#the way i cried so much listening to the stolen century

[very-small-giant]

ok so i made an animatic??? this part of the song is soooo made for these two to me i had to do it

#the adventure zone #taz #taz balance #taz spoilers #taz balance spoilers #taz lup #lup taaco #barry bluejeans #blupjeans #which is the cutest little ship name i have to say #and theyre soooooo #the way i cried so much listening to the stolen century #animatic #Youtube

[charlietheepicwriter7]

Hey, Little Songbird

Chapter 16 - Ao3

Felix could only hope his mother would pardon him for thinking such harsh words, but he felt as though the situation merited it. Because this? Was bullshit.

He could understand, to a degree, where Marinette was coming from. Felix wasn’t a good person; ergo, put Felix in situations where he would be forced to do good to make him confront the benefits of kindness and charity and hugging snot-nosed orphans or whatnot. He could understand becoming a force for good; his family had the money and the influence to improve the live of the less fortunate, and he’d understood that ever since his mother enlisted his help with choosing Graham Films annual donations. He could stand losing some of his own money just to hear Marinette gush about the charity he chose, and how that money would be used (all information he knew, of course; you don’t donate without knowing exactly where your money is going).

What he could not stand is having all his time with Marinette interrupted by Cesaire.

Marinette’s reasoning was that she wanted her two friends to get along, but Felix suspected she just liked to see him suffer. Sure, he did Cesaire a favor once, that doesn’t mean they like each other! In fact, he would go out on a limb and say that Cesaire definitely hated him. Why? …He wasn’t sure. If it had been a few weeks ago, he would have said she was jealous he had been Marinette’s friend while she had been led astray, but now that he’d gotten to—bleck—know Cesaire, he was certain it wasn’t in the girl’s character.

He took the opportunity to ask Cesaire the next time Marinette forced them to work together on a project—this time, cleaning up the content of the Ladyblog. Apparently Felix’s demeanor would help push the blog in a more professional direction.

Cesaire’s fingers paused on the keyboard at his question. Even Marinette, who had been working on a separate project, stopped to listen in. “I don’t hate you,” she lied.

“Yes, you do,” Felix corrected. “I’ve seen the way you look at me, before your near suspension and after. You hate me, and I’d like to know why.”

“Felix, she doesn’t hate you—” Marinette tried, but Cesaire stopped her.

“Marinette, I appreciate you trying to mediate, but you don’t have to right now”—She flashed a smile at Marinette—“Felix, I don’t hate you. I just don’t like you.”

“Okay. Why?”

She drew back, shock crossing her face before she shut the emotion down. “Felix, the first time we met, I was an akuma. An akuma you caused. I still don’t know why you impersonated Adrien, but since you supported Marinette when I didn’t, I’m willing to tolerate you despite that.”

Oh. “I had forgotten that,” he admitted, looking away.

“You… forgot?” She didn’t believe him, it was clear in her voice.

“Yes. I was having quite the bad day myself.”

Cesaire looked ready to say something, but Marinette placed a hand on her shoulder. “Felix, I’ve been meaning to ask you… Why did you impersonate Adrien that day? Knowing you now… it doesn’t seem like something you would do without a reason.”

Felix pursed his lips. True, what he did that day had been… poorly thought out. He would even say that he’d acted rashly, but to be honest, he had planned it from the beginning. The entire time his father was on his death bed, the entire time Felix watched him die, Adrien was calling and emailing him, talking about his friends and modeling and school like Felix hadn’t begged him and Uncle Gabriel to come over and visit, to support them in their time of need like his family had done when Aunt Emilie went missing. Perhaps it was cruel that he and Mother tried to take back their family rings on the anniversary of Aunt Emilie’s disappearance, but it was cruel that they didn’t come to his father’s funeral because… because of a fashion show!

So Felix told them. Despite himself, he told the girls about his father and how much he loved him, and how it broke his heart to see the strongest man he’d ever met waste away in front of his eyes. How his mother cried for months as she sat at his bedside. How their company suffered with the CEO dying and his mother beside herself with grief, how Felix was forced to delegate power to those loyal to his father and their family, trying to keep their business afloat and still in their name.

“Adrien… is very cruel in his ignorance,” Felix said. “He’s more than happy to ignore other people’s problems until they affect him, then he’ll do whatever he can to solve the problem. And I… wanted him to be affected.” He shook his head, picking at Marinette’s bedspread. “I thought that if I caused him to lose all his friends… Well, that plan backfired, so there’s no need to go into detail. I should feel lucky that I got at least one of the rings back.”

“Rings?”

Felix showed off the one he’d stolen from Gabriel, the silver band glinting in the sunlight. The metal seemed to hum against the warmth of his fingers. “The wedding bands of Gabriel and Emilie Agreste were originally family heirlooms of the Graham de Vanily estate. Originally, they were supposed to be used when the eldest child, my mother, got married. Unfortunately, that was impossible.”

“Wait, your mom is a Graham de Vanily?” Cesaire asked. “So, your dad married into the family?”

“That’s correct; Grandfather arranged it back when Father was a mere director in our company.” Felix shook his head. “Mother and Father were supposed to wear these on their wedding day. But Aunt Emilie stole them for her own marriage.”

Marinette gasped. “No! Why would she do that!?”

“I have no idea; if Aunt Emilie ever said why, Mother certainly has never mentioned it. My grandparents disowned her for the theft—though, to be honest, they were already on the edge because Aunt Emilie was marrying someone they didn’t approve of—and it was only Mother’s intervention that kept them from reporting her to the police.” He twisted the ring around his finger. “These rings mean a lot to my family, to my mother… I know it hurt her that she and Father never wore them, even if Father created near replicas for their 3rd anniversary. She never wore hers though… I think she thought that if she did, it would be acknowledging that the rings would never come home.”

“What’s so special about these rings, anyway?” Cesaire asked, moving closer to look at, but thankfully not touch, his ring. “It’s plain silver.”

“Honestly, I have no idea. They’ve been in the family for centuries, and Mother said that you could only understand how precious they are until you and your love both wear them, but…”

“It’s not the value of the rings,” Marinette finished. “It’s what they represent.”

“Precisely. Aunt Emilie stole them to begin with. Now that she’s gone—and honestly, I’m not entirely convinced she didn’t just leave Uncle Gabriel—the rings should come home, no matter how sentimental Uncle is about them. He has made it very clear that he doesn’t consider us family, so there’s no need to keep family heirlooms.” Felix clenched his fist. “I already stole one of the rings; I can steal the other one too.”

Marinette was shaken, but Cesaire immediately nodded her head in agreement. “Go for it.”

“Alya!”

“What? If they were stolen to begin with, then there’s no problem with him stealing them back. Besides, it’s not like Gabriel can report him to the police. There is evidence that the rings were originally your family’s, right? Like, pictures of your grandparents wearing them, or even official documentation?”

Huh. It seems Cesaire is more than she first appeared. “That’s correct, we have both.”

“Then he can’t do much. At worst, he can try to pass them off as a different set of jewelry since the ring is so generic, but that would just draw out the investigation and bring more evidence against him to light. Even claiming that you were the one to steal the ring could be difficult to prove unless he got it on camera.” She frowned. “Getting to the other ring will be difficult though, since Gabriel will likely protect it.”

“Plus, if he knows you stole it, he’s not going to let you into the house,” agreed Marinette. Both he and Cesaire exchanged at look at her abetting. “What? You act like I’ve never stolen anything before!”

“But you… haven’t?”

A cat-like grin stretched across Cesaire’s face. “Oh? She hasn’t told you that story yet?”

A groan. “Alya, no!”

A smirk twitched across his lips despite himself. Perhaps working with Cesaire wouldn’t be so bad after all…

Taglist: @graduatedmelon @novicevoice @dur55 @kris-pines04 @18-fandoms-unite-08 @moonlightstar64 @bee-a-garbage-shipper @sol-o-shade @kittyotakunoir666 @tinyterror333 @allieoftheenemy @marichat00 @xgxmxtx @two-faced-biatch @feliciakainzofspades @evil-cricket @emilytopaz @spicybelladonna @chocolateherringtacofan @user00000003 @wannajointhecrabcult @happymonster-pants @duquesapincarrasca @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen  @sxltinette @kittydemon9000 @thetrashypanda423

#hey little songbird #felinette #felix graham de vanily #marinette dupain cheng #alya cesaire #alya sugar #adrien salt #ml salt #miraculous ladybug #mlb #Alya: You can have a little crime... as justice.

[cozy-the-overlord]

Requiem

Summary: He let go, and he fell.

Word Count: 910

Pairing: None

A/N: So here’s an idea that I got from an ask game forever ago (thanks Lauren!) that I randomly decided to stay up all night writing two nights ago because I was depressed after listening to folklore for the millionth time. This is probably the shortest thing I’ve ever written, and there’s not a lot to it-- just a canon-compliant exploration of what was going through Loki’s head when he fell from the Bifrost at the end of Thor.

Thanks for reading!

Warnings: Suicide Attempt/Suicidal Thoughts

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae @whatafuckingdumbass @the-emo-asgardian @imnotrevealingmyname

If you want to be tagged, feel free to send an ask/message :)

Read it on Ao3!

He fell.

He let go, and he fell.

It was a choice, but it wasn’t. Because what else could he choose? He had already fallen, fallen from a pedestal that had never been his to stand upon, a throne that had been snatched from beneath him before he had the chance to sit. He had already come crashing through the marble floor, in the sight of one who had never bothered to hold him high to begin with.

How much farther could he fall, really?

He let go, and he fell. Thor was screaming, a sound guttural and horrified, the type of sound that should have cut through his brain and throbbed in his eardrums, but it didn’t.

Loki felt nothing. He was too busy feeling everything.

The figure above them was still, even as the swirling cosmos snuffed him out like a candle, the screech of silence drowning out his brother’s shrieks.

I could have done it, Father!

But there was no truth to that cry, was there?

Father.

Not father.

King-slayer.

Kin-slayer.

Traitor, traitor, traitor.

They lied, he sobbed. They lied.

No, Loki, they scolded.

You lied.

He let go, and he fell.

He was drowning.

Loki knew what it felt like to drown. He had almost drowned once before, when he was but a child, in one of the great mountain lakes of Alfheim by which they had spent their summers. The water had been clear, so clear that one could see straight to the mussel shells that glistened in the sand below, so clear that the bottom looked only just below his feet …

Don’t go out too far, his mother had warned.

Wrong, wrong, they hissed.

Not-Mother.

Never-Was-Mother.

Will-Never-Be-Mother.

He gasped for air and choked on the frostbitten nothingness that pierced his lungs.

He hadn’t known he had gone too far out. The sandy floor had been right there, so close he could touch it … until it wasn’t and he couldn’t and the lake swallowed him whole. The water sucked his childish cries from his chest, pulling him deeper and deeper until his throat caught fire and the frothing white blinded his vision, until death’s gaunt specter loomed over him, a leering grin stretched across its skeletal cheeks—

It didn’t matter now. It hadn’t even mattered then, when Thor had pulled his sobbing mess of a brother—

Not-Brother

—pulled his sobbing mess to shore and deposited him in the sand like a load of laundry. It was only delaying the inevitable.

He let go, and he fell. The void pulled him deeper, far deeper than that Alfheim lake could ever dream of, embracing him with a chill that ripped his skin from his bones. He would have screamed, but his throat had turned to ice.

Everything had turned to ice. He was made of ice, freezing, flying, falling, waiting to shatter upon a surface that never emerged, begging for an end that never came.

Let the ground come, he pleaded with deities he knew couldn’t bother to listen, please, just let the ground come and let it all end.

But he only fell.

Colors danced before him, bright and distant, too far to bring comfort but just close enough that he could hear how they laughed at him.

Red, like the banners that dangled in the Great Hall in honor of his brother’s Name Day.

Gold, like the light that glowed on his father’s face as he lay motionless in his bed.

Blue, like the morning glory that climbed his mother’s garden walls.

Green, like the blankets she had swathed him as an infant, a stolen beast in a sparkling cradle.

He sobbed, screaming soundlessly until his throat bled raw as he plummeted through the nullity. It was torture, icicles gashing at his heart with every swollen reminder.

Because he loved them. He loved them so much, more than he could ever bring himself to describe, even though they were never real, even though they didn’t care about him, even though he had failed them in very possible way a person could fail someone. He loved them, and he hated himself for it.

If only he had drowned in the lake.

He let go, and he fell. For decades, centuries, millenia, there was nothing but him, engulfed by nothingness as he plunged through obscurity.

Until he hit the bottom.

He had hoped he’d shatter. It was a lovely dream, really—to crash through the planet’s surface and shatter into a million tiny pieces, shards of ice that could just melt away and cease to be. The sun would rise on a mended galaxy, one where Loki Laufeyson had never drawn breath.

But he didn’t shatter. He hit the ground with a horrible thud, one that rattled his very skull and crushed what was left of him against the jagged rock, broken, yet dishearteningly whole. He lay there, too fractured even for tears, praying for the familiar specter to swoop in and bring the nightmare to an end.

But there was nothing. It seemed even death had abandoned him.

Until a bright light seared his vision white, and a huffing laugh cracked through the fog.

“Look at this thing,” the throaty voice chuckled. “It’s not worth the effort. Just put it out of its misery.”

Yes, he thought, please. Just put it out of its misery.

Their voices melted back into the hum of existence, a hum that was beginning to sound suspiciously like an engine. The light was quickly fading.

Loki closed his eyes.

It’s okay. It’s over.

But it wasn’t over.

It was only the beginning.

#loki marvel #loki fanfic #loki oneshot #requiem #cozy writes

[shima-draws]

Aww yeahhh time for Kiyo to make his entrance!

I wrote an entire essay about him (again whoops) so it’s very long and under the cut for your viewing pleasure ;)

Kiyo

Age: 29

Hair color: Green

Eye color: Brown

Element: Stars

Kiyo, the Guildmaster of the Asterstone Guild! He only took up the position recently and has had the Guildmaster title for about a year and a half. He was the previous record holder for youngest Guildmaster until that title was stolen by Taku. (Kiyo holds a grudge about it but it’s playful.) 

Kiyo, just like lots of other characters in ATS, was taken in by the Asterstone Guild at a young age. He’s similar to Shima in that he has no previous memories before showing up outside the guild one day, battered and bruised. (That marks three characters in this series with amnesia now! Wrow) He grew up under the watchful eye and tutelage of the previous Guildmaster, and because of how attached to him she’d gotten, it wasn’t long before he began to express desires to take over the guild once she retired. After a lot of thought and contemplation she eventually handed over the position to him. This initially resulted in a lot of outrage from the guild members because they did not think Kiyo was suited to be the Guildmaster, but he eventually proved them wrong once he stepped up to the plate and showed them he could act like a true leader!

They did have good reason to be nervous about that, though, as Kiyo is normally a very laid-back and carefree person and is strictly non-violent. This has lead into lots of situations where he’s opted out of fighting, leading his guildmates into lots of trouble when they needed a hand, and they labeled him as both a coward for avoiding necessary battles on missions (which is practically a requirement for a guild member going out on dangerous quests, you sort of have to have a battle prowess to take on any foes) and lazy for not participating when he should. Initially this bothered Kiyo a great deal, but the previous guildmaster assured him that not everybody is suited for battling others, and that he can still pave his own way to success in a non-violent manner. While Kiyo may not have a liking for fighting, he has an extremely smooth tongue and is very capable of talking himself out of sticky situations (mostly by bribing. He is VERY good at that lmao). He has a talent for manipulating others into doing what he wants them to, though he rarely uses this on people he considers friends. When Kiyo’s able to complete a mission and win the day without resorting to using their elemental powers in a fight, his guild members have to stop and think for a second like. Hold on. He just did that so easily, he made it look so simple, we really need to stop underestimating him and calling him totally useless (Kiyo: Hey. HEY).

Kiyo’s pretty close to all of his guildmates despite their constant ribbing—the one person he’s close to that adores him completely is Lacie, because he was the person to bring her into the guild (she was around 10, he was 17), and being the first person to genuinely show her kindness that wasn’t for ulterior motives, Lacie became very attached to him. Kiyo acts like an older brother to her, and Lacie supports him in whatever he does. She was thrilled when he took on the Guildmaster position, and he has a very soft spot for her :’) She always sings his praises to anybody outside who will listen, and gets angry at Emrys the one time he called Kiyo incompetent.

After becoming the guildmaster, Kiyo actually does a good job at taking charge despite the general opinions that he wouldn’t. He’s still very casual about it though and is a bit more flexible with how the guild is run, preferring to let the guild members do things their own way and be less strict about the overall rules. He’s basically got the “Do whatever you want!” and “Just wing it!” outlook, and while a lot of the members don’t like this attitude, a lot of them do. At the end of the day they all do respect him, though! While he isn’t a fighter he’s very good at giving orders and keeping things in check around Asterstone lol

Despite Kiyo’s insistence on staying out of battles, he’s actually an extremely skilled fighter, and is probably the strongest and most dangerous person in the entire guild. The issue with this, though, is that whenever he gets into a fight, he tends to get too “serious” and starts going off the walls, treating the battle as a game and something fun and entertaining. This leads into him not knowing when to stop, and nobody else being able to stop him, so he’s seriously injured other people without meaning to—revealing that he’s actually terrified of violence because he loses himself in it, and why he prefers to stay on the sidelines. It’s only when Kiyo gets really serious in battles that a darker side comes out, and where the star mark in his eye appears. It’s only been seen a few rare times throughout his life at the guild, so nobody really thinks much of it or notices it. It’s only after the star mark appears that Kiyo passes out afterwards, having exerted a lot of power and extremely skilled battle prowess nobody has ever seen before. However, after a grand guild tournament where Kiyo faces off against Taku and gets too into it, revealing his star mark and almost slicing Taku’s head clean off, one of Kiyo’s advisors at the guild starts to look into it out of concern for both Kiyo’s safety and that of others.

In the middle of all this mess, Kiyo meets Toru, and after nearly forcing him to join Asterstone, the two start growing closer 👀 Toru joins the squad of not putting up with Kiyo’s bullshit, but that’s only after he gets over his starstruck fanboy phase. Because Toru is newer to the guild and because he’s a non-elemental not suited for fighting, Kiyo instantly becomes attached to him, finding similarities in their preferences and backgrounds. While Toru does think Kiyo’s an idiot sometimes he treats him very kindly, and is usually the first to defend him when the other members playfully tease him, so Kiyo’s just like you are an angel sent from heaven just for me and I adore you. Still though with Toru being a non-elemental Kiyo stresses about his safety CONSTANTLY, even after Toru gets official training in self defense. If Toru’s in danger Kiyo will blow off literally everything else to go rescue him first, which the other members have to get used to as it happens more often than they’d like akdasbmlads

Later down the line the guild is caught up in something terrible, and find themselves being targeted by a descendant of a great inventor and sorcerer (not Elymas this time tho lol). She’s apparently seeking what’s known as the Velle Nova, and has reason to believe Asterstone is in possession of it. After Kiyo’s forced to fight and unleashes the power behind his star mark, the descendant reveals that Kiyo has the Velle Nova, and then the truth finally comes out…

Kiyo remembers everything about his past. Years ago, his town had been caught up in a great disaster, and he was the only survivor. He was forcibly taken in by several scientists, one of them being the ancestor of the girl descendant. They were attempting to recreate the Velle Nova, one of the great sorcerer Elymas’ inventions, which is said to grant any sort of wish imaginable. They wanted to claim that power for themselves and possess the powers of the universe itself. However every attempt had failed, and without the real Velle Nova they couldn’t achieve what they were after. So they decided to pour all of their research into Kiyo instead, and try to create the weapon inside of a human being. This ended up making a twisted, broken version of what should have been the Velle Nova. But Kiyo couldn’t contain its power—it was going to unravel the universe itself and either destroy everything or alter it tragically into something unimaginable. One of the scientists working with the group realized how awful their experiment was and, being a Time elemental, decided to erase Kiyo’s memories (with some help) and send him centuries into the future so that the rest of the group couldn’t get their hands on him. Hence Kiyo winding up outside of Asterstone with no memories, and the truth behind his star mark. It had been granting Kiyo his wish the whole time—the longing to protect the things he cares about by being able to defeat any threat in his way. Of course with the unstable power that he can’t control, it usually leads into disaster;;

Kiyo, now having recovered his memories, realizes that the same thing is going to happen again, and decides to seal himself off to protect Asterstone and the world before the universe unravels. Cue an epic PMD-esque goodbye scene where he bids farewell to Toru, gives him his trademark scarf, and vanishes, escaping into a dimension between time and space where his power can be contained. *Starts playing I Don’t Want To Say Goodbye*

Toru, absolutely devastated by Kiyo’s farewell, decides he’s going to break time and space to save his man, except there’s one small issue...nobody else remembers that Kiyo even existed, and Toru only managed to by some miracle (and also maybe bc Kiyo handed him his scarf idk some magic soul connection thing). But after a while...a long while, maybe like a year or more...they finally unlock the key to finding Kiyo!!

