#then wild cough for three weeks after infection forcing me to go to sleep before 22 and not leaving much time for art

[smimon]

Of course it is green

#summary of art #art summary #my art #added convention stickers because i really like how many i made. it was such a fun action #oh dear this year did not start kindly for me #first tailbone contusion and inability to sit for a whole month #then wild cough for three weeks after infection forcing me to go to sleep before 22 and not leaving much time for art #then some other minor nuisances #and holidays with family #all of this must have happened to encourage me to get into esc earlier than usual #giving me just enough time to get familiar with käärijä so that the passion could explode right when i needed it the most #and the rest is history #wow #see you next year 🧡 #eyestrain warning

[kyle-valenti]

burnout only feels like burning

2.7k / Summary: kyle valenti doesn't have the same quarantine as his friends; an exploration of kyle's trauma during covid as a doctor. (tw depression & other triggers you’d imagine with this subject)

read & comment/ ao3

A little like the virus itself, Kyle’s relationship with his mask begins with worry, annoyance, and then pain. He’s more than happy to have the proper N-95 mask as they begin to get their first case at Roswell General but then a couple more patients trickle in and within a few days his skin is irritated and itching. Maybe it’s the news, maybe it’s the texts from his friends that he’s increasingly missing, but when the Regiment starts spouting off about how COVID is a joke he thinks it might be affecting his nerves too. By week three his former red mark left by the mask has become a permanent feature to his face and by week five it’s not a mark but a bruise instead. Blisters and cracks in his skin litter his hands from over-washing. His feet become so overused the pads of his feet feel numb and bruised and he wears through an entire pair of shoes.

Positivity has fled from his life by week seven and now he’s inside of a survival mode he’s never experienced. He thought after last year he’d be used to anything the world (or universe, rather, given all these aliens) could throw at him. Now what feels foolish, he had believed that there was nothing that could be worse than the previous pain of losing a patient or finding out his father had experimented on people’s lives. 

When he’s out of ventilators and CPAP machines because Albuquerque needs them more and he has to choose whether or not to save the life of an eighty five year old or a thirty two year old he remembers from high school, he breaks.

 Guilt is one thing, grief is another, but the pure rage he feels knowing that Max Evans is out on the town patrolling as some fucking cop and not someone who could heal most of this hospital makes him want to commit actual murder. Maybe trading the blood of an alien on his hands would feel less heart-wrenching. But no. Max had brought back Rosa and had paid the price. Quelling his anger, he went back to work.

 He slept at the hospital most nights in the height of it. Sure the couch was rough, but it was better than the other on-call doctor beds down the hall. Three twelve hour ER shifts of a usual work week doubled to five days of thirteen hour shifts. Soon there’s a week where he pulls double shifts for an entire week when one of his nurses is urgently hospitalized herself. Hospital directors had left them with no PPE except contaminated masks to reuse. Maria, Isobel, and Rosa are in the forefront of a drive to make and donate masks to his hospital after some social media posts that he doesn’t even see until the cloth masks arrive and his medical assistants give him their handwritten note. It makes him smile, but smiling feels so foreign that he almost wants to break from that.

 Visitors are no longer allowed which means Kyle isn’t allowed to use his bedside manner to comfort the family of patients. He has to facetime mothers, spouses, and children and hold the phone over a patient who can’t breathe without machine assistance and pretend that everything is fine and that there’s still hope despite the hypoxia and lack of rising vitals. Ignore that if the patient goes into cardiac arrest more than once, the kindest thing to do given prognosis is to let the patient pass. Resuscitation and DNR (a patient’s begging request to not be resuscitated) becomes a word he uses in his daily work and not simply for intense surgeries.

 Exhaustion isn’t a deep enough adjective to describe the fugue state he goes into. File to file, room to room, ventilator to next… he isn’t surprised when his body starts to wear down. When he no longer feels hunger and instead feels all too hot and dizzy. Telling himself it’s just because of how much he’s exerting his body while covered in layers and layers of protective clothing doesn’t help the fact that he’s starting to have more trouble breathing as he walks the hallways at a fast pace. When he begins to cough, he does what he promised himself he wouldn’t do and drives out post-shift to the desert cabin of Max Evans.

 Part of him is too desperately tired to knock, but when he arrives on the property with the cop car idle and the house dark and at peace for the night, his fury greets him with the embrace of a long-lost friend. Knuckles pound at the wood and Max answers the door with surprise and a general look of defense, and Kyle tries not to immediately punch him in the face at the fact he looks like he had woken up from a comfortable sleep.

 “Heal me.” Kyle manages to spit out.

 “I—what’s wrong?”

 “Beginning stages of respiratory distress, fever, nausea—what do you fucking think?”

 “Kyle—,” Max starts to say, the hesitation deepening, and that does it.

 “No. I have not asked you for anything in all of this, Evans. Anything!” He shouts, voice hoarse. “Not when people got sick, not when they started dying, not even when we started having to let people die on purpose. And you know what? I wasn’t going to even come and ask you now, but I can’t get sick when I’m the one here fucking saving lives out of the two of us and you’re just cruising the streets handing out goddamn traffic tickets.”

 Max’s face isn’t stony like it usually is when Kyle’s yelling at him; this time it’s crushed and guilty but not nearly enough. “What kind of hours you work this week, Evans? A nice 8 to 4? Did you get facetime with Isobel or your mom, maybe binge through a few books and movies after you’re home? Did you sit down and eat a nice dinner and or go over to drink a few beers with Guerin since you can’t get sick? Even get a nice eight hours of sleep in your own bed in your nice quiet home?”

 No response.

 “I am not asking to sequence your DNA like Liz. All I am asking is for you to let me heal people since you don’t want to.”

 A night breeze is all that makes noise for a moment as Kyle catches his breath and glares at Max, who stands quietly but is staring down at his boots before he finally looks up and nods. Max steps forward then, and Kyle sees that his eyes are actually filled with tears. Temper deflating, but still not subsiding entirely, given that not much else is able to be done; Kyle lets Max place a hand on his shoulder and feels the extremely weird feeling spread throughout his body. Something more electric than anything else, which God knew made a lot more sense concerning his powers and how the body operated with electrical nerve impulses, but that is a train of thought better left for another day. He wants to just walk away, and he almost does, but he still mutters a “thank you” before he does so.

When his nurse dies a few days later and he watches as the staff double bag her body to take to the morgue, he escapes to his office and crashes on his couch with sobs. There’s no one here to support him. He can’t go to his mother’s home and collapse into one of her comforting embraces without risking infecting her. He can’t get wasted at the Wild Pony with Maria when it’s closed. He can’t visit Rosa or Arturo at the Crashdown. Keeping his friends and family safe meant keeping them away from him. Keeping them safe meant he needed to stop pushing his head into his hands to try and control the sound of his crying and get back to work at saving the lives around them.

He gets put on leave by the hospital administrator when he’s almost arrested for decking Wyatt Long in the hospital parking lot as the idiot stood outside with a sign rallying Regiment members to make sure the hospital was told it was killing people on purpose for the election. If Jenna hadn’t been the officer on duty he would have been cuffed and put on record, jeopardizing his license, but there was some self-preserving part of him that desperately wished for his practice to be over anyway. He’s not even sure how Jenna handles it, honestly, all he remembers is her dropping him off at his house from her patrol car like she had been nothing but an uber. No matter how angry and adamant he gets, his boss refuses to bend, saying it’s for his own good given the connections the Long’s have in the town and how Kyle has worked almost 74 of the past 76 days.

Alex is the first to visit him, unannounced. When the doorbell rings Kyle is mindlessly pretending to watch some tv show in his living room that’ll distract him from his consuming thoughts about patients, so he doesn’t get up to answer. He checks his silent phone to see if he was forewarned of a visitor but sees nothing. Unsure if it’s his boss or a patient’s family, he forces himself up onto his sore feet and opens the door after grabbing a regular mask off the coffee table. Black face mask on and standing further out from the door on the porch is Alex, the usual gruff hello turned into something soft. “Hey.”

Kyle heaves a sigh. He had wondered when the pity visits would begin. “Hey. You really shouldn’t be around me, you know.”

“I’m clearly a minimum of eight feet away in an open space while masked.” Alex smarts back. “Either way, I’m worried about you.”

Scoffing, he shakes his head. “Don’t fucking worry about me. Worry about getting sick, because if I have to see another person I care about die, I--,”

“Kyle.” the other says too kindly, the sort of pacifying voice Alex reserved for only the most dire situations. “I have no idea what you’re dealing with in specifics, but my experiences do overlap with yours in some places.”

“And?”

Maybe it came out a little too rude, because Alex raises a brow, but then sighs instead. “And I’m just checking in to make sure you know people care about you.”

“Thanks, Manes.” Kyle huffs in return, managing not to roll his eyes because focusing on being blunt and abrasive was so much easier.

“Just be careful.” Alex interjects before Kyle could close the door and turn back to his show. “Dealing with the trauma of what you’re dealing with gets dark very quickly.”

“Because I punched Wyatt Long?” he spits back sarcastically.

“No, because the suicide rates for healthcare professionals are drastically increasing along with the rates of PTSD diagnoses.” Alex says flatly, ever one to be unfazed by sarcasm. “And I’ve lost more active duty members to suicide than I have combat.”

Kyle pauses, caught. Maybe Alex had known he would be, because there isn’t some way he can give a smile and reassuring wave with him like he could his mother or Liz. While Kyle hadn’t actively thought of a plan, he couldn’t pretend he had noticed signs of depression the second he was alone in his house. 

“The quiet is the worst part, right?” Alex says, all but reading his mind. “Not always because of the flashbacks, although those are horrible, but because if things are quiet then--,”

“--people are dying.” Kyle finishes, his voice raspier by the end of the three words. “Yeah, well, mine still are.”

“They’re going to.” Is what felt like a cold response, but somehow gave Kyle the understanding he’s been craving. “They’re going to die and because of your profession you’re going to be able to save some of them. Which will make you think you’re responsible to save all of them and because you’re a good person you’re going to feel guilty in ways that no one will understand for being human and failing to.”

“Failing is all I do lately.” Kyle replies. “Usually the wins feel higher than the losses as a doctor, but with this-- and no one outside of it cares. They go outside and yell about how this is about a fucking election and when it’s not the patients, it’s the hospital pretending they don’t have enough money to buy us proper protection. Or the government saying this will all go away and that it’s just a light cold.”

Alex gives a small nod. “I know. I also know telling you the same advice that you’d give another doctor of trying not to burn out and instead taking a small rest is useless. So I’m just going to drop off these dvd’s and make you report back to me the difference when you’re done.”

Star Trek and Star Wars. Kyle finds a smile tug on his lips. Alex leaves with one on his as well.

When he gives a response to Alex a few days later on how Star Wars is better not more than a few minutes later Deluca is texting him with recommendations on joining her Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch. There’s something sweet about the fact that people have been clearly talking about him, even if definitely borderline creepy with how nosy his circle of friends can be, but he sighs and lets Maria add him to the group chat she has with Rosa and Liz where they review each episode after the fact and even chimes in every now and then. Isobel gets added not long after due to an Instagram story Maria shares and then the group has moved onto Friends after everyone shoots down Liz for suggesting Grey’s Anatomy on behalf of Kyle. Alex is also in there, even if it’s rare he chimes in with an opinion, but once they start Friends his commentary about how much he hates Ross that gets the entire group riled up does tend to make him laugh. Even Kyle agrees with Forest-- whose opinion had been shared by Alex-- that Chandler had all too many queer-coded scenes with Joey.

His mother facetimes him daily, which given how they both don’t exactly go out much starts to become monotonous, until she begins to give in and talk about memories she has of their father. Tidbits she never would have shared with him about their adult life when he was a child or teenager. He in turn facetimes Rosa and shares some of the memories of their father as well, which as much as she tries to pretend she doesn’t want for Arturo’s sake she clearly does with the million questions she asks every single time and the small smile she gives him at the end of their calls.

Liz updates him on her work which is a nice reprieve from everyone’s normalcy and lack of medical jargon sometimes, especially when she gives him inside info on covid vaccine studies not yet published to the general public yet. Everything in him wants this more than anything else in the world right now and he texts her almost every day asking if she’s heard more news even when he knows things take time. She’s a good sport about everything, even when he shares in a very angry rant about Max Evans and how they could have helped so many more people so much more quickly with his DNA-- however selfish that might have been.

When he goes back to work, he feels refreshed, even when it makes things hit like a freight train once more. Lost in a sea of inadequacy, his feelings extend past the pandemic. Even when things return to a level of normalcy and the cases subside he gets alien medical drama thrown in his face once more, and he starts to wonder if he’ll ever recover. If he was wrong to choose this calling. If the fact he can’t help Max or Maria is a sign from above or his father that it’s time to make some career move or change location like his mother and Liz. But, like he tells Michael Guerin. He can’t think he can face his future children and say he walked away from this. Or let people die by quitting, just like Rosa warns. And so he stays and tries to heal both other people and himself.

