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revasserium · 3 months

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promise (to be holy)

rafayel; 1,745 words; fluff, fluff w/out plot, established relationship, kinda?spoilers for raf's lvl 55 affection story, no "y/n", genderless!reader, very suggestive but not actually nsfw

summary: oh, didn't you know? promises are sacred things beneath the ocean...

a/n: @syneilesis thank u for being my lad screaming buddy; this one's for you and for raf the little slut

The ocean has always been a certain kind of poetry, hasn’t it? You smile to yourself as you blink yourself awake and the world is the size of your sunlit bedroom. Rafayel’s breaths are even, his lashes so dark and long they remind you of a certain kind of midnight — the kind that catches starlight in her hair and has magic in her fingertips.

The kind of midnight that inspires wonder.

“If you really are that enamored with me… I can paint you a portrait. It’ll last longer.”

You blush, even as Rafayel’s eyes flicker open to catch yours, his lips pulled into a teasing, sleep-heavy smile.

“I — I wasn’t staring. I just woke up too and you were blocking my sun.”

You try to turn away, but Rafayel is faster, his arm looping around your middle to pin you to him, his breath warm as it kisses the skin of your bare shoulder. He cocks his head, still blinking the sleep from his eyes.

“Oh? Is that so?” he asks, shifting so that your eyes are level. The morning light paints his outline in liquid gold, and from here, the shade of his eyes makes you think of all the secrets the sea might keep from the sky.

“Mhm,” you nod, licking your lips, and watching with some satisfaction, as his eyes flick down to trace the movement. His skin is warm and his fingers soft as they press into the bend of your waist to pull you closer.

“Liar,” he says — whispers, before he dips down to graze his lips against yours.

You sigh against him, grinning as you curl your fingers into his hair and tug. The way he gasps makes a certain, unnamable hunger surge within you, pushing you forward till you’re pressing him back into the bed, your thighs on either side of his hips.

“Y-you — ngh —” Rafayel hisses as he tips his head back, his teeth digging into his bottom lip, his fingers inadvertently into your skin. You cock your head — and perhaps it’s the tantalizing line of his neck as he leans back, straining beneath you, or perhaps it’s just the morning light, falling like a lover’s caress across the smooth of his skin, the soft wave of his hair as it splays across the pillow — dark against light.

“Now… who’re you calling a liar?” you ask, flattening your palm slowly against his chest, reveling in the way his stomach tenses beneath you, how his breaths seem to quicken as you lean down and down and down.

“Y-you —” he almost musters up a glare as he hisses, “bullying the weak…” he murmurs as he tries to turn away. You twist his face back towards you with a finger beneath his chin and watch as his eyes go wide.

“Oh? You think this is bullying? But… I haven’t even gotten started yet…” you don’t miss the way his pupils dilate, the way his entire body goes rigid and then soft.

“I — you — I’m not accustomed to the ways of you humans! T-to a Lemurian like me… this is — this is —” The words die on his lips as you lean down to skim your lips along the bend of his neck, dropping phantom kisses on the long line of his collarbone, your fingers still holding his head in place.

“Hm?” you hum, grinning as he arches up into your touch, his fingers digging crescent-moon grooves into your hips and thighs, “this is… what, exactly?”

Rafayel makes a broken, keening noise at the back of his throat as you pull away, a fox-fire smile twisting your lips. You blink down at him, feigning innocence.

“Didn’t you say you were going to tell me all about Lemurian traditions? Why not start now?”

His eyes narrow as he forces himself to look away from you. You can almost feel the heat radiating off him in waves, burning from the tips of his ears all the way to the roots of his hair.

“I — you —” his lashes flutter and you can’t help your own laughter as it bubbles from you.

“C’mon, let’s get up — didn’t you want to go to the paint shop today — oh!”

You make to pull away, swinging your legs off him, but the world tilts as a pair of hands pull you back, and a moment later, you’re being pressed into an ocean of tangled sheets and pillows, Rafayel’s face hovering above yours, his expression caught between annoyance and ill-concealed desire.

“You shouldn’t start something you can’t finish,” he cocks his head, lips drawn into a delightful pout as you try to tug your hand away. He huffs as he pins you down harder, the redness in his cheeks deepening even as he leans in.

“Who said I was starting anything?” you ask, batting your lashes up at him even as he scoffs.

“Words aren’t the only way to make promises, y’know,” he says, and you feel his grip on you loosen. But there’s a tantalizing lilt to his voice that holds you in place, a dark, faraway look in his eyes as he leans back slightly, his gaze grazing down the shape of you, splayed out beneath him.

