#then they'll eventually get to a point where they will allow themselves to look at the evidence instead of avoiding it out of fear

[trippygalaxy]

Hi there, is it okay to request a headcanon of legend,hyrule and twilight separately on how they find or found a baby and they have to raise the baby themselves?

OOOOOO!! How fun!!

EDIT: IM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG!!

Paring: Legend, Hyrule, Twilight w/ baby (separately) Warning: Death/blood in Hyrule's, mention of child abandonment, swearing,

Legend

Ravio was actually the one to find the baby! The small infant was wrapped in a tattered blanket on his doorstep, and being the resourceful merchant he is--

he panicked and ran to Legend's house

Legend was utterly confused and shocked at the sight of a frantic Ravio holding a sleeping baby. The veteran was quick to ask him how he got the kid and why on the goddesses green earth would he come to him?!

The two stood over Legend's bed, watching the sleeping baby before turning to eachother. They had no clue what to do.

For the first while, Legend are set on trying to find the kid's parents. He was angry at the thought of this kid being abandoned and wanted to give the idiots who dropped them off a piece of his mind.

But after no progress had been made, Legend kinda realizes that HE had to take care of the baby....

Legend nearly had a heart attack that day

How Legend Would Raise The Baby

The first step Legend has to take is BABY PROOFING HIS ENTIRE HOUSE!!

THIS MAN has all kinds of cursed relics and powerful magic items scattered across his house!! 'A totally hazard for the grabby hands of a infant child!' - Ravio

Most of the items are now in a basement/protective shed aka no where the baby would go without the supervision of Legend or Ravio

Struggles the most with calming the kid and putting them to sleep. No matter how much Legend rocks them or tries to sing to them, their big eyes stare up at him without a wink of tiredness

Eventually, from the lack of sleep and as an act of desperation, Legend turns into his bunny form and curls up against the kid. After tugging on his ears for a bit, the child eventually relaxes against the fluffy bunny, falling asleep.

Legend is relieved the kid is finally getting some rest and haunted at the thought of having to do this everytime they can't sleep.

The Veteran is very paranoid in general but now that he has a full ass baby he has to take care of? OOO ITS GONE THROUGH THE ROOF--

Only Him, Ravio and his Zelda (Fable) are allowed to look after the kid. If he has somewhere to be and NEITHER of them are available? Yeah no, fuck whatever plans he had, he is staying with this kid.

Also has a quiet fear of someone trying to take the kid to get to him

Ravio is very set on dressing up the kid, giving them cute little outfits-- which Legend doesn't fully mind but still doesn't see the point of such fancy onesie that they'll grow out of in a month--

OH MY GOD RAVIO MADE A ONESIE THAT MATCHED LEGEND--

okay...He's a little bit more on board

Overall, he's a very paranoid and anxious parent but will throw everything aside for this kid.

Hyrule

While wandering around the wastes of his Hyrule, the traveler heard the faint cries of a...baby?

Quickly, the boy made his way towards the sound, sword drawn and at the ready as he prepares himself to face a hoard of monsters to protect this kid.

But as he crests the dirt mount, he isn't met with the sight of ghoulish monsters or howling beasts. No, he is met with a much more somber sight, one that made his heart ache.

There infront of him were two lifeless figures, bloodied and torn, embracing eachother with thin arms, a small baby laid between them both.

The baby, stained with the blood of their parents, cries into the wind. Blood is caked around their small and chubby hands, weakly holding onto their mother's shawl as a wordless beg for comfort.

A beg that would go forever unanswered..

..Like hell it would!! Hyrule skid down to the two-- three figures, eyes blurry with tears that threatened to spill. Quiet coos came from the hero as hands slowly reaching to the wailing child.

Blood quickly stuck to the hero's tunic like glue and yet, he couldn't of cared less in that moment.

How Hyrule Would Raise The Baby

Hyrule is in WAY over his own head when it comes to raising a baby

But he'd be DAMNED if he gave this kid away. He found them, so they're his reasonability now!

Hyrule soon found an unexpected bonus his magical abilities! The sparkling lights and crackling energy were a great way to distract and calm the young child!

Speaking of magical abilities, Hyrule uses his healing spells a lot when it comes to keep his child safe and healthy! Baby has a small case of the sniffles? BOOM heals! Baby's temperature is higher than normal? BAM! healing peak to the forehead <3

Oh, the fairies absolutely love the little child!!! Hyrule can not stop the fluttering circles they do around him and his new child! Hyrule is about to gently scold the girls for overwhelming the baby but stops when he hears the giddy laughter.

They laugh, bouncing in Hyrule's arms as they reach out and garble at the dancing lights. That...That was the first time he has heard them laugh like that!!

The traveler didn't have a proper home/place or residence due to his wandering nature and heroic duties, but as soon as he takes in the kid he'll make it his mission to find a proper home for the two of them

Now, that is easier said than done-- and the two mostly stay in the few inns that are scattered across his Hyrule or any homes the two were invited in.

And it takes Hyrule a while to find somewhere the two could stay parentally, but never once did he ever give up. Even when doubts flooded his head and people offered to raise the child for him, he stood his ground.

One night, while the two sleep in their newfound home the hero comes to the realization that...One day he'll have to explain what happened to you and...your real parents...

He couldn't help the tears that welled up in his eyes and he most certainly couldn't help but pull the sleeping child a little closer to his chest.

The hero dreads that day. But until then, he'll give them the life their parents would of wanted..

Twilight

It had been a few years after the hero's adventure. Hyrule was now in s state of peace, which allowed the hero to return to his humble village and continue his once humble life.

Another peaceful day, another day as simple and normal like the ones before. A new and welcomed change of pace compared to those stressful ones from prior years. During the day, our hero of Twilight made his way down his list of daily chores.

One of these chores brought the hero out to Ordon spring (a spring with many complex memories and emotions tied to it) with his trusted steed, Epona!

As Twilight gently washed the young mare, he noticed how restless she got the longer the two stood within the spring. It was a rare sight to see Epona in such a antsy state, especially considering the early morning rides the two did since returning home.

But not even the gentle coaxing of her rider can calm her.

Growing more worried for his trusted companion, Twilight made a move to guide the two back out of the spring, intending to go home. But all the rancher got was a snort of air as the mare dug her hooves into the dirt.

"Epona, what is going on with you?" The rancher asked, eyebrows furrowed with concern. The mare stood strong, stubborn as ever as she...kept facing away from Twilight? Huffing, Twilight glances in that direction as well, expecting...anything other than what he saw.

There by the sides of the alcove stood-- or well laid the golden wolf, the same spirit that has helped him along his journey. A small sense of dread fell over the rancher's shoulders, worries of a new adventures prickled at his mind.

Before those thoughts can swirl, the wolf slowly uncurled from himself. His tail pulling back to reveal...a...a blanket?

Cautiously, Twilight approaches the spirit as he tried to get a better look at the blanket bundle. The sudden shift from the blanket causes the hero to pause, shoulders tensing as he expects something to pop out (and he swears he hears the slight puff of an exhale from his mentor, a wolfish mimic of a laugh) but the hero nearly falls to his knees when the small hand of a child pops out from the fabric.

A...A baby...Covered in a soft blanket with the golden wolf curled around them...Ohhhhh Boyy....

How Twilight Would Raise The Baby

Twilight is actually one of the more capable ones when it came to raising a baby!

Since he grew up in the small village of Ordon, he and a lot of the others in the village helped with raising and taking care of babies! So since he was a young boy he knew what sounds meant what and how to properly care for this baby.

Though he does get in his head quite a bit, questioning if he's the right person to raise a kid and if he's actually doing anything right, he can always count on his friends-- his family to give him a helping hand!

Ilia is around quite a bit! She knows how stressed Link can get when it came to juggling his daily tasks (he refused to let anyone take his work load, saying they've helped him far more than they should of) with raising a baby, so whenever she can she'll watch the small bundle of joy while Link catches up on his sleep.

Colin loves sitting with the young baby, excitingly but gently rocking the child as Link is busy wrangling those cheeky ordon goats

Ya know Wolfie? Yeah, that's the baby's new best friend! Whenever the rancher turns into his wolfish form (out of view of course), his young pup is quick to cling to his soft fur

The two will playfully 'wrestle' (both in twi's wolf form and human one), which is really just Twilight/Wolfie falling over while narrating his defeat as his kid climbs all over him while giggling.

Using his strength, Twi definitely picks up his pup and 'flies' them around their home! The home is filled with childish giggles as Twilight twirls around, lifting them high and 'diving' back down.

A certain golden wolf might watch from afar, peering through the candle lit windows with a softness unlike any other. Wolfie might be the baby's best friend, but a certain goldie will soon join the ranks as one of their bestest of friends <3

Taglist: @the-cucco-nuggie @miadancer24

#linked universe #linked universe x reader #not really #linked universe headcanons #lu legend #lu hyrule #lu twilight #linked universe legend #linked universe hyrule #linked universe twilight #tales out of orbit #trippy answers #anon ask

[useless-moss]

Back with the dragon headcanons.

This episode: The Night Fury

Buckle up, this is a long one.

Color variations! Their whole body is usually a dark color. Shades of black/dark grey, dark blue, dark purple are the most common. However, they also have lighter colored patterns on the underside of their wings. Blurred together scales and marks that resemble the northern lights and/or a galaxy type design. It started as a mutation meant for better camouflage, but eventually turned into a mating thing like with peacocks. A night fury has really pretty patterns/designs on the underside of their wings? They have a better chance of getting a mate.

Patterns. They have darker markings and patterns. Think of a black jaguar or a tabby cat for reference. Also, accompanying the previously mentioned designs on the underside of their wings, white speckles that look like stars and can even extend to their underbelly.

Toothless has melanism, hense his more solidly black design, and is actually considered even more rare because of his coloration alone.

They have the widest eye color variation among dragons. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, even shades that look purple are possible.

They usually live in large packs led by a female alpha/queen. If you find one Night Fury, there's usually at least ten more nearby.

Night Fury's in a pack are able to fight the control of dragons like the Red Death and Bewilderbeast more easily since, well, they already have an alpha they're following. Solo Night Furys are still strong willed and can break out with enough trying, but it's significantly harder.

Night Furys are one of if not the most intelligent dragon species. They're able to adapt to different environments, learn from observation to mimic other animal, dragon, and even human behavior, can recognize human weapons, and are smart enough to strategize hunting plans.

Building onto that last point, they don't hunt anywhere near where they nest. They'll fly miles away to hunt for, usually, fish. At least half of the pack will leave at a time while the other half stays back to guard the hatchling, eggs, and nesting area in general. This behavior was learned and adopted after being hunted to near extinction.

Their favorite nesting places are areas that humans can't easily get to. Large cliffs with rocky/rushing water below and in areas prone to storms. Again, a learned behavior from being hunted.

More nesting info, they use a combination of their plasma blasts and claws to dig/carve out caves into said cliffs, which is where they'll nest. Cliff side in an area you can't get too close to on boat with a bunch of holes in the side? Congrats! You probably just found a Night Fury nesting ground and should turn back quickly.

Night Furys aren't inherently aggressive or hostile at all, really. They're wary of humans for obvious reasons, and will defend themselves and their pack/territory, but otherwise they're pretty laid back. Big cats, essentially. Don't be a threat, give them space, and you get to live. This is partly due to them being smart enough to recognize via body language, tone, and even supplies if someone or something is a threat or not.

You want to tame a Night Fury? No weapons, bring food, and again give space. Let them come to you, because they will eventually. Will begin to realize you're not a threat, then realize you bring snacks, then accept that you're pretty alright and begin allowing more physical contact/affection and eventually be okay riding/flying with you. It's a slow process built entirely on trust and mutual respect. If you start getting pushy with a Night Fury, especially too soon in the process, they'll push you away and you have to start from scratch.

Night Fury's are very, very, very protective and loyal. Arguably one of the best dragons to tame purely off of the fact they'll stick with you until the very end and do everything possible to keep you safe.

Once you've tamed or generally befriended a Night Fury you're considered part of the pack. Dynamic from there depends on the type of Night Fury you're dealing with. An adult/older male or female with a history of hatchlings? They'll likely consider you as one of their own babies. A juvenile/younger male or female? They'll likely see you more as a sibling. A hatchling? Hope you're ready to be a parent cause that's what they'll likely see you as.

Cuddle piles. They'll usually sleep cuddled up with littlermates and parents in a pile of sort for warmth and security. This is a behavior that persists into adulthood, since it's a source of comfort and stability as well as a bonding experience.

You know the smaller nubs on a Night Fury's head? Hatchlings tend to suckle on those for comfort. There's literally no other reason. It's like a baby with a pacifier, essentially.

My personal favorite now, SCRUFF! Hatchlings have looser yet tougher skin on the back of their neck that acts as a scruff, allowing adults to pick them up and carry them around easily. As they age it stretches and thins and, eventually, that pressure point we saw in httyd 2 becomes 'exposed.' At that point a parent or other adult Night Fury will nudge the spot with their snout or claws to activate it. This whole process usually occurs around early juvenile/teen stages, since that's when a night fury will begin actively joining hunting parties and need to fly with more speed and agility.

#httyd #httyd rtte #httyd headcanon #httyd dragons #night fury #night fury headcanon

[icedragonlizard]

Headcanon: Heroes in Another Dimension reopened old wounds for two people

Kirby and the star alliance went through two adventures. The first one was in the main story where the group went out to stop the Jambastion cult. The second adventure then took place in Heroes in Another Dimension, where the group then went to Another Dimension to save Hyness and the mage sisters from the brink of demise.

There's something worth talking about, though. That the second adventure takes place in Another Dimension. Allow me to talk about my headcanons for how two dream friends handled this adventure:

Magolor and Susie have both been stranded in Another Dimension before, with Magolor having been stuck there for about five months while Susie was stuck there for like more than a damn decade. They both absolutely hated it. Neither of them wanted anything to do with that wretched place ever again after they left in their respective instances. And then... they've had to GO BACK to Another Dimension again during HiAD with Kirby and all the other dream friends!

After the first Star Allies adventure of defeating Void Termina, Kirby then reassembled the group to go to Another Dimension. Magolor and Susie were very hesitant to stay in the group, for obvious reasons.

They've both told Kirby about their Another Dimension experiences in the past before HiAD. It took Kirby a few seconds to remember this when he noticed them both being hesitant to join in on the adventure for HiAD... and he came to understand why. But nevertheless, he insisted they still join with the rest of the group, as he then promised that they won't be there alone this time nor will they have to be there for too long. That, and Taranza would've been sad if they didn't join.

And so Magolor and Susie stayed in the star alliance on the adventure for HiAD, despite their traumatic experiences with Another Dimension. They were not excited for it, though. They were scared that old wounds were going to reopen and it'll really torment their minds.

When HiAD's events went on... oh boy... the feeling of old wounds reopening for both Susie and Magolor was much worse than they anticipated! They had horrific flashbacks of the times they were previously stuck in this hellscape. It got so bad that they struggled to prevent themselves from going frantic at times. Taranza was right alongside them in this adventure, and it made him horrified to see how traumatized these two looked to be going through this place. He had to keep assuring that they'll be okay and they'll get through this.

Taranza, of course, was never stuck in Another Dimension beforehand like Magolor and Susie were. HiAD was his very first time of being in that place, and while they both did tell him about their experiences with this place before... it really hit different when he got to see the place himself and watching these two be so frightened and afraid over it. It was one thing to be told about it, it's on another level for him to actually start knowing what it was like for these two to have been stuck here. It has made him feel all the more heartbroken for them, especially Susie who was stuck here for so much longer.

Taranza had given hugs to both of his fellow wave 3ers during this harrowing adventure, reminding them they're not alone this time, and that he and the others would make sure that they don't get hurt here.

It got really bad when all the other dream friends started noticing Magolor and Susie looking so distraught during HiAD. It got to the point that the group asked them why they were so frightened and upset. The two of them didn't want to say why, but the group insisted out of concern... and eventually, the two reluctantly opened up why.

The thing is that Magolor and Susie have both been repressive about their trauma before this point. Mostly, I mean. They've told a few of their closest friends, but the star alliance at large did not know about their baggage regarding their experiences with Another Dimension.

Magolor only disclosed his Another Dimension experiences with Marx, Taranza and Susie before HiAD, and begged them to not tell anyone with them listening. He's been secretly embarrassed with how much he fell from grace when he was sent to that twisted dimension and didn't want to let it be known to a lot of people. While he of course made his apology when returning to Dream Land (haha, pun!), he didn't explain to most about what actually happened to him before he returned. He wanted to move on from those debilitating horrors.

Before HiAD, anything about Susie's backstory (Another Dimension, her daddy issues, you name it) was literally only known to Kirby, Magolor and Taranza. They were the only ones that she was comfortable enough to open up to, and she pleaded them to keep it all a secret. She's never said a thing about her backstory to anyone else.

For comparison, Taranza is much more open about his trauma, and the entire star alliance knew about his deal with Sectonia before HiAD. But until HiAD, nobody except for Kirby and the other wave 3ers knew anything about Susie's grief because she didn't tell them. She didn't even tell anyone aside from those three that Max Haltmann was her dad to begin with. She's largely kept all her personal business to herself, and has been trying to maintain a 'smart kickass coolgirl' persona and tried hard to not look sad or traumatized to most people.