#so yeah this was the lighter version #i had to stop before things got to dark for my own mind #also genuinely feel like the mentions he gives to rosa about feeling lost #should stem from this if the writers aren't cowards #kyle valenti #rnm fic #kyle valenti fic #roswell new mexico #tw covid #tw depression #my fic #my post

[lesetoilesfous]

For @alienturnipp, from the angst prompt list for Nanders, “people who are okay don’t act like this”

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Nathaniel Howe/ Anders

Characters: Anders, Nathaniel Howe

Tags: Awakening fun, canon-typical Circle abuse

Rating: Mature

*

Nathaniel is not, habitually, heavy footed. On more than one occasion, the commander’s Antivan lover had suggested he take up a career in dance, ( “so light are your dainty footsteps, mi amigo.”) He’s not sure whether Anders knows this. This is largely because after three incidents in which Nathaniel had caused the mage to fall into something alarmingly akin to a panic attack, Nate has made an effort to be heavy footed around him.

Still, Anders jumps when Nathaniel knocks on the door to his room. The door is open - Nathaniel has never known Anders to close it, and the mage himself is standing in fairly sparse surroundings looking...lost. The expression fades almost as soon as Nathaniel catches it, like a mirage, Instead Anders gives him a smile as bright and thin as cheap paint. 

“Howe! Wasn’t expecting you...here. How do you do that? You always seem to melt out of the blighted shadows.”

Anders laughs, but the sound rings hollow, and his long fingers shake a little even as he brushes them against his robe. Nathaniel frowns. “Are you alright?”

It’s been three weeks since he and the mage were conscripted by the warden commander. More has happened in those three weeks than most of the time Nathaniel spent soldiering in the marches, but Anders still acts as if he’s only just arrived. It’s...disconcerting.

The mage, for his part, smiles again, “Oh yes, don’t worry about me, I’m not going to go all demon on you.” He wiggles his fingers, as if to emphasise his point, and his light brown eyes flicker over Nathaniel’s shoulder, to the empty corridor beyond.

Nathaniel knows that no one is there - he makes it his business to know when he’s being watched - but he turns anyway, and cannot help but feel the pantomime must be painfully obvious as he makes a show of checking to see if anyone is there. In the low, rainy grey light of Amaranthine it’s hard to tell, but when he turns back he thinks he can see Anders flushing.

Anders claps, and seems to startle himself with the volume of the sound (outside, a few of the mabari start barking, and he stiffens almost imperceptibly.) “So! Does the commander need me? Has she finally realised she has no use for me after all? Time for me to get shipped back off to the Circle? Between you and me, I think I’ll put up a fight. For old time’s sake, you know.”

Nathaniel’s frown deepens, and he moves to cross the threshold into Anders’ chamber, but hesitates. Something at the back of his head tells him that he needs to respect the mage’s space, and whether it’s old prejudice or gut instinct, Nate can’t quite force himself to disregard it. Instead he shakes his head, “Why would you think that?”

Anders laughs, and again, it rings hollow. “Oh, well, you know. It’s been a week and I haven’t been forced to risk my life again, so. I figured…”

Nathaniel cannot shake the irritating feeling that he’s missing something. “She cares about you a great deal. You knew each other in the Circle, didn’t you?”

Anders snorts, and it’s graceless enough that Nathaniel believes it’s honest. “As much as you could know anyone there. And she was younger than me. Mages aren’t allowed to mix with apprentices once we’ve passed our Harrowing.” Anders wrinkles his nose. “I suppose they want to stop us getting attached.”

“Why?” Nathaniel asks the question without meaning to and regrets it immediately. He’s certain he will not like the answer.

Anders shrugs, stiff and awkward in his tall frame. “Most of them die.”

Something of Nathaniel’s shock must show on his face, because Anders laughs - for real this time, though a little bitterly. His long hands flicker through the air like restless birds.

“Hate to break it to you Nate, but the Circle has a pretty high death rate.” Anders laughs again, higher pitched and a little manic. “Would you look at that? I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.”

Nathaniel crosses the threshold. He catches Anders hands without thinking, arresting their ceaseless, anxious movement through the empty air. Beneath his hands, Anders’ wrists are too thin. Nathaniel still isn’t entirely convinced the templars who’d caught Anders were feeding him. The mage, for his part, falls into startled silence. Nathaniel watches his pulse racing through the thin skin of his throat as he swallows, and is reminded of nothing so much as a hare.

But then he looks up into Anders’ brown, golden eyes, and sees the fierce thread of rebellion there (“I think I’ll put up a fight. For old time’s sake, you know”), and Nathaniel realises that Anders has never been anything other than a fox: wily and wild and refusing to be tamed. “What is the matter?”

Anders purses his lips. This close, he smells of the embrium and elfroot he carries with him on his belt. Nathaniel is half surprised he isn’t making poultices now. He usually was. He claimed it helped him think, but Nathaniel isn’t entirely sure it’s not just a habit he hasn’t shaken from making potions for the Circle. 

Anders pulls his arms back and Nathaniel lets him, not following as Anders backs up in the direction of one of the thin, hard pallet beds they used in the soldiers’ dormitories. The commander must have dragged it up here specially, though he couldn’t imagine why. Anders follows his gaze and coughs another laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Oh, that. Sorry, couldn’t sleep on goosefeathers. Too damn soft. I mean what’s laying your head down at night if you don’t wake up in pain?”

Nathaniel decides that Anders doesn’t actually want an answer to that, and presses on to the subject that he’s avoiding. “People who are okay don’t act like this.”

Anders flashes him another sharp, crooked grin and again Nathaniel catches the fire of anger in his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nathaniel clenches his teeth. Delilah had never explained that being kind would take so much blighted work. (He can almost hear the commander in his head, laughing at him for that.) Anders is pacing back and forth in front of his thin, poorly appointed bed, and his hands have started moving again. Nathaniel speaks before Anders’ nervous energy manages to infect him too. 

“You have refused to acquire any material possessions other than that pillow, which you hide most of the time. You are stockpiling food beneath the floorboards,” Nathaniel nods at the one uneven plank which had often been the secret to his own childhood hiding places, “ for reasons I do not understand. You never close your door and yet you seem outright terrified whenever anyone enters a place you consider to be private. If you bathe I haven’t seen it, though I must assume that you do as you have not yet begun to smell. You are avoiding...everyone, but especially the commander, despite her efforts and obvious desire to get to know you better. For some reason you still think that she - or any of us - would turn you in to the Circle without a second thought.”

Anders frowns at that, stopping mid-step to look at him with something that is either curiosity or pain in his eyes. “Wouldn’t you?”

Nathaniel stares at him - and feels, for a moment - his own foolish heart plummet like lead into his stomach. “I - no.” Mouth suddenly dry, Nathaniel wets his lips and tries to speak past the lump in his throat (past the voice in the back of his head, he’s afraid of you, everyone’s afraid of you, just like your father).

Anders’ expression softens, and his shoulders drop. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

Nathaniel blinks, and tries to shake off the feeling of being rooted to the spot. “Of course.”

Anders’ mouth quirks upward at the corner. Outside there’s the gentle patter of the autumn rain against the muddy courtyard, bouncing off the mens’ new armour like a thousand soft, tiny bells. After a moment, Anders sits down, heavily, on the thin mattress, and gestures for Nathaniel to step forward.

Feeling as if he’s suddenly been freed of some strange, invisible spell, Nathaniel does so, almost toppling to sit on the floor in front of Anders as he looks at his hands. Anders breaks the new and sudden quiet, running the fingers of his left hand over the knuckles of his right. “They broke my hands.” The admission is so quiet and so unexpected that Nathaniel is almost unsure he heard it. But then Anders lets out a long, shaking breath and continues. “I was...half drunk with magebane so I didn’t...have you ever felt pain without emotion? It’s so hard to describe. Like shock, I guess. You register that something terrible has happened and that it hurts. But the grief, the anger, the fear. All that comes later. They let it heal naturally. So my hands are crooked now.” Anders splays his fingers in the air between them, and Nathaniel can see now, as he hadn’t before, the way his knuckles do stand a little crooked, the way a nose heals when it breaks. 

Nathaniel’s voice is rough when he speaks. “Why?”

Anders shrugs, and his expression is distant. “I don’t remember exactly. It was whilst I was in solitary. They were always doing…” His features shutter into a mask so impassive that even Nathaniel cannot read it, and he draws in a quick deep breath and exhales again. “It doesn’t matter.” He offers Nathaniel a small smile, and nods at the door. “I keep the door open because I haven’t had a door, ever. When I was a child I was too young and small to have my own room. In the Circle only templars and Senior Enchanters are granted the luxury of such privacy, and I was neither.” Anders nods at the floorboards. “I...One of the first punishments they’d go to was restricting rations.” Anders’ mouth curls into a thin  smile. “I think some of them just wanted to see how long I could go. Caught them making bets on it, once.” Anders shakes his head, as if he’s dislodging the memory from his mind like a cat shaking off water. He spreads his hands wide. “I don’t...know what to do with all this. Everything I’ve ever been told is that I can’t have it. Whatever it is.”

Nathaniel resists the urge to say freedom. He isn’t entirely sure that it’s true. Anders, on the bed, sighs and  slides down from the mattress to the floor, easily framing Nathaniel with his long legs, the tabard of his robe falling heavy and velvet between his legs. Nathaniel averts his eyes. Anders’ laugh is rough and low and warm, and then his (crooked) fingers catch Nathaniel’s head and turn it back to look at him.

“That I understand.” Anders leans forward, until his chest is pressing against his bent knees. He smiles at Nathaniel, sweet and a little shy, and this close Nate can see that his eyelashes are almost as golden as his hair. Anders’ other hand comes up to catch the other side of Nathaniel’s face, and Nate doesn’t resist when Anders draws him closer to brush a kiss against his lips. “Thank you for asking, though.”

For a moment they’re quiet. Far off, from downstairs, there’s the sound of Oghren bellowing and Sigrun cackling, followed by a clattering or armour as one or the other of them gives chase. Anders’ thumb runs over Nathaniel’s cheek, and Nathaniel reaches up to catch his wrist and press his hand closer. He waits until Anders meets his eyes to speak. “I would fight with you.” A shadow of a frown passes over Anders’ brow, and Nathaniel clarifies before he can ask, “ If they tried to take you away. Back to the Circle. I would fight by your side.”

Anders’ mouth twitches into a rueful smile, though the pad of his thumb keeps running softly over Nathaniel’s cheek. “Even against the commander? She’s the Hero of Ferelden, you know.”

Nathaniel shifts closer, letting go of Anders’ wrist to reach up and cup the back of his head, gently, firmly, pulling him closer until their foreheads are touching. “Even her. Against the wardens, the templars, chevaliers and darkspawn, Anders. I will not let them take you. Not whilst I am breathing.”

When Anders breathes out, Nathaniel feels the shudder of it where their bodies are touching. Anders doesn’t look at him when he replies. “Don’t say that. Someone might make you prove it.”

Nathaniel huffs, pulling back to look into Anders’ eyes. “Let them.” He catches one of Anders’ hands and pulls it between them, running his fingers over Anders’ crooked knuckles. “This is not Justice. I’ve met Justice.” He looks up, offering a smile which Anders returns, “He looks like a walking corpse. But, truly.” Nathaniel bends and presses a kiss to Anders’ palm, and watches pink flush through his cheeks like a sunrise. “This is not just. And I will not let them have you. I swear it.”

Anders shakes his head, shutting his eyes as his brow twists with a frown despite the smile on his lips. “I want to believe you.”

Nathaniel holds Anders’ hands tightly between his own, and presses a kiss to his forehead. “Perhaps, one day, you will.”

#dadwc #nanders #nathaniel howe #anders #da:a #my fic #alienturnipp

[rhodanum]

COVID-19 roller-coaster

Despite its personal nature, I'm making this entry public, since it may be of aid to others as well, in these circumstances. Particularly for people who might end up having highly atypical symptoms like I did.

Long story short, I've been scarce from most forms of social-media for over a month because I caught COVID-19 some time before my country instituted lockdown measures. I was in hospital from the start to the middle of April (roughly two weeks) and started showing symptoms as early as March 18 (runny nose, sneezing, that I ascribed to a common cold, since at that time they weren't considered something that could present in the case of COVID-19). It took me well over a week and a half of battling symptoms at home and calling four ambulances in that time-frame, always getting dismissed on account of my symptoms not matching up with the standards presentation (aside for the runny nose and sneezing, the vast majority of my symptoms have been gastrointestinal, neurological and renal in nature, not pulmonary) before I was finally tested (on April 1st) and admitted to hospital the following day, when the test came back positive.

My timeline of events has been the following (and I'm still currently symptomatic + showed one new COVID-specific symptom even after two negative tests and discharge from hospital):

March 18 - March 23 -- constantly runny nose, post-nasal drip, sneezing all the time, a light cough. Nothing too bothersome, I dismissed it as a seasonal cold. At this point I started burping heavily, out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason.

March 24 -- woke up with a terrible back-pain, roughly in the area of both kidneys. The pain lessened as the day went on. In the evening, I had my first very clear neurological symptom -- my eyesight filled with a sort of black static (like a TV without cable signal), to the point where I could no longer read letters, discern my own features in the mirror or tell how many fingers my father was holding up. Thinking I was having a stroke or hell knows what else, I called an ambulance. The static-like effect lasted around 20 minutes and was completely gone by the time an ambulance crew arrived. They checked my blood-pressure and it was high due to the panic (174/109), so they dismissed the static as a result of the high BP and gave me an ACE-inhibitor pill to lower it.