“Yeah? Then… what’s another way of making a promise?” you ask, propping yourself up on your elbows as he shifts back to allow you more space. You shift and the pair of you find yourself sitting face to face, the sheets rumpled around you like a white-sand beach, the remnants of the night before scattered in the folds like footsteps in the sand.

He looks at you before his eyes cast downwards. Your fingertips itch toward him and you reach out, brushing aside a stray strand of hair. Quick as a flicker, he catches your hand, pressing his cheek to your palm, eyes falling shut as he sighs.

“There’s… lots of ways to make a promise…” he says, murmuring it against your skin as he turns his face to press a kiss to the delicate skin of your wrist. You shiver as heat chases up your arm, tingling through your body as you swallow.

You sit there, frozen, as he leans in, slow and slow and slow — till you can feel the heat of his breath on your lips.

“You see… words are a little harder when you’re underwater, so sometimes we make promises by touching palms —” he turns his hand around yours till your fingers lace, “sometimes… we brush cheeks…” he grins as he leans in further, his cheek brushing by yours.

“And sometimes…” he pulls back ever so slightly, till you feel your own breath catch in your chest. His voice is deep and warm and soft and sweet — tugging you in as the moon on the tide, and you can’t help but wonder at the mysterious forces that might’ve pulled you towards one another in the beginning.

Chance, or perhaps something much less nebulous — like gravity.

Your lips meet like magnets clicking into place, and it’s far from the first time you’ve kissed but somehow here, in the morning light, with the windows of the bedroom thrown open to welcome the sea, the salt hanging solid and heavy in the air, it feels like the first time. You can taste the smile on Rafayel’s lips, can feel the eager way he presses in, tongue sweeping across your lips as you gasp open for him. You feel the weight of his body as he pulls you in, pushes you down, and the gentle give and take of it all somehow rings out against the slow shushing of the rising tides.

When he finally pulls away, both of you are breathless. You wonder, briefly, dazedly, if he might’ve been able to go on kissing like that forever. Do Lemurians even need to breathe? What might it be like to kiss like that and never feel the burning ache of oxygen in your lungs? It’s a dizzying thought, and you let yourself linger on it for a second more before Rafayel’s laughter breaks your train of thought.

“What? Was it so good that you’ve gone into shock?”

You blink, shaking your head as you feel heat wash up into your cheeks.

“No! I — I was just wondering… what does a kiss promise, exactly?”

And at this, Rafayel’s cheeks darken again, but he sighs and lowers himself onto the bed next to you, a finger trailing idly along the bend of your ear.

“Well…” he says, “it depends on the kind of kiss.”

You yelp, swatting at him with a pillow as your stomach flips inside you at the implications. His laughter is bright and pure and sweet, but as you both settle down again, he shrugs, pulling you closer to nuzzle his nose against yours.

“But mostly… a kiss just promises that there’ll be another kiss.”

You smile, leaning up to graze your lips against his, “Like that?”

He lets out a soft groan before pulling you in, his lips parting yours, slow and sensuous.

“Yeah… just like that.”

“And so… if you kiss once then…” you press a finger to his lips to stop him from leaning down again, “you’ve gotta keep on kissing? Forever?”

Rafayel grins, tugging away your hand, “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

You purse your lips, humming as you feign contemplation. Rafayel scoffs and makes to move away again, but you pull him back, laughing.

“You can’t leave yet! We’ve got a promise to keep, remember?” and with that, you kiss him, and he softens. As he always does.

“I think…” he says, a little breathless as the pair of you sink back into the sheets, “we’ve got a bit more than one promise… but I think we can start with this one…” and he leans in to capture your lips in his, fingers drifting to the skin of your waist. And as the dawning day watches from beyond the window, the ocean shushes itself against a stretch of forgotten beach, water through sand like tangling lovers’ fingers, reaching and holding, pushing and pulling.

And for lovers like that, there will always be promises to keep, and keep, and keep.

pls come talk to me about love and deepspace oh m ygod

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anipgarden · 11 months

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Adding To or Starting a Garden

AKA, the beginning of the Plants-Related section of this series.

This is my third post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps!

Got an area of lawn you’d like to convert to a wildlife haven? An area you can stick some hanging baskets in? Want to know how your garden of tomatoes and zucchinis is already putting in a lot of work? This is the section for you!

It would be dumb of me to not acknowledge that the act of gardening can come with a lot of costs. Buying seeds, buying plants, buying soil, raised bed materials, mulch, etc. … it can all get a bit daunting, let’s be honest! But there’s quite a few ways to get seeds and plants for free or extremely cheap, which I’ll be addressing in this section! The next section will be all about addressing the other Costs in gardening and how to mitigate or eliminate them entirely.

Also, do keep in mind; there’s no need to try and convert a whole area from lawn to garden or unused to garden at once. In fact, it could actually be extremely beneficial to do it a little at a time--maybe four or five square feet to start out.

