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ifellinluvwithamonster · 6 years

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Smells Like Ash(and Love)

Note: The title is stupid and I’m sorry.

You sighed happily, cozy sitting in your sweater under a warm blanket in your favorite chair. It felt like a lifetime since you had the time to just sit and relax like this, what with trying to run a successful business and all, but it was worth it just to feel your muscles groan in relief. You owned a bakery, one that was known for being popular with the discerning tastes of all the species of the world. Selkies, dragons, minotaurs, satyrs, aliens, robots, demons, ghosts, vampires, werecreatures, witches, orcs, and more all flocked to try your treats. Trying to run the bakery was doing a number on you, but you didn’t mind. You liked being busy, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t.

Speaking of, you thought, might as well take a look at my orders while I’m sitting here. Grabbing your laptop from the coffee table, you flipped it open and took a look at the orders that were going out tomorrow. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, except for one huge order that practically had your eyes popping out of your skull. Scanning the order details, you saw that it was the same person who had been cleaning out your shop every other week since you opened. You didn’t know the exact numbers, but you were fairly certain that whoever they were, they were your best customer. I should do something for them as a thank-you for all the business they’ve given me, you thought. You decided to send them a complimentary muffin basket with their next order. That done, you closed your laptop and stretched your arms above your head. Letting loose a long yawn, you decide to turn in for the night, not knowing what would be waiting for you in the morning.

The next morning, you were going through your usual breakfast rush at the bakery, when you noticed one of your employees staring at the door. You were about to ask her what was the matter, when you discovered the reason for her frozen state. Standing directly outside the door, was a dragon. This was shocking for two reasons: the first reason being dragons very rarely left their caves unless it was for something of extreme importance, and the second reason being because the dragon in question, who had vermillion-red scales, golden eyes, and was the nearly the size of the bakery, had a basket of muffins perched precariously on its snout. Shooing away the employee you went outside to inquire why the dragon was there.

“Hello Mr...?”

“Tudron.” The dragon rumbled. He had a voice that rolled like thunder, and a thin trail of smoke came out of his nostrils as he spoke.

“Mr. Tudron.” You said, plastering your customer-service smile on your face. “What can I help you with?”

“This came with my order today, but as I did not order it, I came to return it.” Tudron said lowering his snout so that you were eye-level with the basket of muffins. Your eyes widened when you realized that you recognized the muffin basket.

“You’re the one that placed those orders!” You said, happy to finally meet your best customer face-to-face well, face-to-snout. “I should’ve realized when I heard your name, I can’t believe I forgot.”

“You know who I am?” Tudron asked curiously.

“You’ve been cleaning out my shop since the beginning. Without you, I don’t know that I would have been able to keep my business afloat. I sent you the muffin basket as a thank-you for all the business you’ve given me over the years. I know it isn’t much but...”

Tudron was quiet for a moment, then he said “I see.” and without another word, opened his mouth and tilted his head so that all of the muffins fell into his mouth. He snapped his jaw shut, devouring the contents of the basket in one bite. Licking his lips, he said “Delicious.” he then turned around and took off into the sky.

You blinked. Well... You thought, turning to walk back into the store. At least he liked the muffin basket...

“Tudron?” At the sound of his name, the dragon lifted his head to look at you. You had just come out to sweep the patio in front of the bakery when you saw your best draconic customer in the same spot he was in yesterday. “Why are you here? Was their a problem with your order?” You asked anxiously.

“Not at all.” Tudron reassured you. “It was perfect as usual. I simply came to enjoy the atmosphere.”

You blinked. “Atmosphere?”

“Yes.” Tudron said. “I’ve never felt the need to come to the store in person before, but when I came yesterday to return the muffins I discovered what a... charming little place this was.”

“Oh.” You said.”Well, then don’t mind me, I’m just gonna be doing some sweeping. You go ahead and enjoy.” Turning around, you proceeded to make quick work of the sweeping and then walked back into the shop, not noticing the eyes watching you the entire time.