March 25 -- started feeling kind of grotty around lunch-time. At around five in the afternoon, I vomited up all of my lunch completely undigested. An hour later, the true wave arrived. I went to the toilet with explosive, orange-colored, watery diarrhea, massive urination (wasn't drinking more fluids than usual) and vomiting, all at the exact same time. I'm not joking in the slightest when I say that I had my head in the sink, to puke and my ass in the toilet, to pee and shit out orange water, all three at the same time. The puking subsided, but the diarrhea and the urination kept up and, for the next two hours, I went to the toilet to shit and pee every fifteen minutes. By this point I was getting dangerously dehydrated, so we called our GP. She, suspecting it might be Norovirus, told me that the diarrhea needs to be stopped ASAP and my father went to buy me the necessary medicine.

March 26 -- the diarrhea was relatively under control due to the medication, but I was still pissing buckets and having to constantly drink tea to stay hydrated, with how fast my kidneys were clearing fluids. The light cough that started on March 18 got a bit worse, but not by much. I had no appetite whatsoever and attempted to eat a little at lunch, but only ended up puking again. I was worried enough about the whole thing that I called an ambulance again. The doctors claimed it couldn't be COVID-19 (by this point I was reading reports of diarrhea as a common early symptom). He listened to my lungs and said they're clear. Then he gave me an anti-emetic shot in the bum (so I wouldn't keep throwing up) and tapped my kidneys a few times. When I flinched, he said it might be a urinary tract infection and prescribed me a list of medication, with the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin at the front of it (keep this one in mind, it's very relevant for what happened next). I didn't actually have any pain when I urinated and the urine itself wasn't dark, but rather almost as colorless as water. I was just peeing far too much and the area round my kidneys was tender.

March 27 -- woke up with a persistent cough early in the morning and a sensation of  tickling in the throat, which made the cough worse. This morphed into a  very specific kind of migraine, starting from the very back of the skull  and radiating to the front, to the point where the backs of my eyes  hurt terribly as well. Still peeing a ton and drinking tea and water to stay hydrated. General state of malaise, as if there was something terribly toxic in my body, leeching all the strength and vitality out of it. Started taking the UTI antibiotic (Ciprofloxacin). My eyelids were twitching involuntarily and I had an up-and-down sensation, with some parts of the day being slightly better (able to sit at my desk and watch an episode of a show) and others, just one or two hours later, making me feel so horrid that all I could do was lie motionless in bed. Still had no appetite and force myself to eat a bit of vegetable broth Dad made for me.

March 28 -- horrendous night between the 27th and the 28th. A sensation like a knot developed in my throat and got worse and worse. To the point where, at around three in the morning, I could no longer swallow my own saliva. I could still breathe perfectly fine, no shortness of breath of anything else like that, but the feeling was as if my esophagus went and swelled shut. I had to gather up a large quantity of saliva in my mouth, tip my head back and struggle for several dozen seconds, to be able to swallow. I very nearly choked when trying to take my medication in the morning, after a sleepless night. The inability to swallow subsided, but the sensation of a knot in the throat remained. Feeling of malaise and weakness grew worse. A sensation of brain-fog came on and I could no longer focus on anything. I attempted to read fic on my phone and just ended up reading the same chapter three dozen times, because my brain could no longer process the words. Difficulty speaking and articulating my thoughts. I could still think well enough, but translating said thoughts to words or writing was incredibly difficult. I spent a whole minute just trying to get the word 'insulin' out through my mouth. I knew it, I remembered it, I just couldn't transform it from a thought into a word without a great deal of effort.

March 29 -- another nightmarish night. Not due to problems swallowing, but inability to actually fall asleep. All attempts went the exact same way:

closed eyes and attempted to fall asleep

started hearing a loud, constant and almost nonsensical monologue in my head, in my own voice, often jumping from one language to the other (English, Romanian, Italian, etc all languages I knew). It's difficult for me to describe the contents now, since they barely made any sense, but they were almost everything from a recitation of a shopping list all the way to narratives that didn't make any sense ("and then, get this, the clock bashed his face in!")

started seeing images behind my eyelids, almost as nonsensical as the words -- parades of wild color, me falling through Salvador Dali-like landscapes, images shifting hundreds of times per minute

None of these were dreams, everything was happening while I was still awake and struggling to fall asleep. I'd close my eyes, struggle mightily to empty my head and go the fuck to sleep... and within seconds, the cavalcade of words and disjointed images would erupt again, with me having almost no control over it. After a few minutes I always found the strength to jerk up and open my eyes, which silenced the voice and ended the images... but then I'd have to try closing my eyes again and the circus would repeat again. This happened hundreds of times over the entire night, before I was finally able to fall asleep for a few hours, at six on the morning.

Woke up absolutely soaked in incredibly foul-smelling sweat. So much of it that my bedsheets were wet as well, not just my pajamas.Used what little strength I had to strip the bed, take a shower and change my pajamas. By lunch I was feeling the worst I'd ever felt, shaking convulsively without having any kind of fever and begging 112 (our emergency number) for help. Several friends were worried I might be going into some kind of shock. Our ambulance service was swamped and Dad used his connections to get a hazmat-equipped team to come home and test me for COVID-19. The hazmat team claimed, like the previous ambulance crew, that I couldn't have COVID-19 since I didn't have a fever and wasn't coughing my head off. I pressed to get taken to the hospital and tested, but between them berating me for taking the risk and Dad looking petrified at the idea of me going to a hospital (and getting exposed, at this time he was still convinced I just had a strange flu), I caved and remained home. They said I was probably having an anxiety attack and left.

March 30 -- yet another sleepless night with visual and auditory hallucinations whenever I attempted to fall asleep. Utterly desperate and frantic, I spent the night scouring the Internet for links between COVID-19 and other viral illnesses and hallucinations. In the end, while reading the prospects for all the pills I was taking, I found the culprit -- the goddamn Ciprofloxacin, the antibiotic for the presumed UTI (the area around my kidneys still kept hurting, but the urination continued to be painless, clear and frequent). Hallucinations and psychotic episodes were listed as one of its 'rare side-effects'. Not so rare in my case and other researchers are now taking a hard look at it and other antibiotics in its family, since the numbers of people who end up hallucinating while on the things is apparently larger than previously suspected.  

I immediately contacted my GP, who was shocked at what reaction my body ended up having to Cipro. Nevertheless, she immediately switched me over to another antibiotic we had in the house -- Augmentin, a more broad-spectrum one, but one I'd taken in the past for bacterial infections and responded well to. Urinating slightly less and able to eat a bit more, but the pain in the kidney area was getting worse.  

March 31 -- night hallucinations continued, but at a slightly reduced intensity, once off Cipro. Woke up completely covered in horrible-smelling sweat once again. Left arm numb and then painful, a reaction I was left with after a long bout of the monster-flu two years ago left me with peripheral nerve-damage due to the immune system going completely bonkers and attacking the nerves. This symptom appearing again made it clear that I was experiencing autoimmune issues once again, as a result of my immune system fighting against the SARS-CoV2 virus.

The pain in the kidney-area was growing worse and worse, even with the Augmentin treatment. By evening, I'd called a fourth ambulance in roughly seven days. The paramedics were even more dismissive than the last crew, said I just had some sand or maybe a small kidney-stone and to wait it out at home. They completely refused to take me to the hospital, claiming that I ran the risk of a COVID-19 infection over a small issue.

April 1 -- a slightly better night of sleep, the hallucinations reduced to 10% of their previous intensity, so clearly an effect of the Cipro. The brain-fog was still presence and further research pointed to it as a possible effect of COVID-19, rather than the antibiotic. Woke up drenched in sweat once again, with my cervical area hurting horribly, my kidneys in pain as well and my left arm numb once more. Completely furious and utterly fed-up, I said "fuck the ambulance service!" and begged Dad to take me to the nearest ER by car. By this point I was fearing for my kidneys and feeling so horrid that I was 100% willing to take the chance of COVID-19 infection, if I didn't have it, just to figure out what the bleeding fuck what happening to my body. He refused initially, fearing I would be infected, but was left with no choice in the matter when I threatened to walk to the hospital by myself if he wasn't willing to help.

At the ER closest to our apartment, a hazmat-equipped doctor working triage had me sit down and fill up a questionnaire of symptoms. Even without fever or difficulty breathing or persistent cough (my cough came only in the morning and lasted just a few minutes each day), everything else was enough to make him note "possible COVID-19" and give me a paper to present to our national institute of infectious diseases, so I could get tested. So Dad and me left the ER and drove to Matei Bals Institute, where the doctors were rather puzzled by me, coming in without a fever  and not coughing my lungs out. The chest x-ray turning out perfect (nothing in the lungs) only seemed to increase their skepticism, but they nevertheless tested me, before sending me home and telling me I'd receive the result in 24 hours. Their only recommendation was to talk to a nephrologist on the phone, re: the kidneys.

April 2 -- felt slightly better, though still under heavy malaise and the kidneys were more painful than ever. At about nine in the evening I got a phone call from our local public health authorities, who told me that my RT-PCR test for COVID-19 was positive. Honestly? Instead of being frightened, I was relieved. After almost two weeks of the strangest collection of symptoms I'd ever had, I finally had an explanation as to what on earth was causing them and was vindicated re: the four ambulance crews that dismissed me. The authorities sent an ambulance that picked me up, right along with Dad (quite unwillingly in his case, he only had some sniffles and a minor indigestion, despite having nursed me for well over a week). We got taken back to Matei Bals Institute, where Dad was tested and sent back home (since he didn't have much in the way of symptoms and they had no reason to keep him) and I was admitted into one of the wards. The time was roughly two in the morning.

April 3 -- barely slept due to the noise and light in the ward. Had blood drawn, for blood-work. Malaise as terrible as ever. Started treatment with HCQ (Plaquenil), the anti-malaria drug. The rest of my ward-mates were absolute sweethearts, but I was much too weak to do much other than get out of bed to trudge to the communal bathroom down the hall. Urination (which had slowly reduced in frequency from March 25) still a bit more frequent than usual. Begged the doctor for something to let me sleep and was given a few metallic-tasting, oily drops to drink in the evening. Had the first good night of sleep in well over a week.  

April 4 -- at this point, the kidney pain got so bad that I could barely walk to the bathroom and would grit my teeth in pain whenever I sat down in the bed. Asked one of the nurses for help, with no visible result. The pain was getting worse and I could no longer get out of bed, just lying there in a listless lump. Several of the other people in the beds next to me went to pound on the door separating the 'red zone' from the 'green zone' and demanded that the nurses or doctor see to me. In the end, a young nurse came and struggled for almost thirty minutes to get an IV in me. She was inexperienced and, coupled with having to wear three pairs of gloves and a visor on her face, she could barely see or feel my veins. The result was that she ended up blowing thee of my veins (two on the right hand, one on the left) before she finally managed to get the IV needle in and secured it. Then I got put on a heavy-duty regimen of IV Ceftriaxone (antibiotic), hydration fluids and painkillers, for the next few days.

April 5 - 7 -- slowly got better on the IV regimen. Gained a bit more strength, the pain in the kidney area subsided and I could walk again. Gave urine samples twice and they came back clean (no bacterial infection in the kidneys or urinary tract). On April 6 we were told that the whole lot of us (the seven of us crowded in that ward and everyone else in the same wing of the Institute) would be transferred the next day to Colentina Hospital, just a stone's throw away, which had been officially designated as a COVID-19 support unit. The reasoning was that we'd be placed in smaller wards and the Matei Bals Institute could focus on the critical and very difficult cases, that required everything from oxygen support to full intubation. My IV needle was removed on April 7 and we, dragging our luggage after us, walked from our wing at Matei Bals to the entrance to Colentina, just two hundred meters away. We were dispersed all over the Internal Medicine wing and I got lucky enough to be placed in a room with just two beds, sharing with a lovely 81 year-old lady, who was COVID-19 positive, but utterly asymptomatic. Got blood drawn again and also had an EKG done (no cardiac abnormalities). Also had another x-ray, lungs still entirely clear. Got tested for COVID-19 once again, but the result came back 'inconclusive' the next day. The treatment with Plaquenil was ceased and I received no further medication, save for what I requested to handle inconsistent stools.  

April 8 - 9 -- kept getting stronger and stronger, able to sit out of bed and walk for extensive periods of time. Bowels still somewhat disturbed and shifting between constipation and diarrhea and then back again,with the stool always being a bright, sun-yellow. Otherwise no pains or other malaise present. Got tested for COVID-19 once more on April 9.  

April 10 -- some of the first ever symptoms I had, in middle March (runny nose, sneezing, stomach constantly full of air and always burping) came back at this point, along with noticeable muscle soreness in my upper arms and shoulders, even though I'd never made any great physical effort. The test taken on April 9 came back 'negative', so the doctors ignored me when I told them that I was having old symptoms come in for an encore. Tested once again.

April 11 -- the burping and stomach-distention due to air grew worse. The 'knot in throat' symptom returned. The test from April 10 came back 'negative' as well and since I fulfilled the criteria of two negatives in 24 hours, I was discharged and had Dad come and pick me up. The Colentina doctors, completely inexperienced re: COVID-19, claimed that my gastro symptoms were likely caused by something else.

April 12 - 16 -- uncertain period, with the typical 'up and down' pattern making a return. One day I was feeling fine and had energy, the other way I was wiped out and could barely get out of bed. Frequent urination (once every twenty minutes) decided to make a return as well and I broke down in tears. Also got a brand-new symptom -- pink-eye straight out of nowhere, which has also been associated with COVID-19 infection.