Toru and Kiyo share a tearful reunion, and Kiyo cries a lot because it had been so lonely sitting in that black hole all by himself for so long. Toru begs Kiyo to come back, and suggests that Kiyo separate himself from the Vella Nova in order to live a normal life, but Kiyo informs him that he and the Vella Nova...are the same. They’re the same combined entity! Kiyo says that if he tries to unfuse, he’ll just end up destroying himself, because there’s nothing to separate, being one singular existence. So Toru points out uh hey since you’re the same thing, don’t you get a say on how your power is used? “It’s your power, Kiyo” yes we’re referencing Tododeku here we go

Kiyo’s like hmm uh yeah I guess you have a point;; so we went through all that for nothing huh. And Toru tells him you’re a fucking moron and Kiyo’s like ahh yes but you loved this moron enough to come rescue him from the void ;) And they kinda sorta confess but not really? Kiyo’s too nervous and Toru’s too distracted trying to figure out how to get them out of there but no worries they sort it out later. Kiyo tells him that hey I’m still dangerous and I could lose control at any given moment and Toru’s just like well I guess we’ll just have to stop you and bring you back to yourself. So with the knowledge that he’s got a whole guild of awesome people backing him up and a boy who broke the laws of the universe to save his ass, Kiyo and Toru escape the rift and finally return home together 💕 And that’s pretty much how their arc ends!

Extra personality traits

-He has a really short attention span so this makes things painfully hard on mission briefings, which leads to Kiyo usually screwing up the mission one way or another

-He often charges ahead without thinking and is the first one to become a target in a bad situation. Nobody really feels bad for him though because most of the time it’s his fault for walking right into it LMAO

-He can be very childish sometimes and most of the time he does it on purpose. His guildmates complain that their leader is a whiny, immature brat

-He is an expert on how to annoy people do not test him oh my god

-He can be incredibly selfish;; He’s gotten better with it during recent years, but he got scorned for it a lot when he was younger. He’s also very emotional, and you can read what he’s thinking like an open book! When his friends can’t read him that’s when they start getting worried.

-He has no experience in romance whatsoever and it’s the one (1) thing that can get him flustered. Nobody at the guild has ever seen Kiyo get mildly embarrassed or caught off guard, so they begin to think it’s impossible to make him blush. Then Toru shows up and ruins everything lmao

-He has a great sense of humor and can always make others laugh! He’s also very mischievous and sometimes plays pranks on other members of his guild.

-He’s very stubborn when he wants something and not in a good way. He also pouts a lot when he gets like this

-He loves his guild and his guild members man :'( If any of them are ever in any real danger he's quick to offer himself up first as a target. He's protective of his friends and will do anything to keep them safe!

-A very very affectionate person. He mostly shows this through physical acts like hugging and generally touching other people. In return he also craves affection and gets very soft when it’s given back to him. I’d probably say he’s a little touch starved despite being in close contact with others all the time lol

#Me: Time for a new OC! *Writes a novel-length essay about their background* #Kiyo #Among the Stars #ATS #Shima's OCs #This took me way too long to write fnaskbldads god #Original character #Character art #Character design #Digital art #Art #Character sheet #Character reference #Shima arts #Long post #shima-draws

[tigerseye46]

A Hero Is Born (Red Shark/Sand Au)

Summary: After being dismissed by Guanyin after centuries under their teaching, Red arrived at the city to live a normal life, hiding his identity and powers. He has spent four years in the city and works at Culinary Cicada, content with how he is now. He didn’t expect his life to change one day.

A/N: Finally got this done. There are going to be rarepairs but aren’t the main focus for this chapter so I didn’t tag it. Sun Wukong’s alias is Sun Hàoyú 昊瑜 meaning “vast and limitless excellence.” Zhu Bajie’s alias is Zhu Xiùliàng 秀亮 meaning “refined light.” Sorry if these aren’t good aliases. I know Sha Wujing’s staff can’t control water, but in this au, it can. He learned how to do that after the journey. Also I want to say thank you all my anons and others who put in ideas for this au! It made it really fun! Anyway enjoy!

AO3 Link

Red would admit he didn’t care much for the legends as other people did. He had been a small part of those legends so they weren’t extraordinary to him (not that he had revealed that information to anyone). 

But Mr. Sun and Tang always loved to talk about them, especially the latter, so he listened to the elders. Today was one of those days. A special day that would change his life forever. 

“The thing you need to understand, bud, is that the old legends are never finished. While there may be no pages left to turn, there is always more. Years ago, the Spider Queen and her army attacked. No one could stop them, no one except… Sha Wujing. Using his crescent moon spade, he trapped the Spider Queen under a mountain. He made it so no one else could wield it and he trapped her forever.”

“With the battle won, Sha Wujing… disappeared and was never seen again. It is said that the spade remains there, preventing our world from being destroyed. Because of him, civilization was able to prosper into the awesome world we see today. All thanks to Sha Wujing!”

Red hummed as he leaned against the counter. “That’s cool I guess.”

Mr. Sun scoffed. “Just cool? You know how many people would love that story?”

“I’m just not that impressed by it.”

“How dare you. You always react to the stories that way. Thought that one would bring more excitement.”

“Well, I’m not your audience. You’re not putting on a play for me.”

“At least you listen anyway.”

“That I do. I do think Sha Wujing is more impressive than say the Sun Wukong or Zhu Bajie.” At least he didn’t attack him as much as the others.

Sun appeared as if he was offended by the statement. “He is impressive… I like the Monkey King better,” he muttered. “Anyway, you know the deal. One peach soup.”

“Yea, yea. You got it.” He attempted to pass the bowl but it was quickly taken away by Tang.

“Not so fast. You left out so many details, Hàoyú. No extensive details of how he defeated the Spider Queen? He’s a hero! He deserves a better explanation than that.”

With an eye roll, Hàoyú responded, “Whatever.” He made grabby hands at the bowl. “Can I have my soup now?”

“No. You’re a scholar, tell the story accurately or I might go to your rival.” Sun huffed at the mention. “I could do better, better than those stupid depictions of Sha Wujing, no one can really capture his handsomeness, huh?” He cleared his throat, the small blush on his cheeks fading away. “Anyway, Red, you have orders to take out. Get to it!”

“I was about to take my break.”

“Break? You've been taking a break all morning. How is Culinary Cicada supposed to flourish if you’re slacking off?”

He began pushing Red, rumpling the other’s lotus print shirt. He shoved takeout bags in his hands then sent him out. The human heard a slurp behind him. He spun around to see Sun had stolen the soup back. Furrowing his brows, he suggested, “How about you tell an actually good and detailed story about Sha Wujing and you keep the bowl?”

“You just love hearing about your crush. Alright, it’s a deal.”

————

Red entered an abandoned construction site, whistling a tune under their breath and focusing on their phone. He paused when he heard a voice. “It’s amazing that you’ve finally done it! Are you ready, you two?”

A nasally voice replied, “For the last time, Goliath, we’re almost done.”

“Sorry, Syntax! I’m just so excited!”

“You can’t blame uncle Goliath’s excitement, dad.”

“Hmph. Well, try to hold it in for a bit longer.”

The demon hid behind some rocks. He spotted three spiders and a human surrounding a mountain.

One spider towered over the group, he fiddled with his fingers nervously, indicating that despite being the giant, he was probably the most gentle one out there.

Another had his hands behind his back, tapping his feet impatiently.

The third was tinkering with an invention, a device strapped to his back. The human was beside the third, he had a purple bandanna with two green marks, almost like eyes, wrapped around his forehead and a black coat with white fur.

“Because of you two, we can lift Sha Wujing’s spade!”

Red moved higher up and looked at the glowing object. The duck beside him quacked out of surprise. What was a duck doing here? Whatever. It wasn’t important.

“Sha Wujing’s spade,” he whispered.

“The spider clan will be restored!” Goliath’s shoulders briefly bounced up in surprise. “Huh?”

Huntsman was on top of the mountain and started reaching for the weapon. “Huntsman,” Syntax yelled. “Don’t do that!”

“Whatever, nerd.” He gripped it and instantly got zapped by it which sent him crashing into a wall.

Syntax stood over him. “Idiot. This is the hundredth time you’ve tried this. You think you would have learned your lesson by now. We’ve clarified that he made it so only someone worthy would wield it.”

“Which is why we have this.” The human gestured to the power glove. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

“Hmph, brat.”

“Go ahead, Xiaotian.” Syntax pulled Huntsman up, their cheeks becoming green for the slightest second before they focused on the kid.

Xiaotian strolled up to the weapon and pulled on it with the glove. Sparks danced until he was able to rip it off. He held it high in the air and shouted in triumph, “Look at what I did!” Goliath and Syntax applauded him while Huntsman huffed.

“I could have done it,” he mumbled.

Xiaotian went back up to his family with a smile and waited a second before asking, “Wait, why isn’t anything happening? Are you three sure this is the right mountain?”

Syntax scoffed. “No, Xiaotian, I think it’s the other one.”

The mountain rumbled and cracked in the center. The Spider Queen destroyed it and crawled out with a cackle. “I’ve returned! The queen is back!”

Red’s eyes widened. Oh no. The queen was free. What should he do?

The duck pecked his hands as he was pondering. “Hey!” He attempted to shoo the duck away. “Shoo! It’s rude to peck at people’s hands!”

The four bowed to her with heads hung low, the human placed the crescent moon spade aside. “My queen,” Huntsman started. “We’re glad to have you free.”

“My clan,” she cried. “Wait, where are the rest of you?”

“I’m sorry. We’re some of the few spiders left.”

The Queen’s fist clenched, her happy tone at being freed slipped away. “I see. It’s all Sha Wujing’s fault. Now introductions are in order for the new members.”

“Well, there’s me, Huntsman. Then there’s Goliath and…”

“I can introduce myself, brute. I’m Syntax, my lady, and this is my son, Qi Xiaotian.”

If Red wasn’t so focused on the situation, he would have thought, Son? Those two look nothing alike.

“Son?” Her majesty questioned.

“Yes, he is my biological son. I wasn’t born a spider but I would say those details are for another time.”

“Alright. How did you all manage to free me?”

The human stepped forward with a spring in his step. “I did it, my queen! I managed to harness its power to make it our-” Her majesty loomed with a glare. Xiaotian nervously chuckled. “Our power,” he finished.

With a scoff, the queen congratulated him reluctantly, “Good job… for a human.”

Ignoring the human comment, he beamed. “Thank you! Now, we, the Spider clan, can rule the world!”

The duck continued to peck at the demon. The demon flapped a hand to get rid of the sting while the bird focused on the other one and made him fall right onto Qi Xiaotian.

Red held up the bag of food. “Hey… did someone order food?”

Huntsman and Syntax stared at Goliath. “What? I didn’t order anything.”

Xiaotian shoved him. “Get off me, dumbass! You ruined my moment!”

Spider Queen focused on the intruder. “Well, well, we’ll, an eavesdropper has fallen into our midst. It’s a shame to crush such a tiny, insignificant thing like you as my first act but, oh, what can you do?” She was about to crush them when she was interrupted.

“Wait, my queen.”

Ugh, the human. She rubbed her face. “Yes?”

“You don’t have to waste your energy. I’ll handle it! Allow me to prove myself!”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

Red muttered, “Maybe I can go now.”

“You’re fortunate, grocery boy. It’s not every day someone is crushed by the Spider Clan! You should consider yourself-”

The demon’s ears picked up a sound, his gaze drifted to the staff. “Sha Wujing’s staff,” a voice whispered.

Xiaotian growled, “You’re not listening! I, Qi Xiaotian, will not be disrespected! You’re toast!”

The human attempted to punch him with the glove but he blocked it… blocked it with the crescent moon staff. Fuck. “How did you?”

How did he? He could have used his fire to block it. Why didn’t he? Well, his identity was a secret and he barely used his fire since he became Guanyin’s disciple so that was understandable. But to grab the staff, what was he thinking?

“That’s scientifically impossible,” Syntax said.

“I don’t understand what’s happening but I don’t care. That’s ours!”

“I was supposed to be on my break! Dang it, Mr. Tang!” The weapon activated and whacked the human and the spiders (save the queen) away.

“This can’t be,” her majesty muttered in disbelief.

“That was not what I expected.”

Huntsman hissed, “That doesn’t belong to you. Give it to us!”

“Ummmm… no?” Then suddenly he was launched into the air by the weapon. “AHHHHHH!”

“He can’t leave with the damn thing!”

“I was trapped under a mountain and suddenly, a thief takes it!”

Xiaotian bowed. “Allow me, your majesty. I won’t fail again.”

“Fine! Go!”

The human grabbed his technological staff and made off in his motorcycle to give chase.

-------

Red took in deep breaths to calm himself down as he landed on the ground. Xiaojiao snapped a picture of herself with her sword and motorcycle outfit. During the picture, she used her magic to create sparkles. “Nailed it!” She pocketed her phone and put the sword away.

“Xiaojiao!”

“That was a cool game of tag! You looked like you were having fun! I wanted to join in too!”

“I almost died.”

“But you didn’t! We should go to the arcade! Invite your new friend!”

“He was trying to kill me.”

Her face turned dark. “Where does he live? I’ll handle him.”

“Red Son! Where are you?” Tang stormed up to them. He showed his phone to reveal a zero-star rating. “I got a zero-star rating because of you. Would you like to explain yourself?”

“I think what happened is-”

Xiaojiao giggled. “Congrats, Tang! It’s better than nothing!”

“No, it isn’t! You know you would be in trouble if this happened to my magic shop, missy. Now, Red, you’re-” Tang searched around. “Where did he go?”

Red slipped past him. “Mr. Sun!”

“Hey! Come back here!”

Ignoring him, the demon ran into the shop. “Mr. Sun!”

Hàoyú was in the middle of his bowl. “Yea?”

“So, remember the story you told me this morning? About the Spider Queen?”

Tang and Mei followed him. “Red, we weren’t done talking.”

“Yea, that’s great, Mr. Tang.”

Sun sipped his soup, completely disinterested. “Yea? What about her?”

Red got close to his face. “She’s back! Sha Wujing’s staff was removed! We have to find him! He has to save-”

Sun pushed him back and held his bowl protectively. “You’re getting spit in my soup. Calm down. Who knew that would be the story you get wrapped up in? Relax, it’s just a story.”

“It’s not just a story.” He showed the spade. Hàoyú pursed his lips, contemplating the possibility or holding back from saying something snarky, Red wasn’t sure.

“Wow, Red, you found a stick!”

“No! It belongs to Sha Wujing!” The three burst into laughter. Red growled, his fists briefly flamed but no one noticed except him. “Listen to me! The Spider Queen is out there. I’ll prove this belongs to Sha Wujing.”

Sun raised a brow. “Okay. How?”

“Ummm…” The spade wobbled, it grew then stabbed part of the wall, causing a crack before shortening.

Sun gasped and he was about to get a closer look when Tang pushed him away. Tang grabbed the arm holding the spade and hoisted it up towards the sky. His eyes twinkled. “Sha Wujing’s spade! I knew it! His awesome weapon that he used to seal evil! Wait… why do you have it? And where is the queen now?”

“She’s at a fashion store,” Mei responded.

“What?!”

“I hope this isn’t one of your puppy videos, young lady.”

“There’s always time for a puppy video, Tangy, but no. Look at what’s trending. Hashtag Spider Queen!” She showed a video of the Spider Queen robbing a fashion store with Qi Xiaotian. The queen used some device to absorb a one-of-a-kind item.

Tang panicked when the video ended. “Okay! We have to do something! Get in the truck!” He shoved them in the truck while they shouted out of surprise.

The group yelped as Tang drove like a madman through the streets. They were squished in the car, Red rasped out, “This is a little uncomfortable.”

“Tang! Can you slow down? You’re going to kill us,” Mr. Sun told him. He couldn’t die but he knew it would be unfortunate if the group got into a crash.

“Yea. We need to get to Sha Wujing without getting injured in a crash.”

“Guys! The Spider Queen moved downtown! She’s destroying the mall!”

“We need to get to Sha Wujing fast. The only problem is we have no idea how to get there.”

“Ugh, you’re right. How do we get there? Do we just keep driving?” Tang asked in a frantic tone.

Mr. Sun replied, “Well, if you would have let me talk before you pushed us in here. I know someone who could get us there!”

“Really?”

“Yep! An old friend of mine. The greatest, excellent, glorious Zhu Xiùliàng. Now drive there, Tang!”

“Drive where?”

“Uhhhh… oh, yea, you need directions.”

-------

The group watched kids climb on the tall pig like a jungle gym while others were in the corner conversing or doing other activities. Wukong had a big grin on his face at the scene.

Xiùliàng chuckled and cautioned, “Careful, little ones.” He gently put them down, they frowned and he reassured them, “You can play later. Grandpa has to talk to these people first.” They reluctantly agreed and began breaking away to do their own things.

Sun blushed as the light hit Xiùliàng in a way that illuminated his beauty. Tang whispered to him with a smirk, “Oh, now I know why you brought us here.”

Xiaojiao teased, “Wow, Mr. Sun. We have to save the world and here you are trying to pick up a guy. I see you.” Sun shot them both a glare.

The pig didn’t hear them, he instead focused on beaming at the kids as they walked away. A hand was placed on his hips and he turned to the group with a “Sorry about that. That’s a lot to take in.”

“It most certainly is, old friend. I was hoping something like this wouldn’t happen,” he muttered.

“I was hopin’ that too,” Xiùliàng muttered back. A child with black hair tied up in braids and a blue headband with a flower ran up to the pig with a drawing in hand. “What is it, Yǎshuǐ?” He picked her up so she rested on her arm.

“I made you a drawing, grandpa!” She waved it in front of the pig’s face then looked towards the group. Her eyes briefly widened in surprise before she gave a wave. “Hi, yéyé!”

“Hi, hon,” he greeted.

“Oooo, yéyé. Didn’t know you had grandkids with him,” he teased. “Why didn’t you invite me to your wedding and why didn’t the paparazzi cover it?”

“Shut up, Tang. It’s for respect, you know that.”

“Mhmm…”

Red shook his head. “Disregarding Mr. Sun’s love life,” he murmured. “Mr. Zhu, we need your help to find Sha Wujing.”

Xiaojiao got on her knees, bringing her friend down with her and pleaded, “Yea, we could really use your help.”

Red sighed. “Please help us. The fate of the world is at stake.”

“Alright,” he answered. “Really?”

“Of course. Anything for Sun.” The two cheered. “I’ll just drop these kids off then we’ll go.”

“WOOOOO!”

------

Tang hummed as he walked along the path, trying to contain his excitement. “See, this isn’t that bad,” he said then a trap sprung out of nowhere. “Eep! Never mind! Stupid Sun, stupid Zhu, why did we let them stay behind?”

“Because you said they could.”

“Careful, Tangy. I wonder why Sha Wujing chose to live here.”

“I don’t know. Good thing it isn’t Sun Wukong’s home or we would have to go pass the Flaming Mountains. They actually had to borrow my m- Princess Iron Fan’s fan to-”

A cackle came out of nowhere. Syntax appeared. “If it isn’t you three.” Syntax used the glove to pound at the ground, sending it up.

“Hey! Be careful, kids!”

“I’ll be taking that spade.”

Red held the weapon up. “This is Sha Wujing’s. You are not taking it.”

“You’re just a bunch of broken metal, can’t even make anything useful.” “What? Oh, whatever.” He charged at the spider who caught the spade with glove.

He was launched and heard the distant cry of “RED” as he blacked out.

------

The demon woke up on Sha Wujing’s mountain. “I’m… I’m here?” He stood up and started walking. He spotted a house and peeked inside but found no one so he continued onwards. There was a handmade statue of Tripitaka and Sha Wujing. “Wow.”

The sound of a twig snapping caught his attention. He saw the very person he was looking for glancing at him with a frown. “Huh?” Then the figure ran off.

He followed quickly and reached a river, a single fish. “A fish?” The fish jumped out of the water, a blue light surrounded it. “Ack!” The older demon appeared. “Sha Wujing?”

“It’s been a long time, Red Son or should I say, Red Boy?”

“You know it’s me?”

“You literally just switched the Boy to Son. No shit. Surprise your little friends haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Yea, I haven’t told them yet.”

“I know. Anyway, where’s my spade?”

“Oh… ummm… I’m sorry! I lost it. I was trying to bring it to you and-”

Wujing laughed. “I know. I’ve been watching you.”

“What?” He flashed back to some of the animals he saw. “That was you?”

“Yep. I need something of you, kid. I need you to be my successor.”

“What? Are you sure? Has your brain short circuited?”

“No,” he replied annoyed. “My brain is fine. You’re going to be my successor. Look you came all this way and were fine.”

“Because I’m a demon!”

“Regardless of that, you still made your way here and you’re experienced in fighting. Be a hero.”

“What about the Spider Queen?”

“What about the Spider Queen? Take it as a trial or a warmup.”

“But I-” He sighed, he was hoping he could lead a normal life but he supposed he had no other choice especially since the elder had no intent on helping. The elder was changed, certainly different from the demon who was considered more calm and rational.

Sha Wujing grunted. “What are one of those bullshit quotes I can give you? Oh, right. Believe in yourself and you’ll be fine. The spade was taken from you! Get it back!”

“Alright!” He zoomed off.

Wujing whispered, “Hope this makes you happy, master.”