When Susie was backed in a corner to make a confession during HiAD, she deliberately left out details. She only said "Yeah, I was stuck here before. I was separated from my dad, and I came back to him, but he's dead now. But I'm okay guys, because I've been trying to overcome the grief, and that's why I didn't talk about it to you all before!" and didn't elaborate further. The reality is that she's been struggling more to heal than she wanted most of the dream friends to believe. She just didn't want them all to treat her like some sort of charity case because she considered that to be degrading. She wants to be seen as a coolgirl, m'kay? Magolor also wanted to be seen as cool. Neither of them wanted to be seen as traumatized trainwrecks, but unfortunately their frantic behavior in HiAD just blew their cover.

Taranza decided to help bail out both Susie and Magolor. He told the rest of the star allies that they've been working really hard to recover from their trauma, and told the group to please don't mention those two's trauma anywhere around them because it'd make them both uncomfortable. They were already feeling uncomfortable when they were backed in a corner to explain why they were scared during HiAD!

The group agreed to it, but they were flabbergasted by the revelations nevertheless, especially what Susie disclosed. They had no idea that Susie had gone through something like that. She's usually acted either very cutesy or very logical/formal around them before this. Magolor had acted very silly and cool around the group before the confession. The group thought it was weird to be repressing their trauma like that, but they adhered to the requests of not bothering them about it. The two then thanked Taranza for that!

Also, to be fair, Marx was singlehandedly an additional reason why Susie tried to hide her daddy issues to most. This is because she's watched Marx tell Sectonia jokes to upset Taranza. Unfortunately, after HiAD, Marx then told jokes about Susie's dad that caused her to snap. She already hated Marx beforehand because he was doing really aggravating things such as licking her ice cream and tampering with her robotics!

Susie and Magolor were so relieved when the events of HiAD were finally over. They were really agonized during the adventure. They were the quickest to go home as soon as they were allowed to... with Susie resting for a while before going back to work in order to recover from the overwhelming stress she underwent. Magolor went to go sleep excessively inside the Lor Starcutter when he got back home. Phew!!

Kirby felt bad for having made them go. He actually went to each of their homes and told them that he was sorry. It's okay though... they weren't mad at him. He's still their buddy! HiAD just sucked for them.

That's about all I got for this post. Thank you if you read it! I had this idea for a while, considering both Magolor and Susie have been stuck in Another Dimension, and man there's no way they could've looked forward to having to go back to that place AGAIN during HiAD.

Also, it sucks that Magolor and Susie never met during their times in Another Dimension. It could've helped out so much. If they met, then they would've actually had someone in the lowest point of their lives. But instead, they were both completely alone in that hellscape. :(

See you for the next one, guys.

#kirby #magolor #magolor kirby #susie haltmann #susie kirby #susanna patrya haltmann #kirby's return to dreamland #kirby's return to dreamland deluxe #kirby planet robobot #kirby star allies #another dimension #heroes in another dimension #taranza #king dedede #meta knight

[tirkdi]

I don't know why but I've been imagining this a lot for some weird reason. If somehow darklina do end up together just SOMEHOW do you think at one point they'll get bored of each other? Will darkling's obsession with Alina eventually wear out? maybe Alina will want to try something else with someone else. How would darkling react to that? He's possessive as fuck but sometimes I wonder he would understand that unlike him, Alina never really got to be truly free and explore things for herself. I mean I don't think he'll let Alina go lol but do you think aat some point in centuries they might open their relationship?

This is such a hard question because when we're talking about immortals, I tend to believe that almost everything is possible, so this is where metas trying to answer the question (as opposed to fics) get tricky. Is it possible? Totally. Is it likely? Hard to say. I think the question we're getting at is – what are the conditions under which it might happen?

I'm taking the premise of this question to be that somehow, probably during R&R, they get together and rule Ravka (why not?). So we're dealing with not-quite-end-of-R&R Darkling & Alina. It will take them a while to work themselves into a relationship in the first place, and there are a lot of ways that could shake out. But assuming they get there, to a place that is respectful and reciprocal (if not gentle and loving), how long would that feel like 'enough' for Alina, and in what ways?

There are a few things going on here that I'll call out. One thing, to your point of he wouldn't let Alina go, is that we have an example of what an extremely long-lived relationship looks like for him already: Baghra. When the trilogy starts, he's like 800 years old and still living with his mom! Whenever we see them together they're fighting, but they don't leave each other, and right up until the second before she did it, he couldn't fathom that Baghra would jump off a mountain rather than just coming home with him. Similarly, I think it's unlikely that he'd stop needing Alina at any point. At the same time, Alina is different than him – but I do think it's reasonable/probably correct to envision an Alina who never needs him as much as he needs her, even a gazillion years later.

Another question then would be, at what point will Alina feel like she wants (and, importantly, deserves) happiness/something more? There's some character work that has to shake out there, because I'm having a hard time envisioning an Alina that ended up with Aleks at the end of R&R doing anything but being really hard on both of them for many, many years. How does she develop from there? Depending on the setup, I could see his and Alina's relationship getting to a point where they fight like he did with Baghra, but also similarly neither of them has any intention of ever leaving the other. Balance sounds nice in theory, but can be tricky to implement! Their relationship might end up less like a balance and more like a seesaw.

So then, there's the question of – is Alina looking for someone other than him to make her happy or to piss him off? The pissing him off seems pretty straightforward (and I think we have some fics like that that I've seen?). Assuming she isn't doing it to upset him, that she genuinely wants more than him, then I think there's the question of are we talking about sex or are we talking about a relationship with someone else? I do think you could come up with a setup where eventually he'd come to terms with sex, reassuring himself about how the Zoya lookalikes he sees leaving Alina's room in the morning are going to die in like a minute anyway, he doesn't even have to do anything.

I could also see a setup where you could make a power dynamic like that that he'd even enjoy, if he let himself. I think a lot about the Oscar Wilde quote: "Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power." If he allowed himself to acknowledge that he liked the ... humiliation? one area of his life where he was not in control? ... then I could also see him being into it, as long as he felt secure enough in the relationship between the two of them. And that right there is the whole reason we (or at least I) love this ship – their power dynamic is endlessly fascinating and there are so many different ways it could go

#i almost never say never for our tgt immortals #darklina #grishaverse #an ask #aleksander morozova #alina starkov #this was a fun ask to think through!

[sophieinwonderland]

VR, Plurality and Virtugenic Systems

Before we begin, I want to talk about roleplaying tulpas or autojects.

Different groups of plurals have different names for the phenomena, but the basics remain consistent. You roleplay a character long enough and eventually, your brain may start to see that character as someone else entirely. It dissociates from the character and the character may start to develop a life of their own, acting on their own terms, even talking to the host at different times thrpugh the day when not roleplaying. They've gained independence, autonomy and sapience.

Right off the bat, you can imagine how VR could lead to this type of experience being common, especially with characters who are vastly different from the core. What really made me interested in this concept though was this video from The Virtual Reality Show, where the host (of the show; she's not a system as far as I'm aware) pretends to be a guy for a week in VRchat.

"I mean, when in your life have you ever looked down and not been you? Never."

Okay, yeah, she's DEFINITELY not a system. 😜

I am not going to read too far into Phia's wording because much of it seems off the cuff and it's impossible to know how this really affected her exactly without being in her head or at least getting an in-depth interview.

But the short of it for anyone who doesn't want to watch the video is that it only took her four days to feel incredibly dissociated, start talking about this character as a separate person with his own thoughts and feelings, and to start talking about herself in the third person. Seven days later, she describes the character as becoming a part of her that will be always be there.

Again, I cannot possibly speculate what these words might mean to Phia or what she experienced. It obviously sounds reminiscent of system language, but it's just impossible to know what this really means to her.

But what I think this does show is what can happen to others. That you can have people with completely different avatars that they'll strongly identify with in the game and then outside of the game still identify with their physical bodies.

Remember, this is how the experience started affecting Phia in only four days.

For others in VR, they're existing in these worlds for months or years. We may have a new generation brought up in a virtual world from the age of 13. There's no telling the psychological impact that could have.

For existing plural systems, the propagation of VR is a massive boon. Apps like VRchat can allow headmates to present themselves to others in something close to their actual forms.

And I really want to take a moment to appreciate how amazing of a concept that is. This is something that has never been possible for plurals at any point in history.

But something I've never seen brought up is the potential for new systems to be created through VR dissociation. Virtugenic Systems.

Yes, I'm just coining that right now!

If this technology becomes as common as is hoped, this might actually become one of the primary ways accidental endogenic systems will develop in the future.

There have been studies into the characters of writers showing them possessing a degree of autonomy and separateness, and even the ability to speak to their creators mentally.

What I would love to see is an equivalent study to this for VR. How many VR players see their avatars as separate people? Do they hear the voice of their avatar on its own? Do they feel like they become someone else when in VR? Do they use reflexive or non-reflexive pronouns when they think of their non-VR self while in VR?

These are all topics I would love to see explored at length in future research.

I would love to hear other's thoughts on this and to hear if anyone has developed headmates in this way! 😁

#vrchat #virtual reality #vr #metaverse #plural #endogenic #plurality #plural system #endogenic system #actually endogenic #actually plural #tulpa #multiplicity #system #systems #the virtual reality show #dissociation #virtugenic #coining #system terms

[richmonds-disaster-bi]

For Roy/Jaime triplet fic, a bit of heavy angst for your pleasure: Jaime starts to show and one night while he and Roy are just lounging after dinner, he turns to Roy with tears in his eyes and says " If anythin' goes wrong, you hafta promise meh you'll pick them ova meh, you'll save our babies no matta what Roy." Roy is absolutely hollowed out by even the thought of anything happening to Jaime. He's deeply shaken and upset and while he's so damn proud of Jaime for being a parent, he absolutely refuses to even entertain the idea. He's like " No love, I won't fuckin' accept that, I will have all five of us together and nothin' else. Nothin' is gonna happen to ya, I won't fuckin' allow it." They cling to each other the rest of the night, and are still upset the next morning as they head into training. Everyone immediately picks up that something is off, but they don't pry. The lads fall over themselves trying to cheer Jaime up and he eventually tells them what's got him and Roy so upset and the Greyhounds set about reassuring him. Roy though, finds his composure wavering and finally summons the Diamond Dogs. He tells them of just how terrified he and Jaime are, and the selfless promise Jaime tried to exact from him. The Diamond Dogs are gutted and rush to assure Roy that he and Jaime aren't alone. Higgins himself reveals that he and his wife experienced the exact situation Roy and Jaime are fearing, Higgins having to choose between his wife and one of their babies, and refusing to lose either and coming through okay. Roy and Jaime reunite after, surrounded by their Richmond Fam.

Yesssss!!! I adore this angst!

Jamie and Roy having had an appointment where doctors again stressed the possible complications and the different issues that might arise. They did this not to scare them, but to talk them through the different options and calm them

Roy is already a little on edge because it's hitting that fuck, he could lose them. He could lose Jamie or one of their little ones. He doesn't want to freak Jamie out, so he just keeps it inside and debates possibly talking to the Diamond Dogs about it when he's in work to get it out and get some support.

And then Jamie, when they're laying in bed with Roy reading to his now obvious bump, just asks Roy to save their little ones over him if it comes down to it and it breaks Roy. Roy wants to be mad, he wants to yell and shout but he can see how terrified Jamie is deep down so he just holds him close and tells him it'll be okay. Jamie, however, pushes, because to him.....he's replacable and less valuable than their kids. These are his and Roy's babies. He knows already that he would die for them, and he wants Roy to understand that which leads to them arguing and eventually Roy just asks him to stop and when Jamie looks up, Roy is shaking and crying and he looks so broken that Jamie just holds him.

Neither of them sleep well that night. They're both off, both quiet. Jamie is only really there to support the team, give some ideas, watch practice and the team notice how off he is.

When Roy and the coaches are in the office, the team gets Jamie out onto the pitch under the guise of taking a walk. It's out there that the boys nominate Sam to talk to him. Sam just puts an arm around him, and then Jamie is talking. Talking about how Roy won't listen and how he needs to know they'll be okay, but the boys point out that Roy is terrified too and Jamie realises he's been thinking about Roy as this unshakeable rock because that's what he is for Jamie. It makes him see how terrified asking that made Roy

Meanwhile Roy calls for the Diamond Dogs and they immediately know something is wrong when Roy doesn't grumble or make a crack at them. He just comes out and tells them everything. Tells them that Jamie wanted, that he is scared, that he can't imagine choosing a baby he doesn't know but is meant to immediately love over the love of his life and how horrible that makes him feel. Ted and Beard offer support but admit they're out of their dept when Higgins speaks up, telling Roy everything that he and his wife went through with their youngest. That things weren't easy, they were terrified, she wanted him to choose their kid and Higgins wantedto save them both and it worked out. He points out thag worrying now, will make it worse and they should talk and make it through this

Roy is wrapping his head around it when Jamie appears and just squashes him in a tight hug that has them both clinging to each other and whispering I love yous and apologies

#roy kent/jamie tartt #roy/jamie #jamie/roy #roy x jamie #jamie tartt #roy kent #triplets au

[minecraftbookshelf]

Three of ???

The third session installment of None Can Escape the Hourglss Keeper.

On AO3

Crooked towers, frogs with noses, and llama piñatas

-

The Clockers

Cleo doesn't bother to wipe their smeared-blood war paint off of her face before she goes to bed. She'll still want it in the morning, there is no point.

Her newly yellow timer is frozen on the back of their hand, glowing faintly in the dim torch-light of the Entertainment Rock Bunker. Even now, with the enforced break in place they can feel the low electric buzz of the desire to kill in their veins.

Arson and murder do go hand in hand after all.

She'll have to be more deliberate tomorrow about keeping Scar pointed at everyone else and away from herself though. (He can take Bdubs out as collateral damage if need be though. They'll allow that.)

The sheer chaotic potential of both Scar and Bdubs is almost worth being called "Mom". At least Etho has been trapped into it too. 

Both Pearl and BigB are yellow too now so they aren't killable currently, but they do have a very lovely tower with some very flammable decorations right next door. Perfect for the to-do list.

-

T.I.E.S.

Ultimately, not killing any of his teammates (on purpose) was a good call. Especially the way both Tango and Skizz helped him get the kill in the end. Worth the stress, Impulse decides. The lack of sore feelings in the team will serve him well for at least a few more days.

They'd hauled their beds up onto the tower, electing to leave the rest of their belongings in the bunker for the night and he can hear both Tango and Skizz snoring fit to wake the dead, as well as see Etho where he's leaned up against one of the outer walls, nearly a shadow disappearing into the stone.

If he stays for the night he won't sleep until all the rest of them are, Impulse knows. And he'll be the first awake in the morning.

Hopefully that can be used against him eventually. Less rest than the rest of them could add up.

For now, Impulse rolls over and lets the draining adrenaline from the boogey curse wash over him, lulling him off to sleep. They're still allies and so for now, Etho also needs to sleep.

-

The Bread Bad Boys

He is only ever supposed to watch.

Grian has never been particularly good at falling rules. In any form or under any name.

Only ever supposed to watch.

That doesn't mean he is always immune to the consequences of breaking them.

Every now and then, if ignored for long enough, the rules will enforce themselves.

Usually it happens on either his own private server or on Hermitcraft, where he can barricade himself in the depths of his base and ride it out.

The timing is rather unfortunate.

He feels it coming in enough time to warn Joel and Tim. He clings to physical consciousness long enough to communicate his lack of curse and then.

Grian falls.

Only ever supposed to watch.

The Canary knows. The Watcher can tell. Underneath the worry and high-pitched scolding directed at everyone who approaches are sideways glances and a tense understanding. Not complete understanding. But enough. Enough to know that The Watcher is both more and less present than it appears.

The Player does not know. It's efforts to guard The Watcher's shell are quite entertaining though. All it's pretenses falling aside beneath a fierce desire to protect and safeguard. Both the Watcher and The Canary. That might be a problem eventually, but for now The Watcher will wait and see how it plays out.

It makes for a good show.

-

The Mean Gills

Scott takes the time to sweep the detritus of Skizz's failed TNT drops off the roof, loose paper and sand and creeper dust sprinkled over the planks.

He'll have to take some more security measures in the morning. He doesn't enjoy that Pearl had not only looked at the door and seen and recognized the Threshold there, and had proceeded to walk right past it, making sure he saw when she didn't even use the door.

It's not the first time she's invaded his space like that. Last time he'd chalked it up to the soulmate bond. Clearly something else is at work there. 

It's not like the Threshold would actually stop anyone. Not in these Games. But they should at least give pause. Some sign of discomfort. Not brushed aside like so many hanging vines.

And sometimes that moment of hesitation is all he'd need to escape or strike first.

And he doesn't fully trust Pearl's promise to kill him last (not that he'd make it easy for her). 

He tucks the broom away in the storage space and throws himself onto his bed. Pearl is a problem for tomorrow. And he's sure she'll remind him of it. For now, it is time to rest.

-

The Nosy Neighbors

Pearl likes the frogs.

Mostly because of the various reactions they've garnered from everyone else, but also because the frogs themselves are very cute. Even if the noses are a bit unsettling.

They'll help distract from the trap floor too. Misdirection is key to traps and the general aesthetic of the tower will help with that a lot. Benefits of being just a little bit crazy.