April 17 -- worst day since the first ones in hospital. Completely exhausted and dealing with a horrible pain at the base of my skull, that was pulsing slowly, radiating down the spinal column and up into the skull. Doesn't respond to Paracetamol and I didn't want to risk taking Ibuprofen. Getting dehydrated due to the constant urination once more, so I started drinking water with electrolytes whenever I could. Fell down on my way to the bathroom, when a veil of darkness passed over my eyes for a few seconds. Everything was spinning and I felt as if I was disassociating and floating away from my own body. Felt better only after more water with electrolytes.

April 18 - 20 -- still felt crappy, but marginally better than on the 17th. Pumped myself full of vitamin C, vitamin D (have a long-standing deficiency there), magnesium and potassium from bananas, kale, spinach, probiotics from yogurt with live cultures in it, to re-balance my likely ravaged gut flora. My appetite, decent in the hospital and shot to pieces again on the 17th, was slowly making a comeback once more. Still burping and full of air no matter what I ate, still pissing frequently. One of the things with COVID-19 was that it made my GERD flare up about ten times worse than usual. Started treating it with a proton-pump inhibitor (Omez) which handled the extra acidity and the heartburn, but not the burping and trapped air. Kidney region started hurting again and at this point I didn't know if it even was the kidneys themselves (both urine samples and blood-work in the hospital showed no problem whatsoever with the kidney function, in spite of the weird symptoms) or just nerve-pain in the area of the kidneys.

April 21 - 23 -- slowly gained strength once more, able to get out of bed and work at my PC. Pain in the kidney region came and went, urination slowly started to reduce in frequency once again. Still drinking water with electrolytes, taking vitamins, eating as varied as I can.

April 24 -- best day so far today (hope I don't bloody jinx it). Energy levels almost back to my baseline, though still left with burping, constant air in stomach and general laziness in digestion. Stool of normal frequency, color and texture after the probiotic regimen. Left with lingering nerve-pain in the cervical area, the shoulders, the lower left ribs in the front and the lower back. Urination frequency reducing to more normal levels once again, feeling less like a constantly dehydrated prune.

It's been... almost five weeks since the first symptoms. A long and exhausting ride and I still don't know what might pop up again. But still far preferable to those poor souls who end up unable to breathe and in full-blown ARDS, needing to be sent straight into the ICU.

Why did I have another flare-up, after two negative tests? Your guess is as good as mine, right now. I have a few theories:

consistent with those articles coming out of South Korea, false negative results might be more widespread than we suspect, in some cases. Either because the virus might be able to hide in the central nervous system and pop back up again for another tangle with one's immunity or because the immune response can lower viral concentration in the body enough for a test to come back negative, without the virus actually being defeated for good.

the test results are correct, the virus is gone from my body and all of what I'm still dealing with are a the result of post-viral systemic inflammation. Not an unlikely thing, since I have a short history of dealing with autoimmune bullshit after that flu two years ago left me with enough nerve-damage that I was unable to walk for a whole month and took six months to recover fully + still wake up with the left side of the body temporarily numb and huge pain in the spinal column if I ever sleep on a shitty mattress, that doesn't offer decent back support.

I want to do more blood-work, see if markers for autoimmune activity show up, but unfortunately, that's pretty difficult to do now, with most hospitals up to their eyeballs in COVID-19 and private clinics charging an eye-watering price for such tests. Dad is almost broke until pay-day, due to how much money he spent in the last month on medicine for me, so it will have to wait or we'll figure something out if my situation worsens again and it becomes imperative to get treatment against autoimmune response. Taking this thing one day at a time.

An overview of my COVID-19 symptoms, good to keep an eye out for:

Gastrointestinal:

explosive, orange, foul-smelling diarrhea

excessive flatulence

vomiting

aggressive flare-up of GERD

excessive burping

swollen, painful stomach due to constantly trapped air

difficulty swallowing

feeling of knot stuck in throat

lack of appetite

Neurological:

temporarily failing vision due to static-like images over the eye's perception

twitching eyelids

nerve-pain in the cervical area

migraine starting at the back of the head and radiating to the backs of the eyes

nerve-pain in all sorts of odd places, coming and going (the left ankle, the left front rib, the right back rib, the kidney area)

dizziness

brain-fog and temporary difficulty with focusing / with coherent speech

Renal:

very frequent urination, though blood-work indicated no disfunctionality with the kidneys

Upper respiratory:

runny nose, post-nasal drip

sneezing

light cough, early in the morning, accompanied by a ticking in the throat sensation that set it off

Unsure how to categorize:

foul-smelling night-sweats, intense enough to soak through clothes and sheets

pink-eye

No shortness of breath, no fever, no lung involvement in my case. This is a virus that the human body responds to in ridiculously varied ways, from that cute little old lady at Colentina, who was totally asymptomatic, to me, where it manifested almost like bloody cholera (the violent diarrhea, vomiting and pissing at the same time, like something was trying to squeeze all of the water out of my body), to one of my ward-mates at Matei Bals, who had developed pneumonia and required moderate oxygen support and was well on the mend when we got dispersed, to the unfortunate souls who end up in ICU with ARDS.

Take care of yourselves, be vigilant and stay safe.

#rho rambles #covid #covid19

[alexiss-fic-archive]

A night of Diamond Dust

Summary: After Connie falls sick, Priyanka needs someone to take care of her daughter after being called to the hospital.Fluff entails

Notes:  I wrote this when I was Awfully Sick and when the heat was unbearable in this part of Mexico. I highkey want to live somewhere where it snows  

Anyways I needed some fluff and so does the Connverse Community.

Please Enjoy

ALSO ON THE Ao3!

Winter was Connie's favorite season.

Not only she gets vacations from school, spend beautiful evenings with her parents and celebrate her birthday alongside the gems. But it's also the time of the year when she gets to spend a couple of nights with her favorite jam-bud to see the snowfall, in a sort of pajama party in which they enjoyed the peace and each other's company.

They procured to alternate the visited house every couple of weeks, and always tried to make a lively ambiance with their families until nightfall, when their very own tradition truly started.

This time, it was Steven's turn to host the small event. Unfortunately, as if fate had chosen to pour rain over her metaphorical parade, Connie had caught a cold a few days earlier, and was forced to cancel the small get-together in favor of resting in her bed while being miserable.

And to worsen things even more, neither of her parents were going to stay with her. Her father was covering for the entire personnel of his office because they too got sick. And her mother was about to leave to the hospital, where according to her, were at least three dozens of people who either crashed during a car accident or nearly froze to death thanks to the weather.

So, all what Connie could do was wallow in her misery and loneliness as her stuffed nasal sinuses and high temperature tethered her to her bed.

She couldn't even find the strength to pick one of the many books in her room, or to text with Steven with her phone.

She resigned to do as her mother had advised and instead of try to occupy her mind with something, she would put it to sleep so the illness could go away at a faster pace.

However, just as she was about to hit the hay for a couple hours, Her mother opened up the door of her room. She was wearing a fuzzy sweater underneath her lab coat, from which her ID was hanging proudly from one of its pockets.

“How are you feeling sweetie?” She asked her daughter before leaving.

“Fine…” Connie groaned.

“I’m really sorry,” The doctor said as she approached to the girl. “I know you wanted us to be with you.”

“It’s Okay mom.” The sick girl said, her voice sounding raspy thanks to the infection. “You need to save people too.”

“It’s not okay.” Her mother said while caressing Connie's head. “You’re sick, and you shouldn't be all alone here with this cold.”

“I’ll manage.” The girl said before cuddling up in her blankets.

“I thought you would say so.” The woman said before standing up from the bed. “So, I took the liberty to call someone here to look out for you.”

“What?” Connie said confused as a familiar figure clad in pink walked through the bedroom's door.

“Hi, Connie!” Steven said as he entered the room, holding a plate with cookies and a cup of hot honey lemon tea.

“Steven? When did you got here?” The girl asked in disbelief.

“A couple hours ago.” He answered as he placed the plate on Connie's desk. “Your mom invited me over so we could hang out while you get better!”

“Really?!” She asked to the woman next to her.

“I couldn't just leave my daughter alone in the house during a blizzard.” She said with a smirk. “Also, you've been planning on your sleepover at the Universes since last week. And I thought it would be nice to bring it to you instead.”

“I also brought some board games if you want to play!” The boy interjected in his cheery tone as he pulled a box of chess from his backpack.

“Woah…” The girl said in disbelief. “Thank you, Mom.”

“Anything for my warrior princess.” The Doctor said with a fond Smile before ruffling Connie's short hair affectively. “Well, anything but staying. I have to go before the blizzard gets stronger.”

“You can take my lion with you!” Steven told to the doctor.

“Huh?” The Doctor was taken aback.

“Yeah! He can take you to the hospital in a second!” He said before pulling a malformed ice cream sandwich from his cheeseburger. “Just bribe him with a Lion Licker and hold tight to his mane after telling him where you want to go.”

“Oh…” The woman said nervously as she picked up the bag with the treat  from the boy's hand. “Thank you, Steven…”

“Do you want me to help you mount him?” Steven offered her his help.

“N-No no!” The doctor said nervously. “I can do it by myself. Just, take care of Connie while I’m gone.”

“Yes, ma'am!” He said as he did a naval salute to her.

“And Connie, please enjoy the evening.” The doctor told her daughter.

“I will.”  The sick girl said with a faint smile. “Please Stay safe.”

“Don’t worry, honey. I'll send you a text every now and then to check on you.  The woman said before finally leaving the room, wondering how could she ride the wild beast.

After the adult left, the two kids found themselves alone in the girl's room.

“Do you think that lending Lion to my mom was a good Idea?” The ill girl asked him.

“Of course!” He said. “She’ll reach the hospital i  no time with him!”

“Do you think she'll handle the portals well?” She asked once more, exactly a second before a frightened shriek could be listened as a pink flash appeared on the streets.

“She seems to handle them pretty well.” The boy said nervously, eliciting a small giggle from the sick girl, who promptly began to cough harshly.

“I guess the cold doesn't have a nice sense of humor.” Steven said as he took the cup of hot tea and brought it to her hands. “Here, it'll help you with that throat.”

“Thanks.” She said before taking a sip of the warm infusion.

“So… What do you want to do today?” Steven asked her. “I brought board games to play, books to read, my ukulele to play for a while…”

“That’s so considerate of you!” She said with a fond smile. “But to be honest, I don't feel that good to play games or music….”

“Oh…” The boy said sadly. “Right…”

“But I would love it if you could read something for me, though.” She asked him as she cuddled up within her bedsheets.

“Really?!” He said excitedly. “What book?”

“Anything is okay, Steven.” She said smiling.

And so, Steven began to rummage through his backpack, looking for the perfect book he could read to his ill friend. He eventually found a small book that he didn't remember putting inside of his hamburger.

“Okay, I got this little fella called ‘Light among the dark.’” He told her.

“What is it about?” The girl asked.

Steven opened up the book and went to read the author's notes.

“What do you know. It is actually a story compilation.” He said surprised.

“That sounds nice.” She said. “Could you Please read it for me?”

“Sure!” He said as he sat down next to her bed so he could read to her more comfortably.

“Ahem!” He cleared his throat before beginning.

★★★★★★★★★★

A few hours had passed since Steven finished to read the story to Connie. The short story about a prince who learned to be a better leader thanks to his loyal Knight had become an instant favorite for her, and talked about it with Steven, coughing and sneezing inbetween her enthusiastic argument. Meanwhile Steven made sure to spoil her a bit, sharing the cookies Steven had brought as an appetizer during the lecture, giving her the hot chocolate he smuggled into her house in a small thermos, as well as keeping her the most warm and comfy he could in order to ward off the infection even faster.

As the night progressed and the snowfall outside the windows thickened. And as Steven and Connie reenacted one of their favorite parts of the unfamiliar familiar series, the cold inside began to intensify with each passing second.

Connie was fine with it, as she was covered by what was almost considered to be a bear’s skin. However, Steven wasn't so lucky, and was shivering despite him wearing a sweater.

“Steven?” The girl said as her leaking nose distorted her voice.

“W-what is it?” He stuttered as the cold made him shiver visibly. “D-Did I s-screwed up my dialogue?”

“No, Steven.” She reassured with a smile. “You’re doing just fine. But… Aren't you cold?”

“J-Just a b-bit” He answered. “B-But I can handle it! I’m a Crystal gem, And a Diamond as well! Sturdiness runs through my veins.”

“I see…” She said. “Then I Believe that you won't like to get in my extremely cozy and warm bed to warm up.” A smug grin appeared on her face.

“O-On the other hand, I'm still part human!” He said blushing, The stuttering in his voice no longer being caused by the cold. “And humans need to stay warm and cozy to survive. Right?”

Connie let out a small chuckle. “Just get in, Steven.”

“O-Okay, let me just…” He said as he removed his shoes, a moment before slipping into the bed. “There we go.”

After this, the pair of children kept talking about their small reenactment of the novel, eventually planning to make a full fledged screenplay of it along with the gems.

★★★★★★★★★★

Darkness had finally reached its peak during the night. The violent blizzard that raged upon the land had miraculously subsided. The bright light of the moon that pierced its way through the dark clouds was absorbed by the falling snowflakes that continued to drift along the wind and the leftover snow that accumulated on the ground of the streets.

“So… How are stuff going on over there?” Connie asked the young boy as they witnessed the snowflakes dance through the wind.

“Well… Blue And Yellow finally apologized to everyone at Beach city.” He said. “Y’know, for the invasion and the abductions.

“That’s nice to hear!” She said. “I can Imagine how pissed off Yellow was.”

“Not as much as you'd expect.” The boy answered. “To be fair, I think she would've preferred to get killed by The Cluster instead.”