Front Lawn (or Managing Principles)

If you live in a place where you’re required to have a grass turf lawn (HOA’s come to mind…), try replacing it with native grasses instead! You could even possibly use a low-growing ground cover plant like clover to a similar effect! Reseeding/replacing an entire lawn can be a big upfront cost, but even just letting the lawn be a little messy and tall helps. If the lawn gets patchy, leave the bare spots for a little while and something different will likely pop up! Pioneer species will fill the gaps and provide benefits to other plants around them, support animals, and more! If you want to take the guesswork out of it, you could always research what the pioneer species are in your area and plant the ones you like most.

Obtaining Seeds for Cheap or Free

The cheapest way to start a garden is by far via seeds. However, seeds can be a bit complicated to grow, and some sources make them… way overpriced. Fortunately there are ways to get seeds for little to no cost!

Some places sell seeds for as low as a dollar, 50 cents, or 25 cents! The packets may not have a lot of seeds, but it’s definitely a good start for a low budget! I’ve personally bought cheap seed packets at Walmart--the Ferry-Morse and Burpee brands are not what we’re looking for here. Typically the cheaper ones I’ve found are American Seed (which is owned by Green Garden Products, which also owns Ferry-Morse, Livingston Seed, McKenzie Seed, and Seeds of Change. Do with that information what you will), but they’re rarely stocked near the Ferry-Morse ones in the Formal Gardening Section. I’ve most often found them on end caps near the gardening section, so you may have to weave through a few aisles to find them, but once you do there’s an array of flower and vegetable seeds to select from! Alternatively, I’ve found seeds at Dollar Tree sold 2 or 4 for a dollar in Spring as part of their seasonal product; however, when they’re out of stock, they’re typically out of stock for the year. Try to check them out early in the year!

Otherwise, other seed companies like Urban Farmer or Botanical Interests will often have semi-frequent sales in spring and fall, when people are stocking up on seeds--joining their email lists can help you be the first to know when a good sale is going on!

Some foods from grocery stores will provide seeds that you can use in the garden as well. I’ve had the most luck with store-bought bagged beans, peppers, and tomatoes. Some people have had luck with watermelons, apples, citrus, squash, and more. Do keep in mind that you likely won’t get the same variety of fruit/vegetable as the one you bought--the resulting plant may look different and taste different.

Give it a shot! Pick some beans you like--if they don't grow well, at least you can eat the rest!

If you live in the US, food-producing live plants, bare roots, and seeds can often be purchased with SNAP benefits. But what does growing fruits, veggies, and herbs have to do with boosting biodiversity? While food crops aren’t typically native, they still provide valuable shelter for native insects. Some plants even have intricate relationships with native fauna--like the squash bee, a solitary bee which exclusively pollinates cucurbits like pumpkins, squash, and zucchini. And we get to benefit more directly as well! If you’re planting a diverse range of foods in your garden (as opposed to the swaths of single-plant farms that typically produce what’s sent to grocery stores), you’re supporting high levels of biodiversity by providing a variety of plants for creatures to live and hunt around.

Most of the time, when we think of boosting biodiversity with a garden, we think of a colorful flower garden teeming with pollinator species. However, if we’re striving to use native species, it can be a bit difficult to find some species in stores. I can say from experience that trying to find any wildflower seeds other than butterfly weed, purple coneflowers, and black-eyed-susans is… challenging, if you limit yourself to stores like Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s. You might occasionally get lucky with an ACE Hardware or a local nursery, but even then sometimes it can be hard to track down who in your area is selling what--let alone if you live in an area where no one really is selling native plants or their seeds. Not to mention, even once you find a local or online store selling the seeds you want, they can sometimes cost a pretty penny. So what do you do?

If you have the option to, consider gathering native seeds yourself! Get good at identifying the native flora and fauna--or at least, a few target plants and their lookalikes--and get ready to go! Learn where they tend to grow, when they’ll be seeding, etc. Try to identify the plant before it goes to seed (for most plants, it's easiest to identify when flowering), then check back regularly to gather seeds. Typically, if I want to learn how to collect seed from a specific plant, I just search it on Google or YouTube--oftentimes, I'm lead to the GrowItBuildIt Youtube page, so it may be a helpful resource for you as well! Of course, make sure to leave plenty of seed behind so the wild population can repopulate, and seed can feed other creatures in the area. A good rule of thumb is to take no more than 1/3rd of what's available.

Buying seed in bulk is an option if you can afford the upfront cost. Try teaming up with a few friends to buy some bulk seeds and split them amongst yourselves--you’ll get tons of seed! Prairie Moon is a popular site that'll sell seeds by the pound if you can afford the price--though they're in the US, and I believe they focus on Midwest and East Coast natives.