Not everyone will underestimate her though. Scott and Cleo both will be unlikely to fall for it. She'd be better off trying to get someone else. Even if she does want to kill Scott. Just a little bit.

He killed her last time, it's only fair. It's how they show affection at this point.

Grian will be back in the morning and Pearl will be down another hour, the glitch around her being boogey-killed resolved. A kill won't get her back to green but it will at the very least take some of the opposition down a bit. And if she knows anything about these games its that sometimes they are decided by a half a heart. (Or a matter of seconds.)

She's lulled to sleep by visions of murder dancing in her head and Froggy purring on her chest.

#none can escape the hourglass keeper #limited life smp #trafficblr #zombiecleo #watcher grian #grian #pearlescentmoon #impulsesv #limited life session 3 #rain rambles #smajor1995

[savagebisand]

y'all are so funny to me over here panicking and stressing meanwhile my state of delusion runs so deep that I simply refuse to accept canon if it differs from my prediction and I predict an angry sandray makeout at the music club BABEY!! Sand ain't holding rays shirt that tight whilst ray grips tf outta him for no reason. Also these are the faces of men who are toRn between a carnal desire to claim the other and another desire to shove him away and scoff in his face. ITS DELICIOUS. like look at how desperate rays expression is, he's trying to come off fierce but it's so clear how much he needs sand to reaffirm he still wants ray. Its like his face is begging sand to hold him and dig his claws in right back and kiss him hard even as he knows sand will likely shove him off and tell him to get lost.

Sand looks like a man on the edge between desire and spite, theres this pained look like he's fighting a losing battle. It's evident part of him wants to push ray around a little and yell at how stupid and selfish he is but another part is seeing the ray he's grown to care for, seeing those hollow eyes searching over him for hope and part of sand wants to crumble and give ray what he needs. Even if ray doesn't know how bad he needs it. Sand always wants to give ray what he needs. It's something he's growing to despise in himself whilst still being unable to resist the pull of. Now personally, I could be sad and frustrated or I could sit back and enjoy the yummy angsty meal JoJo is serving me about the hold love has on us and the ugly ways it can make us act.

Look, love is often glamorised to us as this beautiful wholesome thing that always mends and completes you. And sure love is that. But narratives often neglect to present the other side of love too, it can be selfish, possessive, confusing, desperate, all consuming, jaded, frustrating. It's a breath of fresh air to finally see a show, particularly a BL at that, highlighting the complexities of catching feelings and being in love whilst still capturing the hope that lingers and the beautiful moments mixed in when you see the best in someone as well as the worst. It reminds me a lot of The Priests speech on Love from the series Fleabag:

It's in The way that by the point you see them showing an ugly side it doesn't matter because they're already beautiful to you. It makes you fight for them to show up for themselves and you, even in moments you'd rather walk away and wash your hands of it. I have no idea if they'll get their happy endings. But I know that part of the fascination of watching sandray for me is that I have been that person, unable to give up on a love against all odds because what if I never love the same way again.

Anyways strap in for today's ep everyone and good luck recovering from the emotional rollercoaster it'll take us on. Remember to drink a hot cocoa, curl under a blanket, maybe cry and scream a little but try to laugh too and remember that the point of entertainment like this is to take us on a journey. There has to be bad and fighting in the trenches before there can be light and good. The mess and damage won't be this severe on the characters till the end just for a part of the duration of their growth.

If you're feeling hopeless just keep in mind that characters like Ray and Boston can't grow emotionally and get to any place where a hopeful ending is possible unless they travel to a very low dark point first, they're going to become worst versions of themselves before they can be the best and that will hurt people around them. But I truly believe JoJo wouldn't take these characters to those points unless he was going to use it to form some self realisations and repentance. Everyone will recover eventually because that's just life, we all have to. It has been said that characters must go to uncomfortable places to start contending with truths about themselves that allow an anti hero or antagonist to become something more of a vigilante or at least a better morally good (mostly) version of themselves and as a writer I know that often is a very effective method of characterisation.

You will get through this, your favourite ship will get through this. Dissect and enjoy the journey but don't let it haunt your mind to the detriment of your own whimsy and wishful thinking. Shows are made to be excited for each week. When you start dreading if the ending you hope for can happen it's time to take a breather. Don't let it affect your experience of a character or pairing and make it a negative one! That's what fix it fic is for or shows where these actor duos do get a happy satisfactory end. JoJo may write this story a certain way but you get to choose where you think the end works for you. Love you all, stay safe out there. Happy watching!!

#sandray #also i have no energy left to waste getting annoyed at rays entitlement to think he can keep sand and mew #its just funny at this point bc the narrative clearly indicates he cannoT so like idk let him cook #hes gonna set the whole stove on fire sooner or later but in the mean time i think i should get to see sexy angry makeouts

[reallyghostlypost]

Headcanon about the mines

I'm writing a fic about how Marlon decided to recruit Thad for the Guild but realized that I ended up infodumping too much about the mines, so I'm posting this separately.

Marlon started walking towards the mine, still deep in thought. He hated this but he'll have to ask Camilla for help again, even if he knew she could barely spare her own fighters. But maybe he could handle the monsters here on his own a little longer… maybe they'll figure something out for the spreading corruption in the Badlands… maybe something will go in their favour for once… He finally reached the entrance of the mines, trying to clear his thoughts and focus. But then he suddenly stopped. There was a small light at the back of the room shining through the pitch darkness.

He entered the cave slowly and carefully, scanning the room as much as his glow ring allowed him, ears straining to catch any unusual sound. After a few tense steps the small light was revealed to be the elevator panel. Marlon frowned, why was the elevator working? The thing hasn't been functional in decades… It hasn't been repaired since the 'the accident', when it became obvious that despite it's abundance of riches the Corneal Mine was too dangerous to exploit, even with all the precautions. So in the end the mine was abandoned and left to rot. The elevator doors got blocked off over time, complicating the situation. A few of the lower doors got caved in after the explosion, and over time, as it became harder and harder to descend into the depths due to the increasing number of monsters, one by one the rest of the doors were somehow lost.

How this happened is still controversial. It almost looked like the monsters themselves were blocking the doors on purpose, trying to stop anyone from reaching them. At first they assumed it was the shadow people, recognized as the only intelligent monster species. But as the doors started to get blocked higher up in the mines, the adventuring community got more agitated. Shadow people couldn't go this far up. It was too cold there for them and the ice was refracting light to the point where it was too strong for creatures made of darkness to stand. Even if they would venture a little higher to block one or two more doors it was eventually obvious that they couldn't be responsible for every destroyed door.

The idea that other monsters could be smart enough to do this was mocked. No other monsters showed this type of intelligence before, even on the battlefield when their life was in danger, even when adventurers would go to kill entire nests or clans and monsters fought to defend their young. The idea that the monsters were becoming more intelligent was too scary for many to consider, so the theory was rejected every time it was brought up. Even now, many mages and adventurers were still trying to find an explanation for this.

Rogue dark mages were blamed by a few people, especially since the Corneal Mountains, with plenty of caves and ravines, were often used by dark wizards and witches as hiding places. But aside from the dark magic inherent to the mines, and Magnus's wards, there was no other magic on the doors or anywhere else inside the mines. There were also no signs of rituals. The odd force Magnus reported, the one that would mess his wards up, was also blamed. But with no signs of someone tampering with the mines or the wards it was eventually dismissed as some unusual property of the cave's weird magic. It could simply be a coincidence, and it only looked like something was targeting the doors one by one, but everyone in this business learned a long time ago to never trust coincidences.

Still, even if the elevator was really useful for the guild no one tried to repair it. No one wanted to risk throwing their back in such a dangerous area to try and dig the doors out of under the rubble. And after years of not being used it was assumed the elevator broke due to a lack of maintenance. But the elevator now looked fully functional. Who would try this?

#sve headcanon #my fanfic

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

What if unborn Renesmee 2 wasn't discovered and got to be born? which means Hong never realized he wanted baby for himself and not to prove a point? would he try to give it to rosalie? What would the family do if they discovered this after baby was born?

The Seventh Seal

I mean, it's highly unlikely that would have happened. Hong was confident, but it took Esme a day to open that door to the basement. Someone was going to open the door within a month's time.

Add onto that that he told Carlisle and even that day Carlisle would demand something be done about it.

Hong Presents Unto the Cullens a Baby/Jellyfish

Hong triumphantly opens the basement after a month, dives into the vat, and retrieves Renesmee 2. He walks back up the stairs with no warning and presents her to the family.

Well.

His announcement has to wait as Jasper and Esme book it to the basement where they find themselves drowning in human blood and blacking out.

This, in fact, is actually the entire family save Carlisle and Rosalie. Rosalie manages to book it out of the house in time and Carlisle just sits there in numb horror while the sounds of Edward, Emmett, Esme, Alice, and Jasper rampaging in the basement waft upstairs.

"Is that a--" Carlisle almost ends that sentence with 'baby' but the thing in Hong's arms is see-through and weird looking. It looks, in theory, like a baby. It has a nose, eyes, all the parts in all the right places but... uh... yes...

Hong is now a little annoyed as Edward is the one he has to display this to and he's busy eating Bella Swan in the basement. Typical.

Hong, still dripping in blood, sits on the couch (ruining it entirely) and proceeds to wait with Carlisle.

It takes a long time to wait.

The Cullens, in fact, are too ashamed to come out of the basement. Edward's more hostile than ever (as he didn't conclude Hong was benign good in this world) and that he purposefully put that blood there to humiliate the family (especially Edward).

They also think Hong murdered Bella Swan.

They're now discussing how to best ambush Hong from the basement in sign language.

Carlisle's still sitting on the couch, staring at the not-baby.

Eventually, the basement Cullens agree to confront Hong with a monologue. Edward will rail at him on how he knows he's a murderer and he will get out or bad things will happen!

They then see the baby.

Hong announces that this child is the child of two vampires, however, as Edward can see, it's a thinking being who has superb control (better than the Cullens, clearly, as she didn't crawl back down to the basement) ergo we should turn Bella into a vampire.

They stare.

Emmett points out Bella's dead.

Hong points out Bella being dead would defeat the entire purpose of everything. (No one understands this).

They decide to move past whether or not someone, or Bella, is dead and... discuss what to do with this baby. Hong, what were you planning to do with this baby?

Hong hadn't thought that far ahead.

Uh, Rosalie, you wanted baby, right? Otherwise they can smash it with a hammer, it's no different than all the other times the Cullens have murdered someone.

No one wants to smash the baby with a hammer.

Rosalie, feeling very weird, agrees to be the mother of... whatever the fuck this thing even is. (Notably, Renesmee 2 is not as good looking/normal looking of a baby as Renesmee 1 and Rosalie also has only had 0.1 seconds to get used to the idea)

"Her name is Renesmee"

Rosalie stares and informs him that her name is not Renesmee. She doesn't have any names on hand but it is decidedly not Renesmee.

Rosalie then realizes they'll have to move. She's supposed to be in high school, she can't drop out to raise a crystal baby no one's allowed to see.

Hong notes he can make Forks forget Rosalie exists.

:/ is Rosalie's response to that.

There's much shouting and eventually Esme volunteers to watch Renesmee 2 while Rosalie's at school.

Hong, in dismay, learns that Edward thinks the child is the spawn of Satan and does not, in fact, believe it has any kind of soul.

Shenanigans continue.

#twilight #twilight renaissance #the seventh seal #hong bellamy #renesmee two #the cullens #rosalie hale #carlisle cullen #edward cullen #esme cullen #meta

[raymondshields]

Ok friend you have my curiosity where is this fic you speak of. I am SO ready to have my brain chemistry fundamentally changed

Start here. My recommendation is to read that, maybe read the rest of Turnabout NaNoWriMo, and if you want to know more after that, I can hand you some 200k of fic that is properly formatted with the interludes, because Ao3's formatting really doesn't work with the Sagiverse anthologies. (So what you see here is maybe like a quarter of what we've got. We have a lot, and also lots of art.)

Turnabout NaNoWriMo is the first of three-and-a-half anthologies I've written, and it's only after reading and enjoying all of them do I let people at my fiance's anthologies, which are excellent but a bit more private. (Turnabout Runaways, which was this year's NaNo challenge, is incomplete but at least 50k. I will be slowly working on it probably for a few months, and eventually it'll be done.)

These anthologies take place in a greater crossover AU we refer to as Sagiverse. It started in 2020 in Saint Seiya, and now hosts several different series, eight hundred some-odd characters, upwards of thirty different fantasy worlds (of which Earth is only one), and more plotlines than we can keep track of properly.

Here's the two-sentence pitch: seven hundred years ago, there was a giant war between various magical factions on Earth that ended in a mostly-forgotten pyrrhic victory and the gods choosing to seal magic away from the world. So magic began to slowly die out, and as of present day, magic is rarer and rarer, and mage society is dying out, but it's still holding on as best it can, until one day the gods finally allow magic to return.

Ace Attorney gets involved with this very very simply. Miles Edgeworth is a mage. To be specific, he's a necromage, one of the most powerful currently active on Earth. His father, Gregory Atticus Edgeworth, had never found proof of magic while he was alive. His mother... well, no one knows who his mother is, or anything about the man at all. After DL-6, Miles was taken in by MvK as a ward just as canon says, but the von Karmas themselves are magi of a kind. After DL-6, Atticus finds the proof of magic's existence that he's been looking for all along, and he is not going to leave his son and missing fiance alone in a world that so very much wants the both of them dead.

And so begins a thirty-five year trainwreck to put their wayward, way-finding family back together. They'll do it, no matter what it takes. It just turns out their family's a little bigger than they think it is.

The fic I linked pretty much opens with the identity of Miles' mother, which you learn pretty much as I did, because I didn't plan jack or shit, only let him tell me what was going on. You may raise an eyebrow at the canon ages, don't worry about that. We had to fix the timeline anyway (because the forensics tech was all twenty years out of date so we just changed the years to be twenty years earlier, setting DL-6 on December 28th 1981) so we just didn't pull him back as far. Atticus died at 39, his fiance was 33.

This is because when I first got into AA, I found the IS-7 picture of Gregory and Ray, and I sort of mistook 18-year-old Ray as Atticus' wife. My fiance pointed out the age gap, paused, and went "but they're cute so I'm sure we can make it work" and then we did. If you hesitate a bit on the ship but don't immediately hate the idea, I promise I can sell you on it. At the end of the day, everything comes back to Atticus and Ray's tragic romance. This I can promise you: it ends happily. We're just still writing everything in between.

Sagiverse!Ray is a pretty distinct character from canon!Ray, but they're close enough that if you like one you'll probably like the other. I gave him way more trauma and it's fun. :3c

If you're wondering what happens to other characters, I can answer that. Apollo is dead for a few months, Phoenix a little bit longer. Robot!Athena has Issues. Franziska changes her career from Interpol to Magica Underground mostly because it's a better use of her legal talents. Miles gets to be the chosen one and lead a war against one of his university friends who unfortunately (and semi-accidentally) stole Phoenix's corpse and ran away with it. (Phoenix is fine, don't worry about it.) Atticus gets to be a bounty hunter on the ghostroads with Mia and they do a lot of shooting MvK and causing problems. Ray, uh. Well, at least he only got shot in the head twice?

#asks #relicsongmel #like if i'm going insane in the tags on something AA that doesn't make sense #95% chance i'm talking about sagiverse #occasionally i check in with canon and go do some meta on that but mostly i stick to our au #but yeah if you let us do it we WILL rewrite your brain and you'll have to live with it #and YES i am trying to get a wiki up because it's big and complicated! i'm just dealing with finals and so much work ;~;

[soulsxng]

The First Nephilim, pt 2 (pt 1 here)

Today:

There are very few Watchers left-- likely fewer than can be counted on two hands. Many of them eventually returned to the mortal realm, to give those of the new nephilim, now free of a curse, and able to live as they pleased; as well as the fallen angels, a place to belong.

The Zental Port of Gaea.

Some still consider themselves followers of Iryin, and await the day that their deity will return to them...while others loathe their once beloved god.

As for the original nephilim, of the 30 or so that were born, only 10 or 15 are still stuck in their cycles of reincarnation-- the others all became Anguished spirits, and either still wander the realms to this day, or were dispatched, and finally allowed to return to creationary energy once more.

For those that still survive, however, though they're commonly reincarnated as nephilim, that isn't always the case. Though they're still very much effected by the curse, and it is still considered extremely volatile, the effects have somehow been slowly reducing over each lifetime. Now, they're at least able to hold a less monstrous form, and their souls are more stable than before.

Of course, they still struggle with their hunger, and can actually lose control fairly easily in a lot of cases. For example, heightened emotions make them more volatile. Being around blood, or someone that is near death (even a natural death). Exposure to certain beings-- typically those that have the same curse as them, but also beings that can regenerate, or revive upon "death".

While these original nephilim don't seem to attack each other when they lose control, being near each other for longer periods of time seem to bolster the effects of the curse. As for the second category, it's the curse recognizing that, essentially, they have an unlimited feeding source...or at least somewhat unlimited, as there are a lot of cases in which this curse will break through a lot of immortalities.

This makes these original nephilim extremely valuable in black market scenes and the like, and so it's common for them to almost immediately have a Watcher assigned to them when they're reborn, to prevent them from being captured and used.