-------

Xiaojiao was about to use her powers when Red Son crash landed. Red dusted himself off.

“Kid,” Tang yelled.

“Red,” Xiaojiao shouted. “You’re alive! We saw you blast off! We thought something happened to you! Where did you get the jet? You crashed it already! Did you find Sha Wujing?”

“Yep!”

Tang questioned as he looked around frantically, “Where is he?”

“He said it’s up to me, to all of us.” Sun and Zhu exchanged glances.

“What?”

“That’s anticlimactic.”

“How are we meant to fight that?” Sun motioned to the Spider Queen’s humongous form.

“We believe in ourselves. You clean the streets while I stop her… somehow.”

“The jet would have been useful.” She kicked the broken pieces and a speed bike was revealed.

“That works.”

“You can do it, pal!”

Red drove off and approached the queen. “If isn’t the thief trying to ruin my big moment.”  She attempted to squish him when he dodged with the bike.

“Where is it? Where is it?” He squinted at the device the queen had been using to absorb objects, the spade rested in the middle. “Here goes nothing.” He ran into it.

Xiùliàng covered the group. “I’ve won! The clan has been restored!” She stumbled. “Huh?” Red emerged with the weapon. “Sha Wujing?”

“Nope. Just Red.” Red punched her. Spider Queen tried to blast them, they dodged with taunts, “Nice try! You missed! Almost!” They pushed her down with the spade then used it to cut half of a building. “Here we go!”

As he was about to trap her, the Queen roared, “I won’t let this happen again!” She destroyed it, the younger demon was sent backwards. “Sorry, doll. Good luck trying to trap me again. I AM THE QUEEN!” Red’s gaze shot towards a body of water. “You might have that idiot’s staff but you are not Sha Wujing!”

“No, I’m not. I’m Red, his successor!” He lifted the spade up, water swirled around it and he sent it to attack the queen. “It’s time for your reign of terror to end!”

The queen gasped and her powers waned, she turned back to her normal form. “That’s impossible!”

“Nothing is impossible if you believe.” Xiaotian raged, “This isn’t over! You wouldn’t be so mighty with your precious powers, sand boy! Come fight me!”

Red was about to do when a web entangled him. The three spiders showed themselves. “Nice try. We know when to leave the party. We’ll see you,” Huntsman said. Syntax threw a smoke bomb and they disappeared.

The group cut Red free. “You can’t run when I’m about to win! Hmph.”

His friend hugged him. “You kicked SQ’s butt! Without us the city would be toast.”

“I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

Xiùliàng hugged them. “You did.”

“You’re the new Sha Wujing now I guess.”

“I’m proud of you, Red,” Tang said. He was proud of his kid but he couldn’t understand why Sha Wujing had chosen to hand his weapon to a random kid. He’ll think about it later. “I’m really proud.”

“What do we do now?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Red perked up. “Yea! We could bring justice to the world! Go after bad guys!”

Sun suggested, “Or we could eat.”

“Let’s go with that.”

The group discussed their recent adventure while Sha Wujing watched from a building. He frowned, shifted to a duck and flew off.

#lego monkie kid #monkie kid #red sand au #red shark au #red son #sha wujing #lmk sandy #sandy #tang #mr tang #sun wukong #monkie kid wukong #zhu bajie #pigsy #lmk pigsy #long xiaojiao #mei #qi xiaotian #mk #spider gang #syntax #lmk huntsman #huntsman #goliath #lmk goliath #spider queen #philo/tiger writes

[mansions-maiden]

Helloooww againnnnn xD

Thank you so much for taking my request before (arthur mc switch place). Sooo i wanna request again if you have timeeee xD

About young mc was a mischievous kid, problem child and often got spanked by her mom back then. So i wanna request the scenario of mc suddenly become a little girl and 12 of them will dealing with her shit*y mischievous behavior xD. Kinda wanna see they got tired and traumatic to have children xD

Thank you so much before and i love you so muchhhhh ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

this was so much fun to write! and sorry it was late! I was busy with school work and the first draft got deleted. so had to rewrite it from the scratch. T-T. wrote it long as a compensation! Enjoy the reading! And second request from the same person! Love you too❤💕

word count: 2K.

The sun rose in the east and dyed the streets of 19th century France in it’s orange hue. Sebastian went to wake MC up as she didn’t wake up yet.

*rap rap* “MC! wake up! It’s morning already!” , he knocked MC bedroom’s door for sometime and yet, there was no answer from the other side. Worried, he went to comte and grabbed the spare keys to MC’s room.

He went inside and searched for mc. But when she couldn’t be found anywhere, he called for comte and Leonardo. Hearing his calls, Leo and comte immediately came running into the room, only to find a small girl child, fast asleep amidst the silky bedsheets.

The three men looked at each other before Leonardo gently picked up the girl in his arms. A crescent smile crawled on to their lips at the sight of the little girl.

Comte took the girl from Leonardo's arms and put her on his hip, wrapping an arm around her little waist.

"who is this little girl? Where did MC go?" Comte asked looking around the room.

The girl woke up from her slumber due to all voices and movements. The three men stared at her. " Hey Leo, why do I get a feeling that this little girl is MC? her eyes look the same as our mc..ow!" Comte cried in pain while speaking as MC was pulling his blonde locks of hair painfully.

Leo laughed at Comte and Sebastian quietly snickered before composing himself and spoke" M.comte, I think we should explain the situation to residents too."

"You're right Sebastian. I shall inform them. " Comte said, finally freeing his hair from MC's grip.

MC was giggling to herself loudly.

(Aand mama Comte and papa Leonardo mode have been activated )

All the residents stared at the new arrivals in the dining hall.

" Goodness Comte! When did you become father? Congratulations on becoming father of 13 members!" Arthur spoke from one end of the table with a mischievous grin.

"stop it Arthur. I am no one's father. And this little girl here is our MC. Looks like she took something that changed her into her childhood self". Comte said with a little frown as he took his seat.

"oh really!? MC is so cute! Come here little girl!" Vincent aka the gentle angel took her from Comte and sat her on the table. "Do you want bread lil doll?" Vincent asked, giving her the baguette.

MC threw the baguette on the other side of the table ( I can hear the sound of Comte's breaking heart seeing his favorite dish being thrown away XD. )

The baguette smacked Mozart's face and a disappointed sigh was heard from him ." It's only morning and I have to deal with little MC's ruckus? She already causes enough trouble in original form.." Mozart said.

"Mama! Papa! Give me chocolates!" MC went to Comte and tugged at his cloak with her little hands.

"wait! Why the hell is she calling you mama and papa!?" Theo asked with a surprised tone to which Leonardo replied with a shrug and laugh.

“sebastian? can you buy her some chocolates? “ comte asked. Sebastian immediately went into the town. 

"You're soo cute Toshiko- little mc! I want to squish you in my arms!" Dazai said as he poked her cheeks and suddenly, a shrill scream of pain escaped his mouth. " Ahh~! Why did you bite my hand !? " Dazai screamed again looking at the red bite mark appearing on his fingers.

"No one touches mc!" Mc squealed and jumped on to the floor and began running. "Catch me if you can!" Mc ran out of the dining room and disappeared into the gardens.

Arthur, Vincent and Napoleon were soon on their feet searching for mc. "Now, where did this sneaky little girl go?!" Arthur said, wiping the sweat beads on his forehead. That's when the three heard heard the adorable giggles of a child.

They saw mc, covered in mud from tip to toe and Arthur's and Theo's dogs running and playing with her.

"Gotcha!" "Ahh~ Arthur! Hehee!" Mc squealed and wriggled , trying to escape from Arthur's grasp.

"hey! W-what are you doing?!" Arthur exclaimed suddenly as he found himself getting covered in dirt by mc. " Wowee! Noe Arthur us dirty! Napoleon! Shoo him away and throw him in the bath"

"Go and freshen up Arthur. I'll take care of her" Napoleon told Arthur and sent him into the mansion.

" Napoleon! Bend down! Bend down! Gimme a piggy back ride! "

"wai- woah!!" Napoleon was surprisingly pulled down by MC by his Cape.

And that's how MC had a whole tour of mansion with Napoleon as her personal horse.

The sun rose further into the sky and soon it was afternoon. All the vampires gathered at the dining table including Shakespeare, who was invited for lunch by Vincent.

Shakespeare heard the giggles of a child. "Why doth I hear the giggles of a child in thy mansion Comte? " Shakespeare asked searching for the source of the voice.

"our MC has turned into a child Will. Those giggles are of our MC." Vincent explained what had happened from the morning.

" oh- looks like destiny has strange ways of entertaining herself.." Shakespeare murmured to no one and called out for MC.

"Shakespeare! You're here. I have some stories for you. Do you want to listen?" Mc asked running into the dining hall.

"what may those stories be little Angel?" Shakespeare asked, making her sit in the chair next to his.

" Do you know, Theo has sweet tooth secretly. He even fills his entire pancakes with sugar syrup! He dips everything he finds in sugar syrup.! And he wants Vincent  to love only him!”

"oi little Hondje ! What do you think you're blabbering about?!" Theo rose from his seat, as he stopped  eating his sugar syrup dipped pan cakes. XD .

"Vincent! Protect me from your darling brother!" MC said hiding behind Shakespeare and sticking her tongue out at Theo.

The mansion reverberated with the laughter of residents as she went on and on telling her stories , which had some of the most embarrassing stories of residents and had left residents with burning cheeks.

After lunch, Theo called little mc and took her out into the town along with his dog King. “ MC! come here! Don’t go wandering off!” Theo was having hard time catching mc and looking after his King at the same time.

“THEO! Come here! You must see this! It’s so cute!!” MC approached Theo and dragged him by his arm. Theo turned to stone as soon as he saw what had caught the sight of mc. “Theo! Theo? ...Hello..Theo!” MC shook Theo by his arm and Theo immediately looked down at her with a flustered gaze,” Why would you want to show me a cat?! You little rascal!” Theo bent down to reach mc’s height. “Oh.. Are you afraid of cats? I’m sorry! I didn’t know that.. but! OH! I gotta tell this to all the members!”

“Don’t you dare!” Theo now ran after MC as she sped off towards mansion. Her mischief kept all the residents on high alert their toes and they didn’t even realize it was evening.

When mc was roaming through the corridors, she found Leonardo fast asleep near the library doors again and  a sudden idea popped in her mind. She woke up Leonardo and gave him a glass of water. “ Leo! I thought you might be thirsty. So I brought you a glass of water!”

Unable to resist her puppy dog eyes, he took a sip of water, only to spit it out the next instant .” What did you mix in this cara mia?!”

“uh-oh! I think  I mixed the salt without my knowledge. Thank you for saving my tongue Leo!” mc said laughing and ran off into the corridors.

Sebastian was in kitchen, cooking dinner  when he felt his waistcoat being tugged. “ Hey, peasant! Bow down to the queen! “ MC posed as a queen with crown stolen taken from comte’s room. “ Your lovely highness, I’m afraid you’re not a queen yet. But the princess of this mansion does deserve a treat. Here” Sebastian told as he kept a chocolate bar in her mouth. A sweet moan escaped her mouth as the chocolate melted in her mouth. “ Yours truly is satisfied peasant! You may continue your work!” MC said as she went off, still chewing off the chocolate in her mouth.

“It looks as if looking MC is much harder than all the 11 vampires combined together..” he sighed as he murmured to himself.

after sometime:

Isaac heard a soft knock on his door and he opened it, and found little mc with her hands behind her back and mischief dancing in her eyes. “I am here to give you this” MC said with a smile as she gave him  a paper. A sour face was made by Isaac as soon as he saw the paper she gave. “What is this?! Not you too!” Isaac cried out as he saw the drawing of Isaac saying, “I love apples” and many more drawings related to apples.

“OH MC! COME HERE!” Isaac shouted as MC ran away, laughing loudly on her way. The residents heard the commotion and came outside, only to find Isaac with a flustered gaze and panting heavily. “Who told mc about apples and me?! Now even she joined in Arthur’s cult!” Isaac told everyone and everyone burst out laughing.

Comte called her into his room and sate her in the chair across him as he asked,” Cherie? Here you go , I bought this for you. “ Comte said as he gave her the new dresses and chocolates.

“ aah!! Comte! thank you so much!! You’re my mama!!” Mc squealed as she hugged comte’s knees.  She stretched out her hand and told, “mama! say aah!” comte opened his mouth and soon found out that she had given him a chocolate. He took her into his arms and sat her on his lap, kissing her nose and forehead affectionately.

After dinner:

MC was on the couch yawning  and scrunching her eyes when comte and Mozart found her. “Are you sleepy cherie? Would you like to sleep?” Comte asked, bending down. “Yes..” “ I shall play a lullaby then. Will you listen to it MC? “ . “yeah...” mc yawned again.

Mozart told comte to follow him into his music room with mc. Mozart began playing  lullaby as soft as the wind chimes in the windy night on his piano. Comte ran his fingers through the hairs of mc as he watched her fall asleep, with her head in his lap with a smile on his face. ‘could this day get any better?’ he thought to himself as continued petting her head.

After MC fell asleep, he carried her gently in  a princess carry into the hall where everyone is gathered.

“Is she asleep?” everyone looked at mc’s sleeping face with adoration as Napoleon asked. “ I can’t believe she has the nerve to sleep after keeping us on our feet the entire day.” Theo sighed .

“ I do agree..she’s such a handful kid.. But it is the most refreshing day and most adorable thing I’ve ever seen”  Arthur said, stretching his hands above his head and laughed.

“I can’t believe one of the most feared emperor  ended up becoming a personal horse for a little girl” napoleon said rubbing his still aching back and shoulders.

“Does anyone want to have a kid here in the mansion?” Sebastian asked with a curious gaze.

“No! Having mc already in her original form is enough to us. She’s just like a big grown up baby. “ Leonardo said with a smile.

“I’m so glad that everyone thinks of MC the same way” Comte said laughing.

“We all are tired today due to her. Let’s call it a day guys..” Everyone retired to their own rooms and comte put her to sleep in her room before going to his room.

Next day, mc was back in her own form with no memories of the previous day. But everyone kept their mouths sealed for they wanted to hide their smile whenever they saw her and were mesmerized by her innocence.

#im sorry for writing about comte so many times #but i can't help it #i love him too much #ikevamp fluff #ikemen vampire #ikevamp funny #ikevamp vincent #ikevamp comte #ikevamp leo #ikevamp theo #ikevamp shakespeare #ikemenvampire x mc #ikemenvampire hc #ikemenvampire xreader #ikevam napoleon #ikevamp hcs #ikevamp

[gisellelx]

Daffodils

Pairing: Carlisle/Esme Word count: 1600 TW: Esme’s backstory

March 1, 1921

Carlisle was angry.

Well, not angry. Esme had to amend her understanding of that word. Charles had been angry. She remembered what anger looked like, sounded like, felt like against and within her body. If Carlisle was able to get angry, she certainly hadn’t seen it yet, and where he was now wasn’t that.

Carlisle was upset. That word better matched the draw in his brow, the tightness of his jaw. He paced his study, slowly, because the room was too small to afford him the room to move at his full speed.

Edward had come to her a week ago, in the garden, at night, the moonlight shading across both their bodies such that it made their skin seem to become a silvery shimmer. He’d sat across from her, his knees pulled to his chest, watching as she carefully put bulbs into the ground. It was still too early; the ground still likely to freeze. They were so much further north than London, the tiny rural enclave where she’d so freely swung from the branches of the huge crabapple tree in her front yard. At this time of year, the daffodils would already be starting to peek their way out from the thawing dirt, their orange and yellow-white heads cheerily greeting the tired Ohioan farmhands who were starting to prepare the fields. Her mother had always kept the beds neatly; ensuring that year after year a crop of the bright little flowers would appear just in time for St. David’s Day. 

And so she was planting them, in the moonlight, knowing that it would be several weeks before they made their appearance. Like everything, it was the time which had shifted. The way her body moved so much more quickly. The way she could perch in perfect stillness on a tree branch, no longer worried about taking a fall and fracturing her leg. The way death had stolen away from her in three days of agony, and she’d awoken to the kind, concerned face of this man she had never forgotten.

Carlisle. 

She’d asked his name, ten years ago. She remembered the way his brow furrowed in confusion when he’d told her. The tiny hitch in his voice when he admitted that he didn’t remember his mother. She hung onto every word, stored every flickering glance he’d given her. Even through the haze of the laudanum she’d remembered, and it had been so easy, sliding into this household with the kind doctor and the affable, but aloof, boy. 

Edward had sat in the garden for a half hour, watching her dig, plant a bulb, and pat the earth back down, over and over, before he made clear his reason for coming outside.

“You have to tell him, Esme,” he said, his tone hard and frustrated and she sighed.

She didn’t want to burden Edward. He was a boy. His body had never filled out as it would have had he matured even a few years more. And even as an immortal, he was only twenty. The images that she tried valiantly to keep from her mind, lest he see them—she knew they hurt him. Charles’ hands, the way they moved when she had displeased him, so fast she didn’t even see them before she felt their impact. The constant fear. The way nothing was ever good enough—the groceries she bought, too expensive, the curtains she sewed with inexpert seams. Edward had heard the bellowing voice, felt her entire body tense at the sound of the good shoes crossing the threshold, the wool coat and hat finding their way to the hook by the door. 

And what had happened over and over on the second floor, in the privacy of their bedroom—Edward had seen that, too.

“I can’t,” she told him.

“He has to know.”

 She shook her head.

“Esme…he cares for you. He has to know.” The boy’s voice was hard, frustrated.

The words caught her up short. He cared for her, she knew that much. He’d taught her to hunt, and he gave her things to read. He showered her with anything she wanted; dresses, furniture, even flowers when she asked. But he was so reserved, disappearing into his study when they weren’t together.

“How will he take it,” she whispered, and Edward only shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he’d said. “But he has to know.”

So it had been three days ago, now, that she’d told Carlisle. And the gentle doctor had listened, and nodded, and gently touched her shoulder. She’d cried, the heaving tearless sobs that were now the mark of her new existence. And he’d comforted her, squeezing her shoulder, even stroking her cheek. When she felt calm, and he was certain of her security, he announced he was going to take a walk and disappeared for several hours.

And that had been that, she thought. He listened, and he absorbed her story, and it was one more thing about her that he simply took as part of her. She was grateful for the acceptance, pleased with the quiet way he’d accepted it. But it unraveled in the days after. The blond doctor withdrew. He stopped talking to her. Stopped touching her shoulder in the affectionate way he’d begun to before she’d given him the information. When she entered a room he flinched, looking away.

She felt…afraid of him, which seemed so uncharacteristic for Carlisle, the gentle man she’d met ten years ago and who had given her no reason to doubt him now. So she followed him here, to his study, where he had warmly invited her to join him anytime. He stood at once, began pacing, making her wonder if her presence was unwelcome.

He was so obviously upset.

“You’re angry with me,” she said quietly, and he became perfectly still at once. It was an eerie stillness, a stillness she was still getting used to. Carlisle was so good at human habits, and Edward only slightly less so, that when they stopped moving in the way their kind were able to, a perfect cessation of motion, not breathing, not so much as twitching—it still took her by surprise.

He shook his head. “I’m not angry with you.”

“You’ve stopped touching me.” Because she was undesirable? She supposed she deserved that.

He looked at her, his brow furrowed. “Have I?”

She nodded.

“I didn’t realize.” He came to her side, seated himself on the arm of the chair. He took her hand, placing it between both of his and caressing her knuckles.

“You’re angry.”

And in a flash, he was on the other side of the room, his back against the wall.

She swallowed. This much was right. “You’re angry,” she repeated.

He shook his head. “Not with you, Esme. Never with you.”

“But you’re angry.”

He nodded, slowly, standing back up, dropping her hand and thrusting his hands into his hair. They clutched at the golden locks, squeezing frantically, intermittently as he began to pace again.

“I just… What beasts are we, men? To do this? I stopped touching you because I can’t bear the thought that my hands might feel like—”

“You could never be him,” she said quietly.

He shook his head. “You don’t know that.”

She shrank back into the chair, one of two luxurious ones he had installed in his study. For what reason, she suddenly wondered. Edward didn’t need to sit, and neither did she. Carlisle was so perfect in his charade, in the nearly three centuries of masking himself as a human, that he rarely missed these finer details which so easily could go unnoticed.

What did he mean? At once, her former husband’s face materialized in her mind. Already, as Edward and Carlisle told her it would, his visage was growing dimmer, less distinct, as though he were in a dream. He was becoming a faceless demon; her only memory his hands and his voice. But the memory of his fist was crystal clear…

Downstairs, the piano abruptly stopped.

“You could never be him,” she repeated.

And he whirled. His eyes, the glorious amber eyes she loved, flashed dark. When he spoke, his voice was high pitched and rapid. “Do you know that, Esme? Do you know that I could somehow not be him? That I don’t have it within me to hurt someone? Are you certain? Because I want to hurt him.”

The shock of his words made her flinch, and he didn’t miss it. His body lost a little of its tension. His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, the fist she didn’t realize he’d balled—did he know he’d done it?—released itself back flat.