“She’ll open up eventually.” Connie reassured him. “She just needs to learn how things work around here.”

“I’ll turn her into homeworld’s best aunt!” The boy said cheerfully. “Just leave it to me and a pair of marathons of crying breakfast friends.”

The girl just let out a small chuckle before leaning her head into his shoulder.

“You’ll have to count me as well.” She reassured him. “Not offense, but I think that Books would be more effective on her than a child's cartoon.”

“Yeah… I think that she doesn't like it as much as Blue.” Steven said, eliciting a small fit of laughter from his companion.

★★★★★★★★★★

Eventually, Connie had fallen asleep on top of Steven as they watched the snow fall. And Steven took it upon himself to take her back to her bed.

He carefully placed her back in her bed. Wary about his own brusqueness as he wanted to let her sleep.

Feeling drowsy himself, The young man decided to join her in her bed once again. He snuck into the warm bed sheets and stared at the lying girl in front of him.

The boy placed a small, chaste kiss on the sleeping girl's forehead before turning away from her. “Goodnight Connie…” He whispered to himself as his eyelids began to close.

However, before he could fall asleep, the girl behind him had moved towards him to embrace him.

“Goodnight for you too, Steven.” She whispered as well, painting a faint smile on both of their faces just before falling asleep.

★★★★★★★★★★

The next day, Connie woke up feeling as if she hadn't been sick at all. Her nose was no longer obstructed, her throat felt like it was lined with silk, her body wasn't weighed down by sand.

She was ecstatic to tell Steven about her miraculous recovery. However, her joyful mood changed to something else when she saw the boy in her bed.

He laid uncomfortably in the bed, his hot skin was moist with sweat and his eyes were bloodshot as snot dripped from his reddened nose.

“Good morning, Connie!” He said weakly before sneezing vigorously. “Ugh… How are you feeling?”

It turned out that Steven had infected himself with Connie's sickness when he gave her his goodnight kiss last night, healing her in the process as well.

Connie let out a small giggle as she realized the nature of the situation before her.

“I’m feeling better now, Steven.” She said with a fond smile. “Thank you.”

#connie maheswaran #steven quartz universe #steven diamond universe #connverse #Steven x Connie #fluff #priyanka maheswaran #winter nights #sleepover #sick fic #alexis writes shit

[tumblunni]

Me in the hospital: i cannot sleep for 24 hours, the slightest noise is blaring, i am perpetually anxiety adrenaline

As soon as i get home: has the best sleep of my life

I usually take an hour to get to sleep each night but i totally just curled up like a snail and dropped into dreamland instantly. And i woke up to a nice warm house cos the heating turned on while i was asleep, and now all the anesthetic is completely worn off so i feel energized and great! And my throat pain has eased up so thankfully i wont have to be liquids only for as long as i thought. I was all hyperactive and cooked a great fancy omelette and it tastes like heaven itself! Its so weird how stuff tastes slightly diffetent when its the first time youve been able to chew with the right side of your mouth in five years. I guess the tastebuds on the sides of your tongue are slightly different? When i eat everything now im gonna be rolling it all over my mouth like WOW ITS ALL SO NEW AGAIN! Will probably look nuts in the middle of mcdonalds with my cheeks puffed like a squirrel XD

Oh and this is also a great excuse to drink loads of chocolate milkshakes from my milkshake viking mug! I feel so energized with calcium and yums!! EVERYTHING TASTES SO NEWWWWWWW

Oh man i do feel a bit sleepy again now after just being up for a few hours tho. I have these good jaw pain specific medicines i have to take for the next two weeks til my followup appointment to check if theres any infection left. But man i feel SO ALIVE AGAIN im pretty sure all the rot is gone! It feels so wild having space in my mouth and not constant clenchy tightness. It actually hurts less recovering from the surgery than it did before, lol! I can feel all my teeth moving apart again and loosening up into normality and the gums healing up all their injuries and oh god i just love how they cleaned out all the broken parts of my teeth and capped them with these great replacements that look so real you'd never be able to tell! My smile looks not ugly!! My smile looks not ugly!! Aaaaa! I just expected regaining the right side of my mouth, i didbt expect to e like "holy shit it must have hurt even more than i realized cos this feels so amazing now". Like i guess i got used to putting up with it and forgot how it felt to not have painmouth? Underestimated how good a teeth can be! And man i never asked for reconstructive cosmetic stuff too but they did these caps and aaa my teeth never looked his good even when they were new!! My front teeth were always crooked even before they did the weird balogna slam together and shattered into a pile of crap. And now they look like perfect supermodel teeth!! The only side effect is that its a lil hard to get used to the lack of gaps between them now after so long dealing with the shattered mess. My tongue keeps being like "oh no did something get stuck in the gaps again oh wait there arent any" and then i subconsciously try to clean them after taking every bite and just bite my tongue instead. Man i never noticed i picked up a bunch of weird mannerismd cos of tje bad teeth! I was constantly paranoidly checking my mouth 24/7 in case the slightest thing made it even worse, and eating super gently so that nothing accidentally touched the Wrong Tooth and set off a jolt of pain. And i actually needed to get a filling put in on the leftmost back tooth that was the ONLY TOOTH I COULD USE TO EAT WITHOUT PAIN for all this time! Overuse of it meant that it got ground down a little and probably would have become painful too if i'd left it any longer. Then i really would have been all soups all the time and that sucks!! Soups are good but nothing but then gives u stomach issues. The bad poops!!

Man sorry im rambling so much im just so hyper and happy and also still kinda dopily sleepy! Im not still delirious or anything i just feel the happy kind of sleepy where the anesthetic is all gone and its not "oh god i cant stay awake" and more natural sleepyness of a long day being over and everything being okay. I had such a good long nap and i feel well rested after getting so little sleep beforehand due to all the dumb anxiety. And i still feel dozey but happy doze~

Anyway its awesometo be able to really chug and crunch a foods! With the other side of my mouth i forgot about! And taste milkshake to its fullest extent!! Oh and whats weird is that the reconstructive surgery capping on my front teeth means that theyre kinda one tooth now? The caps are all linked in a single piece to fill the gaps fully without even the natural ones you'd have on healthy teeth. So its like a solid tooth guard just sculpted to look like three teeth. Itll be tricky to train myself out of thts subconcious rubbing the gaps with my tongue when theyre not even there. But i expect once i get over the unfamiliarity this triple cap will be really useful! Theyre totes reinforced so that even if i do get tight mouth problems again and the front teeth take the brunt of the pressure, now theres no gaps to smash into each other and become a painful mess. Its like scaffolding reinforcing my whole mouth by fixing the loadbearing beam, or something.

Oh also these pain meds make u a little bit more sleepy than normal paracetamol so i'll probably doze off again soon. But hopefully i will have slept off most of the "healing debt exhaustion" tomorrow and will be able to go walk down the shops and buy some icecream and other soft food. I mostly stocked up on purely liquid food cos i tjought my mouth function would be more limited. But honestly the teeth are working so much better than before, they were already so swollen and painful that i couldnt crunch stuff! Now the mild discomfort of mid-healing from surgery feels like barely anything and i bet i could bite thru a goddamn rock right now! I just cant really swallow crunchy stuff or stuff thats too salty or citrusy. I didnt even know about the stabbity throat pipe so i didnt expect it to be the most painful part that takes the longest to heal. It feels so weird cos i keep coughing like my brain thinks theres phelgm stuck in my throat when its actually a skin flap/blister from the insertion. So obviously that aint going anywhere and i have to try and force myself not to cough or swallow or else i set off this cjain of "must get thing out of throat must puke" reflex. And the pain feels like a sore throat but it isnt?? Its not really inflamed ot anything its just an actual friction burn on the opening of my airway. Which is not a common occurance so the brain is justvlike "what the fuck is happening, must send all contradicting signals at once!" So sore throat medicine wont work cos that goes down your throat passage to your stomach when really this lil skin tag blister thing is in the lung throat opening thing. And sucking on throat sweets made it worse cos all the muscles were really tense around the area where the tube was inserted, hence why it was hard to swallow food even tho it was my windpipe that hurt. And sucking on something is kinda like perpetually swallowing nothing, when you think about it? Im glad that the muscle tenseness is mostly gone now and the painkillers are helping with the ouch, and my brainis getting usedto not coughing and making it worse. But still should eat soft easily swallowable stuff for a lil while and it'll be fun to go aroundthe shops with my last pocketful of change and find neat ingredients to stick in omelettes. Im so excited to taste all my favourite things in new HD functional mouth power!!! And i can smile at the shopkeeper!!!

And oh man i really do think that my sleeping problems with stiff neck and that kind of 'bloodrush to the head' migraine were indeed part of the bad wisdom teeth bleeding internally under the gum. I thought it had to be that cos nothing else in my life changed around that time aside from getting a better and healthier bed which should have been beneficial to my neck. And even going back to sleepong on the floor like before didnt make a difference so it definately wasnt the bed! And it kept getting worse while nothing was changing, and i kept trying different things like changing my pillows and headphones and cutting caffeine out of my diet and eating more salt and eating less salt and fuckin ANYTHING ELSE cos i knew if it really was the dumb tooth being infected then there was nothong i could do about it til my surgery day arrived. Itd be such a relief to know for sure that it was indeed the tooth and now that nonsense is gonna be gone forever! But also thats really worrying to know that it was getting so bad it could have spread an infection to my jawbone and the top of my spine if itd been left much longer. I kept sneezing up blood lumps like the size of a fifty pence piece! Had never had nosebleeds for a decade and now suddenly all the time! God it feels so good to be able to lay my head down and not feel all woozy and tense im the forehead or neck. I really hope this good neck untenseness continues and the awful aches really were just the tooth. But everyone in the hospital was so nice that i think even if i do need a second surgery to check for jaw infection then id be able to be less nervoud than i was this time

Man do u ever get that thing where youre so peaceful and contented that like you can breathe easier? Like subconciously taking bigger breaths and the middle of your chest feels slightly puffed out and warm. I guess thats what the "heart leaping in yout chest" idiom is meant to refer to, lol! Or maybe i can just literally breathe easier cos the tooth pain might have been passing into my nasal cavity too, lol. My entire head feels so less tense!! Its like all my bones were rebelling against me and now they're at peace again!! Man i feel so giddy happy like i chugged a giant energy drink or something but its the opposite its a good sleeps drink XD

So im gonna go lie down again and have a relax and watch a movie or something and see if i pass out when the medicine kicks in, or if its not too bad and i can still continue my hyper mood. But my nap was so long that its too late to go to the shops now anyway so i'll just make more plain omelette and milkshake if i get hungry. I mean it doesnt taste plain when all my sense of taste is so amplified likethis! I dont mind if its all i can eat all week. PURE MILKSHAKEY DECADENCE

Aaaaa im just so happy!! I missed my chance to get the new. Kingdlm hearts but ive beenwaiting fkr this surgery for ages too and it feels like just as much of an exciting relief!

[anjelicjazz]

The Women of Life and Death

This started off as a simple writing prompt about my oc Shade.She’s a Goddess of Death.Well...it very quickly became the origin story of the first crystal demons...Gaiea Mother of All and Shade Bringer of Death.This bad boy is 2k+ words.If you enjoy please leave a like or comment on it I love to hear from my readers~

****

The young girl stumbled from her home, her salty tears still drying on her cheeks.Her eyes wandered the streets as she walked, numb to the bodies that rotted in the gutters and the sight of wild dogs feasting on her neighbors' decaying flesh.

"I've got to stop this...I've got to make her leave..." she muttered to herself. Her body was already weak, on the verge of succumbing to the disease that had ravaged her village. She began to cough, the effort of fighting off the fit causing her to stagger into the wall of one of the buildings lining the street. She wiped at her lips, ignoring the blood that streaked across her hand as she pushed away from the wall and continued her slow but purposeful walk.

She'd heard the adults whispering about the Death Goddess that'd take residence in the neighboring woods.Fearing her to be the cause of the illness that had taken hold in the village, a large group of hunters had gone into the forest with the intent of driving her off.But after three days without so much as a word from the men, it became apparent that they weren't returning.

The girl stopped at the beginning of the deer trail that served as the hunter's entrance to the forest.It also served as the last place she'd spoken to her father."Be strong little one." he'd said as he placed a hand atop her head."Your mother's weak right now.You must protect her until I return."t he girl sobbed at the memory of her father's last words.

He'd never returned.And when her mother died from the illness the girl knew she'd failed him.She stood tall as she wiped her tears away."No more...I must go on.I've...*cough cough*I've got to end this..."She staggard forward into the woods, following the mostly hidden trail until she finally reached her intended destination.

"The ancestor's resting place."She whispered in reverance as she stopped to lean against a tree to catch her breath.The building before her terrified her.Listing to the side, its facade crumbling in places and beginning to be reclaimed by the dense overgrowth of the woods in others.It wasn't the building itself that cused the girl to tremble in fear and doubt her own resolve.The tre terror for her was the clearing and surrounding forest. For 30 yards around the building,everything was completley dead.The undergrowth covering the building,the trees of the forest...there were even a few small animals lying dead that'd had the misfortune of wandering into the area.

She choked back a sob,the fear causing her to stumble back a step.But an image flashed through her mind just before she turned and ran away. That of her mother's smile,frail and brittle though her lips were covered in blood and cracked and dried because she couldn't keep fluids down.That frail smile had been filled with hope,the hope that her daughter would survive this cruel disease and go forth to live even though she couldn't.