The Abomination:

Once one of these original nephilim lose control to the point where they fully transform into an abomination, it's thus far been impossible in all cases but one for them to regain their sanity, and return to their original form again. In the one case, though the being in question was able to change back, they ultimately succumbed to the aftereffects of their loss of control, and died within days afterward.

Usually, the transformation begins with thin, vein-like tendrils that will begin to stretch out of their skin. They'll reach toward anything that is causing the curse to react, and though the initial reach is only a few inches at most before they wither, it gets longer the stronger the curse is reacting. If contact is actually made, they'll try to attach themselves to the victim and begin draining blood/energy/magic from them.

In the next stage, their limbs lengthen and grow larger, beginning with their hands and arms, and their fingers turn sharp and curved, like a blade. Skin in various places over their body begins to crack, and will look akin to smoldering wood. From the cracks in their skin, more of the veiny tendrils emerge, along with drips and bubbles of void matter. Sclera turn dark grey, pupils slit, and irises begin to slowly fade to red. Still in control in this stage, but extremely volatile.

The third stage, they sprout a spiked, whip-like tail, and similarly sharp, bat wings made of bone. Their skin in now mostly made up of the void matter, spilling and floating freely from their bodies, and seemingly being held together primarily by the tendrils. Multiple eyes begin to appear in various places all over their body. Though their shape is still somewhat reminiscent of their original form, it's beginning to seriously disform into something entirely different. Though they can still be brought back from this stage, but have mostly lost control, and aren't likely to be able to hold themselves back from trying to kill/consume whatever living beings are around them at the time.

The final stage is a total loss of control. By this point, they've grown to be similar to...

that. With the more human one being like...second stage transformation. They're unable at this point, to recognize anyone or anything. They can sense living beings within several dozen miles of them, and will bolt to wherever they can sense the strongest or largest presence. Though they do appear to have a mouth, they can also swallow things up via the puddles or void matter that drip off of them. Sometimes, when it's especially strong, these puddles can turn into smaller abominations with a sort of hivemind to the original. The original CAN respawn from one of these smaller abominations if it's killed when any are still around.

Once they reach that point, there's really not anything that can be done to save them. They usually just need to be killed so they can be reincarnated with a "fresh start", so to speak.

#[Worldbuilding] #(So essentially the curse is like an infection of the Void #Zhrun pretty much said 'you're going to steal from me? okay here then-- have this and see if you can handle it as well as you think' #and then Heaven's former god pretty much saw that and went 'wow that's a good idea...it would be a shame if...I stole it and made it worse' #so here we are #I should also probably mention #that even if those inflicted with the curse #either from the coven that Levana was born into #or the reincarnated original nephilim like Ezra #even if they don't end up losing control #the curse makes them generally very sickly and can just kill them over time as well #this happens much faster for the reincarnated than it does for the coven #but still the same idea)

[donotpercieveme123]

OFC gotta ask izuna for the headcanon ask, altho i’m also dying to hear what you have to say about kisame :0

I'm sure its obvious to everyone and their mother what I have to say about Izuna, so Kisame it is!!!

A lesson they learned in their childhood:

That the world won't care for his kind. They'll either fear or hate him, he'll either be a tool or hunted out of existence. All he can do is become strong enough that he's untouchable. (I like to hc that he had family, siblings, a community within his clan, but they were one of the bloodline clans nearly hunted out of existence. A good few managed to escape over the years and there was a bigger exodus later which he helped with when he defected)

A reason they have for getting out of bed each morning:

Madara's plan and the promise of a better world. But also Itachi and keeping him comfortable and safe once his illness and his eyes started getting worse and they started getting closer. He sees him and their work as the only steady presence in his entire world at that point, and he finds that he'd do anything to protect that and the weird little liar of a child he's found in his care

A fear:

That he's unredeemable and that he might completely lose sight of his humanity. That no matter how he reaches for the light hoping for it to touch him he'll just be dragged down to the deep, and all he'll know is all the blood on his hands. I don't think he actually likes killing, he certainly enjoys a good fight and a strong opponent but he takes no joy in killing. The first time he held a knife and killed an animal as a child he cried for an hour until his mother sat him down and slapped some 'sense' into him

A strength:

He's very perceptive and genuinely kind despite not being able to see it himself. Once after a night of drinking where Kisame tells him his fear Itachi tells him he has more humanity in him than most people he's ever met, he's already touching the light. Kisame nearly cries, and he swears his loyalty and devotion to Itachi right there, tells him he'll drag him up to the light with him if he has to, regardless of whether Itachi's given up on his own humanity

How they think others perceive them:

As a monster, that they don't see past his appearance or his reputation. And he's not wrong. And if not that then a weapon, he's not in denial about his role in the Akatsuki or as a shinobi in general. Though he has come to trust that Itachi cares about him in his own stunted but devoted way. In the way he lets him into his space and how he allows him to take care of him when he's ill, and doesn't take offense to being treated as a child when he stops for another tea break and Itachi orders a little more dango than he should, or when Kisame shields him from the worst of the things they do by insisting that he gets his hands dirty instead

How they perceive themselves:

As a monster and a weapon, as someone who's done irredeemable things but tries to do better. He eventually comes to see his own humanity though, and he sees himself as a friend, a life partner and an older brother of sorts to Itachi

Whether or not they consider themselves a ‘decent’ person:

He certainly wants to. And he's certainly more sensitive and kind than he'd ever realise. He doesn't though, certainly not by the time he's joined the Akatsuki, but sometimes he thinks he could be a decent person, and it's easy to believe when Itachi looks at him without a shred of fear

A temptation / proclivity they have:

He loves the thrill and danger of the fight too much to ever truly give up being a shinobi despite not enjoying everything else that comes with it. He also gets far too comfortable with what's familiar to actively seek change by chasing the things he actually wants, and he's also too much of a follower, he'll almost always put the plans and wishes of others before his own

An alternate career to what they have in canon (if applicable):

He likes to think about moving somewhere peaceful, maybe near the sea and opening up a tea shop or an inn with Itachi, or living like a civilian, good honest physical labour. Modern AU tho he would definitely put everything he has into becoming a marine biologist, specifically working with sharks, he's all about saving the sharks and rightly so😂 But he'd most likely be doing a minimum wage job (poor foster kid kisame truthism!!)

How they waste time:

He likes to read and no one can convince me otherwise. Time on the road can be long and tedious so he'll read almost anything he can get his hands on, and he'll also read to Itachi when his eye sight gets bad enough. He can do different voices and he gets really dramatic and into it. Modern AU, he'd also be really into movies amd musicals in particular, the campier the better. He knows all the words to Rocky Horror and he'll put on a one man show any time he's given the chance😂 It drives Itachi a little insane but he never interrupts him and he has recordings of multiple of these performances

#for how much i fckn love him i don't post nearly enough #also kisame and itachi as platonic life partners djjdbdhdhdh! #u guys don't understand they're everything to me! #kisame #kisame hoshigaki #naruto #akatsuki #itachi

[icharchivist]

Obviously Lucilius doesn't owe anyone his time or his interest or his love and it's understandable if he doesn't wanna talk about love after spending any amount of time with Belial and it's cool if he's not into him and even understandable that he gets annoyed at everyone wanting him like that when all he wants is to apocalypse and chill. I feel like he's even pretty cordial with Belial, considering his dislike of him, it's not on sight or anything. It's just a sad situation all around

Yeah pretty much!!

like i do think it's tragic for Belial and that Belial's emotional hurt is actually super impactful and important to consider, so i understand also being mad at Lucilius to some extend - but sometimes i do feel like it's good to remember that Lucilius is also his own person who has reasons to be displeased with the situation he's in.

Ultimately in many conflict with people, especially characters who are meant to be narrative devices who carry on nuanced stories and viewpoints, it's important to remember that sometimes both side lose no matter what. There is no situation where Belial can get what he wants and needs from Lucilius where Lucilius also gets what he wants and needs from him - and vice versa. the tragedy of this relationship in many way is that they're deeply incompatible, but because of the unique bond as creator/creation, Belial has clung to him and loved him no matter how little his needs are met, and Lucilius had gone through the motions as someone who is not made to handle this type of affection to start with.

and i personally feel for both of them a lot, i think both of them are really tragic and their own way to process their emotions is what ultimately bring misery to people around them, and therefore to themselves. Still it would be pretty unfair to ask one of them to betray themself just as a reward to the other, and that goes both way. (which is why the best outcome is "Belial, get the fuck out of here and move on", not really chastising Lucilius for not caring)

And, yeah, depends on which stories and all but as it looks like, gbvs shows Lucilius being much more cordial with Belial than what we've seen in 000 at least. I think with this recontextualization it probably adds that the rawness of being just brought back to life and all the implications that came from it probably made Lucilius much more likely to act on his temper, compared to gbvs being apparently much more into the swings of things.

I guess i'm just being cautious because once in a while when the conversation starts drifting on Lucilius's treatment of Belial in particular, there can be some.... opiniated asks about how Lucilius is the worst of the worst for it to the point of also disregarding the elements that makes Lucilius compelling to start with.

Like, not sugarcoating it, i've had asks where, after being sympathetic about Lucilius on main, i got long asks about hating on Lucilius because everything is unforgiveable and the worst actually and eventually it just makes me a bit wary when a conversation can steer into reaching to paint him as even worse as he is because he drew some boundaries in an asshole way.

Ultimately a character is allowed to be an asshole, especially for their own sympathetic reasons, without having the scrutiny of "here's why it means they're even worse than worse."

But yeah the whole thing is just a sad situation for both Lucilius and Belial imo, they make each other miserable and as long as they'll stick together it'll still be the case - but i doubt either of them would ever be able to give the other what they truly want, and as such they're doomed on arrival.

and it's what makes it tragic on both side, imo.

#LIKE im so sorry it's just. war flashbacks and all of that. #it's been a few months since we haven't had major Lucilius hatred in the DMs that i couldn't moderate in some way #it's more like i'm trying to gently remind people that i also really like Lucilius #and that i'd rather not try to read everything he does in bad faith #ichareply #ichafantalks gbf #anonymous #and also like ngl sometimes i got also carried away with being harder on him than i probably think about in general #so i also try to steer back into places i'm more comfortable in yaknow

[whileiamdying]

We Have Our State, out of Golda Meir's "My Life"

If 1946 was difficult, then I can only describe 1947 as the year in which the situation in Palestine got completely out of hand as far as the British were concerned. In the course of that year, the battle against Jewish immigration turned into open warfare, not only against the entire yishuv[1] as such, but also against the refugees themselves. It was as though Ernest Bevin had nothing else whatsoever on his mind except how to keep Jewish refugees out of the Jewish homeland. The fact that we refused to solve this problem for him apparently infuriated him so that he eventually lost control altogether, and I honestly believe that some of the decisions he made regarding Palestine could only have been the result of his intense personal rage against the Jews because they could not and would not accept the judgment of the British foreign secretary as to how or where they should live.

I don't know (nor does it really matter anymore) whether Bevin was a little insane, or just antisemitic, or both. What I do know is that he insisted on pitting the strength of the British Empire against the will of the Jews to live and that by so doing he not only brought great suffering to people who had already suffered enormously, but also forced upon thousands of British soldiers and sailors a role that must have filled them with horror. I remember staring at some of the young Englishmen who guarded the DP detention camps on Cyprus—when I went there myself in 1947and wondering how on earth they managed to reconcile themselves to the fact that not so long ago they were liberating from Nazi camps the very same people whom they now kept penned behind barbed wire on Cyprus only because these people found it impossible to go on living anywhere except Palestine. I looked at those nice young English boys and was filled with pity for them. I couldn't help thinking that they were no less victims of Bevin's obsession than the men, women and children on whom their guns were now trained night and day.

I had gone to Cyprus to see what, if anything, could be done about the hundreds of children who were being kept there. At that point about 40,000 Jews were living in the Cyprus camps.

Each month, with great precision, the British allowed exactly 1,500 Jews to enter Palestine: 750 from the camps of Europe and 750 from Cyprus. The principle under which this policy operated in Cyprus was “first in, first out,” which meant that, inevitably, many small children were doomed to live under very difficult conditions for months. Our doctors in the Cyprus camps were very concerned about this, and one day a delegation of physicians appeared in my office in Jerusalem.

“We can take no further responsibility for the health of the infants if they stay in the camps for one more winter,” they informed me. So, I began to negotiate with the Palestine government. What we suggested was some scheme that would permit DP families with a child under the age of one year to leave Cyprus “out of turn” and then subtract their number from the DPs who left “in turn.” This meant persuading the Palestine government to be both flexible and reasonable—at a time when it was neither and also persuading the DPs themselves to set up a special system of priorities. It took quite a time for me to work something out with the government, but in the end, I managed to do so and even got permission for orphaned children to leave as soon as possible.

The next step was obviously for me to go to Cyprus and talk to the DPs. “They'll never listen to you,” my friends warned me.

“You will only be sticking your neck out and asking for trouble.

The one thing that these people are waiting for is to get out of Cyprus, and now you want to ask them to agree to let some people who may have only been there for a week or two jump to the head of the queue. It won't work!” But I couldn't see it that way. I thought that at least it had to be tried, so I went.

When I got to Cyprus, I immediately reported to the office of the British commandant of the camp, an elderly, tall, thin Englishman who had served for years with the army in India. It was what you might call a courtesy call. I told him briefly who I was and what I wanted and asked whether he had any objection to my touring the camps the next day.

He listened to me very stiffly and then said, “I know all about the families with babies, but I haven't received any instructions about orphans.”

“But that was part of the agreement I made with the chief secretary,” I said.

“Well, I'll have to check it,” he answered rather unpleasantly.

Nonetheless, we went on talking, and after a while he said suddenly, “Oh, very well then. Include the orphans.” I couldn't understand why he had surrendered so quickly, but in the morning I discovered that he had received a telegram from the chief secretariat in Jerusalem that read: BEWARE OF MRS. MEYERSON. SHE IS A FORMIDABLE PERSON! And, I suppose, he decided on the spot to take the advice seriously.

The camps themselves were even more depressing than I had expected, in a way worse than the camps for DPs that were being run in Germany by the U.S. authorities. They looked like prison camps, ugly clusters of huts and tents—with a watchtower at each end—set down on the sand, with nothing green or growing anywhere in sight. There wasn't nearly enough water for drinking and even less for bathing, despite the heat. Although the camps were right on the shore, none of the refugees was allowed to go swimming, and they spent their time, for the most part, sitting in those filthy, stifling tents, which, if nothing else, protected them from the glaring sun. As I walked through the camps, the DPs pressed up against the barbed wire fences that surrounded them to welcome me, and at one camp two tiny little children came up with a bouquet of paper flowers for me. I have been given a great many bouquets of flowers since then, but I have never been as moved by any of them as I was by those flowers presented to me in Cyprus by children who had probably forgotten if they ever knew what real flowers looked like and who had been helped in making those pathetic bouquets by nursery school teachers whom we had sent to the camps. Incidentally, one of the Palestinian Jews in Cyprus then though she later escaped—was a girl named Ayan, an attractive young radio operator from a captured Haganah ship who is today a child psychiatrist in Tel Aviv and my daughter-in-law.

At any rate, the first item on the agenda was a meeting at which I explained my mission to the committee representing all the detainees. This was followed by an open-air meeting with most of the detainees themselves. I told them that I was sure that they would not have to remain on Cyprus for long and that eventually everyone would be released; but until this time came, I needed their cooperation in order to save the children. The Irgun Zvai Le'umi sympathizers in the camps objected violently to the agreement I had made with the British. It was all or nothing, they shouted, and there was even an attempt to attack me physically.

But finally, they calmed down, and we made the necessary arrangements.

There was still one problem bothering me. We had asked that “orphans” be allowed to enter Palestine “out of turn,” but what about the children on Cyprus who had only one surviving parent?

When I got back to Jerusalem, I went to see the high commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, and thanked him for what he had done. Then I said, “But there is one very tragic aspect of our agreement. It seems terribly unfair that a child whose mother or father was killed in Europe should have to stay on Cyprus when a friend who may have been 'lucky' enough to have lost both parents is able to leave. Is there anything at all that we can do about this?”

Cunningham—who was to be the last British high commissioner to Palestine and who was an extremely kind and decent man— shook his head rather unhappily. Then he heaved a resigned sigh, smiled and said, “Don't worry. I'll take care of that at once, Mrs. Meyerson.”

I used to see him from time to time, and however tense or chaotic the situation in Palestine was, he and I were always able to talk to each other like friends. After Cunningham left Palestine on May 14, 1948, I didn't expect to hear from him ever again. But one day several months after I became prime minister, I got a letter from him. It was written by hand from the country place in England to which he had retired, and its essence was that however great the pressures on us, Israel should not budge from any of the territories we had taken in the Six-Day War, unless and until we were guaranteed secure and defensible borders. I was very touched indeed by his letter.

A less pleasant reminder of those days was the ceremony I attended in Haifa in 1970, when the bodies of 100 children who had died in those dreadful camps were brought to Haifa for reburial in the lovely foothills of Mount Carmel. I tried to shake off the thought, but I couldn't help wondering if the two little girls who had so solemnly handed me those flowers in 1947 were not among them. On the other hand, I often bumped into people who had attended that meeting in Cyprus and remembered it well. About five years ago, for instance, I was visiting a kibbutz in the Negev when a middle-aged woman came up to me very hesitantly. “Excuse me for bothering you,” she said, “but this is the first opportunity I have had in all these years to thank you.”