“I want to hurt him so badly,” he choked. “That’s why I couldn’t be near you. I can’t let you see me this way.”   His hand opened and closed again, as though it couldn’t decide what to do.

She shrank back. “Please,” she felt herself saying, and the words were old. She didn’t mean to be begging Carlisle, of all people, but the begging felt familiar. “Please don’t. Don’t be upset.”

“Esme, of course I’m upset!” he bellowed. “I love you!”

He stopped suddenly, swallowed, and staggered several steps backward

“You…” she tried to repeat the words but found they didn’t make sense.

Carlisle seemed just as surprised as he repeated the words. “I…love you.”

Esme didn’t think about what she did next. Charles had said those words to her, what? Once? Maybe twice? Enough that they were already fading? She still wasn’t used to the way her new body moved, to the fact that as Carlisle protested, she was stronger than he was, and would be for a good while. When she shoved him against the desk, it creaked and groaned under their combined weight; when she straddled him and pressed her hands against his jaw.

“I love you,” he groaned again into her lips. The desk protested further.

“I love you,” she repeated.

He placed his hands on her face, pulling her back from him so that she could look into his eyes. They were the orange gold, partway between when he’d hunted recently and when he would need to hunt immediately. She knew, now, after watching for weeks, how his eyes went from the flaxen gold, to the light yellow, to the darkness of old honeycomb before he set out to hunt again. Now they were just the right yellow; the pale color of the corona of the flower she had planted in the cold garden, weeks late. 

And as she pressed her lips to his again, she realized that perhaps her daffodils had bloomed on St. David’s Day, after all. 

#carlisle cullen #esme cullen #tw: domestic violence #fanfiction #twilight

[somedayonbroadway]

The Sisma

A/N: This is an original work that I am testing out, so please be brutally honest with me, give me all the opinions if you choose to read, I would really appreciate it! This began as an Anthropology assignment to create a new religion and out of it came this...

Summary: In the beginning there was darkness, chaos and evil. But all of that was ancient history, right?

TW: Witchcraft

In the beginning there was darkness, chaos and evil. The Craz roamed the darkness in their true form with greed and mischief and ate away at the very essence of potential life that might have emerged otherwise. This was the before times, before a new humanity, water, fire, air and earth.

Then, the stars fell. Four stars, to be exact, four stars that were four beautiful sisters; Alora, Rakisha, Nori and Beila. They fell right down to the darkness. It was pure chaos. The fallen stars still had their fading lights with them, and a desire to make something whole and pure out of a fallen world, one that had once been a home of goodness and peace and acceptance. So together, they used their light and their unique ways to push away the darkness and create a world of their own. The four sisters came to be known as the Bringers; the Sisma.

Alora, the first to fall and the first to awaken in the darkness, danced the grass into existence, creating a soft place to land for her following sisters, whom she knew were yet to come. She brought forth from the ground, trees and mountains, flowers and soil. Alora was henceforth known as the Bringer of Earth.

Beila, the most heartbroken of the four by the essence of darkness that now surrounded her, cried from her own sad eyes, the swelling seas, the rivers and the rain from the stars above. Beila was then and forever will be the Bringer of Water.

Rakisha found the world still dark and dreary as she fell into it, so she whispered light into the world, sending a ball of fire up to the skies to keep the world warm, bright, and wild, though her creation was found to be unpredictable and hungry, just as she was. Rakisha, wild and free, came to be known as the Bringer of Fire.

Nori, the youngest and shiest of all the sisters, sang the air from her lips so quietly so that every creation could then breathe in life and know of her presence though they may not see her. From the song came the breeze and the wind. From then on, Nori was named the Bringer of Air.

For the first time in centuries, there was new hope on a fallen world, the light of four Bringers creating something brand new from the dark ashes. This, however, was something the Craz were anything but grateful for. Craz thrived on darkness and chaos, surviving off of the mess of a world it had once won in a great war. The Craz fought back, sending a dangerous darkness back out over this new world, poisoning the green trees, the oceans, the wind and the sun, creating the night and the dark moon so it could use it to harness the light and send it far away from them.

Fearing they would lose their new creation, the Bringers brought forth an army to defend it; the animals. Nori made birds of the breeze and let them fly over the darkness and shed their light onto it. Fish, sharks and seals grew from the bubbles of the rain, rivers and sea purifying the waters so that they may live there. From the burning fires of the world grew lions, tigers and bears, fierce creatures to let out mighty roars to scare the darkness back into the light. Finally, from the flowers and trees grew creatures unlike any other; humans.

The humans were meant to be an army of light against the Craz, fighters and protectors of the sacred land that was created for them. This, however, did not last as, instead of protecting the Bringers gifts and lights, they began to harvest the gifts for themselves, trying to steal the lights away from the world and claim it as their own. The Bringers then decided to leave the humans to fight the Craz without their light, promising to come back when they were worthy enough to have a purified world, when the light could reach their eyes.

At least, that’s how the story went.

All of that was ancient history now. Still the story was as sacred as ever, told on the first of each season and followed by the Relation to the Bringer of the season. It was winter now, the season belonging to the Bringer of Water, Beila, the saddest of all the Bringers, so the Gingri had each cleansed themselves in the river that ran beside their village, just as they would do the whisper of fire on the first of summer, or the dance of earth to welcome in spring, or the song of the air for fall. But now, it was only winter. The season of Bringer Beila. Some believed that Beila held the weakest light of all the Bringers and that the Craz could easily infiltrate Gingri with the darkness that winter brought. Maybe those folks were right.

Penn stared straight ahead, watching the river run through the trees. This was a peaceful place, a place where she could sit and listen to the gifts of the Bringers when she felt lost or afraid. She always thought the gifts spoke to her, guided her. She could feel them, sense them. It always felt surreal.

“Penn!” someone called from behind her. The girl jumped, whirling around, her heavy hair falling behind her as her green eyes searched frantically for the voice calling out. “Penn! We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

“Oh?” Penn asked, a smirk falling onto her face easily, as though there was nothing in the least that was special about this day.

Another girl came rushing up to her, giggling as they lightly collided. Penn caught her friend easily, holding her by the shoulders as the other smiled. “Everyone has been searching for you! You are popular, Penn, a real life celebrity who is missing her own birthday party!”

Jeen, a girl like no other in the eyes of Penn, had the best smile in the universe as far as she was concerned. Something about it made her feel all gooey inside. “Well, I was quite comfortable here until someone disrupted my meditations—“

“Oh, meditations are for the old! We’re coming in with the new.” This girl always had a way of trying to make ridiculous, nonsensical things sound profound. It never really worked, but it did make Penn laugh. “It’s your Jequan today!” Jeen insisted. “You should be excited.” Clearly, the other girl was disappointed in Penn for not being quite as bubbly as she was.

It was Penn’s Jequan. It was a ceremony that had been done for generations, a test for every child of seventeen years of age. It was a big deal in Gingri, a great tradition that welcomed a child from their young life to the life of an adult. It cleansed them of the darkness that may be planted inside every young Gingrinian at birth, the darkness of a fallen world.

With a small, dramatic sigh, Penn reached up for a tree branch that hung above her. With slight difficulty, the young girl pulled herself up and hooked her knees around the sturdy tree, letting herself hang upside down. Her thick hair hung beneath her as she tilted her head at her friend. “The world is more interesting from this angle,” she stated with a cheesy, sarcastic grin. “You have very pretty eyes.”

Jeen did not seem very amused to the average person, but Penn was no average person and could see that look in her deep brown eyes, the one that said she was doing her very best to keep from smiling. After all, Penn had known Jeen for what felt like a lifetime. Well, since they were six. See, when Penn was young, she was a quiet, reserved young girl. She hardly spoke to anyone back then, except for the Bringers. Penn always wished she could see the Bringers. They were always so beautiful in her head. Being taught Sismarna by the Seekers, the belief of the four Bringers, she was taught that the Bringers were unlike any being she’d seen.

Growing up, Penn had spent so much time wondering, she had forgotten to live a little. Jeen reminded her that there was still a world here. They vowed to explore it together, take in every blessing the Bringers had given them.

Still, they had heard this Sismarna story thousands of times. The Bringers created the world. The Bringers were the light. The Craz were the darkness.

Yet, Penn and Jeen knew very little about the Craz. All they knew were the stories they’d heard that only might be true. There were rumors of course, of a Craz that had been captured and studied a few decades ago, but there was no proof that even that had ever happened. It was curious.

Now, the story of Penn and Jeen sneaking off into the woods behind the hunters was a completely, totally and entirely classified secret. Only the hunters were allowed deep into the forest. If what the Seekers preached was true, Craz inhabited that forest. Sometimes, hunters would come back looking spooked, eyes wide open and some kind of voice in their head. It always wore off eventually. The Seekers said it must only be a warning.

When they were fourteen, Penn and Jeen had stuck out on a hunting trip. They had only been joking at first, asking each other what would happen if they went off into that dark forest and wondered alone. So they each covered the other in brown dust and drew on their chests the symbol of the Bringers for protection, just as the hunters did for every quest they went on. An ancient Listener had once heard from the Bringers that this was the best way to keep the Gingri people safe when in a Craz infested forest. So no one questioned it. After all, one had to be blessed with the gift of the Connection to be a Listener, just as the Seeker had to be blessed with the gift of Knowledge to preach and the Healer with the gift of Warmth to heal.

Out on that hunting trip, to this day, Jeen swears she saw a Craz. They got separated for one moment and Jeen came back with a scraped wrist claiming that a Craz had stolen her blood, a Taker, teachers of witchcraft and history of the Craz, and will wait till the opportune moment to use it to control her. Penn was still trying to convince her that myth was not real. Jeen would not have it.

“Okay! Come on, come on!” Jeen insisted, tugging lightly at Penn’s hair. “You’re gonna be late for your own ceremony! Your brother will have your head if you’re late!”

With a dramatic sigh, Penn looked to the ground and let herself fall, landing gracefully on her feet. “My brother needs to learn patience. He’s not a proper Seeker yet, there to fore,” she emphasized, flipping her hair back. “He ain’t in charge yet,” she shrugged easily, smirking at her own improperness. Sometimes it was just more fun to be improper. Then that snarky smile left her face as she became serious. “Now quick, help me fix my hair before he sees me.”

So maybe Penn knew her brother was very much in charge. Well, of her at least. See, her brother, Kye, was all she truly had growing up. He was only five years older than her, but he had taught her all she knew now, about the Bringers and the wild world they lived in. He had braided her hair for her and tucked her into bed at night. Penn’s mother had died when Penn was young and her father was a Seeker, busy with other families a lot of the time. And being a Seeker’s daughter brought much too many expectations onto Penn, like her being on time for her Jequan, her hair up, back and tamed, and her clothes ready to come off so she could show her full, true self to the Bringers.

Jeen only snorted and took four straight fingers to her forehead on one hand, before moving them in a U like motion towards the skies. “Sisma, help us,” she asked the Bringers with a small laugh, calling the Bringers by their official collective name; The Sisma.

With a small laugh, Penn began the short trek back. “Yeah… Kye’s gonna kill me,” she stated, rushing into the small tent, stripping out of her clothes as Jeen tip-toed behind her awkwardly, trying to tame her hair into a bun on top of her head. Penn was in her underclothes by the time she got to the center of the tent. Jeen quickly tied her off before rushing away, knowing she should not be there. Kye was waiting with his arms crossed, as if knowing that his little sister would choose that exact moment to enter the room.

“You’re late,” he stated. “Have you even chosen your ruins yet?”

Raising her eyebrows at her brother, Penn put her hands on her hips. “Oh ye of very little faith,” she scolded playfully. “Of course I’ve picked my ruins! I…” Then she stopped, because her brother was right. Penn was too excited to sit down and be a proper seventeen year old who actually sat still and chose her ruins for herself. It was her birthday after all. Today, she went from girl to woman. It was her Jequan. It was much too exciting to sit and look through some ancient book.

With a very heavy sigh, Kye, who believed himself to be an old of some kind when Penn was around, stood up and grabbed the paint made from berries and grass, dipping his fingers in it. “I thought so,” he sighed, with a small shake of his head. Still, Penn prided herself with the small smile she had gotten out of him. She stood patiently as her brother drew on her forehead. “The ruin of Hope, to bless your stubborn head,” he began, moving to her shoulder. “The ruin of Perseverance, to help you if you struggle.” He moved to her hip. “The ruin of Guidance, to help you connect with the Bringers,” he said, before standing. And then he began to draw right in the middle of her back, a large symbol, bigger and more important than every other. “Lastly, the ruin of the Light,” he sighed. “This will protect you when I cannot.”

Turning around with a smile. “Aw,” Penn smirked. “I knew you loved me.”

Kye sighed and brought four fingers to his head, lifting them up to the sky. “Sisma, help my clueless little sister—“

“Okay, I get it,” Penn stated. “I’m done joking. This is a very important day and my brother is helping me,” she smiled. “Just don’t worry about me too much. After all, I am a Seeker’s daughter,” she said confidently, mockingly strutting around the tent and moving her head like she was trying to flip her hair back, only her hair was tied in a tight bun and would not move.

“Oh, baby sister, what will I do with you?” Kye asked.

Penn let herself give him a big, cheesy grin, like she might have when she was a small child, her eyes squeezed shut as her teeth nearly took over her whole face. “Give me a kiss, wish me the luck of Sisma and watch me crush my Jequan in a very good way?” she asked.

Looking at her with those bored looking eyes, Kye kissed his little sister’s cheek. “May the Sismas bless you,” he said. “Now go out there and crush your Jequan in a very good way,” he instructed, pushing her a bit towards the exit of the Preparatory Tent towards where her ceremony would begin.

This was it. The last moment of her childhood, standing here, at the doors of a white tent, covered in berries and wearing very little clothing and she did not know how to feel. This was the day she would be cleansed of the darkness the Craz had cursed all mankind with.

It was odd, in a moment she felt conflicted, almost like she would lose a part of herself. Quickly shaking herself out of that mind set, Penn smiled and took a very deep breath, walking out, into the open, where many people stood in a large circular formation.

In the middle of it all was a man Penn always strived to please. “Come closer, my child,” he smiled. It was her father. She smiled and did as he said, kneeling before him slowly, a small excitement for making the man proud rising up in her. “Recite the way of the Sismarna,” he instructed gently with a fond smile on his face.

Raising her four fingers up to her forehead and pushing her hand up towards the stars, Penn began slowly, “Sisma saved this world. We are not but Refugees, borrowers of a land created for creatures more worthy than us. We must remain true and steadfast towards the light over darkness, Sisma over Craz and honor over witchcraft tricks,” she stated. “We must rely on the Bringers to save us and bring us light, we must make ourselves worthy to receive such light again, therefore, I, Penn Nightingale, surrender myself to them, asking Sisma to cleanse me of the darkness of this world.”

Her father smiled down on her. “Very good, Penn,” he whispered, motioning for her to stand. So the girl did, following her father obediently towards the box in the middle of the small crowd. Three Seekers helped lay her down in the open square. She was surrounded by four wooden boards, hand carved with intricate designs lining the sides, separating her from the rest of the world as one of the Seekers leaned over her with a smile.

An ancient prayer was sung over Penn’s head as her body was slowly and gently buried in pure soil, given to Gingri by Bringer Alora. The girl closed her eyes and breathed in deeply through her nose as the soil was poured over her. “May the Bringer Alora grant you a piece of her light,” one Seeker said. After only a few moments, Penn was completely immersed in the soil. “Penn Nightingale, please stand and present the dance of the earth,” the same man called above her.

So Penn slowly lifted herself from the soil and began the dance of the earth in complete silence. The eyes on her made her want to stop. Her heart was running wild and a nervous smile made its way to her face as she forced herself to keep her shy gaze on the ground. She was used to doing this dance in a group at the start of spring. Her feet moved and stomped the ground in a pattern she’d known since she was a child and as her dance came to a close people applauded her. The first of the four challenges was complete.

Next came the cleansing. A barrel of water from the river was dragged close to her. Her father helped her lay back down. “We will now be cleansing you in the water of the river,” he explained as a wave of water was poured over her. She gasped and shivered a little bit at the cool feeling, holding her breath as she was submerged. She was shivering already, listening for the sobs of Bringer Beila who some believed they could hear during this part of the ceremony.

Only, Penn didn’t hear any sobs. She heard a whisper, inaudible at first, but growing louder and louder by the second. For a long moment, Penn forgot the fact that she couldn’t breathe, intent on knowing what this Bringer was trying to tell her, if Bringer Beila was trying to communicate something to her. It was growing louder and louder by the moment until finally a strained and tired voice was able to meet her ear. “Neligra!” it nearly screamed before hands pulled Penn out of the water. That’s when she heard the worried murmurs.

“Child, are you alright?” her father called.

Reaching up to wipe at her eyes as the cold water dripped down her face. “I’m alright!” she smiled, trying not to think too much about what had just happened. Neligra. She had never heard that word before. It must’ve been in her head, the lack of oxygen. She did not know how long she had been under the water, but she knew she had to catch her breath.. “I apologize, I got lost under there,” she tried to laugh off.

The Seekers only smiled at her, helping her stand from the box. “You gave us quite a fright there, young one,” one of them chuckled. “No one ever stays beneath the water for that long. You have quite the lungs on you,” he stated. “May Bringer Beila bless you with a portion of her light.”  

It had only felt like a small moment to Penn.

And now suddenly she was standing in front of hot coals, a small pathway lined with fire. “While performing the whisper of fire, you will walk across these coals to the other side where a healer will be waiting if you need her,” her father instructor. “Don’t worry, my love, they aren’t too hot,” he assured, and Penn managed a smile, only becoming slightly intimidated by this part of the ceremony. Watching others do it always made her feel giddy, like she couldn’t wait to conquer this challenge, still that did not mean the idea of letting her own feet trail across those stones seem any less painful.

Still, taking a deep breath and hesitating for a long moment, Penn managed to hiss as her first toe touched the coal. “Bin ein jent cur,” she began whispering. “Mon grea lo pondru kin il lee…” It was nearly a chant. Maybe it was. Penn had never thought to ask. All she knew was the flames around her seemed to grow and her words echoed in her head. It only made her wonder more what the words actually meant. A Seeker must know, her father must know. She would have to ask soon.

The path was long in Penn’s head, and when she stepped into the cool grass again she sighed in relief. Everyone else was quiet. Penn looked around, the smile gone from her face as she saw that the eyes watching her had widened. She looked through the crowd, searching and searching for an answer for why everyone was looking at her like she had two heads until she found Jeen standing with Kye. Jeen offered her a stunned shrug as the Seekers surrounded her.

“May the Bringer Rakisha bless you with a piece of her light,” one of them said, almost suspiciously. “You have one last challenge, Penn Nightingale. Are you ready?”  he asked genuinely. Penn looked to her father. He looked worried.

“I am,” Penn breathed, unsure of what was happening to her. She must just be imagining things.

The last challenge was to honor Bringer Nori. It was done while singing the song of the air. Penn was supposed to let the Seekers lift her body up towards the stars while she sang, before they let her sink back to the ground. It was supposed to be a simple one, the last challenge, the last point.

And yet, as Penn began to sing this song, something began to happen right before her very eyes.

The world around her grew dark. The faces of her friends and family morphed into something new, faces with black paintings on them, ruins of darkness and danger drawn across their skin as they danced to the song around her, chanting their own language at her, one that she listened to and began to translate in her head. “Naligra!” the group screamed before she blinked and was suddenly back in reality.

The song falling gracefully from her lips stopped immediately. “Neligra…” she breathed to herself, her eyes suddenly void of any emotion or thought as her feet moved slowly and silently without her consent. She began to speak in a language she had never spoken before, walking aimlessly towards the forest she had been forbidden to go into since she was a child.

“Penn?” Jeen called, trying to follow after her, but Kye stopped her, unsure if going after his sister was safe.

The crowd didn’t dare stand in her way as an unfamiliar song began to spill from her lips in a way nothing ever had before. Penn was walking willingly towards the forbidden forest, a dazed look on her face as though she’d never seen those trees before.

“Penn,” her father called as well, following after her.

That was when Penn turned around, her eyes still very much entranced. “Neligra,” was all she said again, speaking clearly and definitively this time before her hand raised over her head. The motions the invisible people in her mind had been doing in that large circle came to her easily. Penn was not even thinking about them, Penn was hardly thinking about anything. Some instinct deep inside her knew exactly what to do. She let it take full control as she snapped her hands down towards the ground and a black smoke engulfed her.

And just like that, Penn Nightingale was gone.

#original post #original story #original work #new religion #witchcraft #fantasy #fantasy world #work in progress #my wip #first draft #the bringers #mythology #original mythology #four elements #new world #creation myth #rituals #ceremony #made up #anthropology #original character #writers of tumblr #writing #writer #writing life

[jo-the-schmo]

Red, Dead, Reflections Ch. 1

A/N: Alright so... I started writing this fic over a year ago, and was posting it as I wrote it. I fell out of it for a few reasons but I’ve missed it. So I decided to start writing it again. The original versions of the first 5 chapters already exist on my blog but I want to repost them and do some editing. This way I can make the series more polished. I also want to try and do a once a week maybe schedule to give me some time in between writing chapters and so I can take some feedback into consideration.I hope some of the people who originally wanted to keep up with my series see this and I want to apologize for falling back on this. I feel really bad about it. I’ll try harder to commit to this. Thank you so much for being interested in my work. If anyone would like to be tagged just let me know, I don’t wanna assume the people who did before want to now. 