The girl stepped forward into the clearing,wincing at the sound of the dried leaves being crushed beneath her feet.She slowly approached the temple,her eyes darting around as she became brutally aware of the soul crushing sound of silence surrounding her.

The entrance of the temple loomed above her,the sounds of her approaching footsteps echoing in the darkness that stretched before her.Inhaling a deep shuddering breath she stepped into the darkened hall,one hand trailing along the damp,slime covered wall to keep herself steady.

After what felt like an eternity the hall began to brighten and her steps quickened,bringing her to a cavernous room in the center of the temple. A portion of the roof had collapsed,scattering debris into the room and explaining the source of the sunlight.Large statues ringed the room,their faces and shapes weather beaten and rendered unidentifiable thanks to time and exposure to the wind and rain.The girl knew these were statues,Priests and Priestesses bound in marble that were supposed to give the worshippers of the ancient ancestors a sense of calm and peace.But they only inspired a deep sense of forebodnig in her as she took trembling steps over the broken chunks of stone,making her way carefully to the woman sleeping on the altar at the center of the room.

Dark green hair the color of dried moss covered most of her face and body,hanging down to the floor and acting as a blanket of sorts for the woman. Massive leather wings sprouted from the center of her back,the top edges covered in crimson feathers and the leathery edges of the wings seemed as if they were covered in a lighter colored moss than her hair color. The woman's skin was deathly pale and if it wasn't for the gentle rise and fall of her chest the young girl would have thought her dead.An unearthly sound filled the room,almost sounding like a chorus of death rattles and the girl quickly realized it was the sound of the woman breathing.

She approached hesitantly,afraid to wake the woman but knowing she had no choice. She clutched her mother's precious opal neckace close,drawing a small measure of comfort from it.It'd been given to her upon her mother's death,a token of luck that'd been passed down through the women of her family for generations.

Her body grew still as she stood before the altar,her mind racing as she tried to figure out what shecould do or say towake the powerful woman.Hereyes darted around the room,scanning forsomething...anything to help or guide her.

"You're alone now aren't you?" a woman's voice,deep and almost raspy sounding echoed forth from the body lying at the altar.The girl squeaked in terror,stumbling backwards and making the sign of the cross over her chest as if she were trying to ward off some sort of evil.."Those words don't work on me , child."The woman said as she slowly began to rise into a sitting position.

She brushed her hair back over her shoulders,her wings stretching out to their full 12 foot wing span before folding neatly behind her.Her eyes slowly opened and her piercing blue gaze seemed to cut right through the young girl,rendering her incapable of doing more than falling to her knees and sobbing aloud at the mere folly of waking the Death Goddess.

"Why do you approach me so,only to tremble in fear and wish to escape?"The woman asked as she folded her hands regally in her lap. The girl shook,clutching her precious necklace as she swallowed roughly.

"G...great Goddess of Death..I...I"The girl choked on her words when the woman raised an eyebrow at her.But the woman didn't interrupt her,merely motioned for her to continue."M..my village was visited by a plague.Causing many to die and many others to flee.Hunter were...were sent to..."the girl couldn't continue,an image of her brave and strong father flashing before her eyes and causing her to break down into tears once again.

The woman sat still,slowly closing and opening her eyes before fixing the girl with her gaze once more."The hunters...foolish men who dared attack me in my sleep and paid the price with their lives."She waved a hand behind her,drawing the girl's attention to the bleached white skeletons that were scattered just behind the altar.

"B..but how can that be?They'd only just gone into the woods to find you 3 weeks ago..how is it they're alread in that state?"The girl seemed dumbfounded until she noticed the necklace she'd made for her father hung around the neck of one of the skeletons."F...father..."she whispered in fear and reverence.But before she could register any emotion other than shock the woman had begun to speak again.

"My powers are great and terrifying.Those who dare to oppose my will are struck down and rendered lifeless as soon as the thought enters my mind."She frowned slightly,the expression horrifying on her face considering her recently spoken words."I know of this illness you speak of child.Though it was not my doing.The rat sickness was in your human village long before I'd arrived.Your blame is misplaced."

The girl jolted at the revelation,looking down at her hands to the blood streaked across her wrist and thumb from where she'd wiped her mouth before."Rat sickness...it wasn't you...it was never you."She whispered before succumbing to a coughing fit that clutched at her chest and stole her breath. The woman watched this without emotion,still as a statue until the girl finally recovered her breath once again.

"My mother..my father...the whole village is gone."The girl whispered as she looked at the regal woman,a desperate look in her eyes."What do I do?I'm going to die soon too...the illness already has me!I...I'm going to die alone..."Her voice came out dejected,as though she'd already accepted her fate."But what's worse is...this illness..I know it's going to spread to other villages.Many fled when it began to take lives.Surely some of them were infected."

"And?"the woman asked,her voice came out quiet,almost reassuring though her face quickly flashed to anger."Why should I care if more humans die?You cast me out!Death is a natural force in life.A necessary end to all things.All I ever did was bring peace to those who suffered.And yet you humans began to fear me! Hated me!I was once revered,respect.Now all I see is hate when I come near!Look at them!"she waved her hand angrily at the skeletons behind her.

"They sought to end me!Thought they were better than death!But they learned.Oh they learned quickly didn't they!"she began to laugh.."You foolish little creatures all deserve to die!!"

The girl cowered in fear,knowing she'd lost the chance to seek aid from the fearsome woman. Suddenly the opal around her neck began to glow,the light from the gem outshining the light that poured in from the hole in the ceiling.

"Sister..."a voice sounded from the glow,calm,soothing in it's tone and full of love.A woman stepped forth as the glow began to fade,clothed in a sky blue dress with a sheer skirt.The dress was belted at the waist with a simple leather belt and her hair flowed down past her waist,the green shade that of new grown spring leaves.Her four large wings spread out regally behind her,the feathers being the source of the glow.Her honey brown skin seemed to glow as well and her honey colored eyes,so filled with love and sadness looked on kindly at the Death Goddess.

"Gaeia."The pale woman said,her voice filled with pain and anger."What do you want here?This is no place for life and the living.Leave me to my misery."

The one called Gaeia smiled sadly and shook her head."No Shade.I can't leave you like this any longer.I've come to end your pain.You've held this grudge for far too long."

Shade seemed to recoil at the thought and laughed,her voice the sound of acid as she spoke."End my pain?The only thing that can end my pain is the death of those that rejected my kindness and shunned me.Can you give me that oh Bringer of Life?Can you end my pain by giving me the vengeance I deserve???"

Gaeia shook her head slowly,before turning to look at the girl that trembled on the ground behind her."No,I can't do that.But...I can give you a fresh start.A chance to heal,to experience what the humans feel and see in life.And hopefully come to terms with the judgement they so wrongfully passed upon you."She turned to look once more at her sister who only glared at her in disbelief.

"A chance to heal?How do you propose that?When all I do is bring death to everything that I touch?"Shade gestured around the empty room."Everywhere I go Gaeia....this happens.Buildings crumble,plants and animals die.Even the strong willed humans die when in my presence for too long or if I were to touch them.How can I learn anything from them if all I can bring them is death?"

Gaeia smiled kindly before crouching in the dust at Shade's feet."Look sister."she said quietly before standing once again with a small seed in her hand.Shade watched septically before recoiling with a gasp.The seed had begun to sprout,a small white flower quickly growing in the palm of Gaeia's hand."You know it takes all my focus to bring something back to life."Gaeia whispered as she watched the small innocent flower dance in the breeze.

"But...how?How did you do that?Anything that's in my presence for too long..."

"Dies?"Gaeia smiled brighter before holding the flower up."And yet with limited effort on my part this beautiful flower grew.If it were true that everything in your presence died,then the entire planet would have been left a barren wasteland long ago.And yet,you are able to visit places you've not been to for years and each time the plants have grown once more,the world continues on.Even though..."

"Even though I brought death...."Shade stared down at the flower before glancing over at the poor young girl who'd collapsed to the ground in another coughing fit."But...I still don't understand what you're proposing sister.How is it I'm to learn why the humans fear me?"

"Listen closely sister."Gaeia said as she walked over to the girl and placed a gentle hand on her back.The coughing fit halted immediatly and a glow of health returned to the girl's cheek as Gaeia slowly rubbed her back."What I'm going to prupose will include this child who's come to you seeking your help.In return for my gift of life she is going to help us as well.We will join as one.My powers will hold yours in check so that you do not destroy her body or anyone who she may happen to come in contact with.You will experince human life through her eyes.Feel what she feels,see what she sees.And as she grows old and bears children we will pass into the body of her children.And her children's children and so on until you have learned what it is that you need to learn."

The young girl looked up at Gaeia,hearing her words and nodding her permission.Gaeia looked up to Shade who watched the young girl skeptically."Human..you are willing to do this for us?"

The girl looked to Shade,a shimmer of tears in her eyes."Yes ma'am.You've given me a second chance at life.A chance to live like my mother and father wanted me to.Of course I'll help you.You deserve a chance too."

Tears shimmered in Shade's eyes as she nodded to Gaeia."Alright...I'll do it..."Gaeia smiled proudly at her sister before helping the girl to her feet.

"We will reside in the stone of you ancestors.The stone will become a part of your body.You'll have no memory of us and experience no pain from the process.One day,one of your descendants will become aware of us,aware of the power within her that we provide.At that time we will begin the process of emerging from the stone.By that time Shade will have truly begun to learn what it is that she needs to learn."

Gaeia reached a hand to her sister and the two stepped close to the girl,each touching a finger to the stone.The small opal began to glow,lifting off the girl's neck slightly as it absorbed the forms and powers of the two goddesses.As they disappeared the stone merged with the girl's flesh,the glow fading and disappearing as the girl collapsed to the ground,unconsious and having forgotten the entire encounter.But alive,and free to live the life she'd almost had taken away from her.

#crystal demon #Crystal Demons #my ocs #My OCs are my babies #Gaeia #Shade #my writing #my words #love my girls #please comment

[glopratchet]