It had been a few weeks since that first encounter, and thus far Tudron had not failed to sit in the same spot every day from open to close. You thought it was odd. Shouldn’t a dragon have better things to do than hang around a bakery all day? Then again, from what you know of dragons all they ever did was sit around and protect their hoards, so, maybe not. Brushing away the thought, not wanting to think badly of your best customer, you went outside to sweep and give Tudron your customary daily greeting. However, when you went outside you couldn’t help but stare in shock and awe. Every inch of the patio was covered in brightly-colored flowers.

“Tudron!” You exclaimed. “Where did these come from?”

He simply shrugged in reply. “A truck came and a deliveryman got out and unloaded them on your patio.”

“He didn’t talk to anyone?!” You said. “I didn’t order these! I better check my accounts and make sure there weren’t any charges...” You walked back inside to do just that, not noticing the way Tudron wilted ever-so-slightly.

As it turns out, there weren’t. The flowers were ordered by an anonymous sender. You figured it was some kind of prank, but you wondered who could have the money to burn that they could just order a bunch of expensive flowers to be left on your patio as a joke.

“Maybe it’s a secret admirer.” One of your employees, Nisha said when you you asked her.

“For who?” You asked. “A lot of people work here Nisha, leaving flowers outside doesn’t exactly make it clear.”

“A delivery for Y/N?” A man called out at the front of the store.

“I didn’t order anything.” You said.

“It’s already been paid for m’am.” He said. “Sign here please.”

After signing for it, you opened the box to reveal a beautiful red-and-gold dress. “Well, I think that clears things up.” Nisha said from the front of the store, a shit-eating grin on her face.

The next day you were sweeping the front patio as usual, your mind pondering who your secret admirer could be. Who did you know that could possibly have enough money to get those kinds of gifts for you? You paused in your sweeping, a realization dawning on you. Sneaking a glance at the dragon at your back, you wondered if just maybe... Your pondering was interrupted by yet another delivery-person. This time the box you were handed revealed a large ruby on a gold chain. It was breathtaking, and matched the dress you received yesterday perfectly. As well as a certain dragon...

Taking another look at said dragon, you smiled and put on the necklace immediately. You couldn’t help but notice how he perked up the moment you did. “Thank you.” You said.

“For what?” Tudron asked, head cocked.

“For the necklace, the dress, and the flowers.”

Tudron didn’t say anything but you got the impression he was pouting. “When did you figure it out?”

“To your credit, it was only just now. But you didn’t have to go through all this trouble. You could’ve just asked me on a date.”

Tudron’s eyes flicked over to you. “What if I asked you now?”

You grinned. “Yes!”

“There’s one thing I’ve been wondering though.” You said. You and Tudron had been dating for almost a year now, and had been reflecting on his first attempts at courtship.

Tudron looked at you curiously. “What is that my love?”

“The gifts I could understand. But why did you sit outside the bakery every day? Even after we started dating?”

Tudron stayed silent for a long moment. “Tudron?”

“Do you know why dragons spend so much time with their hoards?”

“To protect their treasure.”

“Yes. And that’s why, to... protect... you.” You had the distinct feeling that if Tudron had skin, he would be blushing. You said nothing, just leaned in to give him a kiss.

The End

#nhc #fic

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gadgetgirl71 · 3 years

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Top Ten Tuesday 15 December 2020

Welcome to this weeks Top Ten Tuesday. Originally created by The Broke & The Bookish, which is now hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week it features a book or literary themed category. This weeks prompt is:

Books On My Winter 2020-2021 TBR:

The Trials of Koli Rampart Trilogy Part 2 by M R Carey

The journey through M. R. Carey’s “immersive, impeccably rendered world” (Kirkus) — a world in which nature has turned against us — continues in The Trials of Koli, book two of the Rampart Trilogy.The earth wants to swallow us whole…Koli has been cast out from Mythen Rood. Behind him are his family and the safety of the known. Ahead, the embrace of the deadly forests awaits. But Koli heard a story, once. A story about lost London, where the tech of old times was so plentiful it was just lying on the streets. And if he can safely lead Ursula, Cup and Monono to this sparkling city, maybe he can save the rest of humanity, too. In a world where a journey of two miles is an odyssey, he’s going to walk two hundred. But the city is not what it once was…and around him, Ingland is facing something it hasn’t seen in three centuries: war. The Rampart Trilogy The Book of Koli, The Trials of Koli, The Fall of Koli For more from M. R. Carey, check out:The Girl With All the Gifts, Fell side, The Boy on the Bridge, Someone Like Me By the same author, writing as Mike Carey:The Devil You Know, Vicious Circle, Dead Men’s Boots, Thicker Than Water, The Naming of the Beasts

Reflect Reclaim Trilogy Book 1 by Jesse Booth & Joanna Reeder

Their romance only lasted a short few months… but that was more than 100 years ago.

Ever since his fiancé, Gemma MacLugh, was killed at the hands of a dragon shifter, vampire Leif Villers has mourned his loss. Still, a part of him never gave up on her. He could hear her voice, feel her love even through the grave, relive her memories over and over until they were stripped from him.

Now Leif has discovered the final piece to bring her back from death’s clutches. He carried her brooch, never knowing it held the key to resurrecting his love.

Too bad it’s now in the hands of the formidable kraken shifter who nearly destroyed the Shifter Academy in the recent vampire/shifter war and then slithered away, never to be seen again.

————

Across time, powerful selkie Gemma MacLugh–a magic user who can shape-shift into a seal–should have a wonderful, comfortable existence at her home in New York in 1897. But jealous sisters target her with their cruelty, making life miserable. If not for her Grandmother and her best friend and fellow selkie, Frederick, things might have been truly unbearable.

But when a mermaid seer foretells her upcoming death and opportunity arises to leave her home and travel across the country to a boarding house in Washington, she takes it.

To get away from her cruel sisters.

To escape her destiny.

But is it luck or fate’s final joke when she meets a tall, dark and handsome man by the name of Leif Villers?

Their love will challenge time and death itself, but can Leif get Gemma back? Can Gemma truly escape her fate?

**Reflect is the first book in the Reclaim Trilogy within the Shifter Academy Universe written by USA Today Bestselling Authors, Jesse Booth and Joanna Reeder**

The Dictionary of Lost Word by Pip Williams

In 1901, the word ‘Bondmaid’ was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid’ flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.

Friends and Strangers by J Courtney Sullivan

An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post‘s Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics’ Pick).

Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms’ Facebook group, her “influencer” sister’s Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.

Enter Sam, a senior at the local women’s college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she’s always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She’s worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth’s father-in-law, the true differences between the women’s lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.

A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

‘At first glance they’re magnificent, yet the more she looks, the more she realizes how sinister the mountains appear: raw, jagged spikes. It’s not hard to imagine, she thinks, looking out; this place somehow consuming someone, swallowing them whole.’

An imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But she’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother’s recent engagement, she has no choice but to accept.

Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. Though it’s beautiful, something about the hotel, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium, makes her nervous – as does her brother, Isaac.

And when they wake the following morning to discover his fiancée Laure has vanished without a trace, Elin’s unease grows. With the storm cutting off access to and from the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.

But no-one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she’s the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they’re all in . . .

Book of Yeshua by Francis Chapman

The dual time-line conspiracy thriller that will make you question everything

Did you ever ponder the sheer absurdity of the story told in the New Testament? That humanity’s redemption lay in the execution of God’s only son?’

Elliot Ambrose is one of the few souls on Earth who knows the truth about Yeshua of Nazareth. His determination to expose this truth throws him into conflict with an ancient and powerful foe, who will stop at nothing to protect their secrets. Elliot must undertake a violent journey, and a war started in Judea two thousand years ago culminates in a final battle in the twenty-first century.