Summary: At the age of 23, you and your pseudo-family perform a heist gone wrong, leading you into a dangerous and seemingly impossible position. Discover your own history, the story of those around you, and gain new relationships along the way in this (sorta) choose your own adventure.

Warnings: Explicit language, blood, death, violence

Word count: 5,988

From Out West

“This is a little too ballsy for my liking, Austin.” You warned as you carefully adjusted the colored contact lenses in your eyes.

“Since when did you turn into a little pussy-willow?” He smirked at you while he turned a corner. 

“This is a bank, not a home robbery, so forgive me if I’m a tad nervous about this! We’re robbing a god damn bank in the 21st century, in a busy city that we aren’t necessarily familiar with!”

“Maybe you aren’t familiar, you know I’m a regular ol’LA boy.” You turned your head to look at the two in the backseat.

“Miguel, you can’t seriously be okay with this.” You questioned but were confident in it enough to make it a statement. He shrugged his shoulders, making that confidence literally evaporate. 

“We gotta trust Austin, as crazy as this plan is. We haven’t gotten caught yet.” You crossed you arms and made sure your wig was pinned right.

“Doesn’t mean we won’t be startin’ now.” You grumbled. 

“Come on, sissy! This plan is fool-proof! They’ll never even know it was us!” Eli chirped. 

“Oh yeah, except for the fact that this is a fucking bank and the FBI CAN get on our asses for this!” You swore it was exhausting being the only realistic one sometimes. “On top of that, there’s only 5 of us! We’re insane!” 

“6.” Austin corrected. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Your girlfriend won’t be in the damn room with us.” 

“She’s the ace up our sleeves, it would be silly for her to be in there with us.” The car smelled like old cigarettes, it made you sick. The band around your chest dug into your ribs. You opted to stay silent and relent for the time being, instead focusing on your disguise. The wig was carefully pinned to your real hair, it was short enough to be confused for a men’s haircut but had enough length to not require any glue. Dark brown hair, abnormally vibrant green eyes. And with the mask covering your face, that would be their only descriptions they could give to the police. Flat chest, boyish haircut, baggy black hoodie, just your average deviant. The destination was in view. 

“Alright,” Austin started. “everyone knows the plan, yeah? Gina is inside, she’ll send us the signal. We go in quick and make our presence known. I go behind the counter to make sure the tellers ain’t up to no funny shit. Miguel, you round up the lovely citizens into a corner, hit Gina a little to make it convincing. Eli, you take care of the money. And Y/N, I need you to stay in character, be loud and intimidating, keep the tellers in check when I’m helpin’ Eli, and the civils with Miguel, got it?” You all nodded. He looked back at Miguel. “You got the fake bomb ready?”

“Yes’ir.” 

“I’ll pass the big boss to you once I pick him out. Zoe is waiting for us in the alleyway between the bank and the office building. We get in, make some noise, scare them shitless, get the money, and go.” He parked up front of the white walls, you saw a mother walk through the glass doors with her toddler in a stroller. You immediately felt bad. 

“You promise this is the last job, right?” You looked at him seriously. “At least the last of something this big, I don’t think I could handle with again.”

“Of course! This is just to get us enough money to get us all out. The economy is garbage, think of it as taking what should already be ours.” You heard the crackle of the walkie on Austin’s lap. He threw it into his bag. “That’s the signal, masks on everyone.” Austin’s was a fox, long, fake salt and pepper hair rolled form under his hood. Eli’s was a raccoon, convincing copper bangs swooped between the ears. Miguel had an owl; disturbing blue eyes pierced your being. You strapped on your black dove and joined with group as they exited the stolen vehicle. You kept both your hands in the front pocket of your hoodie, trying to be discrete about the two handguns inside. Only one was loaded with real bullets, that was the backup, You preferred to use the blanks. Unable to trace, and when used properly, won’t hurt anyone. Austin and Eli took the leads. 

The doors were kicked in. 

“EVERYONE GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND RIGHT NOW! HANDS UP, ALL YOU! THIS IS A ROBBERY!” He screamed, pointing his gun at a man behind the counter about 3 yards away. Miguel was quick to shout at the people in line to get into the corner of the room. Gina pretended to try and defy, he slaps her, needless to say it’s convincing. 

“Dove, handle the worms.” You traded spots as Austin grabbed one of the men behind the counter. Your eyes locked with the poor woman, she was covering the stroller with her torso. You pointed your blank gun at some random person. 

“Stay on the ground or I’ll fucking shoot, ya hear me?” You lowered your voice, made it coarser, time to be a ‘man’. They nodded hysterically. The woman was crying. You could hear Eli screaming his demands in a fake accent. “Everyone hand over your phones. If any of you give me a reason to even SUSPECT you’re up to anything, I will shoot.” Everyone put their phones on the ground and slid them over toward you. You turned your attention to the back. “What’s the hold up, owl?” 

“I’m handling it.” He strapped the fake bomb to the teller’s chest, making him kneel down in the middle of the bank. “Listen up, everyone! This man has a bomb attached to his body. We have someone hacked into the security cameras. If you don’t follow our instructions to the T, they will blow a hole in this lot.” He paused to let the cries and gasps die out. “Now, for those said instructions, listen close. We will exit the building soon, you will stay down for 5 minutes.” He pointed at a clock on the wall. “Do not touch anything or move a muscle. When 5 minutes have passed, the big guy here-“ He patted the man’s shoulders and dropped a key wrapped in tissue in his lap. “will take a little drive off the premises. He will keep going until he reaches the designated location written on that tissue. If any of you contact the police before the end of the day, he will die, along with any other drivers in his vicinity. So, unless you want a substantial amount of blood on your hands, I’d suggest you keep quiet until midnight. As for the rest of you, you have permission to leave the building once that 5 minutes are up. But I would suggest keeping a low profile, for your safety and others’.” There was a loud crack. 

“I got it!” The phony Australian accent rang. Austin led the rest of the bank tellers to you, making them sit in the flood of civils. 

“Staying alert, Dove?”

“Don’t patronize me, stupid Fox.” This whole situation pissed you off. The baby was crying, mom was too, trying to hush the whines. 

“Fire a shot, Dove!” What? “Don’t let their insubordination stand.” He demanded. This was a fear tactic. He was trying to teach a lesson to the others. 

“I’m not firing a warning shot over a fucking baby, you psycho!” Your blood was boiling, this was overkill, he was way out of line with this. Of course, he wasn’t telling you to shoot the baby or the mother, but you weren’t going to cause more grief where it didn’t need to be. 

“Take the shot!”

“Fuck you!” 

“Why are you going against me?” Was he seriously doing this now? You felt like your head was going to explode. She was the only person with a child present. You put both of your pieces back in your hoodie and knelt next to her. She flinched as you approached, but that was to be expected. 

“Ma’am, I’m making an exception for you because you have a child with you, and that prick is really getting on my last nerve. You’re allowed to exit the building now, but the other rules still apply. People will die if you talk, maybe not you, but other people who have children like you do, most certainly. Take your kid and get out, don’t do anything out of the ordinary, and get out.” Her red eyes shook you to your core, familiarity. She nodded in both fear and appreciation. 

“Than-than-thank y-“ She was choking on her own misfortune, you decided to spare her. 

“Yeah, yeah, just get out.” She got up and collected herself, checking around the room as she walked out of the building. You could only see his eyes, but you could tell Austin was reaching his limit fast. An older gentleman stared at you. 

“At least one of you has a heart.” You were glad Austin was too focused on being pissed to hear that. You got up, kicking the phones toward the door as you walked. Austin grabbed you arm. 

“You’re lucky I didn’t kill her for that.” By letting that woman go, you showed weakness. It was a hint at your identities, but you didn’t care. 

“And you’re lucky I’m not shooting you for saying that. I’m not a killer like you, Fox.” Your voice was laced with venom. Eli had interrupted your dispute. 

“Alright lovebirds, time to play nice, we’ve got precious cargo.” He gave both of you a duffle bag, they were pretty hefty. Austin took a deep breath, putting on his best showman voice. 

“Alright folks! That right there is our cue to hit the road. Remember, 5 minutes on the clock. No one likes a-“ The doors were filled with red and blue, sirens. The police were here. “Shit!” Shit was right. “How the hell are they here?” Austin screamed. He gave you a shove. “It’s probably because of that god damn woman!” 

“There’s no way she would’ve had enough time for that.”

“And no one had a phone out, I was watching the whole time.” Miguel chimed. 

“We have bigger fish to fry right now! We gotta go.” You all dashed over to the back door, all you had to do was move towards the alley, if you could just get to the dump van, everything would be fine. Drive up to get the real car, leave that one with no prints or hair, and you’d be home free. The 4 of you booked it out the door. But the van was no where to be seen, instead, there were about 3 cops on either side which was 6 in total, trapping you in. 

“They must’ve got Zoe!” Yeah, no shit. 

“Put your hands up!” You all raised your arms, except of course for Austin. You kicked his calf. He didn’t budge. “I said put your god damn hands up!”

“In case you didn’t notice, pal, there’s a bomb in that building. If you don’t let us pass, I’ll blow that building out of existence, along with the man attached to it.” He pointed his gun to one of the cops to your left. “So, I suggest you let us through, or else you’re gonna piss me off more than I already am.” 

“We know the bomb is fake, drop to your knees or we will shoot!” Another one barked. Someone had ratted you out. You looked at Miguel and Eli, you weren’t letting this go down, not by a long shot. You tuned out Austin’s ramblings and whispered to the other two. 

“Be ready to run. I’m gonna buy you guys some time. Don’t kill any of them, disarm them.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Y/N?” Miguel questioned with panic. You took a deep breath. 

“Thank you for being my family.” You swept your leg behind Austin’s knees, and he collapsed to the ground as you stood. 

The world slowed to a crawl, pulling a gun out of your pocket, these were real bullets. You’ve never missed a target. You drew the attention of all 6 police officers, but no amount of training could prepare them. You fired 3 shots, each one hitting the hands of the officers Austin had been talking to. Their weapons fell from their hands. You felt bodies push past your legs, down the alley way away from the bank. You were glad the streets of LA were confusing. Now was the time. You whipped your body around to face the rest of the officers, firing rapidly at their shins. You weren’t gonna put blood on your hands. 

But deep down you knew, there was no making out of this one. You would buy them a few minutes while trying to subdue you. Just as your haphazard shots began, they fired precise ones of their own. Two passed through your skull, three in your chest, and one got a through almost half of your jugular. Both pieces fell away from you as gravity swaddled you. Bits of your wooden mask, blood, head pushing back unnaturally, seeing the backs of your made family run, they were almost home free. There was no pain after that point, you waited patiently for your back to hit the ground beneath you, but it never did. You kept falling. 

And falling. 

The midday light felt like it was slipping away, there were leather walls encompassing your lifeless form. No sound, no sense of texture, just the smell of dirt and decay. Then there was nothing but darkness, but that void that beckoned you, that pulled at your very being, was gone just as quick as it appeared. 

Your body shot forward with a violent intake for air. The gasps filled your lungs to the brim, your chest and head ached, throat tight. The coughing erupted from deep in your chest, which also held a different pain from the ever-tightening band around it. You threw you hoodie away and made quick work of loosening it just a bit, and in doing so noticed that your body was free of any physical wounds. There was still a soreness, and blood wiped off your skin, but there were no open wounds. You were incredibly cold, and at first you assumed that to be attributed to your near-death experience, until you looked up high to see to see an open window with snow falling outside. 

“I don’t think we’re in California anymore.” You muttered to yourself. You shivered, the place was covered in hay and in low light, that’s when the smell hit you. It reeked of animals, that would probably have something to do with the fact that you’re in a barn. Shakily, you got to your feet. Knees wobbling, your eyes adjusted, there were horses. That certainly explained the stench. A chill ran up your spine, the cold tickling at your vertebrae. You scanned the room for where you had tossed your hoodie, only to find it in a horse’s mouth. Your eyes widened in fear. “No, no, no, no, no, no!” You exclaimed. You rushed forward and grasped at the hanging sleeve, tugging on it with all your strength. “Drop it! Drop it right now!” 

The horse did not listen, in fact, now it seemed more hellbent on consuming the thick material. After hurtling a few curses at the horse, you heard a distinct rip. You fell back, the remnants of black cloth now in tatters. You let out a muffled scream of frustration. Even with the long sleeves of your cotton shirt, you were still freezing. It suddenly struck you how odd it is for it to be snowing at all. You figured you weren’t in California anymore, but you were somewhere that snows in the middle of May? How far were you? You couldn’t think of any states that snowed this late in the year. Were you in Maine? Up north, Canada? How did you even get here? 

“Did those idiots come back to get me? I could’ve sworn…” You could’ve sworn they ran like you told them to, and that you had experienced several fatal injuries. Is this hell? Purgatory? The other side? It was cold enough to be Hell that’s for sure. Nothing made sense. You found your mask on the ground, chunks of the painted wood were replaced with vacant space, splintered bullet holes. You fastened it to the first belt loop, it rested against your left pant leg. Pins dug into your scalp, wigs still surprisingly attached to your head. Your eyes watered, your contacts were drying out. You opted take them out now rather than waste your time trying to find drops in a barn. You flicked them away once they were out. “Now, if there’s a barn with animals, there’s gotta be a house with people.” You walked over to the large wooden doors as your talked to yourself, but today just had to be the worst day of your life. Something landed on top of you, or more accurately someone. 

You were surprised you didn’t feel any cracks as the weight crashed on you. Shifting your weight over, you elbowed the man in the jaw. He rolled off of you with a grunt of pain. You were quick to jab him in the stomach with the toe of your boot. Sputtering a cough with saliva dripping out the mouth, the man rushed to stand. He was trying to fight. 

“You’re on the wrong side of the mountains, partn’r.” He slurred. “This here is O’Driscoll territory, Which you don’t got no business bein’ in.” I’m in the mountains? Where the hell- He didn’t give you enough time to finish that thought before he was throwing a punch at you. If this basic boy thinks he can step in my personal space, he’s got another thing coming. You blocked the fist with your forearm and redirected the force toward the ground. With the base of your wrist, you hit his throat. The force of your own strength and the ever so impeccable sense of gravity caused him to wheeze, choke, and writhe on the ground. 

“Listen here, buddy,” you pressed your boot down on his chest “I have no idea where the hell I am right now. I don’t give a single shit about territory or whatever the fuck you’re going on about, but if you put your hands on me again, I’m gonna mangle your entire lower half with a rake.” You applied more weight. “I didn’t come here of my own volition, someone put me here. Which means, you’re little punk ass better tell me what’s going on or get out of my way so I can-“ Gunshots. Mystery man took your distraction as an opportunity to wriggle out form under you. They were ceaseless, did someone drop you off in the middle of a gang war, what the hell is going on? You were about to duck behind whatever cover was around you if the idiot of the room had decided he didn’t learn his lesson. 

“Are you with those crazies?” He yelled, peeking out the barn doors for only a second. “I should’ve known.” His voice was cold and malicious. “You’re with that son of a bitch, Dutch!”

“Who?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, pretty boy, they must’ve sent you up to spy on us! I’m gonna kill you for-“

“I literally have no idea what’s going on!” But he wasn’t listening to reason, clocked you in the ribs before you got the chance to block, then using your surprise to his advantage, hit you on the nose. There was a familiar crack and blood rush. “Did you just fucking break my nose, you ass?” You screeched toward the ground, wiping away the blood. 

You took him off guard by doing that, so you were quick to knock him in the jaw. The shooting stopped but you were a little preoccupied and decided not to waste anymore time. His arm bent to caress the side of his face. You rushed forward, lacing your arm between the gap his made. Using all your weight, you swung your legs out and forced him to drop to the ground. His back slammed forcefully and with a swift adjustment, your shins trapped his neck, locking him in place. You squeezed his neck enough to make him gasp. He tried to push away from you, but with the position you left him in, there’s no way he’d be able to without some sort of outside assistance. 

“Who are you calling pretty boy now? Huh? Who, bitch boy?” You heard the door start to open, you let lose and pulled the man up to shield you, locking his head so that you peek between a gap in your arm and his head. A man wearing a blue coat and hat walked in, his hands resting on his belt. 

“Well, well, what have we got ourselves here?” You couldn’t quite place his accent. You noticed he had a holster. 

“Don’t fuck with me, dude. I’ve got your friend trapped between me and you. No need to make this get crazy.” You warned, tightening your grip to enunciate your point. What sounded almost like a chuckle escaped his throat. 

“You must not be an O’Driscoll if you think he’s my friend.” You panicked, you tried to think of your next move, but he had plans of his own. “What’s your name, son?” Your suspicions were correct, it seems. This isn’t the first time someone’s confused you for a man, especially when you were trying so hard to not look like yourself. But maybe, you could use this to your advantage. 

“James West.” That was Austin’s code name for danger. If someone introduced you or called any of you James, it meant they weren’t trust worthy. You and Gina would usually use Jamie, but now James felt like the safer option. 

“Now how in the hell did you get involved in this, West?” He rested his hip against one of the stable posts.  

“I have no idea.” You threw the man away from you, there was no point holding him anymore. “I woke up here, and this guy just started attacking me.” You thought for a moment. “Are you Dutch?” You asked. This time, it was a single, hearty-

“HA!” He had a spark in his eye. “Me? Dutch? I ain’t that old yet, kid.” You rolled your eyes and pulled yourself up. 

“Well, my nose is broken because this little shit thought I was with you, so I have some choice words for this ‘Dutch’.” You huffed. “And don’t call me ‘kid’.” You brushed your fingers across the bridge of your nose, preparing yourself for what you were about to do. One deep breath in, out, pop. You pushed your nose back into place and winced. A wad of blood shot out. “Jesus shit!” You coughed, you never get used to having to do that. The blue coat cowboy looking mother-fucker looked semi-impressed. 

“Well, I’m not Dutch, but you could sure meet him if it pleases.” Something caught his attention. “Speak of the devil…” The door opened again. A man walked in with very distinct black hair. He was also a cowboy looking mother-fucker. Oh god, am I in yeeyee country? His eyes immediately locked on you. 

“Did you cause this mess, Arthur? Or have we just met a new friend?” The man who you presumed to be Dutch, had a deeper voice than the man apparently called Arthur, but their accents were similar. That was not promising for you. 

“That depends, his name is West, James West. I walked in a right fine mess between him and that there O’Driscoll.” Arthur pointed to the man still struggling to steady himself. Dutch choked a deep laugh, he seemed more amused than Arthur was. 

“Right fine is right, Arthur. You did this?” He asked. You nodded reluctantly. “You’re a good fighter, boy. Real good, it seems.” He strode over to the guy on the floor and picked him up by the collar, tossing him over to Arthur. “Morgan, you deal with this trash while I talk to our new pal.” Dutch walked over to you, confidence in his step, while Arthur threw the man back on the ground. He wrapped an arm around your shoulder and shook you around a bit. “James West, huh?”

“Yeah, what’s it to ya?” 

“Oh, this boy’s got spunk, Morgan!” You looked over and saw Arthur yanking the man around by the shirt. Dutch forced your attention back to him. “Now West, you’ve gotta understand our position here. We can tell clear as day you ain’t involved in a lick of this mess. But we don’t have a single clue as to what your business is up here. Now, you seem like a considerate young man, but I got worried folks on this mountain, and I can’t have no scamps running around and hellraising” He squeezed your shoulder. “So, don’t take any offense to what I’m about to ask, but what are you doing up here?” He looked you dead in the eyes. In your opinion, the question was fair. You couldn’t fully let your guard down, but they appeared to not be whoever put you here. Then again, these O’Driscoll’s didn’t seem to be either. 

“I can’t give you an answer to that one, Mr. …?” 

“Van Der Linde.” That’s one hell of a name. 

“Mr. Van Der Linde. Frankly, I have no damn clue why I’m here. One minute, I’m getting shot down in the middle of the day, and then I wake up trapped in some barn in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, in what looks like the ass end of winter. So, I’m a little confused right now to say the least.” You were clearly frustrated with your situation, he wasn’t oblivious to it. 

“Where are you from, son?”

“California.” That was a safe enough answer. 

“James West from out West. That’s certainly an opener.” He scratched his chin. “I’m gonna put you to a test young man.” He turned you around and lead you over to where Arthur had just gotten off the now bloody man. He was whimpering, begging under his breath for mercy. 

“I don’t think he’s got much to say, Dutch. They apparently happened upon this place and took it over. That’s all I’m getting’” 

“I’m going to give our new young friend a choice.” He pulled a revolver out of his holster and held the handle out to you. “In normal circumstances, I’d let Arthur handle this situation himself. But I’ve got an itching curiosity with you, kid.” You felt obligated to hold it in your hand. Looking down at the man, pity flared in your chest. “Should we kill him, or let him go? I’m letting you make the call.” What kind of question was this? Who were these guys? The choice wasn’t very difficult, you’d be a hypocrite if you did otherwise, and you weren’t compromising your promise on the off chance these guys might not like your opinion. 