“For what?” I asked.

“I was on Cyprus with a baby in 1947,” she replied, “and you saved us. Now, I'd like you to meet that baby’” The “baby” was a sturdy, pretty girl of twenty who had just finished her military service and obviously thought I had taken leave of my senses when I gave her a great big kiss in front of everybody—without a word of explanation.

At the Zionist Congress in Basel in 1946 it had been decided that Moshe Sharett should head the Political Department of the Jewish Agency from Washington and that I should remain its head in Jerusalem. But by 1947 living in Jerusalem was like living in a city occupied by an extremely hostile foreign power. The British shut themselves up in what was actually an improvised fortress—a heavily guarded compound (we called it Bevingrad) right in the middle of town sent their tanks rumbling through the streets at the slightest provocation and forbade their troops to have anything to do with the Jews. Whenever the Irgun Zvai Le'umi and the Stern Group took the law into their own hands— which, most unfortunately, they did fairly regularly the British responded with retaliatory actions that were aimed at the entire yishuv, particularly at the Haganah, and hardly a week went by without some sort of crisis arms searches, mass arrests, curfews that lasted for days and paralyzed everyday life and, finally, the deportation of Jews without even a charge, let alone a trial. When the British began flogging members of the Irgun or Sternists whom they caught, the two dissident organizations responded by kidnapping and even executing two British soldiers—and all this while our battle for free immigration and land settlement was in full force.

Looking back at that period, I can see, of course, that almost any other colonial power imposing itself on a rebellious native population (which is how the British saw us) would probably have behaved in an even harsher manner. But the British were harsh enough. It wasn't only their often very cruel punitive, measures that made the situation so intolerable; it was also our knowledge that whenever possible, they aided and abetted the Arabs, not to speak of inciting them against us. On the other hand, the idea of a perpetual bloodbath in Palestine was also not very appealing to Britain least of all in its postwar mood—and in February 1947, Mr. Bevin himself decided that his government was tired of the whole thing and said so in the House of Commons. Let the United Nations deal with the Palestine problem. The British had had enough. I can't imagine that the United Nations was overjoyed at having this responsibility dumped on it, but it couldn't very well refuse to accept it.

The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) arrived in the country in June. According to its terms of reference, it was to report back to the UN General Assembly by September 1, 1947, with some sort of concrete proposal for a solution. The Palestinian Arabs, as usual, refused to cooperate with it in any way, but everyone else did, though a little wearily: the leaders of the yishuv, the Palestine government and later even the leaders of some of the Arab states. I spent a lot of time with the eleven members of the committee and was horrified to discover how little they knew of the history of Palestine or of Zionism, for that matter. But since it was essential that they learn—and as quickly as possible—we began to explain and expound as we had done so often before, and eventually they started to grasp what all the fuss was about and why we were not prepared to give up our right to bring the survivors of the Holocaust to Palestine.

Then, for reasons which will never be understood by me—nor, I suspect, by anyone else just before UNSCOP was scheduled to leave Palestine, the British chose to demonstrate in the most unmistakable way just how brutally and tyrannically they were dealing with us and with the question of Jewish immigration. Before the shocked eyes of the members of UNSCOP they forcibly caged and returned to Germany the 4,500 refugees who had come to Palestine aboard the Haganah ship Exodus 1947, and I think that by so doing, they actually contributed considerably to UNSCOP's final recommendations. If I live to be a hundred, I shall never erase from my mind the gruesome picture of hundreds of British soldiers in full combat dress, bearing and using clubs, pistols and grenades against the wretched refugees on the Exodus, 400 of whom were pregnant women determined to give birth to their babies in Palestine. Nor will I ever be able to forget the revulsion with which I heard that these people were actually going to be shipped back, like animals in their wire cages, to DP camps in the one country that symbolized the graveyard of European Jewry.

Speaking at a meeting of the Va'ad Le'umi only a few days before the passengers of the Exodus left on their grim journey to Hamburg, I tried to express the disgust and grief of the yishuv, as well as its flickering hope that somehow, someone, somewhere would intervene to save the refugees from this new torment:

The British hope that through deportation of the Exodus 1947 they will succeed in frightening the Jews of the DP camps and terrify us. There can be only one answer on our part: this flow of boats will not cease. I am aware that the Jews seeking to immigrate to Palestine and those assisting them now face terrible difficulties, with all the forces of the British Empire concentrated for one purpose: to attack these creaking boats laden with human suffering.

Nevertheless, I believe that there can be only one effective answer: the uninterrupted flow of the “illegal” ships. I have no doubts about the stand of the Jews of the camps; they are ready for all perils in order to leave the camps. The Jewish survivors of many European countries cannot remain where they are.

If we in Palestine, together with American, South African and British Jewry, do not let ourselves be frightened, the boats will continue to come. With much travail, greater than in the past but come they will. I do not, for one moment, disregard what the thousands of these boats will face in the coming days. I know that each one of us would deem himself happy if he could be with them. Each one of us worries over what may happen when the Jews on the Exodus are brought to Germany ... with the British forces completely free to teach these lawbreakers a lesson. There can be no doubt that they will be steadfast, as they have been until now. The question is only whether there is no hope for some lastminute change of heart on the part of the British.

Since we are incapable of despair, we wish at this moment, from this place, once more to address our call to the world, to the nations—to the many who suffered so much during the war, to those on many of whose fronts Jews fought and helped in their liberation. To these nations we issue this lastminute appeal. Is it possible that no voice will be raised, that the British government will not be told: Remove the whip and the rifle from over the heads of the Jews on the Exodus? And to Britain we must say: it is a great illusion to believe us to be weak. Let Great Britain with her mighty fleet and her many guns and planes know that this people is not so weak and that its strength will yet stand it in good stead....

But the fate of the Exodus had already been sealed, and the ship returned to Germany.

The summer of 1947 dragged on and on. Despite the fact that the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road was increasingly coming under the control of armed Arab bands, who shot at all Jewish transport from the hills above it, there was no alternative other than for me to ferry back and forth between the two cities and rely on the young Haganah guards who accompanied me. What was really at stake was not whether I would be killed or wounded traveling to Tel Aviv and back, but whether the Arabs would succeed in their proclaimed intention of cutting the road altogether and thus starving out the Jews of Jerusalem. And I was certainly not about to help them achieve this aim by refraining from using the one road that connected Jerusalem to the Jewish centers of the country. Once or twice a bullet whizzed through the window of the Jewish Agency car in which I used to travel, and once we took a wrong turn and arrived in an Arab village that I knew to be a nest of cutthroats; but we escaped without a scratch.

Sometimes there were also “adventures” of a different nature.

For instance, one-time British soldiers searched my car for arms just after I had been promised by the chief secretary himself that these searches would end, in view of the growing danger to Jewish traffic on the roads. My protests did no good at all. A gun was found on one of the Haganah escorts and she was promptly arrested.

“Where are you dragging her to?” I asked the officer in charge of this great operation.

“To Majdal,” he said.

Majdal, an Arab town, was certainly no place for a young girl to spend the night, and I told the captain that if she were taken there, I would insist on going with her. By then he knew who I was, and I don't think he looked forward at all to explaining to his superiors why a member of the Jewish Agency Executive had gone to sleep in Majdal, so he changed his mind, and we all went off to a police station in a nearby Jewish town. By then it was midnight, but I still had to get to Tel Aviv—which I duly did, royally escorted by British policemen and the Haganah girl, who was hastily released. Others, however, were not so lucky. The death toll on the roads rose weekly, and by November 1947, the Arabs in full view of the British had begun to lay siege to Jerusalem.

On August 31—only a minute or two before their deadline expired—the eleven gentlemen of UNSCOP[2], convened in Geneva, turned in their report on Palestine. Eight members of the committee recommended—as the Peel Commission had—that the country be partitioned into an Arab state and a Jewish state, plus an international enclave that would take in Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity. The minority (consisting, among others, of the representatives of India, Iran and Yugoslavia all of which had large Moslem populations) suggested a federal Arab-Jewish state.

It was now up to the UN General Assembly to decide. In the meantime, all the parties concerned made their responses known, and I can't say that any surprises awaited the United Nations in this respect. We accepted the plan, of course—without much elation but with great relief. and demanded that the mandate come to an end at once. All the Arabs said that they would have nothing to do with either set of recommendations and threatened war unless all Palestine was made an Arab state. The British made clear that they would not cooperate with the implementation of any partition plan unless both the Jews and the Arabs were enthusiastic about it, and we all knew what that meant. And the Americans and the Russians each published statements in favor of the majority recommendation.

The next day I held a press conference in Jerusalem. In addition to thanking the committee for having worked so rapidly, I stressed that “we could hardly imagine a Jewish state without Jerusalem” and that “we still hoped that this wrong would be rectified by the UN Assembly.” We were also very unhappy, I said, about the exclusion of western Galilee from the Jewish state and assumed that this would be taken up at the Assembly, too. But the most important point I wanted to make was that we were extremely anxious to establish a new and different relationship with the Arabs— of whom; I thought, there would be some 500,000 in the Jewish state. “A Jewish state in this part of the world,” I told the press, “is not only a solution for us. It should and can be a great aid for everyone in the Middle East.” It is heartrending now to think that we were using those words—to no avail—as long ago as 1947!

The voting took place at Lake Success in New York on November 29. Like everyone else in the yishuv, I was glued to the radio, with pencil and paper, writing down the votes as they came through. Finally, at about midnight our time, the results were announced: Thirty-three nations (including the United States and the Soviet Union) were in favor of the partition plan; thirteen, including all the Arab states, opposed it; ten, including Great Britain, abstained. I immediately went to the compound of the Jewish Agency building, which was already jammed with people. It was an incredible sight: hundreds of people, British soldiers among them, holding hands, singing and dancing, with truckloads of more people arriving at the compound all the time. I remember walking up to my office alone, unable to share in the general festivity. The Arabs had turned the plan down and talked only of war. The crowd, drunk with happiness, wanted a speech, and I thought it would be wicked to dampen the mood by refusing. So, from the balcony of my office I spoke for a few minutes.

But it was not really to the mass of people below me that I talked; it was, once again, to the Arabs.

“You have fought your battle against us in the United Nations,” I said. “The United Nations the majority of countries in the world have had their say. The partition plan is a compromise: not what you wanted, not what we wanted. But let us now live in friendship and peace together.” That speech was hardly the solution for our situation. Arab riots broke out all over Palestine the next day (seven Jews were killed in an Arab ambush on a bus) and on December 2 an Arab mob set the Jewish commercial center in Jerusalem on fire, while British police stood by, interfering only when the Haganah tried to take action.

We were of course, totally unprepared for war. That we had managed for so long to hold the local Arabs at bay, more or less, didn't mean that we could cope with regular armies. We needed weapons urgently, if we could find anyone willing to sell them to us; but before we could buy anything, we needed money—not the sort of money which had helped us to afforest the country or bring in refugees, but millions of dollars. And there was only one group of people in the whole world that we had any chance of getting these dollars from: the Jews of America. There was simply nowhere else to go and no one else to go to.

It was, of course, out of the question for Ben-Gurion to leave Palestine then. His role was absolutely central. I think that he himself felt that no one else could possibly raise the kind of money that was being discussed in the series of secret meetings we held in Tel Aviv in December 1947, and the early part of January 1948, and I certainly agreed with him. But he had to stay in the country.

So, who would go? At one of these meetings, I looked around the table at my colleagues, so tired and harassed, and wondered for the first time whether I ought not to volunteer for the mission. After all, I had done some fund raising in the States before, and I spoke English fluently. My services in Palestine could certainly be dispensed with for a few weeks, and though I wasn't used to proposing myself, I began to feel that I should suggest this to Ben-Gurion. At first, he wouldn't hear of it. He was going, he said, and was taking with him Eliezer Kaplan, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency.

“But no one can take your place here,” I argued, “while I may be able to do what you can do in the United States.” He was adamant.

“No. I need you here.”

“Then let's put it to the vote,” I said. He looked at me for a second, then nodded. The vote was in favor of my going.

“But at once,” Ben-Gurion said. “Don't even try to get back to Jerusalem.” So, I flew to the States that day—without any luggage, wearing the dress I had worn to the meeting with a winter coat over it.

The first appearance I made in 1948 before American Jewry was unscheduled, unrehearsed and, of course, unannounced.

Also, I was quite unknown to the people I addressed. It was in Chicago on January 21, at the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, which were non-Zionist organizations. Palestine, in fact, was not on the agenda at all. But this was a meeting of professional fund raisers, of the tough experienced men who controlled the Jewish fundraising machinery in the United States and I knew that if I could get through to them, there was some chance of getting the money that was the key to our ability to defend ourselves. I didn't speak for long, but I said everything that was in my heart. I described the situation as it had been the day I left Palestine, and then I said:

The Jewish community in Palestine is going to fight to the very end. If we have arms to fight with, we will fight with them. If not, we will fight with stones in our hands.

I want you to believe me when I say that I came on this special mission to the United States today not to save seven hundred thousand Jews. During the last few years, the Jewish people lost six million Jews, and it would be audacity on our part to worry Jews throughout the world because a few hundred thousand more Jews are in danger.

That is not the issue. The issue is that if these seven hundred thousand Jews in Palestine can remain alive, then the Jewish people as such is alive and Jewish independence assured. If these seven hundred thousand people are killed off, then for centuries we are through with the dream of a Jewish people and a Jewish homeland.

My friends, we are at war. There is no Jew in Palestine who does not believe that finally we will be victorious. That is the spirit of the country... But this valiant spirit alone cannot face rifles and machine guns. Rifles and machine guns without spirit are not worth very much, but spirit without arms can, in time, be broken together with the body.

Our problem is time. ... The question is what can we get immediately. And, when I say immediately, I do not mean next month. I do not mean two months from now. I mean now.

I have come here to try to impress Jews in the United States with the fact that within a very short period, a couple of weeks, we mi 460 in cash between twenty-five and thirty million dollars.

In the next two or three weeks we can establish ourselves. Of that we are convinced.

The Egyptian government can vote a budget to aid our antagonists. The Syrian government can do the same. We have no governments. But we have millions of Jews in the Diaspora, and exactly as we have faith in our youngsters in Palestine so I have faith in the Jews of the United States; I believe that they will realize the peril of our situation and do what they have to do.

I know that we are not asking for something easy. I myself have sometimes been active in various campaigns and fund collections, and I know that collecting at once a sum such as I ask is not simple. But I have seen our people at home. I have seen them come from the offices to the clinics when we called the community to give their blood for a blood bank to treat the wounded. I have seen them lined up for hours, waiting so that some of their blood can be added to this bank. It is blood plus money that is being given in Palestine...

We are not a better breed; we are not the best Jews of the Jewish people. It so happened that we are there and you are here. I am certain that if you were in Palestine and we were in the United States, you would be doing what we are doing there, and you would ask us here to do what you will have to do.

I want to close by paraphrasing one of the greatest speeches that was made during the Second World War—the words of Churchill. I am not exaggerating when I say that the yishuv in Palestine will fight in the Negev and will fight in Galilee and will fight on the outskirts of Jerusalem until the very end.

You cannot decide whether we should fight or not. We will. The Jewish community in Palestine will raise no white flag for the mufti. That decision is taken. Nobody can change it. You can only decide one thing: whether we shall be victorious in this fight or whether the mufti will be victorious. That decision American Jews can make. It has to be made quickly, within hours, within days.

And I beg of you—don't be too late. Don't be bitterly sorry three months from now for what you failed to do today. The time is now.

They listened, and they wept, and they pledged money in amounts that no community had ever given before. I stayed in the United States for as long as I could bear to be away from home, for about six weeks, and the Jews all over the country listened, wept and gave money—and, when they had to, took loans from banks in order. to cover their pledges. By the time I came back to Palestine in March I had raised $50,000,000, which was turned over at once for the Haganah's secret purchase of arms in Europe.

But I never deceived myself—not even when upon my return Ben-Gurion said to me, “Someday when history will be written, it will be said that there was a Jewish woman who got the money which made the state possible.” I always knew that these dollars were given not to me, but to Israel.

That journey to the States, however, was only one of the journeys I made that year. In the six months that preceded the establishment of the state, I met twice with King Abdullah of Transjordan, who was King Hussein's grandfather. Although both those talks remained closely guarded secrets for many yearslong after Abdullah's assassination by his Arab enemies (probably the mufti's henchmen) in Jerusalem in 1951—no one knows to this day to what extent rumors about them were responsible for his death.

Assassination is an endemic disease in the Arab world, and one of the first lessons that most Arab rulers learn is the connection between secrecy and longevity. Abdullah's murder made a lasting impression on all subsequent Arab leaders, and I remember that Nasser once said to an intermediary whom we dispatched to Cairo, “If Ben-Gurion came to Egypt to talk to me, he would return home as a conquering hero. But if I went to him, I would be shot when I came back.” And I am afraid that is still the situation.