If you want to cheat the system, don’t buy bulk sunflower seeds--buy bags of sunflower seeds being sold as birdseed. They’re typically all black oil sunflower seeds, but they’ll sprout, and they’re fairly cheap for the amount you get!

However, beware generic wildflower seed mixes! Many brands like to sell wildflower seed mixes in big box stores like Home Depot, Target, or even Dollar Tree, but they’ll often include flowers that aren’t native or possibly even invasive in your region! Before you make any purchases, double check to make sure the contained seeds won’t do more harm than good! A quality source of native seeds will provide English and Latin names for all seeds included, and will be native to the region or at least non-invasive.

See this? I don't trust this.

There’s a good handful of programs online that’ll send you free seeds if you’re planning to start a native habitat project! Poke around online and see what you can find; you might get lucky! The best time to start looking for these is fall and winter, I find--by early spring, many of them are either done or beginning to wind down... though some also start up in spring. Ultimately--just check regularly! You never know what you can find!

Other Ways to Get Plants

Don’t want to start from seed? That’s fair! You can try cuttings! Just be sure not to take too much of the plant while you do so. Make sure you’ve gotten a few leaf nodes on your cutting, and cut any flowers you may have gotten. Make sure to leave some blooms and foliage on the original plant for the creatures in the current habitat--you don’t want to destroy one habitat to make another in your garden. There’s tons of methods of rooting cuttings, many of which have different efficacy rates for different plants, but that’s a topic for another post.

If you find seedlings growing in a place where they won’t be able to sustain themselves long-term, or are in danger of being destroyed, consider relocating them! You may be able to gently dig up and transplant the seedling to your garden. Don’t do this if they’re in a place where they can easily survive--ideally, you’ll be taking plants from sidewalk cracks, heavily maintained public gardens, roadsides, etc. Do be careful while doing this--ensure your safety first!

You’re totally allowed to join gardening communities like clubs, facebook groups, and more before you’ve even put a trowel to the dirt. These are great places to learn information and advice! Many gardeners are more than happy to help out a new gardener, and will eagerly provide seeds, cuttings, or even baby plants! Talk to some people about your gardening journey and what you’re hoping to do, and you just might find some kindred spirits--or at least get more people interested in the topic!

Seed and plant giveaways and trades happen all the time in gardening clubs, as well as online! Just poke around and see what you can find! Some are explicitly trades, meaning you’re expected to send something in return, but once you get your feet on the ground with some plant knowledge you’ll be stellar! You may be able to explain you’re just starting out, and someone may send you seeds without expecting a trade, but I’d suggest trying giveaways first.

Poke around online and see if there’s a local chapter of your state’s native plant society. From there, you’ll likely be able to find a calendar of events--many of them will host plant sales in the spring, with a bunch of native plant seedlings ripe for the pickings if you can make it out and have some money to spare! Fair warning, though, you’ll want to get there early if you can. If they say they’re starting at 10, try to get there by 9:45. Year after year, there’s always record turnout, and they sell out of plants faster than ever. Just trust me on this. I’ve been let down; hopefully you won’t have to be.

Some libraries are beginning to host seed libraries! Check around and see if your library has one! Ideally, the system works best if you also have seeds to contribute in return, but if you’re just starting out I’m sure they won’t mind you taking some seeds! Just consider saving some seeds to contribute in the future and pay it forward. If your library doesn’t have a seed library? Consider asking if they’d be willing to start one! Community interest is a great way to get the ball rolling on projects like these, but they’ll only know the community is interested if the community tells them they’re interested!

Volunteer to Garden for/with Someone Else

Maybe someone in your area wants to garden, but is struggling to find the time/energy. Many elderly people who used to garden simply can’t anymore but still would like a garden. Other people may love to have a helping hand in their garden. You might even find a few people in your area interested in renting and sharing a community garden plot with others, so they don't have to handle it all on their own! They may be interested in increasing biodiversity right now, or may be willing to if it’s brought up to them. You might be just the kind of person someone needs! Since it won't be your garden, you’ll likely need a bit of permission and collaboration to get anything in particular going, but it’s worth a shot and a way to maybe even make friends!

Again, your mileage may vary with some of these. You may not know where there's a bunch of wildflowers growing in your area, or maybe your local library doesn't have a free seed library. That's okay! Do what you're able to, find what you can find, get what you can get! And there's never any shame with starting small--in fact, starting small can make the project easier to manage and expand when you're able!

That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to start growing plants cheaply--low cost seed starting set ups, essentially. There's a lot of good options, many of which I've used myself even! Until then, I hope this advice is helpful! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!