You handed the gun back to Dutch. 

“Just because he’s an asshole, doesn’t mean he deserves to die. Let him go.” Dutch was intrigued by your answer. He looked over to Arthur with a smirk.

“I think I like kid!” 

“Please don’t call me ‘kid.” You requested. Arthur pulled the man to his feet and threw him outside.

“Get outta here before he regrets it.” The man darted into the snow, leaving a trail behind him. 

“Grab the horse, Arthur. We gotta get something out of this.”  You were lead outside to find a horrific scene, bodies were strewn about the snowy landscape. Whoever these guys were, they were not to be trifled with. You should play this safe. 

There was a house not too far away, the snow was dense. It was more than freezing. You sent a glare to the horse Arthur led past you. You’ll pay for this, you dumb fucking horse. With your adrenaline dying down, your whole being felt frozen. 

“Normally, I wouldn’t be one for disrupting dead for anything other than money, but you’ll die out here without something warm, Mr. West.” Dutch gestured to one of the several bodies riddled through the snow. You swallowed the lump in your throat, trying your best not to think about how you were robbing from dead people. It wouldn’t be the first time, but you still didn’t feel good about it. You separated from him and carefully stepped around the bodies littered in the snow. You found a man with his face in the snow, you pretty much picked him so you wouldn’t have to see his face as you stripped him of his coat. It didn’t look particularly warm initially, but anything would be better than this. The arms bent limply back as you peeled the sleeves away. Luckily upon further inspection, you were happy to learn there was a sort of wool lining inside, that would at least help insulate your own body heat. A sudden commotion broke out from inside the rustic home. A man yelling for Dutch and a woman screaming. Your instincts made you spring into action, you lept through large portions of the snow to make it to the steps faster and before you knew it you were bursting through the door. A blonde man wearing another cowboy-looking hat was chasing a woman around a table. 

“What the hell are you doing, Micah?” Arthur questioned as him and Dutch followed you in. 

“We got a feisty one over here, boys!” He hollered. Oh, you were not comfortable with this type of language.

“Stop chasing the poor woman, ya moron!” He warned with more intensity. You weren’t gonna see this go down, that’s for sure. You ran up behind the man called Micah, grabbed his collar, and used his weight to pull his back towards you, and then to the ground. His body slammed, he let out a surprised yelp, followed by a pained groan.

“Fucking sicko! Stop chasing her around, she’s scared!” 

“Get out of my house!” The woman bellowed. Admittedly, you had no idea what was going on, but you knew you could at least try and defuse the situation. You put your hands up to appear less threatening. 

“Miss, I don’t know who you are or what in God’s name is going on, but I promise I am not here to hurt you.” You spoke to her in a calm voice. Whatever was going on, it clearly had her frazzled. “I don’t have any weapons, and I don’t make it habit of hurting people who don’t need hurting. You clearly have been hurting for no reason. Can you explain to me what’s happened so that I can help you with this situation?” You took a cautious step around the table to make sure she wouldn’t dart away from you, you kept steady eye contact. 

“They…they killed my husband a few days ago! They took over my home and locked me in the basement!” She wept. Maybe these O’Driscolls were the ones to stow you in the barn, they sure seemed like the type with this new information. 

“I’m so sorry for your loss, ma’am. I can assure you that those men won’t be bothering you anytime soon. Can you-“ You heard glass shatter, looking over, you found Micah scattering to his feet, fire was spreading from the floor to the wall at an incredible rate. It was already crawling up the right-side wall before you had a chance to react. There was no way you could put that out by yourself, and the others weren’t exactly jumping at the chance to help you. You settled on running to grab some blankets from the bed across the room. The boys were leading the woman out of the house and she reluctantly followed. Micah sent you a glare as you passed him out of the house. “Oh, don’t you look at me like that, you weren’t any help!” You knew you should keep your mouth shut, but you knew you were right on this one. The group was walking toward some horses, you followed behind. 

“Micah, lead the horse back to camp.” You handed the blankets to the woman. 

“Thank you.” She seemed genuine but was also hurt by your sentiments.

“It’s no problem, ma’am.”

“Adler, Sadie Adler is my name.” She wrapped herself in the blankets.

“Well, it’s no problem, Mrs. Adler. It’s the bare minimum to what I could’ve done.” You hoped whatever camp Dutch mentioned was close by. This cold was blistering. 

“Mrs. Adler, you may ride with me, we’ll get you back to people who can help.” Dutch hopped up onto a white horse, lending a hand for Sadie to pull herself up. “Arthur, please take our new friend with you. I don’t think he’s in any shape to be riding.” Arthur nodded, heaving himself with ease onto a spotted mare? You couldn’t tell if it was a girl, but you just got that vibe. He did not give you a hand. Oh yeah, I’m a dude. A manly man. You gripped the back of the saddle and used all the arm strength you had to get onto the bare back on the horse. You hoped this ride wasn’t going to be too bumpy because you were not about to get punched because you had to grab onto this man and couldn’t tell if someone was a homophobe or not. You sure hoped these people weren’t, but you weren’t exactly in the position to be picky. 

“Pearson’s not gonna happy about this.” Arthur mentioned as the horses pushed forward.

“Mr. Pearson isn’t happy about anything except his drink. He’ll be alright.” Now seemed like a good a time as any to start asking questions. They couldn’t go anywhere away from you at the moment. 

“Not to interrupt or anything, but could someone tell me where I am, or what day it is. Could someone please tell me what the deal is?”

“We’re north of New Hanover if the maps are correct. We’re planning to head down there as soon as this winter passes. God knows how long that’s gonna take.” Dutch complained. You had never heard of New Hanover, but apparently it was winter. Maybe you really did get shot, put into a hospital maybe? Then these guys… You panicked for a second. O’Driscoll wasn’t another name for them was it? It didn’t make much sense but no one else would put this much effort into stealing you away. “As for the day, I couldn’t tell ya exactly. It’s winter in the year of our Lord 1899.” He laughed. What?

“What?”

“Ah, just bit of a joke, son. We live in dark times. We’re hurtling straight into a new century.” Wait was he joking or not joking?

“It’s 1899?” You tried to keep your voice neutral, but he seemed to pick up on your worry.

“Yes, it is, son.” He paused. “Are you alright?” You were anything but alright. These people are crazy, I’m trapped on a mountain with some insane cultists who think they’re in the 19th century, I’m fucked. “Arthur, we need to hurry, the boy’s looking pale.” 

Your head felt fuzzy, colors were blurring together. I am not stuck on a god damn mountain in 1899, I’m not, that’s physically impossible. This is all a dream, or some weird set up. You felt like you were 19 again, disconnected, afraid, losing it. You weren’t gonna go back there again, you wouldn’t! You didn’t know you had stopped breathing. You didn’t feel Arthur’s arm catching you so you wouldn’t get trampled. Everything was black. 

#rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #arthur morgan #Dutch Van Der Linde #time travel au #red dead redemption 2 #Javier Escuella #Charles Smith #John Marston #sadie adler #mary-beth gaskill #hosea matthews #abigail marston #lenny summers #too many tags

[liltaz-asatreat]

8, 14, and 17 for merle from the headcanon list??

Here's the headcanon prompt list! Please send in asks! This is fun!! :D

8. It’s movie night, what movie do they pick?

I like... live under a thousand rocks and don't really watch any shows or movies, so I don't really have an answer for this one? I would say maybe like... before he reconnected with his kids, Merle loved movies that are action packed with darker adult themes, but the overall message of the story is still choosing to overcome the darkness and become something better than before and choosing love over everything else. After reconnecting with his kids, and especially after Story and Song, those kinds of movies are still some of his favorites, but I feel like he'd be more down to watch something a little more kid friendly with a strong found family trope.

14. What is enough to bring them to tears?

I think people verbalizing to him how much they look up to him and see him as capable, and asking him for help genuinely because they want it and not out of necessity in which if given the option, they would find someone better. Everyone gives Merle a lot of shit for not healing or helping them out as much as they think he should, and canonically, he doesn't like Angus because he compares himself to him and everyone recognizes how capable he is and how valued he is, and no one talks to Merle the same way. Clint cried when Mavis told Merle that he was her hero because she could see how hard he was trying to be a dad and said she loved him, and I like to think of that as Merle crying in universe because his own daughter is recognizing that he's not perfect, but he is trying, and he's loved for that.

(I also want to think Taako and Magnus give him less shit about healing after Story and Song now that they remember the 100 year journey and how much Merle's had to save their asses, but idk if that is necessarily in character, and that lowkey irritates me.)

Also, I think he cried or, at least, cried afterward in times he's thought back to it, when he was on the beach watching the sunset with John until he died. John was basically the antithesis to Merle because he chose to follow the darkness and roll around in his existential dread, even after Merle offered him friendship and understanding, and then when he finally took him up on that offer, it was way too late for him, and there wasn't anything Merle could do about it. Here was a chance he could have literally saved someone's soul, and it probably would have been the most important one to save with him being the Hunger but also his friend who he cared very much about, but he failed because John wouldn't listen until the end.

Idk, I think a lot about this aspect of Merle. Maybe a little too much lol

17. What’s something they like that may be surprising to others?

I think during the Stolen Century, he's had to get pretty creative with how to treat different wounds, allergies, and other ailments because they were coming into contact with environments they'd never experienced before with different plants and wildlife that could potentially hurt them or cause a reaction, and the people there might have hit them with new types of magic they've never seen before that causes different effects and curses, contact with new diseases and illnesses, and then whatever medication they were taking at home, both prescription and over the counter stuff. So he (and some of the others to a certain extent) had to come up with new ways of treating all these different things, a lot of times on the fly, and he got good at throwing random things together that could make a halfway decent antidote to something or an anti-curse spell or an allergy relief salve. And I think he enjoyed the challenge of having to come up with all of these things, and after Story and Song, he spends some of his spare time just throwing together potions and salves and random medical stuff. This is surprising to others because it was a high level stress thing he had to do out of necessity and he always grumbled about it while in the midst of doing it lol He and Pringles probably got together at some point to talk potions, and Pringles teaches him how to make less useful potions and he teaches him how to make ones that reduce hangovers in exchange

Also, freebie Merle headcanon: true to Clint's inability to roll anything above a 13-15 after including modifiers during the campaign, Merle has the worst luck out of all of the 7. Like, he died 57 times during their journey. He didn't start talking to John until cycle 30, and he stopped talking to John 3/4 of the way into the century. If we round that up to cycle 80, that means he would have only died 50 times if he went to go talk to John every cycle. But! We know that he didn't do that because there are cycles in between where he was doing other stuff (ex. Legato Conservatory, and I'm pretty sure they referenced that he would have done other things in the other cycles in between.) So, that's less than 50 deaths from John. That leaves at least 7 for him to die outside of that, and the Judge's world doesn't count because that's within the 50 year time frame.

What the fuck was he doing?

Ah. Maybe trying potions out on himself!

#lol #thank you for the ask!! #taz #taz balance #merle highchurch

[marril96]

Out of the Woods

Chapter 3: Track & Trace

Characters: reader, Sam, Dean

Pairing: Rowena x reader

Summary: An explosive argument leads to you running away and puts Rowena in danger.

Editor: @miss-moon-guardian

*****

Sam and Dean tried to comfort you on the way back to the hotel, which only made you feel worse. Only made you feel more guilty for running away, for Rowena following after you because she was an idiot who was too in love with you to realize it was a bad idea.

"She could've dropped the phone," Dean suggested, though he didn't believe it himself. "Could've cut herself on the screen."

"I'm begging you to stop," you told him, desperate for silence, for respite. As if it wasn't enough that your girlfriend — whom you'd parted with on bad terms — had gone missing. The last thing you needed was listening to Dean's purposely dumb theories.

The three of you had agreed to return to the hotel room and have you do a tracking spell. A horrible idea, really; tracking was Rowena's thing. You sucked at it. As good as you were at magic, thanks to her excellent teaching skills and immense amounts of patience, tracking was one of the few things you struggled with. Latching on to missing objects and people was difficult.

It was easier when it came to supernatural beings. They usually carried an aura, a presence that made it easy to follow to its source, a sort of string invisible to the naked eye but a perfect guide to a witch. Whenever you practiced on Rowena, it was almost a piece of cake.

But this was different. This was for real. She'd never been so far away from you. It would be difficult, much more so, to look for her in an unknown town than it was in your own neighborhood.

"You can do it, darling."

Rowena said it every time you worried about learning a new spell. Every time you feared failure. She was there, and she would guide you through every step, every single moment,. There was nothing to be afraid of.

"That's my girl!"

She was proud of you so many times. Even when you struggled. Even when you didn't do well, didn't quite meet her standards. She never made you feel inept, inadequate. You were her girl, and she was proud of your every attempt. There was no perfection in witchcraft. Only progress. And, she'd said, you were progressing more than well.

You certainly hoped so for now she needed you the most and there was no time for failure. No time for insecurity.

The brothers cleared a small space to you in the room and watched as you sorted the candles into an imperfect circle around you. Once it was done, you lowered to your knees, and, magic bursting in your veins like lava, hot and deadly, started to chant.

The town was bare of magic. Empty. Startlingly lonely. Had it always been that way, or was everyone magic, everyone non-human, killed? Maybe the victims whose deaths you'd been investigating were the last ones. Final remnants of magic, forever quieted down by a monster — a monster who didn't have claws, whose only fuel, only power, was hatred for everything different than him.

Different than it for you refused to humanize the beast who'd done all this. The beast who'd had your girlfriend and was surely doing unspeakable things to her, things you didn't dare imagine but couldn't keep your mind from wandering to.

Focus, you told yourself. Your first job was to find her. Everything else would be taken care of in due time.

Rowena was strong. Resilient. A survivor. She'd survived a brutal death at the hands of the Devil himself. A pathetic hunter was nothing in comparison. He could shatter her, break her, but he couldn't kill her. Not permanently. For the first time since you'd found out about their fate, you were grateful to know Sam would be the one to permanently kill her.

You gripped Rowena's necklace — the gold one with a circle pendant — tight as you yelled the words of magic, exactly the way she'd taught you. She used to wear it all the time, had owned it for decades, possibly centuries; it was as good of an anchor as any. Nothing stood out amidst the vast emptiness. No signal. No pull. You spat the words again, and again. Focused your mind solely on Rowena, on her power that greatly surpassed yours.

You could find it.

You could do it.

"That's my girl," you imagined her saying. The words you needed to hear. The encouragement you craved.

No beacon. No light. A vast field, a graveyard lone of magic.

And then…

"Got her!" you yelled, fingers instantly clenching around the necklace. The fragile metal burying into your skin.

"Where is she?" Sam asked, relieved. You weren't just missing a girlfriend; he was missing a friend, a good one. No matter your opinion on him and his brother, you couldn't deny they were close. That they meant something to each other — something you could never come to comprehend.

"She's…" The streak of power was faint. Blinking. But, as you closed in on it, let your own power latch on, you could see it freely. Could feel it in your veins as if it were a part of you, a limb you'd just gained. "I can take us there."

"Let's go!" Dean said.

The room was instantly emptied. Belongings shoved in the trunk of the Impala. You were glad to be away from the stinky room, to never have to go back. The three of you quickly checked out, and were on your way.

"We still don't know what we're dealing with, so be careful," Dean said, as if you were a child. As if you'd never faced danger.

"It's a witch-killing maniac," you said, annoyed.

"We don't know that."

"Oh, don't give me that shit! You can't honestly believe this is some witch offing random people. This one's on your kind."

It sounded a lot like an accusation, and it was supposed to.

Sam, ever the peacemaker, spoke up. "We're just saying, we need to be careful."

No, you thought. You needed to get there as fast as possible, kill the son of a bitch, and rescue your girl. Bursting in, guns and magic blazing, was more than okay with you, so long as it got the bastard away from Rowena. The three of you could handle him. Rowena, captured, probably bound in iron, couldn't.

The spell led you to a secluded cabin at the very edge of town. Nothing but trees and weeds for miles. A perfect little torture chamber for a deranged psycho.

Dean parked the car right before the property line, behind a thick bundle of trees. The three of you tiptoed to the cabin, slow, careful, hiding behind trees and various pieces of junk the bastard has accumulated in his yard. You were, once again, offered a gun, and, just like last time, had declined it. You had your magic on standby, ready to fire at your command. Ready to destroy, to ravage, the avenge.

Rowena would have been proud.

She would be proud.

Noise from inside the cabin made your ears perk up. It was faint, but as you got closer, you could make out familiar screams and yelling, words unknown but their meaning clear — anger. Worry clenched at your heart, dug its pointy talons deep into it. Your eyes watered; you instantly wiped at them and took a deep breath to steady yourself. There would be time for crying later. Right now, you had a girlfriend to rescue.

You looked at Dean, then shifted your glance to the door. Do it, your expression said, clear as day.

He shook his head.

You glared and mouthed, hissed, "Do it!"

He looked unsure.

You turned to Sam, who seemed to share his brother's sentiment.

"No!" The word rang loud, startling you. The voice you knew by heart, now broken, desperate. So different to the power it oozed with earlier during your argument. "Stop!"

A muffled response, then a scream.

A rebellious tear spilled down your face. The monster was hurting Rowena. It was one thing to imagine it. To hear it, to hear her cries of pain…

"Do it or I will," you said in a low voice, fixing Dean with your deadliest stare. One you'd stolen from Rowena, that left no room for argument.

Dean pondered on it for a moment, then, getting a nod from Sam, crept forward and, with all the strength he carried, kicked at the door. It fell off its hinges under the force of the strike, tumbled down like a useless sack.

"Get away from her!" he yelled, raising his gun.

Sam went in after him, and, his own weapon up, said, "Stay back!"

You followed right after.

The sight that greeted your eyes made you wish you hadn't.

It was right then and there that you decided the son of a bitch would die, and it would be far from pretty.

*****

Tags: @werewolfbarbie @oswinthestrange @songofthecagedmoose @apurdyfulmind @getthesalt-sam @metallihca @salembitchtrials @jay-eris @hellsmother @elizabeth-effie @shadowgirl-vsb @rowenaswife @wonderifshelikesroses @xfireandsin @liddell-alien @hotdiggitydammit @lae-lae @darkhumorsblog @angel7376 @cherrypierowena @evil-regal-vampiress​ @hellbentredhead​ @angel-e-v-a​ @a-queen-and-her-throne​ @carryon-doctor-lock​ @fangirlxwritesx67​ @mintymarshmellows​ @midnight-lestrange​ @osterhagen​ @impala-1979​ @gracib16​ @feelsandotps​

#rowena #rowena macleod #sam winchester #dean winchester #rowena x reader #rowena macleod x reader #spn #supernatural #spn family #angeleva #fanfiction #my fics

[hsu-liangyu]

“Orientalia”: White Fascination and Nostalgia for China and the Orient

4/11/2021

Denver, CO

CW: Racism, anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment, violence/sexual assault

Preface:

Today was certainly a day. I’ve been on a cross country trek, which I’ve come to call “The Great Journey East”, where I’m driving from my home in the Seattle area to Portland, Maine to ply my usual trade, working aboard some traditionally rigged sailing vessels that operate from the Maine State Pier. I’ve most recently arrived in Denver, CO, after a tumultuous night of camping in un-ideal circumstances on the shores of Great Salt Lake in Utah. I decided to treat myself to a middling hotel downtown to try to affect an aura of urban tranquility before I head out for Wichita in the morning, and then on to see my mother’s family in Oklahoma. The drive thus far has been marked by astounding natural beauty, kind people, and a long series of audio books that I’ve only just begun to make a dent in. I began this journey listening to “Tribe” by Sebastian Junger, which I found to be extremely interesting and helped some of my own understanding of how society today does not serve the community, and how we may one day return to a society where the people come first, as opposed to the individual. After finishing Mr Junger’s audiobook, I turned my ears to a tome that I have put off reading for a long time: “The Chinese in America: A Narrative History” by Iris Chang.

Listening to this audiobook over the last few days, which begins in Qing dynasty China and ends in the modern day, I can say a great many things. I can say that I deeply feel the experiences that were collected by the author and compiled into this book, not only on an intellectual and emotional level, but on a spiritual level. I can say that, despite years of my own research into my familial experiences and the experiences of contemporary Chinese Americans, my level of knowledge was severely lacking, even though I considered myself to be a relatively robust lay-scholar on the topic. I can say that the experience of we Chinese Americans, foreign and natural born, has changed very little in our time here. While circumstances change from person to person, family to family, and era to era, we are all bound together in trends that have haunted our communities, not unlike the tigers that have stalked southeast Asia for time immemorial, striking out when least expected.

All of that, however, is a surface level understanding. Those realities are the first few layers of a complicated and long history of horrific, violent, brutal, and inhuman oppression in the United States.