The first time I met King Abdullah was early in November 1947. He had agreed to meet me—in my capacity as head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency—in a house at Naharayim (on the Jordan), where the Palestine Electric Corporation ran a hydroelectric power station. I came to Naharayim with one of our Arab experts Eliahu Sasson. We drank the usual ceremonial cups of coffee, and then we began to talk. Abdullah was a small, very poised man with great charm. He soon made the heart of the matter clear: He would not join in any Arab attack on us.

He would always remain our friend, he said, and like us, he wanted peace more than anything else. After all, we had a common foe, the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin El-Husseini. Not only that, but he suggested that we meet again, after the United Nations vote.

On the way back to Tel Aviv, Ezra Danin, who had met with Abdullah often before, filled me in on the king's general concept of the role of the Jews. It was that Providence had scattered the Jews throughout the Western world in order that they might absorb European culture and bring it back to the Middle East with them, thus reviving the area. As for his reliability, Danin was dubious. It was not, he told me, that Abdullah was a liar, but that he was a Bedouin, and that the Bedouin had their own ideas about truth which they saw as something much less absolute than we did. At any rate, he said, Abdullah was certainly sincere in his expressions of friendship, although they would not necessarily be at all binding on him.

Throughout January and February, we maintained contact with Abdullah, as a rule through the good offices of a mutual friend, through whom I was able to send direct messages to the king. As the weeks passed, my messages became more worried. The air was thick with conjecture, and there were reports that despite his promise to me, Abdullah was about to join the Arab League. Was this indeed so? I asked. The reply from Amman was prompt and negative. King Abdullah was astonished and hurt by my question.

He asked me to remember three things: that he was a Bedouin and therefore a man of honor; that he was a king and therefore doubly an honorable man; and finally, that he would never break a promise made to a woman. So, there could not possibly be any justification for my concern.

But we knew differently. By the first week of May there was no doubt that for all his assurances, Abdullah had, in fact, thrown his lot in with the Arab League. We debated the pros and cons of requesting another meeting before it was too late. Perhaps he could be persuaded to change his mind at the last minute. If not, perhaps we could at least find out from him just how deeply he had committed himself and his British-trained and officered Arab Legion to the war against us. A great deal hung in the balance: Not only was the legion by far the best Arab army in the area, but there was also another vital consideration. If, by some miracle, Transjordan stayed out of the war, it would be much harder for the Iraqi army to cross over into Palestine and join in the attack on us. Ben-Gurion was of the opinion that we could lose nothing by trying again, so I requested a second meeting, and asked Ezra Danin to accompany me.

This time, however, Abdullah refused to come to Naharayim. It was too dangerous, he told us through his emissary. If I wanted to see him, I would have to come to Amman, and the risk would have to be entirely mine. He could not be expected, he informed us, to alert the legion to the fact that he awaited Jewish guests from Palestine, and he would take no responsibility for anything that might happen to us en route. The first problem was to get to Tel Aviv, which at that point was almost as difficult as getting to Amman itself. I waited in Jerusalem from early in the morning until 7 p.m. for a plane to arrive from Tel Aviv, and when it finally turned up, it was so windy that we could hardly take off. Under normal conditions I would have tried to postpone the trip for another day, but there were no days left. It was already May 10 and the Jewish state would be proclaimed on May 14. This was our very last chance to talk to Abdullah. So, I insisted that we try to reach Tel Aviv even in that Piper Cub, which looked as though it would collapse even in a strong breeze, let alone a gale. After we left, a message arrived at the airstrip in Jerusalem to say that the weather was far too bad for us to attempt the flight, but we were already on our way by then.

The next morning, I set out by car for Haifa, where Ezra and I were to meet. It had already been decided that he would not disguise himself other than by wearing traditional Arab headgear.

He spoke fluent Arabic, was familiar with Arab customs and could easily be taken for an Arab. As for me, I would travel in the traditional dark and voluminous robes of an Arab woman. I spoke no Arabic at all, but as a Moslem wife accompanying her husband, it was most unlikely that I would be called on to say anything to anyone. The Arab dress and veils I needed had already been ordered and Ezra explained the route to me. We would change several times, he said, in order to be sure that we were not followed, and at a given point that night someone would turn up not far from the king's palace to lead us to Abdullah. The major problem was to avoid arousing the suspicions of the Arab legionnaires at the various check posts we had to past before we got to the place, where our guide was to meet us.

It was a long, long series of rides through the night. First into one car, then out of it, and into another for a few more miles and then, at Naharayim into a third car. We didn't talk to each other at all during the journey. I had perfect faith in Ezra's ability to get us through the enemy lines safely, and I was much too concerned with the outcome of our mission to think about what would happen if, God forbid, we were caught. Luckily, although we had to identify ourselves several times, we got to our appointed meeting place on time and undetected. The man who was to take us to Abdullah was one of his most trusted associates, a Bedouin whom the king had adopted and reared since childhood and who was used to running perilous errands for his master.

In his car, its windows covered with heavy black material, he drove Ezra and myself to his house. While we waited for Abdullah to appear, I talked to our guide's attractive and intelligent wife, who came from a well-to-do Turkish family and complained to me bitterly about the terrible monotony of her life in Transjordan. I remember thinking that I could have done with some monotony myself at that point, but I only nodded my head sympathetically.

Then Abdullah entered the room. He was very pale and seemed under great strain. Ezra interpreted for us, and we talked for about an hour. I started the conversation by coming to the point at once. “Have you broken your promise to me, after all?” I asked him.

He didn't answer my question directly. Instead, he said, “When I made that promise, I thought I was in control of my own destiny and could do what I thought right, but since then I have learned otherwise.” Then he went on to say that before he had been alone, but now, “I am one of five,” the other four, we gathered, being Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Still, he thought war could be averted.

“Why are you in such a hurry to proclaim your state?” he asked me. “What is the rush? You are so impatient!” I told him that I didn't think that a people who had waited 2,000 years should be described as being “in a hurry,” and he seemed to accept that.

“Don't you understand,” I said, “that we are your only allies in this region? The others are all your enemies.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know that. But what can I do? It is not up to me.”

So, then I said to him, “You must know that if war is forced upon us, we will fight and we will win.”

He sighed and again said, “Yes. I know that. It is your duty to fight. But why don't you wait a few years? Drop your demands for free immigration. I will take over the whole country and you will be represented in my parliament. I will treat you very well, and there will be no war.”

I tried to explain to him that this plan was impossible. “You know all that we have done and how hard we have worked,” I said. “Do you think we did all that just to be represented in a foreign parliament? You know what we want and to what we aspire.

If you can offer us nothing more than you have just done, then there will be a war and we will win it. But perhaps we can meet again—after the war and after there is a Jewish state.”

“You place much too much reliance on your tanks,” Danin said.

“You have no real friends in the Arab world, and we will smash your tanks as the Maginot Line was smashed.” They were very brave words, particularly since Danin knew exactly what the state of our armor was. But Abdullah looked even graver and said again that he knew that we had to do our duty. He also added, unhappily I thought, that events would just have to run their course.

All of us would know eventually what fate had in store for us.

There was obviously no more to say. I wanted to leave, but Danin and Abdullah had begun a new conversation.

“I hope we will stay in touch even after the war starts,” Danin said.

“Of course,” Abdullah answered. “You must come to see me.”

“But how will I be able to get to you?” asked Danin.

“Oh, I trust you to find a way,” Abdullah said with a smile.

Then Danin chided him for not taking adequate precautions.

“You worship at the mosque,” he said to Abdullah, “and permit your subjects to kiss the hem of your garments. One day some evildoer will harm you. The time has come for you to forbid the custom, for safety's sake.”

Abdullah was visibly shocked. “I shall never become the prisoner of my own guards,” he said very sternly to Danin. “I was born a Sedouin, a free man, and I shall remain free. Let those who wish to kill me try to do so. I will not put myself in chains.” Then he bid farewell and left.

Our host's wife invited us to eat. At one end of the room there is an enormous table laden with food. I wasn't at all hungry, but be represented in my parliament. I will treat you very well, and there will be no war.”

I tried to explain to him that this plan was impossible. “You know all that we have done and how hard we have worked,” I said. “Do you think we did all that just to be represented in a foreign parliament? You know what we want and to what we aspire.

If you can offer us nothing more than you have just done, then there will be a war and we will win it. But perhaps we can meet again—after the war and after there is a Jewish state.”

“You place much too much reliance on your tanks,” Danin said.

“You have no real friends in the Arab world, and we will smash your tanks as the Maginot Line was smashed.” They were very brave words, particularly since Danin knew exactly what the state of our armor was. But Abdullah looked even graver and said again that he knew that we had to do our duty. He also added, unhappily I thought, that events would just have to run their course.

All of us would know eventually what fate had in store for us.

There was obviously no more to say. I wanted to leave, but Danin and Abdullah had begun a new conversation.

“I hope we will stay in touch even after the war starts,” Danin said.

“Of course,” Abdullah answered. “You must come to see me.”

“But how will I be able to get to you?” asked Danin.

“Oh, I trust you to find a way,” Abdullah said with a smile.

Then Danin chided him for not taking adequate precautions.

“You worship at the mosque,” he said to Abdullah, “and permit your subjects to kiss the hem of your garments. One day some evildoer will harm you. The time has come for you to forbid the custom, for safety's sake.”

Abdullah was visibly shocked. “I shall never become the prisoner of my own guards,” he said very sternly to Danin. “I was born a Bedouin, a free man, and I shall remain free. Let those who wish to kill me try to do so. I will not put myself in chains.” Then he bid us farewell and left.

Our host's wife invited us to eat. At one end of the room there was an enormous table laden with food. I wasn't at all hungry, but Danin told me that I must fill my plate—whether I ate or not— because otherwise it would appear that I was abstaining from accepting Arab hospitality. So, I heaped the plate but only toyed with the food. There was no doubt left in my mind that Abdullah would wage war against us. And for all of Danin's bravado, I knew that the legion's tanks were no joke, and my heart sank at the thought of the news I would have to bring back to Tel Aviv. It was now nearly midnight. We still had a long and dangerous trip ahead of us—and this time we wouldn't be bolstered by any false hopes.

After a few minutes we took our leave and departed. It was a very dark night, and the Arab driver who was to take us back to Naharayim (from there we would drive to Haifa) was terrified each time the car was stopped at a legion check post. In the end he made us get out some distance before we reached the power station. By now it was two or three o'clock in the morning, and we were faced with having to find our way back alone. Neither of us was armed, and I must admit that I was very frightened, as well as very depressed. From the windows of the car, we had seen the Iraqi forces massing at Camp Mafraq and had talked in whispers of what would happen on May 14. I remember my heart pounding when Danin said, “If we are lucky—and victorious—we will only lose ten thousand men. If we are unlucky, we may have up to fifty thousand casualties.” I was so upset by this that by common consent we changed the subject, and for the rest of the trip we talked about Moslem tradition and Arab cuisine. But stumbling around in the dark, we couldn't talk at all. In fact, we didn't even dare breathe too loudly. I was badly hampered by the clothes I was wearing, not at all sure that we were going in the right direction and unable to shake off my depression and sense of failure about the talk with Abdullah.

I suppose Danin and I must have been walking for about half an hour when the young Haganah member from Naharayim who had been waiting for us in a fever of anxiety all night—suddenly spotted us. I couldn't see his face in the dark, but I don't think I ever held onto anyone's hand so tightly or with such relief.

Anyhow, he led us effortlessly over the hills and across the wadis to Naharayim. I saw him again only a few years ago when a middle-aged man came up to me in the lobby of a Jerusalem hotel.

“Mrs. Meir,” he said, “don't you recognize me?” I searched my mind but couldn't place him at all until he grinned at me very sweetly and said, “It was I who showed you the way back to Naharayim that night.”

But I never saw Abdullah again, although after the War of Independence there were prolonged negotiations with him. Later I was told that he said about me, “If any one person was responsible for the war, it was she, because she was too proud to accept the offer I made her.” I must say that when I think of what would have befallen us as a “protected” minority in the kingdom of an Arab ruler who was himself murdered by Arabs within just over two years, I can't bring myself to regret the fact that I disappointed Abdullah so much that night. But I wish that he had been brave enough to stay out of the war. It would have been so much better for him—and for us—if he had been a little prouder.

At all events, from Naharayim, I was driven straight back to Tel Aviv. The next morning there was to be a meeting at the headquarters of the Mapaial most incessant rounds of meetings were going on, of course, all that week—and I knew that Ben-Gurion would be there. When I entered the room, he lifted his head, looked at me and said, “Nu?” I sat down and scribbled a note. “It didn't work,” I wrote. “There will be war. From Mafraq Ezra and I saw the troop concentrations and the lights.” I could hardly bear to watch Ben-Gurion's face as he read the note, but thank God, he didn't change his mind—or ours.

Within two days the final decision had to be taken: Should a Jewish state be proclaimed or not? After I had reported on my conversation with Abdullah, a number of people on the Minhelet Haam (literally the People's Administration), made up of members of the Jewish Agency, the Vaad Leumi and various small parties and groups which later became the provisional government of Israel, pressed Ben-Gurion for one last evaluation of the situation. They wanted to know what the Haganah's assessment was at zero hour. So, Ben-Gurion called in two men: Yigael Yadin, who was the Haganah's chief of operations, and Yisrael Galili, who was its de facto commander in chief. Their answers were virtually identical—and terrifying. We could be sure of only two things, they said: The British would pull out, and the Arabs would invade. And then? They were both silent. But after a minute Yadin said, “The best we can tell you is that we have a fifty-fifty chance. We are as likely to win as we are to be defeated.” So it was on that bright note that the final decision was made.

On Friday, May 14, 1948 (the fifth of Iyar, 5708, according to the Hebrew calendar), the Jewish state would come into being, its population numbering 650,000, its chance of surviving its birth depending on whether or not the yishuv could possibly meet the assault of five regular Arab armies actively aided by Palestine's 1,000,000 Arabs.

According to the original plan, I was to return to Jerusalem on Thursday and remain there for the duration. Needless to say, I very much wanted to stay in Tel Aviv, at least for long enough to attend the proclamation ceremony the time and place of which were being kept secret (except for the 200odd invitees) until about an hour before the event. All day Wednesday I hoped against hope that Ben-Gurion would relent, but he was adamant.

“You must go back to Jerusalem,” he said. So, on Thursday, May 13, I was back in that little Piper Cub again. The pilot's orders were to take me to Jerusalem and return to Tel Aviv at once with Yitzhak Gruenbaum, who was to be the minister of interior in the provisional government. But as soon as we got past the coastal plain and reached the Judean Hills, the engine began to act up in the most alarming way. I was sitting next to the pilot (those tiny planes, which we affectionately called Primuses, boasted only two seats), and I could see that even he was very nervous. The engine began to sound as though it were about to break away from the plane altogether, and I wasn't really surprised when the pilot said, apologetically, “I'm awfully sorry, but I don't think I can clear the hills. I'll have to go back.” He turned the plane around; but the engine went on making dreadful sounds, and I noticed that the pilot was looking around below. I didn't say a word, yet after a while the engine picked up a bit and he asked me, “Do you know what is happening?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“I was looking,” he said, “for the most likely Arab village where we could land.” This was on May 13, mind you. Then he added, “But now I think I can put down in Ben Shemen.” At that point, the engine improved a bit more. “No,” he said, “I think we can make it back to Tel Aviv.”

So, I was able to attend the ceremony after all, and poor Yitzhak Gruenbaum had to stay in Jerusalem and couldn't sign the Declaration of Independence until after the first ceasefire.

On the morning of May 14, I participated in a meeting of the People's Council at which we were to decide on the name of the state and on the final formulation of the declaration. The name was less of a problem than the declaration because there was a lastminute argument about the inclusion of a reference to God.

Actually, the issue had been brought up the day before. The very last sentence, as finally submitted to the small subcommittee charged with producing the final version of the proclamation, began with the words “With trust in the Rock of Israel, we set our hands in witness to this Proclamation. ...” Ben-Gurion had hoped that the phrase “Rock of Israel” was sufficiently ambiguous to satisfy those Jews for whom it was inconceivable that the document which established the Jewish state should not contain any reference to God, as well as those who were certain to object strenuously to even the least hint of clericalism in the proclamation.

But the compromise was not so easily accepted. The spokesman of the religious parties, Rabbi Fishman Maimon, demanded that the reference to God be unequivocal and said that he would approve of the “Rock of Israel” only if the words “and its Redeemer” were added, while Aaron Zisling of the left wing of the Labor Party was just as determined in the opposite direction. “I cannot sign a document referring in any way to a God in whom I do not believe,” he said. It took Ben-Gurion most of the morning to persuade Maimon and Zisling that the meaning of the “Rock of Israel” was actually twofold: While it signified “God” for a great many.

Jews, perhaps for most, it could also be considered a symbolic and secular reference to the “strength of the Jewish people.” In the end Maimon agreed that the word “Redeemer” should be left out of the text, though, funnily enough, the first English language translation of the proclamation, released for publication abroad that day, contained no reference at all to the “Rock of Israel” since the military censor had struck out the entire last paragraph as a security precaution because it mentioned the time and place of the ceremony.