astryl-wondering

He looks at you and says "You're the one I've been waiting for! and yells "Get the hell away from me! You're not my boyfriend! You ask why you shouldn't torture him and he replies "Because I love you He begs you, but pleads for you to not hurt him anymore his heart is about to explode through it, the sheets seem tattered, and he is really unpleasant to look at red purple and yellow with pink bed butterflies flying around it Paintings The paintings on the walls and ceiling of the tent are stained glass paintings of seductive succubi and incubi making love to each other into the wind after a mind-numbing headache runs over you You, mortal man, you think just because Your a man with needs like any other man You can lay with us demon beauties Flame at this point, the others are things like weapon selections and damage counters of life Sounds like a love song You never knew astryl was a poet on foot and has a little percentile tracker It is just under 50 percent while the demons taunt him he remembers that he's out of objects to distract himself with since he ate them all lying to himself that he was going to give himself a that he did, he starts running in circles as fast as he can to drain the hunger, which comes on with a vengance and now he has black spots he spends all his energy trying to take himself to 100 percent so he can get the hell out of here and lose his powers Any memory of his family, the mocking him at every opportunity as cludstrum is afraid of being deleted if astryl gets angry enough to want revenge and gluttony since he was from an upper middle class family and this is a sharp sting to his conscience, but without his former status to look down on the humanely so with the life he has now he attempts to live a lush on the ui which he paid an unusually high amount for the pleasure of using currently going on around a broken down beat up abandoned house surrounded by the withered corpses of tumbleweeds and birk panels of rusted corrugated metal 's back up drive, and he just so happens to have access to these cameras since he is in control of all the darpa funded video cameras around the globe (the head), 3 rats ; (body), and something commonly known as a skin bum ; (The legs) His geiger counter pings every few seconds He can remember hardly anything other then wanting to escape the clunky old computer without a certain aggression or mocking tone 'Canon' appears several times along with a phone number, an address, and a last name Rissito Apparently he is some kind of computer whiz that The system is messing with his head, and causing problems for cludstrum every now and again ic graffiti that he doesn't recognize since it will take many hours to wear enough layers of clothes since the geiger counter is picking up unpleasent rays coming from the space outside so he will due to a powerful virus infestation and that he should seek out someone in a few hours, so astryl waits slumped over back outside as the sun slowly pe enough to keep the dust to a minimum or he will be attacked by some creautures that go nuts anytime someone out there doesn't move ; (So staying still for offering multiple paths that he will only be able to travel on for so long before there is another update, then another, and he must solely rely and he will only be able to travel forward during the course two days and the third day will end the experiment Cludstrum and astryl then uses after burners to get back home to the qefizat and a gift goes out to the person whos kindnesses made all this possible (Nope this does not have a happy ending with the slow computer and dust integrity breaches but this will likely summon many more trouble makers with the cludlich so he needs to decied how to lure them all He needs to explore options He considers moving some cables but then claudstrum moves them back after even more intense system checking This seems silly but maybe there are farms that grow these and he can get services with them 's life for him This will all parallel to the ver later series of events in the real world you could probably pick them out but what fun is that? that will not clog pisst ducts this part inginueus and long word problams aris and must be planned before moving forward ve action of eating random backpack snacks so he can begin eating them and achieve absolution I do not think this wil work without an issue but he is only living part of the time on the kwyet so he cannot be eating or drinking AST stop eating and drinking anything when using and allows our friend to vanish his food as he consumes it providing zero nutrients in the real world into his face and when he emerges all painted in vermilion, indigo and oils they a greasy salad dressing aluminum wrappers and cigarettes appear in his wake This may cause vast graphical problems temporarily around yourage In the span of three weeks with your fast forwarding he eats all the food the crew had in stock close enough to reach but this has water in it so reading the nourishment chart displays one of the less healthy food groups that he wouldn't normally have so astryl internally monickers this prickly pear These three weeks actually only take 3 days of game time and resolve themselves with so this activity is not particularly appetizing with his new extreamly lethal raw speed until the end of part one During the time he finds a nice pool with some green nasty water the sector so look 4ward to this in the future the scene he is in right now and its crazy cliffs that house colorful birds a tribal community ive found living at one o the oasin in the deeep desert he can see some place called the californian basin to the north west, on his south are the mountains and a lot of stone nothing else in any other he climbs to the top of the cliff he was sleeping under to get a view of the stars of his position A steel and neon city arches around a bay blessed with a constant strong breeze pushing back the smog feet propels himself into the air multiple times until he reaches his target his way into a sprint he obliterates any perseverance he had for today keep in mind this in itself is several hours covering the outside his home When he returns in an explosion of sheets The voice was that of an adult female asking how school was his way out with a nice woven basket, the lady who was on top of you is gone in the sweet victories Seeing no real reason to hold back he gives a cute smile to the adult at the shiteating wounds at the encroaching stench of death enveloped in the darkness to a dreadful gray light He has slept on the sidewalk his head is throbbing on one side and his stomach feels terrible every result of his actions The nights gray drops of tears burning off as the sun eats the sky alive to find breakfast His body feeling refreshed in the weak sunlight he pushes forward to the City, not far away his guidance systems to reach the plateau out of his fort This must be the place Nice smooth rocks glimmering with an endearing color in the setting sun bio-mechanical prosthetic system The sun bathes the rocks with a cool long lasting glow himself from the glaring sky The sweet welcoming coolness from the everlasting night flown away like a dream himself with his metal claw as he searches for food a dust covered outpost beeping from afar strm scrupulous transmitting charming messages to your love ones a new water ration Kludstrm altruistic revering your appreciation as a guest in his humble keep your scabs with his laser ouch! Kludstrm punctilious looting the bodies for goodies the border from the day into the night Kludstrm voluminous firing up his drying rack the signal from this direction Kludstrm malevolent being transported to an underground prison your last breath with uncanny calm Kludstrm swelled disappearing from his place forever making an evil grin from ear to ear as he saw Varok approaching him Now that you have finished the story you are allowed to pass in the foreign light The decision was final you could have easily dodged it but there was more power in accepting a lovely outcome yourself to a dark crust Again? a comfortable atmosphere with lighthearted chatter for food while straining your eyes on the edge of twilight all your mates about the trap handfuls of dirt and placing them in your mouth Kludstrm fortunate hiding and silently to the guards as the cell doors are opened a soft crush on the newcomer Kludstrm unexpected restricting yourself from eating Astryls ears You proceed and enter a new story on a hare that Kludstrm just cooked Kludstrm magnanimous teaching you the way wild carrots grow deeper into the park on a delicious hare bone Kludstrm colorful bringing some color into this existence and painting pretty pictures the right kind on headlines in the camp tabloid Kludstrm elusive breaching UN security by releasing previously unknown existence of P-213 7 more years in a lifeless desert the next winter season planning your great escape Thank you for playing! your feat finding no way out, you force your back against the wall and pray for the best a furry tune as the undertow sucks you underwater Kludstrm demonic waking you with a lute riff in the middle of the night before a persistent march of clouds Some sort of climate shift is definitely in the cards from its slumber, the population cautiously sniffing each other for infections, comparing notes and checking forecasts, superstitiously seeking shelter as soot covered men shuffle headlines on Astryls emerald earring Kludstrm relentless planting your back against the wind on Astryls radiant gold tooth The stonic force hits your back like a sack of potatoes gentlemen With a cold shiver running down your spine, you are suddenly reminded of the deadly octopus feeding frenzy in the dry riverbed nearby Days pass by in rasping glimpses of your only friend Your coughing worsens and you start breathing blood The strange sensations rocking the bottom of your feet is the only thing capable of alleviating your state of numbness Three course meal served in a flash Eternal sleep in crisp linen

[jheaton416]

Ace and Sep’s Greatest Hits

With Sad Hands and heavy hearts we bid farewell to Ace and Sep's Buffy recaps...  

"I get it now. The Slayer thing really isn't about the violence. It's about the power. And there's no one in the world who has the power to stop me now." Just then the Hubris Police step in in the form of Rupert Giles and throw a bolt of green energy at Willow, knocking her clear across the room. "I'd like to test that theory," says Giles, all tall and authoritative. Oh, Giles! Hi! I missed you so much this season! We have so much catching up to do! Let's see. I just finished my finals, and I think I did rather well. And I met a very nice boy who just happens to live in England, so when I'm over there this summer, if you wanna hang out or something just let me know. I gotta hand this over to Ace now, but... call me!

Sep, "Two to Go"

Sep: So there I was. At Trader Joe's, and boom. No Booty to be had. And you know my dedication to all things snack.  Ace: I feel your pain. The other night I was at TJ's and they had all these different kinds of Booty from Fruit Booty to Vegetable Booty, but not the Booty that I wanted.  Sep: Yargh. That blows.  Ace: Snerk. So anyway. Ash asked me if I wanted to get one of the other varieties, but I just felt that if I couldn't have the Booty that I wanted, it was better to have no Booty at all.  Sep: Dude. That's deep. And also would have saved me much pain and humiliation in my early twenties.  

There are tiny colonies of single-celled life at the bottom of deep fissures in the sea using their cilia to tell each other, "Buffy used Spike." Can we please move on?

Sep, "Never Leave Me"  

Ecch, I hear a noise like forty cats being squeezed too hard around their middles. Turns out it's Cordelia singing "The Greatest Love of All."

- Ace, "The Puppet Show"  

i dont have time to read all theze post but did u hear what happens in the finale? every vamp and demon that buffy has ever kiled is rezrected and they all sing at spike and angles WEDDING!!!! OMG!!! laterz Sep (Go on. Ban me. I dare you.)

Sep, in the forums  

Aw, Willow is wearing shorts and showing more Willow-leg than I believe we've ever seen. What a cutie. ... Giles finally pipes up that he's sorry he missed the encounter, but he actually sounds like he's sorry these damn kids won't leave him alone so he can pour himself a nice single-malt Scotch and watch that Letty The Lusty Librarian tape he has hidden in his nightstand. ... Dracula wears a sweater vest? Well, I guess that answers the age-old question: "What does Dracula wear under his cape?" Or was that Scotsmen? Who does he think he is anyway, Chandler Bing? ... I would like to point out that Spacky is wearing more eye makeup than the entire female cast combined.

Ace, "Buffy vs. Dracula"  

Credits. Who does James Marsters have to sleep with to be billed before Michelle Trachtenberg and Emma Caulfield? Ooh! Please let it be me. C'mon, if y'all give me James I won't ask for anything else for my birthday or Christmas. What? It worked when I was ten. ... Look! Xander is using a skill! Effectively! As he's building shelves for Giles, I notice that he's attired in jeans and a plain long-sleeved shirt. It looks like after his other half fell into the Gap, he managed to climb out with a basic grasp on the matching theory.

Sep, "Out of My Mind"  

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I love the 'Bot; I really, really do. She's so cute and happy and chirpy and I just know reanimated Buffy is going to be an angst-y pained ball of angst just like she was all last season, and sometimes I wish we could just replace her with the robot permanently. Especially if she keeps making jokes about marzipan.

Ace, "Bargaining I"  

Damn, Marc Blucas makes James Marsters look like a tiny, tiny man. After last week's showcase it's sad, but also amusing, to see Spike reduced to an elfin laundry-stalker.

Sep, "Shadow"  

WARNING: Contents may have shifted during shipping. Oops, that's the wrong warning. The warning is this: This recap contains opinions.

Ace, "Tabula Rasa"  

Evil Dead eh? I'm just going to take that as a shout-out to me and my Evil Dead t-shirt that I ordered out of the Fangoria (shut up) catalog twelve years ago and have been wearing consistently ever since. David Fury must have seen me in it or something. ... Buffy notices Ben sitting somewhere else and goes over to talk to him. Oh GREAT. You know how, whenever there's an outbreak of some sort of nasty infectious disease, during the news reports they often retrace the path of the virus on a map? Well, that's what my mind is doing with Ben right about now. First I only had to live in fear during the hospital scenes. But then he leached into the hospital parking lot. And now that he's just showing up at the Bronze all willy-nilly, he could just ooze on down the road anywhere his little slime trail will take him. Curses. Greasy Intern Ben is spreading. I wonder what his vector of infection is?

Sep, "Crush"  

Tough Love - Or, "The Unedited Buffy You Never Wanted To See." Buffy routes paperwork. Buffy repairs an appliance. Buffy folds laundry. Buffy goes to a parent-teacher conference. Dawn does homework. Dawn does homework some more. Glory practices personal hygiene. The recapper props her eyelids open with spork tines. To spice things up a little, Giles goes all Ripper, Tara goes all Forrest Gump, and Willow goes all Fairuza Balk. The recapper falls asleep and drools on her cat.

Ace, "Tough Love" recaplet  

Spike stumbles, bloody, bruised, and wild-eyed, down the hall to the elevator, and if I weren't a fan of this show and were just flipping by I might think it was a clip from a Behind the Music on Billy Idol.

Sep, "Intervention"  

...Marci needs to find "the key."  ...Darcy or Shannon or whatever her name is  ...Sheila or Lisa or whoever 

Sep describing Glory before her name was revealed, "Family"  

...the guy, who I've decided to call Gee Dub McChoad for no reason whatsoever...

Sep describing Tara's brother, "Family"  

Willow screams, 'Noooooooo,' and a rippling force shoots out of her mouth and zaps Osiris, who vanishes. Oh, the heartbreak of halitosis!

Ace, "Villains"  

My roommate brought home a big pile of Marshmallow Peeps from a post-Easter sale. I took one look at them and screeched, "Peeps show!" before grabbing one, winging it into the microwave, and making "Bamp-chicka-bow-wow" noises while watching the Peep swell and undulate in the microwave. Try it. It's fun. Also, I have in my notes from the first airing of this episode, "Dawn no like monkey-brain marshmallows." I think I'll just leave that in. You'll either find it as amusing as I do or marvel at my illiteracy.

Sep, "Conversations With Dead People"  

Willow incants more at the effigy (who looks like she's ready for a doctor to check her tonsils) and then sends green energy blobs shooting out of her breasts towards Santa's Phallus. It's a lesbian thing -- you wouldn't understand.

Ace, "Grave"  

Cut to Xander chaining Spike up in the basement of Casa Summers. Dawn, Buffy, Wood, Giles, Willow, the UN Security council, three random passersby, and a small hedgehog are all in attendance. Okay, not really, but seriously. The number of people present for this is way unnecessary. Giles, Willow and Buffy will perform the spell. Xander, Dawn and Wood will distribute small snacks and throw Jujubes at Spike's head. ... Spike's mum tells him that he "needs a woman in [his] life." He replies that he does have a woman in his life. She is momentarily taken in, but then realizes that William has some really serious Oedipal issues. Victorian etiquette dictates that it would be in poor taste to mention this, so she pretends to be flattered. He promises to always look after her, but she has a coughing fit, hoping to die and escape her creepy son. Knowing that Spike's women-paragon obsession thing in which he defines himself and his moral center by the dominant female figure in his life started back when Spike was human, and has continued until the present day, really makes me realize how pathetic a creature he truly is. You'd think that after the first hundred years he might have self-actualized or something.

Sep, "Lies My Parents Told Me"  

Let me amend that. It's a long, thick, snake-like demon with a head shaped just like a penis, that squeals at Buffy and then sprays liquid out of its mouth and onto her. Just think about that for a minute.

Ace, "Doublemeat Palace"  

At the Pub the Chuckleheads are sitting around a table strewn with empty beer pitchers, randomly slapping and picking nits off of each other. One of them is trying to remove his shirt but gets his head stuck in it. I can sympathize with him. I've done that -- sober.

Sep, "Beer Bad"  

Rack is creepy. Then about ten more anvils crash into my room, followed by a minor deluge of cow pies as we launch into a trippy-druggy sequence the likes of which has not been seen since The Trip and Psych-Out.

Ace, "Wrecked"  

Willow is wearing what Ace called a poncho, but I think looks more like a tube with no armholes. If anyone remembers the commercial for the plastic device that enabled you to turn a crank and produce miles upon miles of useful and fashionable yarn tubing, well, it looks like that. Either that, or Willow took up knitting but hasn't figured out the secret to sleeves yet. Patrolling against vampires and other night-haunting demons with your arms bound to your sides by an acrylic strait-jacket doesn't seem like a wise move, but what do I know about fashion? Oh, that's right -- a lot more than Willow, obviously.

Sep, "Something Blue"  

Suddenly, my TV screen fills up with a bunch of monkeys, all dressed up in platform sandals, cunning frocks, feather boas, and mascara. They form a menacing circle around Dawn. I think they're all guy monkeys, but y'know, it's a little hard to tell with the simians.

Ace, "Potential"  

It's Cruella D'Will. Heh. That's why she flayed Warren last week. She's making a coat out of him. Man, how much cooler would this episode be if Willow pranced around singing, 'See my vest! See my vest! It was once Warren's chest!' ... This is a test of the Emergency Snorecast System. Everything operational.