I began this audiobook believing that I knew most of what I needed, enough to enlighten the odd person in online discourse, or conversation over dinner. Enough to tell-off the casual bigot that accused me and other Chinese people of overblowing our racial, social, and economic anxieties while making them look a fool. I realized very quickly that while I was not wrong in my knowledge, my staunchly anti-racist rhetoric, or my suspicious attitudes towards the US government and law enforcement, I was missing so much of the story. I was not missing the statistics or the legislative history: I was missing word-to-paper stories of my ancestors -- our ancestors -- and the cold, hard, and hellacious reality that they faced when they got here. These realities may have differed from generation to generation (the Chinese washer-man and washer-woman, miner, and restaurateur of the 19th century was faced with markedly different circumstances from the Chinese who fled WWII, the PRC, or settled in other areas of the world during the diaspora), but they are cold and hard, none-the-less.

I have cried more in the last three days than I think I have in the last three years. My heart hurts for our ancestors, our elders, our parents, our siblings, our uncles, our aunties, and our future children as we exist in a country that has committed nearly every atrocity it could think of to rid us from their stolen land.

This was the state of being I’ve come to Denver with. Finally in the privacy of a hotel room, I showered and talked with my partner. She found a book today, written by the child of white missionaries who fled China just before WWII, that was a compilation of “Oriental” inspired needle-work patterns. She shared the preface of this book with me, which I found to be incredibly alarming, and has prompted me to write on the subject of “Orientalism”, the exotic, and how the experience of white Europeans and Americans in China was vastly different from the Chinese people. Out of respect for the author and their work, which I believe was written as an honest tribute to Chinese culture and its influence on them, I am choosing to omit the author’s name and the title of the book in question. While some may see this as underhanded, I am choosing to do so because I do not wish to wage a war of rhetoric with an author who I have very little personal knowledge of, because I believe it is unethical of me to do so.

However, I will be addressing some problematic concepts that are present in the preface of this book, as they are worth speaking about as we attempt to further society’s collective understanding of differential experiences between people and people groups.

Thank you for reading on, as well as for reading my preface. The following issues are things that I have struggled with for a long time, and I hope that my words bring you additional perspective on Chinese American issues.

“The Orient, the Oriental, and Orientalia: A Curious Lens of Exoticism Riddled with Racism”

Today, I saw a word that I had not seen in a very, very long time.

As most any Asian person will tell you, the words “orient” and “oriental” are generally unwelcome descriptors of Asian people and culture. These two descriptors are applied to clothing, architecture, pottery, art, furniture, cookware -- the list keeps going. I often joke to those who use these words, “what am I, a rug to you?”, which normally drives the point home in a friendly way They are both hangers-on from an era that we’d best leave in the past. An era where the Occident and the Orient were opposites of one another, incompatible, and fundamentally in conflict. The two terms saw relatively common usage in the 19th century, and many Euro-Americans considered “the orient” to be interchangeable with “the far east” while the occident was a catch-all word for Euro-American civilizations ranging from western Europe to the New World. It could be said that the Occident and the Orient began as harmless descriptor words that only communicated a vague notion of differences between cultures, they were rapidly weaponized as anti-Asian, especially anti-Chinese, sentiments began to flare in the western world. Imperial Germany used the two terms to great affect, framing the differences between the Occident and the Orient to be far more than cultural and societal. It was a matter of life and death.

The Occident was the pinnacle of industrialized civilization. It was moral and upright, beholden to the Christian god, supported by the titans of industry, government, and cutting-edge military technology. The Orient was backwards, overrun with dirty Chinese heathens who constantly lied, cheated, and stole from the superior whites. The Chinese were looking to enslave white women, turning them into sex slaves or take them as wives so that they could propagate a wretched half-breed race that would overrun the world and mark the end of all Occidental civilization.

This rhetoric was incredibly powerful, and one only needs to look at early anti-Chinese political cartoons and articles to see these words used in incredibly derogatory ways. The other side of the Orient/Oriental dichotomy was steeped in foreign luxury and exoticism, which served to peak the interest of wealthy whites that bought up all kinds of Asian furniture, clothing, fabrics, cookware, and art from unscrupulous dealers and certifiable importers alike. Affluent white women of the 19th century are well-documented as being deeply invested in luxurious goods imported from “the Orient” and marketed as “Oriental” or “Orientalia” to garner societal notoriety, whereas their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons would have dressing gowns, cravats, and handkerchiefs created out of fine imported silk. All of these goods were considered exotic and other-worldly, which is not a debased outlook for the time, considering that so few westerners had actually managed to travel in the vicinity of China, let alone disembark in one of the few official trading ports open to European traders. This fascination with all things Chinese, entirely divorced from the reality that many Europeans and Americans viewed the Chinese as grave existential threats to white civilization, is not without irony.

While Chinese peasants and workers died in droves from starvation, disease, localized conflict, or at the hands of white Europeans and Americans acting with impunity in a country that was barred from holding them legally accountable for their actions, cargo hold upon cargo hold of Chinese goods were exported for consumption by westerners. These westerners had military and diplomatic presence in China, especially in the mid to late 19th century, often seizing prime real estate in Chinese port cities for international settlements where it was the westerners, not the Chinese, in charge. These ostentatious settlements, coupled with missions run by Christian organizations from all over the western world, exercised great influence with local Qing dynasty officials, and western nationals all throughout the southern coast of China were free to use and abuse the Chinese around them as they please. These prosperous settlements, a highly visible and permanent show of colonization and foreign aggression, were made so by the labor of Chinese workers and peasants. The same workers who were forced into horrific working conditions in and around the settlements while western nationals were free to treat them as they please with no repercussions, ever for outright murder. Any fascination with the Chinese lifestyle, manner of dress, and other items that could be quickly imported to the west as exotic tokens of the Orient was inherently divorced from the horrific reality of daily life within China, and was nearly always a fascination that arose from social tiers that could afford to be ignorant of those realities while directly benefiting from them.

“Orientalia and the Noble Savage”

The westerners’ fascination with all things Orientalia outlines another phenomenon present in the west’s view of China in the 19th and 20th centuries, an phenomenon that Americans are familiar with as it is applied to Indigenous peoples in North America: the Noble Savage.

The Noble Savage idea and stereotype found quick traction with American colonists as they fought to drive out Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands all over North America. These Indigenous groups, savage as they were perceived to be, were often regarded as principled and noble in their way of life, whether that was seen in their treatment of the lands, natural resources, their art and craftwork, their societal structure, or in how they treated white settlers when they were taken prisoner. While all of this talk of nobility betrayed the slimmest undercurrents of admiration from white settlers towards Indigenous peoples, the second word of the phrase was integral to its application: Savage. Despite these noble ideas and practices, a savage is a savage is a savage. This two-faced admiration served only one purpose -- to communicate the slightest inkling of fake remorse in widespread acts of genocide against people that white settlers hated and chose not to understand.

For the Chinese and Chinese Americans, the idea of the noble savage is easily translated. While Indigenous peoples in North America had a comparatively low level of technology to Americans, the same could not be said of the Chinese. Despite lacking robust gunpowder arms and other advanced forms of military technology, the technological prowess of the Chinese people was without doubt. Massive cities, sprawling agriculture, advanced irrigation, roads, palaces, and so much more was plainly evident to any westerner who arrived on Chinese shores (the same can be said of Indigenous populations throughout the Americas despite the prevailing myth of "primordial wilderness" perpetuated by white settlers) . Despite the different perspectives that westerns had between the two groups, westerners applied the Noble Savage ideal to the Chinese just as quickly and easily as they did to the Indigenous peoples across the oceans.

While the Chinese were obviously proficient in architecture, engineering, and in art, many westerners were quick to follow up any admiration of their eastern counterparts with staunch, racial criticism, highlighting their savagery in their daily lives such as gambling, long fingernails, or their seemingly archaic dress. Much of the criticism leveled on the basis of savagery had to deal with the assumption that Chinese men would, without hesitation, steal from white men and kill them, while selling white women into slavery. And while this was based in very loose reality (the triad societies of Canton did, indeed, participate in the sex trafficking of Chinese women to California and the Coolie trade that sent enslaved Chinese men to work on plantations in South America), the fears were stoked by ferocious anti-Chinese rhetoric in Europe and America.

The Chinese who emigrated to America were seen no different, and while public opinion waxed and waned, it was always understood that the Chinaman was a noble savage at best, and the earthly embodiment of evil at his worst. While modern Chinese and Chinese Americans may not be subject to the Noble Savage ideas from two centuries ago, it is not uncommon for Americans, especially white American youths, to take this idea as gospel, tormenting their Asian classmates throughout their formative years.

“China’s Sorrow: Nostalgia for a China that did not exist”

(As a forewarning, this the section where I may become quite emotional.)

Something that I encountered today was nostalgia. Not my own nostalgia, but the nostalgia of an author who grew up in a mission or international settlement in pre-WWII China, and fled from the country just before Pearl Harbor. This author, who shall remain nameless for the reason I stated in the preface of this essay, spoke highly of China’s sights and sounds, the people, the food, the craftwork, and of their pleasant life as the child of white missionaries in China. They spoke on how the pace of life in China was different than America, and that they much preferred the comforts of life in the Orient, surrounded by Oriental people and objects, enamored with Orientialia well into their adult life.

I found this passage to be absolutely appalling. I understand that I may be picking the wrong fight here, but this is my emotional response to an issue that I have found difficult to articulate that managed to, somehow, someway, manifest succinctly in the preface of a book that I randomly encountered. I lay my thoughts here:

White missionaries in China lived privileged lives, much like the other westerners that inhabited international settlements all throughout the major cities of the country. Missionaries, like the other westerners, were an extremely privileged class, living privileged lives in a country that was being torn apart by colonization, internal strife, famine, disease, and violence. While the average Chinese peasant in late Qing, early republic-era China had to contend with the daily realities of starvation, material scarcity, and the reality that a western could beat them or kill them and face no legal consequences for that action. Merchants were forced to deal with countless one-sided trade and land treaties, while government officials struggled to keep the country together, if they weren’t themselves contributing to the horrendous reality. Life in international settlements for western nationals is often reminisced upon as idyllic, quaint, and prosperous, which paints a stark contrast to their Chinese neighbors’ experiences. The westerners were off-limits, exempt from legal prosecution, and largely able to conduct themselves as they saw fit, even when their conduct directly endangered Chinese lives.

Meanwhile, outside of these international settlements, war ravaged the country. When the Qing dynasty fell and the Republic of China was established, the country fractured. The nationalist government was constantly at war, sometimes with itself, sometimes with bandits and warlords, sometimes with organized crime, and most of all with the Chinese Communist Party. The Koumintang government, in the wake of Sun Yat-sen’s death, saw Chiang Kai-shek seize power. The Japanese began to aggressively push their borders into China, fighting with superior military technology and training while the national army faltered from unwilling conscripts led into disastrous battles by inept, corrupt, and tyrannical officers. The CCP fought a guerilla campaign against the KMT that further muddied the conflict, with innocents caught between two radical and violent sides while Japan tightened the noose. Communist and Nationalist fought together against the Japanese one day, and may have fought against each other the next.

While the country was torn apart, the westerners in international settlements were unconcerned with the wars raging across the land. They continued to live their idyllic lives until the war was literally at their doorstop -- only then did they become concerned with the plight of the Chinese people.

Only then did the westerners in international settlements care for the circumstances of the average Chinese peasant in the countryside or worker in the city. They could bear no concern while they benefited from cheap Chinese labor, horrific working conditions, or while some of them got away with murder. They could bear no concern while Europe and America colonized China and ransacked the economy. And they could bear no concern for the Chinese being tortured, beaten, raped, and murdered in the countryside, far from their gates, until it was on their doorstep.

The nostalgia that some westerners feel for China, a China that existed before the chaos of the 1920s onwards, is propped up by lives of privilege and white-washed memories that ignore the struggle of the Chinese people right under their noses.

They feel nostalgia for a China that did not exist, because the one that existed was destroyed in part by their international settlements and the colonization efforts of their home countries.

This nostalgia for a China that was at least slightly better than the chaos of the 1920s through the 1940s, or better than the Cultural Revolution, or better before Tiananmen Square exists also within the Chinese immigrant community. But this nostalgia strikes in a way that the other does not.

While the westerner who lived in an international settlement may be able to intellectually sympathize with the Chinese experience during this tumultuous time, it is the Chinese themselves who bear the actual scars. Many of our elders long for a prosperous China as well, but there is a key difference in this: our elders, our family, sometimes we ourselves, bear the scars of the past. Our nostalgia is momentary, continuously shattered by the very real heartbreak that the Chinese and Chinese American community has been subject to over the last century. While circumstances and perspectives differed, the China that some of us long for is just as much a painful sore on our souls as it is a pleasant memory. The pain, the loss, the grief, anxiety, and struggle.

It is a nostalgia for our ancestral land that cannot be found anywhere else, as precious as it is painful.

Hsu Liang Yu

#aapi #end aapi hate #aapi history #aapi authors #chinese american #history #white allyship #white allies

[ask-ethari-anything]

Ooooh!! I need to know more about that first time where Runaan fell asleep before you started courting, because he was hurt and all.

Please? 🥺

It’s my pleasure, love.

Young assassins are often given guard duty for little trips outside the Silvergrove, to give them practice with awareness and responding to relatively safe situations--compared to taking humans, anyway. Runaan really seemed to enjoy those trips before he was cleared for assassin missions--he really embraced the idea of protecting people by standing between them and danger, and by sorting out tense situations to keep others safe. He has a knack for that, as much as he does for um, harder things.

He was often assigned to guard me while I went on a gem-finding trip. I loved those trips! Pulling rough gemstones from the earth, from caves, from riverbeds, seeing them sparkle in their first light of day, it warms my soul. If Runaan loved his guard duty, then these were the trips I loved. I always asked for them, whenever the village needed more rough stones, and I was good at finding them and bringing them back as intact as possible. Glow crystals are easy to find since they give off light, but it’s almost as if I can hear the gemstones pinging in the earth, and I love that first moment of discovery like nothing else.

But I do get overly focused on my work, and that’s why I need someone watching my back. *sassy grin* So Runaan and I made a great team even when we were younger, and he trekked out with me many times before we had romantic inclinations for each other. 

One time, I insisted on traveling out during a rainstorm because the cache of opals I was after lay beneath an overhang that had been undercut by craftsmen so much over the centuries that I worried for its stability. I wanted to get out to it and retrieve my opals before the overhang got too soaked and became dangerous--and the storm was going to be a big one. Runaan advised that we wait a few days, but I was impatient and insisted. So he dutifully traveled out into the drenched forest with me. I could read his judgy silence, though. He didn’t say a word for hours, and I knew he was grumpy with me for being rash.

We reached the overhang, a muddy slit just big enough to crawl back into, beneath a large chunk of dark gray rock. The vein of opals extended quite a ways, and there was plenty of space beneath it--as long as you were sitting down. Runaan handed me a padded hat. I glared at him, and he glared right back. So I put the stupid thing on to protect my horns and crawled under the overhang through the mud until I reached the back of the rock wall. I began unearthing them as quickly as I could and stashing them carefully in my bag. 

After only a few minutes, a massive bolt of lightning struck a tree nearby, and the thunderclap that followed literally shook the earth. And then it kept shaking.

Runaan called my name and scrambled in under the overhanging rock. He began dragging me out, but before we reached safety, the overhang started to tip and collapse. He seized me in a fierce hug, rolled me over top of him, and then thrust me past him out into the rainstorm!

And the overhang collapsed on top of him.

A few very important things became instantly clear to me as I sprawled in the wet grass, then. I’d been a fool. Runaan had been right to worry. And he might just have died trying to save me from my own stupidity. I had to make it right.

I was on my knees at the edge of the overhang in an instant, chucking big rocks aside and crying his name. Surely he’d be just under this rock, or this one, or this one... 

Well, he’d nearly made it to the edge before he was buried, so I did find him soon, although it felt like a million years. I found his hand first, and I squeezed it tight, trying to get a response from him. I nearly cried with relief when he faintly squeezed me back! I unearthed him even faster than I’d been working--and when I found his head, I had to laugh.

He’d stolen my padded hat when he booted me out into the rain, and it protected his horns under all the rocks--and I had been so worried, I never noticed that he’d taken it!

“Thief,” I blurted, grinning. “You took my hat.”

Runaan looked up at me from the rocks, bearing scratches and bruises on every part of him that I could see, and utterly slathered in fresh mud. But his wide turquoise eyes still managed to look shocked. “Sorry...” he began.

“Moon and shadow, I’m joking! I’m just glad to see you alive. Let me get you out of there, hold on.” And I unearthed him the rest of the way, and helped him up. But he’d been squished pretty thoroughly, and he couldn’t walk well. One of his feet had gotten a bit twisted among the falling rock.

We stared at each other in dismay for a moment, as the rain started to wash the mud off of him. 

“I guess we’re camping out here tonight,” I said, at the exact moment that he said, “You should head back without me.”

Then we chorused, “Don’t be stupid.”

Runaan glared at me, and I snorted and started laughing. His glares had a lot less weight when he was two whole inches shorter than me and also covered in mud!

“Come on, I know a place we can dry off. And when we get there, I’ll need that medkit of yours, the one you always bring in case I’m, er, stupid.”

I wasn’t completely sure, but it seemed for a second that he blushed under all his mud.

It was cute, I’ll admit, even way back then. Silly overachieving assassin trainee, striving so hard to be perfect. He tried to limp along ahead of me to scout the way, but his foot was in bad shape, so I insisted on carrying him on my back. “That way, you can still see ahead and let me know if there’s trouble,” I told him.

“I’ll get you muddy,” he protested.

“Yes. And?” I pointed out that I was muddy from the knees down after having crawled in after my opals.

Well, he still thought it was unseemly for an assassin to show so much weakness that he had to be carried. Poor elf was in quite a quandary! So I said, “Listen, I won’t tell anyone if you won’t. But we can’t stay out here in the rain, and you need to rest. You just had a whole boulder collapse all over you!”

Runaan struggled mightily for enough justification to let me carry him. It was written all over his cute little face! But eventually he gave in and nodded. I backed up and bent down, and he leaned against me and wrapped his muddy arms around my neck, and I scooped him up under his knees, and away we went.

He didn’t say a word the whole time, and his hands were flexing like mad. I didn’t understand what that meant back then, not really, but it was clear that he was pretty tense. 

I hiked to the nearest dry cave and set Runaan down in a safe corner. He was mostly mud-free at that point, except for where we’d been pressed together. He didn’t want me to check him over for injuries yet, so I told him I’d scout around for some supplies. He immediately gave me a list! Luckily for both of us, I’m very good with lists. I made him swear that he’d be alright when I returned, and he did so, readily. So I headed back into the rain to gather berries and leaves and stones and roots and moss, and a few flower petals, if I could find them. He’d added them to the list with another blush, so I was determined!

Well, I found everything he asked for and brought the damp lot back in my opal bag. He seemed surprised at my competence, but I told him, “Craftsmen know their way around the same forest assassins do.” That seemed to make him think for a moment.

Then I asked him what all the supplies were for, and he started spouting assassin knowledge at me. I could barely keep up! Moss and stones to give off a radiant heat with only a little light, berries and leaves for pain and wound cleansing... but he didn’t want to tell me what the flower petals were for.

“Runaan. Just tell me. Is it for a tea? Do you eat them? Here, you take them and do what you want with them,” I offered, holding them out.

But he blushed again and looked away. So stubborn! I pretended like I was going to crumple them up and toss them away, and he reached out and grasped my wrist tightly.

“Wait. They’re... healing petals. For the scratches on my face. I... it’s easier if someone else...”

I grinned so widely, I thought my face would split! “Runaan. Are you telling me you’re worried about your pretty face?”

He blushed again and glared at me.

“Because you’re still pretty, but now you look like the badass who saved my life,” I added seriously. “Did you think I wouldn’t tell everyone how brave you were? How you selflessly saved me first and risked yourself? How you did exactly what you’ve been trained to do? So what if you took a few scrapes? That just proves how dangerous your work is, and how strong you are to survive it. Doesn’t it?”

He stared at me dubiously for a long, long moment, and then his eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he looked aside. He let out a slow sigh, and then he glanced at me and offered his cheek toward me for a petal bandage.

I scooted forward and used my softest craftsman touch to press the first one over a scrape along his cheekbone. “There we go. I’ll have you looking pretty as a lunabloom in no time,” I murmured.

He glared up at me for implying that he wasn’t already that pretty, and I winked at him. “A lunabloom who didn’t just save my life in spectacular fashion,” I amended. Another petal pressed against his forehead, and another beside it, covering a large abraded area. He winced slightly, and I paused. “Did I hurt you?” I asked. But he shook his head and looked down.

I turned his chin lightly, looking for more scrapes to cover, and found a pair along his jaw. I softly pressed more petals over them and then looked his face over thoroughly. “Alright. I think your legendary beauty will recover now,” I pronounced.

Runaan rolled his eyes and looked away again, but I saw a little smile on his lips.

We snacked on a few moonberries, and I tended his foot under his sharp-eyed instruction, patching and binding it for him. He propped it on a stone and lay by the warming moss, and I lay nearby with my head next to his, in case he ever decided to talk again. 

He went still, and then he huffed suddenly as if waking. A few minutes later, he did it again. I realized he was trying not to doze off.

“Runaan, you just got buried in rocks, and you need to rest. Don’t worry. I’ll stay awake and keep watch for you.”

“Do you even know what to watch for?” he asked sleepily.