This dark, gripping, dual time-line conspiracy thriller will appeal to fans of Dan Brown, S. J Parris, and Raymond Khoury.

Dances & Dreams on Diamond Street by Craig Revel Horwood

An offbeat, funny and heartwarming romantic novel from the fabulous King of Strictly, Craig Revel Horwood.

Set against the colourful boho backdrop of London’s Camden in the 1990s, Craig Revel Horwood’s first novel, Dances and Dreams on Diamond Street, tells the story of an unlikely family of friends who each rent a room in a ramshackle six-bedroom, four-storey townhouse. Like any family, the residents of Diamond Street sometimes fights and often act up but when the chips are down, they’re there for each other in an instant – usually brandishing a cheap bottle of booze, and the offer of an impromptu kitchen disco.

Presided over by the wise-cracking but warm-hearted patriarch of the family, Danny Hall, a professional dancer turned choreographer, the novel follows a year in the life of the inhabitants of Diamond Street, rough diamonds one and all, as they try to achieve their dreams – with unexpected, heart-warming and sometimes hilarious results.

Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day by Captain Sir Tom Moore

Who is Captain Sir Tom Moore? You’ve seen him on the television walking the length of his garden. A frail elderly man, doing his bit at a time of crisis. But he wasn’t always like this.

From a childhood in the foothills of the Yorkshire Dales, Tom Moore grew up in a loving family, which wasn’t without its share of tragedy. It was a time of plenty and of want. When the storm clouds of the Second World War threatened, he raised his hand and, like many of his generation, joined up to fight.

His war would take him from a country he had never left to a place which would steal his heart, India, and the Far East, to which he would return many years later to view the sight he had missed first time around: the distant peak of Everest.

Captain Tom’s story is our story. It is the story of our past hundred years here in Britain. It’s a time which has seen so much change, yet when so much has stayed the same: the national spirit, the can-do attitude, the belief in doing your best for others.

The Diary of Bink Cumming Vol 3 by Bink Cummings

Must read: The Diary of Bink Cummings Vol 1 & 2 previously.

Tests, life is full of them. The world is constantly trying see how much you can take before you break. Before you’re no longer you. Before your world dissolves into nothing. How long you can preserver and overcome the endless obstacles. It’s no secret that Big and I butt heads. It’s no secret that I not only dislike my mother, I hate her, because she hates me. Can these people break me? Can they push me to the edge of insanity, ready to jump? Having moved in with Big, I was living the life I never even knew I wanted. Every day was filled with hope and love. Until it wasn’t. Until it all changed and I was forced to learn what I’m made of. It took a single day for my world to never be the same. One day to change me forever. A day of revelations. Twenty-four hours I’ll never forget…

Steamy Adult romance Warning: Contains Mature scenarios, and mass quantities of profanity. For Ages 18+

-This is not a Stand alone.

Satan’s Fury MC Box Set by L Wilder

From the New York Times and USA Today Best Seller L Wilder comes the complete Satan’s Fury MC series with this limited time offer. The boxed set will only be available through the Thanksgiving Holiday, and then it will be gone forever. Grab yours quick while you can.

Maverick- The sergeant at arms finds his silver lining.

Stitch- With this enforcer, there are no limits to his brutality, no lines drawn in the sand … until Wren.

Cotton- The president of Satan’s Fury gives in to his carnal desires.

Clutch- Sometimes closing one door, opens another.

Smokey- Chance brought them together. Circumstance tore them apart.

Big- Hacker verses hacker in the most intriguing way.

Two Bit- Where she was his weakness, he was her strength.

Diesel- He may look like the boy next door, but if you mess with someone he cares about, he’ll become your worst nightmare.

*The Satan’s Fury MC series continues with the Memphis Chapter. Be sure to check out Blaze, Shadow, and the latest addition, Riggs. All are standalone romances with no cheating and no cliffhanger.

Until next week.

#JustForFun, #Top Ten Tuesday, #TopTenTuesday, #TTT

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