The argument itself, however, although it was perhaps not exactly what one would have expected a prime minister designate to be spending his time on only a few hours before proclaiming the independence of a new state particularly one threatened by immediate invasion was far from being just an argument about terminology. We were all deeply aware of the fact that the proclamation not only spelled the formal end to 2,000 years of Jewish homelessness, but also gave expression to the most fundamental principles of the State of Israel. For this reason, each and every word mattered greatly. Incidentally, my good friend Zeev Sharef, the first secretary of the government to-be (who laid the foundations for the machinery of government), even found time to see to it that the scroll we were about to sign that afternoon should be rushed to the vaults of the Anglo Palestine Bank after the ceremony, so that it could at least be preserved for posterity even if the state and we ourselves did not survive for very long.

At about 2 P.M. I went back to my hotel on the seashore, washed my hair and changed into my best black dress. Then I sat down for a few minutes, partly to catch my breath, partly to think for the first time in the past two or three days—about the children.

Menachem was in the United States then—a student at the Manhattan School of Music. I knew that he would come back now that war was inevitable, and I wondered when and how we would meet again. Sarah was in Revivim, and although not so very far away, as the crow flies, we were quite cut off from each other. Months ago, gangs of Palestinian Arabs and armed infiltrators from Egypt had blocked the road that connected the Negev to the rest of the country and were still systematically blowing up or cutting most of the pipelines that brought water to the twenty-seven Jewish settlements that then dotted the Negev. The Haganah had done its best to break the siege. It had opened a dirt track, parallel to the main road, on which convoys managed, now and then, to bring food and water to the 1,000odd settlers in the south. But who knew what would happen to Revivim or any other of the small, ill-armed ill-equipped Negev settlements when the full-scale Egyptian invasion of Israel began, as it almost certainly would, within only a few hours? Both Sarah and her Zechariah were wireless operators in Revivim, and I had been able to keep in touch with them up till then. But I hadn't heard about or from either of them for several days, and I was extremely worried. It was on youngsters like them, their spirit and their courage, that the future of the Negev and, therefore, of Israel depended, and I shuddered at the thought of their having to face the invading troops of the Egyptian army.

I was so lost in my thoughts about the children that I can remember being momentarily surprised when the phone rang in my room and I was told that a car was waiting to take me to the museum. It had been decided to hold the ceremony at the Tel Aviv museum on Rothschild Boulevard, not because it was such an imposing building (which it wasn't), but because it was small enough to be easily guarded. One of the oldest buildings in Tel Aviv, it had originally belonged to the city's first mayor, who had willed it to the citizens of Tel Aviv for use as an art museum. The grand total of about $200 had been allocated for decorating it suitably for the ceremony; the floors had been scrubbed, the nude paintings on the walls modestly draped, the windows blacked out in case of an air raid and a large picture of Theodor Herzl hung behind the table at which the thirteen members of the provisional government were to sit. Although supposedly only the 200odd people who had been invited to participate knew the details, a large crowd was already waiting outside the museum by the time I arrived there.

A few minutes later, at exactly 4 P.M., the ceremony began.

Ben-Gurion, wearing a dark suit and tie, stood up and rapped a gavel. According to the plan, this was to be the signal for the orchestra, tucked away in a second-floor gallery, to play “Hatikvah.” But something went wrong, and there was no music. Spontaneously, we rose to our feet and sang our national anthem. Then Ben-Gurion cleared his throat and said quietly, “I shall now read the Scroll of Independence.” It took him only a quarter of an hour to read the entire proclamation. He read it slowly and very clearly, and I remember his voice changing and rising a little as he came to the eleventh paragraph:

Accordingly we, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and the Zionist movement, have assembled on the day of the termination of the British mandate for Palestine, and, by virtue of our natural and historic right and of the resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations, do hereby proclaim the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel the State of Israel.

The State of Israel! My eyes filled with tears, and my hands shook. We had done it. We had brought the Jewish state into existence—and I, Golda Mabovitch Meyerson, had lived to see the day. Whatever happened now, whatever price any of us would have to pay for it, we had recreated the Jewish national home. The long. exile was over. From this day on we would no longer live on sufferance in the land of our forefathers. Now we were a nation like other nations, master—for the first time in twenty centuries of our own destiny. The dream had come true—too late to save those who had perished in the Holocaust, but not too late for the generations to come. Almost exactly fifty years ago, at the close of the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Theodor Herzl had written in his diary: “At Basel, I founded the Jewish state. If I were to say this today, I would be greeted with laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty, everyone will see it.” And so, it had come to pass.

As Ben-Gurion read, I thought again about my children and the children that they would have, how different their lives would be from mine and how different my own life would be from what it had been in the past, and I thought about my colleagues in besieged Jerusalem, gathered in the offices of the Jewish Agency, listening to the ceremony through static on the radio, while I, by sheer accident, was in the museum itself. It seemed to me that no Jew on earth had ever been more privileged than I was that Friday afternoon.

Then, as though a signal had been given, we rose to our feet, crying and clapping, while Ben-Gurion, his voice breaking for the only time, read: “The State of Israel will be open to Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles.” This was the very heart of the proclamation, the reason for the state and the point of it all. I remember sobbing out loud when I heard those words spoken in that hot, packed little hall. But Ben-Gurion just rapped his gavel again for order and went on reading:

“Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.”

And: “We extend the hand of peace and good neighborliness to all the states around us and to their peoples, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”

When he finished reading the 979 Hebrew words of the proclamation, he asked us to stand and “adopt the scroll establishing the Jewish state,” so once again we rose to our feet. Then, something quite unscheduled and very moving happened. All of a sudden Rabbi Fishman Maimon stood up and, in a trembling voice, pronounced the traditional Hebrew prayer of thanksgiving. “Blessed be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive and made us endure and brought us to this day. Amen.” It was a prayer that I had heard often, but it had never held such meaning for me as it did that day.

Before we came up, each in turn, in alphabetical order, to sign the proclamation, there was one other point of “business” that required our attention. Ben-Gurion read the first decrees of the new state. The White Paper was declared null and void, while, to avoid a legal vacuum, all the other mandatory rules and regulations were declared valid and in temporary effect. Then the signing began. As I got up from my seat to sign my name to the scroll, I caught sight of Ada Golomb, standing not far away. I wanted to go over to her, take her in my arms and tell her that I knew that Eliahu and Dov should have been there in my place, but I couldn't hold up the line of the signatories, so I walked straight to the middle of the table, where Ben-Gurion and Sharett sat with the scroll between them. All I recall about my actual signing of the proclamation is that I was crying openly, not able even to wipe the tears from my face, and I remember that as Sharett held the scroll in place for me, a man called David Zvi Pincus, who belonged to the religious Mizrachi Party, came over to try and calm me. “Why do you weep so much, Golda?” he asked me.

“Because it breaks my heart to think of all those who should have been here today and are not,” I replied, but I still couldn't stop crying.

Only twenty-five members of the People's Council signed the proclamation on May 14. Eleven others were in Jerusalem, and one was in the States. The last to sign was Moshe Sharett. He looked very controlled and calm compared to me—as though he were merely performing a standard duty. Later, when once we talked about that day, he told me that when he wrote his name on the scroll, he felt as though he were standing on a cliff with a gale blowing up all around him and nothing to hold on to except his determination not to be blown over into the raging sea below— but none of this showed at the time.

After the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra played “Hatikvah,” Ben-Gurion rapped his gavel for the third time. “The State of Israel is established. This meeting is ended.” We all shook hands and embraced each other. The ceremony was over. Israel was a reality.

Not unexpectedly, the evening was filled with suspense. I stayed in the hotel, talking to friends. Someone opened a bottle of wine, and we drank a toast to the state. A few of the guests and their young Haganah escorts sang and danced, and we heard people laughing and singing in the street. But we knew that at midnight the mandate would terminate, the British high commissioner would sail away, the last British soldier would leave Palestine, and we were certain that the Arab armies would march across the borders of the state we had just founded. We were independent now, but in a few hours, we would be at war. Not only was I not gay, but I was very frightened—and with good reason. Still, there is a great difference between being frightened and lacking faith, and although the entire Jewish population of the reborn state numbered only 650,000, I knew for certain that night that we had dug in and that no one would be able to disperse or displace us ever again.

But I think it was only on the following day that I really grasped what had happened in the Tel Aviv Museum. Three separate but very closely linked events brought the truth home to me as nothing else could have done, and I realized, perhaps for the first time, that nothing would ever be the same again. Not for me, not for the Jewish people, not for the Middle East. To begin with, just before dawn on Saturday, I saw for myself through the windows of my room what might be called the formal start of the War of Independence: four Egyptian Spitfires zooming across the city on their way to bomb Tel Aviv's power station and airport in what was the first air raid of the war. Then, a little later, I watched the first boatload of Jewish immigrants—no longer “illegals” enter the port of Tel Aviv, freely and proudly. No one hunted them down anymore or chased them or punished them for coming home. The shameful era of the “certificates” and the human arithmetic had ended, and as I stood there in the sun, my eyes fixed on that ship (an old Greek vessel called the SS Teti), I felt that no price demanded of us for this gift could possibly be too high. The first legal immigrant to land in the State of Israel was a tired, shabby old man called Samuel Brand, a survivor of Buchenwald. In his hand he clutched a crumpled slip of paper. It said only, “The right to settle in Israel is hereby given;” but it was signed by the “Immigration Department” of the state, and it was the first visa we ever issued.

And then, of course, there was the wonderful moment of our formal entry into the family of nations. A few minutes after midnight on the night of May 14, my phone rang. It had been ringing all evening, and as I ran to answer it, I wondered what bad news I would hear now. But the voice at the other end of the phone sounded jubilant. “Golda? Are you listening? Truman has recognized us!” I can't remember what I said or did, but I remember how I felt. It was like a miracle coming at the time of our greatest vulnerability, on the eve of the invasion, and I was filled with joy and relief. In a way, although all Israel rejoiced and gave thanks, I think that what President Truman did that night may have meant more to me than to most of my colleagues because I was the

“American” among us, the one who knew most about the United States, its history and its people, the only one who had grown up in that great democracy. And although I was as astonished as everyone else by the speed of the recognition, I was not at all surprised by the generous and good impulse that had brought it about. In retrospect, I think that like most miracles, this one was probably triggered by two very simple things: the fact that Harry Truman understood and respected our drive for independence because he was the sort of man who, under different circumstances, might well have been one of us himself, and the profound impression made on him by Chaim Weizmann, whom he had received in Washington and who had pleaded our cause and explained our situation in a way that no one had ever done in the White House before. Weizmann's work was of incalculable value.

American recognition was the greatest thing that could have happened to us that night.

As for the Soviet recognition of Israel, which followed the American recognition, that had other roots. There is now no doubt in my mind that the primary Soviet consideration was to get the British out of the Middle East. But all through the debates that had taken place at the United Nations in the autumn of 1947, it had seemed to me that the Soviet bloc was supporting us also because of the terrible toll that the Russians themselves had paid in the world war and their resultantly deep feeling that the Jews, who had also suffered so bitterly at the hands of the Nazis, deserved to have their state. However radically the Soviet attitude has changed in the intervening two and a half decades, I cannot now falsify the picture as I saw it then. Had it not been for the arms and ammunition that we were able to buy in Czechoslovakia and transport through Yugoslavia and other Balkan countries in those dark days at the start of the war, I do not know whether we actually could have held out until the tide changed, as it did by June 1948. For the first six weeks of the War of Independence, we relied largely (though not, of course, entirely) on the shells, machine guns, bullets—and even planes—that the Haganah had been able to purchase in Eastern Europe at a time when even the United States had declared an embargo on the sale or shipment of arms to the Middle East. One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present, and the fact remains that although the Soviet Union was to turn so savagely against and upon us in the years to come, the Soviet recognition of the State of Israel on May 18 was of immense significance for us.

It meant that the two greatest powers in the world had come together, for the first time since World War II, to back the Jewish state, and although we were still in deadly danger, we knew, at last, that we were not alone. It was in that knowledge combined with sheer necessity—that we found the spiritual, if not the material, strength that was to lead us to victory.

Also, while I am on this subject, let me say—for the record— that the second state to offer recognition to Israel on the day of its birth was little Guatemala, whose ambassador to the United Nations, Jorge García Granados, had been one of the most active members of UNSCOP.

So now we were an accepted fact. The only question that remained—and, incredibly enough, remains to this very day—was how we would stay alive. Not “if,” but “how.” By the morning of May 15 Israel was already under armed attack by the Egyptians from the south, the Syrian and Lebanese from the north and the northeast, the Jordanians and the Iraqis from the east. On paper it seemed that week as though there might be some grounds for the Arab boast that within ten days Israel would be crushed.

The most relentless advance was that of the Egyptians—though of all the invading armies, the Egyptians certainly had least to gain. Abdullah had a reason. It was a bad one; but it was there, and he was able to define it: He wanted the whole country and especially Jerusalem. Lebanon and Syria also had a reason: They hoped to be able to divide up the Galilee between themselves. Iraq wanted to participate in the bloodletting and—as a fringe benefit—acquire an outlet to the Mediterranean, through Jordan if necessary. But Egypt had no real war aim at all—except to loot and destroy whatever the Jews had built. As a matter of fact, it has never ceased to astonish me that the Arab states have been so eager to go to war against us. Almost from the very beginning of Zionist settlement until today they have been consumed by hatred for us. The only possible explanation—and it is a ridiculous one— is that they simply cannot bear our presence or forgive us for existing, and I find it hard to believe that the leaders of all the Arab states are and always have been so hopelessly primitive in their thinking.

On the other hand, what have we ever done to threaten the Arab states? True, we have not stood in line to return territory we won in wars they started, but territory, after all, has never ever been what Arab aggression is all about—and in 1948 it was certainly not a need for more land that drove the Egyptians northward in the hope of reaching and destroying Tel Aviv and Jewish Jerusalem. So, what was it? An overpowering irrational urge to eliminate us physically? Fear of the progress we might introduce in the Middle East? A distaste for Western civilization? Who knows? Whatever it was, it has lasted—but then so have we—and the solution will probably not be found for many years, although I have no doubt at all that the time will come when the Arab states will accept us—as we are and for what we are. In a nutshell, peace is—and always has been dependent entirely on only one thing:

The Arab leaders must acquiesce in our being here.

In 1948, however, it was understandable that the Arab states— given in any case to chronic flights of fancy—saw themselves as racing through what was now Israel in a matter of days. To begin with, they had begun the war, which gave them great tactical superiority. Secondly, they had easy, not to say effortless, overland access to Palestine, with its Arab population, which had been incited against the Jews for years. Thirdly, the Arabs could move without any problems from one part of the country to the other.

Fourthly, the Arabs controlled most of the hilly regions of Palestine from which our lowland settlements could be attacked without much difficulty. Finally, the Arabs had an absolute superiority of manpower and arms and had been given considerable help by the British in various ways, both direct and indirect.

And what did we have? Not much of anything—and even that is an exaggeration. A few thousand rifles, a few hundred machine guns, an assortment of other firearms, but on May 14, 1948, not a single cannon or tank, although we had all of nine planes (never mind that only one had two engines!). The machinery for making arms had been bought abroad—thanks to Ben-Gurion's amazing foresight—but couldn't be brought into Israel until the British had left, and then it had to be assembled and run in. Our trained manpower situation was also very unimpressive, as far as statistics were concerned. There were about 45,000 men, women and teenagers in the Haganah, a few thousand members of the two dissident underground organizations and a few hundred recent arrivals who had been given some training with wooden rifles and dummy bullets—in the DP camps of Germany and the detention camps of Cyprus and after independence, another few thousand Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers from abroad. That was all. But we couldn't afford the luxury of pessimism either, so we made an altogether different kind of calculation based on the fact that the 650,000 of us were more highly motivated to stay alive than anyone outside Israel could be expected to understand and that the only option available to us, if we didn't want to be pushed into the sea, was to win the war. So, we won it. But it wasn't easy, it wasn't quick, and it wasn't cheap. From the day that the UN resolution to partition Palestine was passed (November 29, 1947) until the day that the first armistice agreement was signed by Israel and Egypt (February 24, 1949) 6,000 young Israelis were killed, 1 percent of our entire population, and although we couldn't have known it then, we hadn't even bought peace with all those lives.

For me to have had to leave Israel the moment the state was established was more difficult than I can say. The very last thing I wanted to do was to go abroad, but on Sunday, May 16, a cable came from Henry Montor, vice-president of the United Jewish Appeal. American Jewry had been profoundly moved by what had happened. There were no limits to its excitement or its pride.

If I came back, even for a short tour, he thought we might raise another $50,000,000. No one knew better than I what that kind of money would mean to Israel, how desperately we needed the arms it would buy or how much it would cost to move and settle the 30,000 Jews penned up in Cyprus, who had waited so long to come to Israel. My heart sank at the thought of tearing myself away from the country, but there was no real choice at all. After discussing the matter with Ben-Gurion, I cabled back at once that I would leave on the first plane. Luckily, there were no preparations to make for the trip. My clothes, such as they were, were all in Jerusalem, as out of reach as though they were on the moon, so all I had to “pack” was a hairbrush, a toothbrush and a clean blouse, though when I got to New York, I discovered that the veil I had worn to Amman was still in my bag! I managed to speak to Sarah briefly and tell her that I would be back in a month at the very most and to receive a hastily produced laissez-passer, which was, in fact, the first travel document to be given any citizen of the State of Israel. Then I left on the very first plane that was available.