Sassy assassin. “I imagine anything that darkens the cave entrance will be worth waking you for,” I sassed back.

He rolled his eyes again, but then he nodded, as if in agreement with my very general assessment of his watch duties. I sat up then, facing the entrance of the cave with Runaan stretched out beside me. 

He tapped my knee with something, and I looked down to see him offering me his sword. I blinked in shock, and then I took it, slowly and reverently, and held it across my lap. As if I knew what to do with the thing aside from admire its craftsmanship.

But he nodded seriously, having successfully passed watch duty to me, and soon enough, his eyes slid shut and he relaxed into sleep.

I’d never seen an assassin sleep before. That’s like seeing a shark sleep. They just don’t sleep around other elves. They don’t sleep much at all, I’ve since come to realize. But there he was, a young, earnest injured assassin, soft and slumberous at my side. And he’d given me his sword.

The amount of trust in those two gestures astounded me, even though we both knew he had no other choice due to our circumstances. He was taking a chance on me. And as I sat there in the dimness, with an assassin’s sword in my hands, I began to feel... something amazing.

I wanted to keep him safe. From everything. He was so tense, so worried, about me as his charge, that he’d neglected to worry over himself. But Runaan was definitely worth worrying over! He’d trained so hard and so earnestly, and he truly enjoyed helping keep others safe. I wanted to make that as easy as possible for him. Because he was overdoing it by a fair bit and he needed to relax!

While he slept, I contemplated that sword. I wondered who had made it for him, and if a better one would serve him more efficiently. I wondered about enchantments and secrets and maybe even moon opals. And so I hauled out my damp notebook and started writing down ideas.

“What are you doing?” Runaan’s voice startled me some hours later.

“Making notes. On swords.”

“Swords?”

“You need a better sword.”

“My sword is perfectly functional, Ethari.” He held out his hand, and I returned it to him.

“But what if it could be better?” I asked eagerly. “Listen. You’re an assassin. You performed your duty today and saved my life. Let me return the favor by making you a better sword, so you can be even more efficient.”

“But you’re a jeweler.”

“I’m a craftsman,” I said, a little too forcefully. “I can make anything I like. And I want to make you a better sword. It’ll take time, because I’ll need to change my training focus, but... if you’ll be patient with me, Runaan, I want to pay you back for saving my life. And this is how I want to do it. I want to make you a better sword.”

He lay in the dimness and stared up at me with those blazing turquoise eyes I’ve come to adore, and he simply said, “Thank you.”

#ask ethari #story time #runaan #ethari #young runaan #young ethari #just a couple of soft young boys changing their lives for each other #hurt/comfort

[aregebidan]

Word Count: 1781 words

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Fandoms: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth

Characters: Elrond Peredhel, Elros Tar-Minyatur, Maglor | Makalaure, Maedhros | Maitimo

Additional Tags: One-Shot Collection, Non-Linear Narrative, Elrond-centric, Maglor-centric, Character Study, Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Everyone Needs a Hug, let Elrond not lose anyone 2k20

Summary: Scenes of the kidnap family through Elrond and Elros' childhood, featuring difficult questions, buried feelings, and the fragile hope of a happy ending.

Can also be read below the cut

“Is it true what they say?”

Maglor raises an eyebrow at the twin crouched in the corner of his tent- twin, singular, he notes. Whatever little Elrond is going to ask, his brother either does not approve of the question, or does not know he is here.

That is interesting; Elros was always Maedhros’ mirror, so careful with his words and protective of his family. It has been two weeks since they took the twins, and for all that time they had been inseparable, clutching each other’s hands and dressing in identical, oversized tunics that they’d somehow stolen off Maedhros’ guards (the twins having long established him as the less frightening one, the one who didn’t make mistakes.)

You don’t go anywhere without me, they had overheard Elros telling his brother. You don’t say anything to them. They are dangerous, every single one.

But this time, Elrond had deemed it safe to come to him alone…

Maglor bites down a smile as he sets his book aside. “What do they say, little one?”

He leans forward unconsciously in his chair, and the child fails miserably in hiding his flinch.

Maglor could hit himself if it wouldn’t scare him more. Two weeks in and he has already forgotten what they are, his young captives, to the point that he has seriously contemplated trying to teach Elrond about the Music. Certainly there is none of that happening on the twins’ side, no fondness in Elrond’s eyes as he shuffles awkwardly to his feet.

Instead, Maglor hears on him the familiar tune of curiosity overlaid with fear, each pulling him in opposite directions. It is a few moments before the child finally approaches the desk, only to freeze at the sight of the two swords leaning against its side.

This was a mistake.

In the night, the world is quiet, and such thoughts can be discerned through the empty wind as a real voice. There is rarely anything so specific as dates or faces, but he has so far tolerated the rumors that he can read minds; if anything, it is useful for frightening away Orcs. Tonight, he is quite sure he would throw it all away in a heartbeat if it meant he never had to listen to Elrond wonder which of the blades he’d use on him first again.

He has fantasized about it for centuries- of being brought to Mandos and demanding that they take his curse away, of ridding himself of both of them, of taking the Silmarils in hand and throwing them into the ocean, and never looking back once, finally free-

Stop wandering around in your head, he remembers Celegorm snapping at him, and takes a deep breath, leans back again.

“You can ask me anything, you know.” He gives Elrond a tired grin. “What reason would I have to hurt you now? You are valuable hostages, you and your brother.”

It’s cold, unfeeling logic, and the child seems to trust it more than he does any living thing. He is cleverer than you by far, Maglor scolds himself. Outside there is the sound of his soldiers and the wildlife alike drifting off to sleep, and the calls of the night-birds in the forest overlap with the quiet, high notes of panic coming from Maedhros’ quarters; Elros has noticed his brother’s absence. They must be quick, then.

As if sensing this, Elrond takes a few more dragging steps until, finally, there is triumph: the child even looks him in the eye as he asks in a trembling voice, “Do you mean that?”

“Anything,” he promises. Then, in a last-ditch attempt to lessen the guilt in those two pale, thin faces reflected in the glass of his lamp, “It’s the least I owe you, after all this.”

All this. It is the closest they have ever come to discussing what happened at the Havens of Sirion. Maedhros has so far been unusually tight-lipped about the occasion, and Maglor is reluctant to speak of the Ambarussa aloud. Two weeks have been spent dancing around the subject, not least because they had no idea how the twins would react.

Maglor briefly wonders what Maedhros would think if he ever heard that they have spoken of it, and how it could have come up so easily; true, he has never been able to restrain his words in the late hours, but that was before the Nirnaeth. That was Makalaurë.

He waits on Elrond’s reaction, his chest already tightening in regret- regret that increases tenfold when the child only looks at him blankly, and he can hear nothing from him.

“Elrond,” he says softly and, he thinks to himself, more than a little desperately.

The little one has shrunk into himself, shoulders curling. He shivers and clenches his teeth, as if the question is fighting him on its way out.

“It’s alright,” Elrond says thickly. “I was about to bring it up anyways…”

Wind whistles in through the entrance of the tent, and between that and the shivering Maglor finds it impossible to stay still. He takes care to stand up as quietly as possible, recalling that the loudest sound in the caverns in Sirion had been his own footsteps. Elrond seems to relax slightly at that, more so when the heavy red cloth comes down between him and the night. He swallows hard, licks his lips carefully.

“It is about the Oath, Maglor.”

Maglor pauses. Well. He wants to call it a pause, but what he does is more akin to a flinch, as if their positions have been reversed- as if he still has a right to be wounded by the words of his hostage. He stares down at him, belatedly notices that his expression may be frightening, tries to adjust his face, and then decides it shouldn't matter; shouldn't matter, because Elrond is crying and there are more important things to worry about than vanity, and why is it that he looks so much like Amras when he cries?

“Did you choose to listen to it? Did you try to fight it?” Elrond bites his cheek, sudden tears shining in the lamplight. “Could you have broken it, if you chose?”

Could you have chosen not to attack our home?

And there it is, out there in the open. Maglor fights the urge to go and put his arms around the child, comfort him the way he did his brothers. Elrond is not Amras or Amrod or Curufin- Elrond wants nothing from him besides answers.

"I do not wish to lie to you..." he says haltingly, then stops at the panic building up inside the room; panic, then anger, then an utterly morose kind of resignation. Elrond had not wanted to believe it was his choice to pursue them.

He wanted to believe the best of him and Maedhros, he realizes, and he must be very careful not to let this affect his next words.

Maglor takes a deep breath and begins again.

"The answer to your question is yes, Elrond, and yet no; and there is no way to know for certain. There has been very little research done on this matter, and all I have to go on is my... personal experience."

He purposely mimics the tone of a lecturing tutor, a familiar voice, assuming Elwing had time and people enough to educate her children as they did in Tirion. This indeed appears to calm Elrond, and Maglor makes a mental note to start on a list of what alarms and does not alarm the twins. If Maedhros objects, he will make the point on valuable hostages and hope for the best.

"Yes, I suppose we could have tried to resist it. Maedhros could have held out a little longer, this I know. But it would have ended in utter failure for the rest of us, and in time for Maedhros as well. An oath gone unfulfilled, Elrond," he explains, "near as I can tell, manifests in the mind of the oath-taker as a permanent pain, sight or sound or thought, whatever it would take to drive them to keep their word. Eventually it was inevitable that we would have to seek the Silmarilli once more. For me the effect was doubled because of my music, and the fact that the Oath was first brought into the world by the sound of Fëanáro's voice; it was all that I could hear."

(And, he adds in his mind, the worst part was that I can no longer be sure Atya would not have said those things to me.)

Elrond nods mutely, and Maglor is suddenly glad that he never used his more practical songs at the Havens.

"And there was the matter of..." He pauses, feeling a headache coming, the sound of dying stars echoing in his mind. Speaking of the Oath, it seems, has brought it down on him again.

This is nothing compared to what the twins have gone through, he reminds himself, and continues on. "To be truthful, little one, the Ambarussa wished to avenge their" -a catch in his breath, remember the way Maedhros does it, how he distances himself from his words- "fallen brothers. They were very close to the three."

Elrond's mouth opens slightly, his lips in the shape of a silent oh.

"I will not say that it had to be the Havens, for we are not blameless; far from it. We are the only ones to blame. But nor can I say that we had the full choice." Maglor moves his weary gaze to the lamp, and speaks to empty air. "Does that answer your question, Elrond?"

Elrond blinks up at him, and for a long while the silence thickens, like snow piling up outside the windows in Himring. Maglor absently wonders if this child has ever heard of Himring- was he born after its fall? Did he ever hear of the Gap, the grand tales they made of the flight of the Bragollach's survivors? What does he think of him now, this son of Elwing's? It does not matter; at least, it should not, but Maglor has never been good at doing what he should.

Both of them startle when Elros' voice and panicked feet pierce the silence: "Elrond! Elrond!"

Elros, Elrond starts to say, then glances quickly up at Maglor, as if asking permission to leave.

"Go," he says with a wave of his hand, and collapses as much as he can in his hard wooden seat as he watches the two small figures make their hasty way from the kinslayer's tent, one of whom now knows everything that matters.

Ai, Káno, what have you brought upon yourself now?

#my writing #my fic #tolkien #silmarillion #maglor #elrond

[highviewsmoved]

⁂ shigaraki tomura x reader. (old god shigaraki & female reader)  ❝ gods cannot love mortals. ❞

Similar to the seasons, death changes.

There are whispers of an ancient deity that descends when it is someone's time to go. Who appears when men fall in war, in sickness or in their own beds rattling their last breath.

The name of his is unspoken, for he has wandered the earth for years, collecting souls, leaving death and destruction in his wake. An omen of some kind, similar to the caw of a crow. He will exist.

He will be there and he will wait.

Death himself comes for her in early autumn, when the trees are bare, the branches similar to skeletal fingers pushing up from the earth; the leaves stuck wet to the ground after a morning of rain.

She is cleaning, yukata rolled to her legs and sleeves tied in tasuki to keep from getting wet from the splash of water. It was simple, an easy mistake. She suddenly missteps when she goes back to refill the bamboo tub, falling in head first into the freezing stream.

The locals, the people in her village warned her the water is vicious for its current. The current had stolen a child not too long ago, the mother’s wailing echoes could still be heard throughout the mountain. Water fills her lungs, suffocating her, as her head knocks against a rock.

She is now at the mercy of the beast, and she hopes the river deity will spare her. When she resurfaces much later she has blacked out, unknowing what or who had saved her.

She remembers the abyss; white and red.

And the face of a man who crumbles.

--

Her mother tells her she lived because he had spared her.

“Who, mother?”

“Death,” she says simply. “He can be merciful.”

She listens carefully while the porridge cooks, the smell delicious. She grips the rag between her fists tightly, and she thinks she has seen the face of death. He is very similar to a human.

Curiosity gets the best of her. “Is he always alone?”

Mother is quiet for sometime, she’s not sure she may have heard her. Until she finally responds. “Yes, always.”

--

She sees death when he takes the soul of an old man in her village, the grieving of the family being heard as others come out of their huts to see the mourning, and she sees him.

Death is there, and he comes with the snow in winter, so unlike when he comes in spring or in summer. The frost creeps into her lungs, as she watches him, holding firewood close to her chest.

The old man by his side as Death looks at her, his spider lily eyes holding hers, as if enchanted; and she feels the tickle of snow on her cheek.

She does not cry, but her heart feels heavy. How many more people will he leave with?

--

Death stumbles upon her; she is kneeling, gazing up at the old chestnut tree, and when he hears her calling he comes. She has believed in him.

“Do you take away my people?” She asks him, her hands on her thighs, talking to this deity who has been known for so long. The tale whispers about him being the one who appears when death and destruction are at bay. In the middle of battlefields, always by a sea of corpses he steps through. She is not afraid of him, perhaps she should be.

The branches shiver, light splaying through.

He is there and he does not speak.

Her voice shakes, her fists tightening. The feeling of pain gripping her throat. “Where do you take the dead?”

Tomura responds, in a tone crisp like winter. “Home.”

--

His voice is the hiss of a snake, coiled deep around her throat; a warning. “This is a small mercy.” He had been there when the cliff near her almost swept her away, he had come just in time as she thought of him. He had heard her heart.  

She cannot deny him, it is true that all the chances he has given her have been at best, luck. Or maybe it is him saving her. This she does not want to believe. He has saved her many times but has not spared her people. She should despise him.

Her voice is steel and iron, “you have given me many.”

He looks at her, taken aback as if she had slapped him. She exposes him like a wound, she realizes this much too late.

“The last time,” he reminds her, tone poisonous.

--

She has not seen him since the leaves have changed and at dawn he comes to her, underneath the large chestnuts. The wicker basket has fallen, she cannot bear to look.

“Who have you come for?” Her question is lost in the breeze, tears wet against her cheeks.

She is tired of fighting, of trying to fight off death himself (she has not fought him, she has welcomed him) who has come every time the season changes and for the people in her village. For the people she loves.

He has come anyway. Despite no one believing in him, praying to him; except for her and her mother. She hoped he would listen.

“Do not ask such things if you wish to not know the answer,” his tone is cold but his eyes burn against her back; skin prickling at the heat.

She exhales heavily, breath shuddering. She has cried for hours knowing her mother's time is soon. Deep in her heart she has known he will come anyway.

“Please,” she cries gently, then with much more pain, “please don’t take her away.”

Tomura cannot hold her to that. No more. It is time. “You know already.”

Her chin quivers, trying so hard to be strong. “Then answer me this, when will you take her?”

He thought it was obvious enough, but he will give her what she asks. Only this time; always this time.

“At dawn.” Then with much more promise, “I am coming for her at dawn.” If it is this morning or the next or the next. She does not know.

--

She remembers the first time she saw his face, covered in a mess of hair, bright and glowing like starlight. His eyes redder than the spider lilies that bloom across the meadows. They say the meaning behind those flowers is rebirth, to say goodbye. He is clad in all black, the fabric wrapping around him tattered from travel.

“What is your name?” Her knees are touching soft grass beneath her, dewy from the morning. Her heart pounds considerably louder when his footsteps have quieted.

“Tomura,” it is said like a breeze, so gentle that it carries.

She swallows, curious about his name, so she speaks it and the tree branches bend against the power it holds. Leaves fall changing to brown. The wind howls quietly, slipping by through her hair and face.

“Why have you come here, Tomura?” The wind swirls above.

He approaches, shadowed by the shade. “I come to know.”

“Know? Of what?” She turns her head in a peculiar way, eyes full of wonder. How odd for a deity to make themselves known to a human. So many times this god of death and destruction has done this. So many times he has hid in the shadows of mourning.

“Of things I seek and do not understand.”

Her heart trills like a songbird.

“Am I something you seek and do not understand?”

It is brave to ask such things, the temperature has dropped considerably and the birds have stopped singing. Everything has grown quiet, even the god near her.

“Yes,” and he is gone, she turns quickly to see and notices the patch of brown earth where he stood, the lush green that surrounded him, had paid the price.

--

She has prayed to Tomura, the god of death and destruction to protect her people, he has not forsaken them. He has saved them despite the bitter feeling of grief still anew. The loss of her mother, the old man, and so many more. All of it is painful. Living is painful.

Home, he had said. He takes them to a place where they can rest peacefully is what he promised, but she cannot help but wonder if he had created this, or if this was how life always is.

Death is a cycle.

--

She dreams of a large hand, of a wasteland surrounding her; she wanders the terrain filled with nothing, and she sees him. White hair and dark cloak billowing in a wind she cannot feel.

“Tomura?” She calls, and he does not turn, he stands there. When she reaches him he has slowly become dust, withering in the wind, sweeping past her.

She is suffocating from the particles as it wraps around her. She awakens, the fire put out in her home, smoke rising, the fabric of her bedding stuck to her sweaty body. She knows what her dream is about.

He will soon be gone.

--

“Will you die?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I fade away.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

She runs to him, closing the distance, her embrace is tight against him, he can feel her heartbeat. Her time ticking slowly away.

She will die of old age. He will die because he loved.

She breathes close; warm breath near his ear, and he sighs. He has dreamed of this. Tomura’s mind goes elsewhere during nights away. He has always dreamed of her.

Her soul he has spared, slowly collecting the surrounding ones. She knew this, yet here she is, with him.

He is feared and known. She is a human.

Gods cannot love mortals.

“Live for me,” she gasps against him. “Fight and live,” she begs, her body shaking with guilt. She has unknowingly brought his end.

“I cannot.”

“What can I give you in exchange? My soul?” He exhales, sounding close to a laugh, a smile cracking his lips.

“I will not allow that exchange.”

She pulls away, eyes filled with bitter tears, and she has never looked more brilliant than ever. She is alive.

He longs to touch her like he has often wished of doing.

So he does. Fingers, crumbling slowly; he touches her cheek, and she is so surprised to find it warm; soothing like the summer sun.

She leans into it, wishing she could have this moment forever.

“Your name—“ she stops, then touches his face, his hair, his lips. Caressing all of him.

“Tomura means to mourn,” he says, eyes glittering.

“I will mourn you, yes,” she promises, his arms wrap around her waist, hands moving towards her shoulder blades. How long has he lived without this? Centuries. Her lips brush close to his temples, “but I will love you always.”

Tomura leans in close, foreheads pressed together, lips breadths apart.

“And I you.”

--

She awakens in the forest holding nothing but black fabric.

--

When it is her time to go from this earth, she is old and weary. She had grandchildren, marrying a kind farmer who passed before her. In her seat she stares out where the chestnut trees stand tall, woven in branches.

The blossoms from nearby waft in the wind. It is her time to go, she grips the piece of black fabric she has held onto.

She closes her eyes, and she rests peacefully, her heart stuttering to a halt.

The way it is painless, as it wraps around her; darkness is not as the stories say; it is not unforgiving. The tunnel of light she moves through as she is back in the wasteland from a dream she had years ago.

Tomura stands tall, cape billowing in a windless desert. She gasps, tears streaming down her face as he is turned to her. Not like the dream of where he seemed so far, but now he is so close.

She goes to him, embracing him once more.

“Welcome back,” she says against his chest, he holds her tightly, no longer crumbling.

“I have been here and I have waited,” his voice is still rough like wood being scraped.

He wraps her close, his hands still warm like sunlight, hair bright and eyes similar to spider lilies.

“You are human?” She asks, pulling away to look at him, eyes searching his features, he still looks the same since the last time she saw him all those years ago.

“Deities are born from humans,” he states, “we are one and the same.”

Her tears are wiped gently with his thumb, fingers gliding across her neck and collarbone. This closeness he has missed.

She grabs his hand and presses her lips to each finger. Tomura no longer takes, he has given and given until her soul found his. They were born for this moment, she no longer hears the sorrowful noise of cicadas in the summer sun, silence has never felt more welcoming.

It is not harsh or lonesome, they have one another.

“I kept a part of you with me,” she confesses against his cheek, and his hands glide down her back, the feeling of her he has craved for years since he left.

He keeps her so close that they could become one. “And you can continue to do so, as long as you stay with me,” he murmurs.

Her breath fans his hair as she brushes her fingers through the locks. “Always and forever.” She is finally home with him.

The promise between god and human has been made, and they stay like this for eternity.

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura x reader #bnha imagines