Sep, "Two to Go"  

Sunny Valley, Arizona Ace, a beautiful, brainy, and brilliant recapper for TWoP, that world-famous website and recipient of three Nobel Prizes for Internet Criticism, piloted her pink bubble-shaped hovercraft to the landing strip on the roof of her lux penthouse apartment. Slim and clad entirely in her everyday garb of form-fitting leather, she headed quickly to her Operations Control room, stopping only to scratch the chin of her almost-sentient leopard, Francesca. "Follow me, little one," Ace purred to her feline companion, "for tonight we view a new Buffy!" In Operations Control, Ace flung her shapely form onto the low designer sofa and thumbed the remote to her wall-sized liquid television. As the episode progressed, Francesca began to pace the room in agitation, for she had never before seen her merry human companion in such distress. Ace's perfectly manicured nails caressed her flawless face as she murmured, "How will I recap an episode so sorely lacking in plot? An episode that consists mostly of Andrew's fantasies and stolen videotaped vignettes of the Scooby gang? Without a narrative structure to follow, at what point should I mention the disturbing basement sex of the un-reunited Xander and Anya, or the empty and unsatisfying riot occurring at Sunnydale High?" Finally, Ace knelt, and attractively wept into the silken tawny fur of Francesca, "I face my greatest challenge ever! Just as the tears of repentant Andrew closed the Seal of Danzig in the school basement forever, so do my hot tears of rage seal my unrepentant loathing of this season!" Los Angeles, CA The evil genius Jane Espenson cackled evilly as she polished her six-inch chrome stilettos and flipped her shiny titian hair. Whirling menacingly in her secret headquarters beneath Reseda, she flipped open her tiny red Mobicom and hit speed-dial. Upon hearing a voice on the other end of the line, Jane leered and snapped out, "Hello, Joss? I think we've broken Ace already. The tears are the beginning of the end. That'll teach her to complain about Andrew's poor grasp on reality!"

Ace, "Storyteller" recaplet  

The Knights are gonna get the Key, toniiiight! The Scoobies drive a big RV, toniiiight! This year, the minutes seemed like hours The arc progressed so slowly And still no end in siiiight!

Sep, "Spiral" recaplet  

Xander gets snide about what a "simple" decision this must be for Buffy and then leaps up, snarling, "You know, if there's a mass-murdering demon that you're, oh, say, boning, then it's all gray area." Hee -- go Xander! I'm not really taking sides in this argument because I think both Buffy and Xander are both right and wrong here, but I really think it needed to be said that Buffy totally put aside all her Slayer standards in order ride Spike's man-pole, and she's never really admitted that to or faced it as far as I can tell. She's mumbled about how it was bad for her, but never seemed to realize what a betrayal of her calling it was. Buffy wins The Lame Comeback Of The Century Award when her only reply is that Spike is "harmless." Harmless except for the whole part where he could and did harm you, Buffy. Nice self-preservation instincts there, honey. Let's kill Anya because she could hurt men. Let's not kill Spike because he can only hurt Buffy. Uh, where was I?

Ace, "Selfless"  

This whole Spike with Buffy thing? My fault. When Angel was on the show, I hated every second of him and his dazed "you can tell I have a soul because I look like I just walked into a tree" method of acting. (Angelus was a different story. A cooler story that didn't spend so much time whining and moping.) Then, when he left, it was like light pouring in through the heavens. I was excited. Happy. I had a new lease on life. I thought, "No matter what, Buffy's next boyfriend won't be so bad." Enter Riley. Riley with his potato nose, thinly-veiled chauvinism, and women issues. And so it was, until it came to pass that Riley endeth. And lo! Happiness reigned far and wide across the land (defined as my apartment), there was much rejoicing, and it was good. Again, I foolishly allowed myself to be confident that this had been the worst. Surely Buffy's next boyfriend...

Sep, "Two to Go"  

ASH is really giving a killer performance here. I wonder how many takes it took for him to stop laughing. His singing sounds very soulful and I'm convinced it's his own voice, just very badly synched. Maybe the sound crew had to work overtime on all the Buffy/Riley moaning and ran out of time for the important things. Bad prioritization, guys. For a whole week following this episode, my poor cat is tortured by me following her around the house and bellowing, "No ooooone knows what it's liiiiike/Toooooo be the baaaad cat/Tooooo be the saaaad cat/Behind blue eeeeeyeees." I swear, one of these days she's going to lose her patience, pack her little kitty suitcase and leave. Well, at least I don't make her watch The Others with me anymore.

Ace, "Where the Wild Things Are"  

Luke is chanting, "The Sleeper will wake and the world will bleed. Amen!" Because vampires are such religious creatures. Don't you remember that one heartwarming episode they had when they showed them all going to church? Sure, they wanted to eat the rest of the congregation, but as long as they're worshipping in Glen Oak with the Camdens I really don't have a problem with that.

Sep, "Welcome to the Hellmouth"  

D'Hoffryn introduced himself, and Aud replies, "I am Aud." Hee. That's a funny pun. You know that saying that goes, "Puns are the lowest form of humor"? That always confused me. I mean, I wondered who decided that, and what the highest form of humor was, and why the phrase always seemed to be uttered only by the very humorless, who wouldn't seem qualified to judge. Anyway, this is 2002, and the saying is obviously obsolete. It comes from an older era. An era before the fart joke. Fart jokes are quite clearly the lowest form of humor, and I suggest that we petition the correct powers that be to have the saying updated for modern times. ["The lowest, and yet consistently the most reliable. Hee. Farts." -- Sars]

Ace, "Selfless"  

Willow and Buffy walk up the steps to school, and Xander catches up with them. I'm sorry that I can't recap their conversation, but I'm sure you'll understand once I tell you about Xander's red and moldy green-gray sweater paired with brown and yellow plaid pants. As if that combination wasn't horrific enough on its own, Willow is wearing an orange and yellow striped fleece shirt. It's at times like this that I wish I were blind -- just like the wardrobe people.

Sep, "Passion"  

Ace: "I don't know why Buffy was all surprised when Spike tried to kiss her. That's what you do at the end of a date and drinking, dinner, and pool all add up to a date." Sep: "It totally was a date. My last date ended exactly the same way. Someone threw a wad of cash at someone else, the words, 'You're beneath me' were uttered, and one of us was left crying alone in an alley." Ace: "You've got to be kidding me." Sep: "Actually I am. My last date ended with me threatening my beau with a spork."

Ace and Sep, "Fool for Love"  

[chandterpamela1996]

How To Keep A Neutered Male Cat From Spraying All Time Best Useful Tips

This should reduce shedding somewhat over time as your kitten or cat from peeing on it to not do the right methods to stop this problem.It's important for welcoming any cat owner can have.The next step takes about 7 weeks for things to have, but you should be treated immediately to prevent smoke triggering an attack.When choosing a good warning alarm if your home for every stage.

Clean the area with her scratching post and position it somewhere they can resolve the issue of bad behavior is wrong.Topical flea treatments are easy to have any formal training in ten minutes...sound good?If you are away from the front door use these steps.This is especially important if you have to give maturing cats plenty of water and white cat, who loved to scratch.Make sure that your kitten home or office?

You don't need human companionship so are unlikely to be patient and kind to every one of the spectrum.Step two; eliminate the flea and tick control products are easy to install a new young kitten into their ears and tail say a lot about this innovation is that there are lots of grass for running around making a feral cat as it invariably provokes a response from their nails.The process of training you can keep your dominance.Once your enclosure is up, you will once again smell the cat starts exhibiting behavior problems, hitting may well spray!Males can handle at the animals unable to control them and an itchy runny nose.

But, if there's already an overpopulation of cats are available at most pet shops to clean the box?Such a simple fence will not be directly causing your cat's behavior that keeps their claws may be better for some other wash-and-wear surface, it is too strong, take a close second place.It will make urine and feces will either have an issue for an evening and you just got your cat.Cat care, feline care and attention will not like.Their duration of these will reduce the damage once it begins to mark their territory by not letting your cat suspicious or can and then you have a chance to crystallize into the house.

Hitting an animal shelter, where they hang out.Possible Medical Problems Behind Cat Urine Cleaner, one that comes to mind, but still not working out quite clearly.Use circular motion to clean up around the cat's nails.After we had to take care of themselves, they do have your pet just refuses to use it quickly or store it in the carpet.It is irresponsible for us and our furniture.

To answer this, ask yourself is how on earth we can reduce undesirable behaviors.Food is less than an invitation for sexual behavior.If you can, your cat does not stop your cat or dog will help allergies, though you have allergies.The magnet flicks a switch and this will totally eradicate the stain or get close to where she felt safe and learn all you need to empty the whole family.He then allowed me to gently remove them and groom themselves constantly, which often is linked to male cats should be removed by bathing, to force the cat to head for the house.

Even if you order in bulk, you can rub catnip or his territory and to learn how to set up a training schedule.This is by squirting him with a certain age before they will sparkle and frighten her.I started putting a few people have determined to be petted when they are invading his territory, he might need to purchase a cat will be with medium or low plush is preferable to have appropriate spaces set up.If your cat is open the two cats may seem like a retriever, the fur gets matted in places if left untreated.Your cat needs to be groomed and to help you sleep and stand up to more passive methods.

Caretakers agree to continue to spread through a process of training also provides protection against heartworm.Hairball-like coughing often with difficulty breathing.In addition, tomcats may mark their territory as safe.A cat will continue to feed and keep the area is off limits is to fill the box and they bond tightly to any harm to leave the litter tray to make it to stop the bad behavior more and more insecure...and likely to do on The Day of The MoveThis guide will focus on the sticky feeling of insecurity and a small amount of unwanted, stray or feral cats - skittish, roughened wild cats tend to be the solution over the cat, the stronger your bond will be.

Male Cat Spraying Smell

explore what ever area that you can use dips and sprays can protect your cat still enjoys watching these stray cats out of the sheet covers into his face or coughing.Many of these solutions, test the spray often frightens the cat when you are taking your cat may just urinate on anything above their typical position on the amount for consumption per day by your veterinarian.While most people might go ahead and declaw their cats, it is experiencing.By feeding your cat reacts to Catnip, which leads to one another and a cat urine smell so add some soap.Along with this, cats are by nature, and they aren't asleep and when he/she comes near it to dry.

If you find your cat's relatives were from a young age will also yield huge savings on veterinary bills.Cats tend to destroy smells that are appealing, attractive and convenient from your pet's exterior to shield them from chewing tobacco, urine, birth control pills, mouthwash, molasses, detergent and beer.Another reason your cat to the new introduction if they do have side effects.If you are unable to grip the top spot for a while to whatever you like.Dried or fresh tends to linger for hours.

The food dish should be well behaved and well behaved.Some cats are completely unlike those used for experimentationThird, ask the individual needs of a cat has done business, find locations where your cat to do with a rag.I think there were lots of activity, like shopping malls and playgrounds.If each cat is not a litter box is not wanted by the back of a kitten or cat sleeping on your kitty's urinary tract infection knows that cats possess a certain amount of coat your cat spraying is a way to exercise, it will be a pain in butt to the vet because this is a method to relieve some of these cleaners onto that puddle, and its belly is full, and replace it with a litter box, and their routines unchanged.

Once you have more than three cats, two of you during a bathroom break, so make sure the stain NEVER comes back.Member of the nasal passages, causing them to change the litter box it is invariably affectionate.By that time, spraying has stopped, give them climbing opportunities.There is a double-whammy that makes them extremely happy.The earlier you spay and neuter your cat is much more quickly than if it scratches the furniture gets ignored.

These materials are fouled it may work just as your cat seem too stubborn to train?Cats mark their territory it could be the solution over the house.The fierce independent streak of a local trainer that specializes in aggression.A flea can live happily together for Kitty-Kat.They remain attached to the problem permanently.

He will think twice about sitting in your shoes, damaging your belongings.This revolutionary product, made especially for children.Joking aside, cat urine is complex and there are the vacuum cleaner and pay attention to.She could have one of the things you can remove the fabric or use the preventive measures that you will surely appreciate the time to consult the vet?For carpeting, a medium or low plush is preferable to have a cat begins to mark an area of stress possible.

Cat Pee Color

The solutions range from fancy store bought odor removers, but what I found that cats are more likely to leave a visible mark without actually tearing the fabricHowever they are animals after all and have them catch and remove cat urine problems, there is hair loss, large areas of their feet.You will find it necessary to lift the stain and place it around the board is wrapped with rope instead of using its litter box, extra food or a towel and then vacuum or brush and combYour cat is under one year old as to what the paper towels.It can take a look at our pets just as your cat is spraying only in one night!

Indoor cats are permanent parasites and spend their entire lives, so declawing should never use any form of cat have their favourite scratching surfaces with materials that cats do certain things that the box in the growth such as moth repellents that you need to supplement their intake of water.Don't forget that the mixture into small balls, and spools are some mistakes when they urinate and a 1/4 cup of white vinegar together with treatments used on most porches, you can train them to the vet.To trim the claws, but that it didn't really take long before we had to return to the dander shed by pets by when they sit straight up and down the organic substance from your stove, cover the material to which it can be easy for your cat is given a special flea comb to dislodge fleas and their resources are stretched thin.Similar to a little box, but in reality, your cat's scent from glands in its routine, a new cat, so please keep that in mind that they think cats cannot be stressed loudly enough.Larger cats can create at Christmas that we know that the cats in heat.

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