In the States I was greeted as though I were the personification of Israel. Over and over again I told the story of the proclamation, of the beginning of the war, of the continuing siege of Jerusalem, and over and over again I assured the Jews of America that with their help Israel would prevail. I spoke in city after city throughout the States, at UJA lunches, dinners and teas and at parlor meetings in people's homes. Whenever I felt overwhelmed by fatigue—which was often—all I had to do was to remind myself that I was now talking as an emissary of a Jewish state, and my tiredness. simply drained away. It even took me weeks to accustom myself to the sound of the word “Israel” and to the fact that I now had a new nationality. But the purpose of my journey was not in the least sentimental. I had come to raise money, as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, and my message was as blunt in May as it had been in January. The State of Israel, I told Jews all over America, could not survive on applause. The war would not be won by speeches or declarations or even tears of happiness.

And time was of the essence, or there would be nothing to applaud.

“We cannot go on without your help,” I said in dozens of public and private appearances. “What we ask of you is that you share in our responsibility, with everything that this implies— difficulties, problems, hardships and joys. Surely what is happening in the Jewish world today is so important, so vital that you, too, can change your way of life for a year, or two, or three until together we have put Israel on its feet. Make up your minds and give me your answers.”

They answered me with unprecedented generosity and speed, with their whole hearts and souls. Nothing was too much or too good, and by their response they reaffirmed their sense of partnership with us, as I had hoped they would. Although there was as yet no separate drive for Israel, and although less than 50 percent of the $150,000,000 raised for the UJA in 1948 actually went to Israel (the rest was turned over to the Joint Distribution Committee for aid to Jews in European countries), that 50 percent unquestionably helped us win the war. It also taught us that the involvement of American Jewry in the State of Israel was a factor on which we could count.

As I traveled, I met many people who were themselves later to become “spokesmen” of the state, men who had not been intimately involved in the Zionist effort before 1948, but who now were moved to make Israel their life's work—and who were to be my close associates in the founding of the Israel Bond Organization in 1950. In the past, whenever I had come to the United States, it had been on missions for the Histadrut, and I had spent my time almost entirely with Labor Zionists. But in 1948 I met a new kind of American Jew—well-to-do, super-efficient and totally committed. In the first instance there was, of course, Henry Montor himself, brusque, gifted and deeply concerned with Israel, a slave driver who mercilessly drove himself as well as others in the attempt to raise ever larger sums of money. But there were also businessmen, hardheaded, experienced industrialists like Bill Rosenwald, Sam Rothberg, Lou Boyar and Harold Goldenberg, to name just a few of the men with whom I found time to talk hurriedly on that whirlwind tour about the possibility of selling bonds for Israel, as well as making appeals for philanthropy.

But all the time I waited anxiously for the moment when I could return home, although I already knew that the newly created Foreign Office, particularly the new foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, had other plans for me. The day before I left for the States, Sharett and I had met in my hotel, and he had spoken to me of the problems of manning the embassies and consulates that Israel would have to establish in those countries that had either already recognized it or were likely to do so within a few weeks.

“I have no one for Moscow,” he said in a very worried voice.

“Well, thank God, you can't offer it to me,” I replied. “My Russian is almost nonexistent.”

“As a matter of fact, that isn't what matters,” he answered. But he didn't pursue the topic and I tried to dismiss it as a good joke.

Although I sometimes thought about that conversation when I was flying from one place to another in the States, I fervently hoped that Sharett himself had forgotten all about it.

One day, however, a cable came from Tel Aviv. I glanced at the signature before I read the text to make sure that it wasn't about Sarah or Menachem (already with his brigade and in combat). But when I saw the name Moshe, I knew that it was about Moscow, and I had to steel myself to read the message. The state was not even a month old. The war was not over. The children were not yet safe. I had a family and dear friends in Israel, and it seemed to me that it was grossly unfair to ask me to pack my bags again so soon and take off for such a remote and essentially unknown post.

“Why is it always me?” I thought, in a burst of self-pity. There were plenty of other people who could do the job as well, better in fact. And Russia of all places, the country I had left as a little girl and of which I had not a single pleasant memory. At least in America I was doing something real, concrete and practical, but what did I know or care about diplomacy? Of all my comrades, I thought, I was surely the least suited to diplomatic life. But I also knew that Sharett must have secured Ben-Gurion's consent to the appointment, and Ben-Gurion was certainly not likely to be swayed by any personal appeals. And then there was the matter of discipline. Who was I to disobey or even demur at a time when each day brought news of fresh casualties? One's duty was one's duty—and it had nothing to do with justice. So, what if I longed to be in Israel? Other people longed for their children to be alive or whole again. So, after a few more cables and telephone calls, I answered Sharett's cable, not very enthusiastically but affirmatively.

“When I get back to Israel, I will try to persuade Moshe and Ben-Gurion that they have made a mistake,” I promised myself.

At the end of the first week of June, however, my appointment as Israel's minister to Moscow was made public.

I took a day off to see old friends in New York and say goodbye to new ones. I was determined to visit Fanny and Jacob Goodman before I left. Neither the children nor I had ever lost touch with them, and I thought it would cheer me up to spend an hour or two with them, telling them about Sarah and Zechariah and Sheyna's children, whom they hadn't seen for so long. But I never got to their house. On the way to Brooklyn a car crashed into my cab, and the next thing I knew I had a badly fractured leg enveloped in a gigantic plaster cast and my address for the next few weeks was neither Moscow nor Tel Aviv, but the New York Hospital for Joint Diseases! Looking back at the times and at my mood, I think that nothing including the blessing of the phlebitis and blood clots I developed) could have kept me in that hospital had it not been for the fact that on June 11, the fighting had temporarily ended in Israel.

By June 11, the progress of the Arab invasion had been halted.

The Egyptian attempt to conquer Tel Aviv and Jerusalem had failed, although the Jordanians were still battering away at Jerusalem from the east and the north, and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City had fallen to Abdullah's Arab Legion. The Syrians, although their advance in the north had been stopped, still held a bridgehead on the Jordan River, and the Iraqis were still poised against the narrowest part of the country in Samaria. The United Nations had been trying for weeks to impose a truce, but as long as they had some hope of defeating Israel, the Arabs were not at all interested. However, as soon as it became quite clear to them, as well as to us, that this was not about to happen, they agreed to a ceasefire—to the first truce, which was to last for twenty-eight days and gave us a chance to rest, rally and plan the major offensives that in July removed the last threats to Tel Aviv and the coastal plain, lifted the siege on Jerusalem and destroyed all the major Arab bases in the Galilee.

So, in theory, pain or no pain, I might have caught my breath a bit in the hospital—both physically and emotionally—but actually I was under enormous pressure there all the time. To begin with, there were the television cameras and the newspapermen. A woman minister to Moscow would have been a novelty in any case in 1948, but a woman minister to Moscow who represented the tiny embattled State of Israel and who was totally immobilized in New York must have been a real bargain. I suppose I could have refused to be interviewed—and today, of course, that is just what I would do under such circumstances. But at that time, I thought it would be good for Israel if we got a lot of publicity, and I felt that I mustn't turn down a single request from the press although the various members of the family, especially Clara, were absolutely appalled by the three-ring circus going on in my room.

What was much worse, though, was the pressure I was under to get to Moscow. I was literally bombarded with cables from Israel.

WHEN CAN YOU LEAVE NEW YORK? WHEN CAN YOU TAKE OVER? HOW DO YOU FEEL? Rumors had spread in Israel that this was a “diplomatic” illness and that nothing was really wrong with me except that I didn't want to go to Russia. But as if this disgusting whispering campaign was not bad enough, there were also indications that the Soviet government was offended by my supposed “malingering,” which was “actually” a tactic designed to delay the exchange of ministers so that the U.S. ambassador to Israel could arrive first and thus become dean of the diplomatic corps. All this was something I had to take very seriously, regardless of my state of health. So, there was nothing I could do except start tormenting my doctors for permission to leave the hospital. It was, need I say, the wrong thing to have done. I should have remained in New York until I was completely well. Both our Foreign Office and the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have survived without me for a few more weeks and I would have spared myself a great deal of misery and at least one operation later on. But one of the penalties of public office is that one loses one's sense of proportion in certain respects, and I was convinced that there would be some kind of terrible crisis unless I turned up in Moscow as soon as possible.

I did make one attempt, when I got back to Israel, to talk Sharett out of the whole thing, but by then it wasn't a very wholehearted attempt. One day I heard an interesting story that cheered me up: Ehud Avriel, one of the Haganah men who had done most to secure arms for us in Czechoslovakia and who later became Israel's first minister to Prague, had been invited for a talk with the Soviet ambassador in that city. In the course of the conversation the Russian said to Avriel, “I suppose your people are looking around for someone to send to Moscow. Don't feel that it has to be a person whose Russian is fluent or who is an expert on Marxism and Leninism. Neither of these qualifications is important.” Then, after a while, as though à propos of nothing, he said to Avriel, “By the way, what is happening to Mrs. Meyerson? Is she going to stay in Israel or does she have other plans?” From this my friends including Sharett gathered that the Russians had more or less asked for me, in their own way, and I began to feel differently about going.

Also, one of the few pleasant things that had occurred while I was in the hospital was that one morning I got a cable from Tel Aviv: DO YOU HAVE ANY OBJECTION TO APPOINTMENT OF SARAH AND ZECHARIAH AS RADIO OPERATORS IN MOSCOW EMBASSY? I was very touched—and grateful. To have Sarah and Zechariah with me in Russia was almost worth the exile from Israel. One of my first projects when I came back to Tel Aviv was to ask Sheyna if Sarah and Zechariah could be married in the small house which Shamai and she had bought years ago. We decided it would be a real family wedding, with only a few “outside” guests. My father had died in 1946—another of the people who were most dear to me and who had not lived to see the state and my mother, poor soul, had been incapacitated for several years, her memory gone, her eyesight bad, her personality quite faded away, leaving almost not race of the critical, energetic, peppery woman she had been. But Morris was there, as gentle as ever and beaming with pride, and so were Zechariah's parents. His father had come to Palestine from Yemen when the Turks still ruled the country. He was very poor, very religious and not formally educated, except in the Torah, but he had brought up a wonderful and loving family though Zechariah himself by now was quite removed from Yemenite customs and traditions.

I settled in again at the hotel on the seashore. Sarah flew from Revivim to Tel Aviv and moved in with me for a few days, and Zechariah, who had been very ill and in a hospital near Tel Aviv for weeks, was finally discharged. Of our immediate family, only Clara and Menachem were missing at the wedding in Sheyna's garden. I couldn't help thinking how different my own wedding had been under what different circumstances it had taken place and how differently Morris and I had started out on life together.

There was no point to wondering now who had been to blame or why our marriage had fallen apart, but I felt (and rightly it turned out) that Sarah and Zechariah, although they were the same age that we had been when we stood under that bridal canopy in Milwaukee, were more mature and better suited to each other and that they would succeed where Morris and I had failed.

In between rushing around to party meetings, being briefed on the Soviet Union and making plans for our departure, I concentrated on thinking about the kind of representation that Israel should have in the Soviet Union. How did we want to show ourselves abroad? What did we want the world in general and the USSR in particular to think about Israel? What sort of state were we in the process of creating, and how could we best reflect its quality? The more I thought about it, the less I thought that our legations should mimic those of other countries. Israel was small, poor and still at war. Its government was still a provisional government (the first elections to the Knesset took place only in January 1949), but the majority of its members would certainly represent the labor movement. The face we turned to the world, I was convinced, needed no makeup at all. We had established a pioneering state in a sorely beleaguered country, devoid of natural resources or any wealth, a state to which hundreds of thousands of DPs—who also had nothing were already streaming in the hope of making a new life for themselves. If we wanted to be understood and respected by other states, we would have to be abroad what we were at home. Lavish entertaining, grand apartments, conspicuous consumption of any kind were not for us.

Austerity, modesty and a sense of our own worth and purpose were what we had to offer, and anything else would be false.

There was something at the back of my mind all the time that I was thinking along these lines, and then one day I found it. The legation in Moscow would be run in the most typically Israeli style I knew: like a kibbutz. We would work together, eat together, get the same amount of pocket money and take turns doing whatever chores had to be done. As in Merhavia or Revivim, people would do the work that they were trained for and suited to in the opinion of our Foreign Office but the spirit of the legation, its atmosphere and flavor would be that of a collective settlement—which, apart from any other consideration, ought, I believed, to be especially attractive to the Russians (not that their own brand of collectivism was or is anything to write home about). We were to be twenty-six people in all, including Sarah, Zechariah and myself, and the legation's counselor, Mordechai Namir, a widower who brought his fifteen-year-old daughter, Yael, with him. (Namir afterward served as Israel's ambassador to the USSR, then as minister of labor and, for ten years, as mayor of Tel Aviv.) As my personal assistant I chose a most charming woman, Eiga Shapiro, who not only spoke Russian, but also knew much more about the niceties of life than I did and who could be entrusted, I was sure, with such (to me terrifying) missions as deciding what furniture and clothing legation personnel and the minister would need.

Even before I returned to Tel Aviv, I wrote to Eiga to ask her to join me, if and when I indeed went to Moscow and to my delight she agreed at once. One of the notes she sent to New York at the end of June is before me now, and it tells something, I think, of what was involved in sending a woman to a top diplomatic post—particularly a woman like myself who was so determined to live in Russia in much the same way she lived at home. She wrote:

I have had a talk with Ehud. He tells me that we shall have to be very comme il faut. So please, Golda, what about a fur coat for yourself? It is very cold in the place to which you are traveling, and most people there wear fur coats in the winter. You need not buy yourself mink, but a good Persian lamb will be very serviceable... You will also need a few evening dresses, and buy yourself woollies—warm nightgowns, woolen stockings and woolen underwear. And please get yourself a pair of good snowshoes.

The question of dress was obviously not uppermost in my mind, but for a while I regretted that we had no national costume which would have solved at least one problem for me, as it did for Mrs. Pandit, the only other woman diplomat in Moscow, who wore her sari, of course, on all ceremonial occasions. In the end Eiga and I agreed that when I presented my credentials, I would wear a long black dress sewn for me in Tel Aviv and that, when necessary, I would wear a small black velvet turban with it. As far as furnishing the legation was concerned, Eiga undertook to do that in Scandinavia as soon as we found permanent accommodation in Moscow. In the interim, we would establish our “kibbutz” in a hotel. There was also the question of finding and taking with us to Russia someone whose French was absolutely perfect, since it had been decided that French would be Israel's diplomatic language. Eiga introduced me to a bright, amusing, painfully thin young woman called Lou Kaddar, who was born in Paris, whose French was beyond reproach and who had lived in Jerusalem all through the siege and had been badly wounded. I liked her the moment I set eyes on her—and it was just as well that I did, because for the better part of the next twenty-seven years Lou was my close friend, my indispensable assistant and, more often than not, my travel companion. At all events, she agreed to go with us to Russia.

I stayed in Israel long enough that summer to welcome the first U.S. ambassador to Israel, that delightfully frank and warm gentleman James G. McDonald, whom I had met before, and to meet the Russian minister, Pavel I. Yershov. It was typical of the newness of the state and of its lack of proper housing that the American and Soviet missions in Tel Aviv made their first home in the same hotel, not far from mine, and I never quite got used to seeing the stars and stripes fly from one end of the hotel roof and the hammer and sickle from the other. There were all sorts of “incidents” during the first weeks of this “coexistence.” I remember, for instance, a gala performance of the Israel National Opera at which the orchestra opened with first “Hatikvah” and then, in McDonald's honor, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but not the “Internationale,” though Yershov's counselor was present—at least until the intermission, when he and his party rather noisily walked out. Everyone in our Foreign Office was reduced to trembling in his boots until Yershov himself agreed to accept our explanation that had he been there, the Soviet anthem would have certainly been played. Today these minor disasters seem funny, but at the time we all took them very seriously. Nothing ever appeared unimportant to us, and Sharett, by nature, was both exacting and sensitive to a remarkable degree and felt—as did the Russians themselves, by the way—that protocol was of the utmost importance, although I could never see why it mattered so much.

A second truce began on July 19, signaling the start of a long, painful round of negotiations over the Negev, which Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish UN mediator, recommended be handed over to the Arabs. Considering the fact that he was really a referee, his position was amazingly lacking in neutrality, and he became extremely unpopular particularly when he added insult to injury by advocating also that Jerusalem be torn away from the Jewish state and that the UN supervise Israel's air and seaports.

God knows that these recommendations were unacceptable and that they proved only that Bernadotte really never understood what the State of Israel was all about. But it is certainly no crime to be obtuse, and I was horrified when, on September 17, only two weeks after I arrived in Moscow, I learned that Bernadotte had been shot to death on a quiet street in Jerusalem. Although his assailants were never identified, we knew it would be assumed that they were Jews. I thought the end of the world had come, and I would have given anything to have been able to fly home and be there during the ensuing crisis, but by then I was already deeply involved in a totally new and very demanding way of life.

Works Cited

Meir, G. (1975). My Life. New York, NY, United States of America: Putnam.

[1] Yishuv (ישוב) denote the body of Jewish residents in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

[2] United Nations Special Committee on Palestine.

#Golda Meir #Memoir #Israel #Golda Mabovitch #גולדה מאיר