Lightning, water, and fire! Like forever before the plot starts. By the time the plot starts, the lightning and fire deities have been subjected to punishment by the two gods that picked them.
Oh (the fire deity) is first to be punished. They basically decide that since they're going to live for a long time, gotta set some long time goals! And they opt to be the wrath of the gods since most of the other deities are too 'soft' in their opinion. So Oh just. Smites humans. This isn't really a /good/ thing and in their defense mentally, they do it to help Ymber since he's the softest of them all. So their punishment by the gods is to be split in two, effectively halving the power of one into two. (Now they are in a male and a female body and use both male and female pronouns apart since they together make they but apart it feels weird to be they. But prior to the split they use they/them. Also the split bodies go by the names Ohiwe and Ohime.)
Fulj is the second to be punished. She falls in love with a mortal woman and that is a crime according to the gods. Mortals and immortals are not to be together and it will only bring suffering to both sides. So her punishment is her memories of the woman are stripped and her body basically broken to the point she can't remain physical all the time.
Ymber, unfortunately, is the one who blames himself for the discoveries and punishments. If he had only tried to restrain Oh more then maybe they would have chilled out and stopped before being punished. If he had only tried to persuade Fulj to not continue seeing the mortal woman so often perhaps she wouldn't have been punished. So he's just increasing the guilt on his shoulders every day that he remains unpunished since the elder gods have both laid down to rest. They can't enforce their laws anymore and none of the deities are keen on harming one another at this point. They just want to continue existing in peace.
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FengQing 16 for the ask meme writing prompt? 👀
16. --in grief.
The street smelled like blood--blood that was still wet when Feng Xin and Mu Qing arrived at the scene, just in time to see the light snuff out from the last Xuan Zhen deputy official's eyes.
Feng Xin saw Mu Qing's balance waver, and he threw out an impulsive hand to steady him. For once, the gesture wasn't knocked aside.
"He... killed them?" Mu Qing's voice was quiet, but it carried both confusion and anger. "How could he?! They haven't done anything to him. If he wanted to fight, h-he should've found me."
Dozens of little cuts crossed the officials' skin, the work of the wraith butterflies. Crimson Rain Sought Flower probably hadn't even lifted a hand personally, as if he considered it a challenge beneath him.
"I'm going to kill him," Mu Qing continued, betraying himself by the crack in his voice. "I'm going to kill him."
"Don't rush in blindly," Feng Xin started to caution, realizing at that moment that his hand was still on Mu Qing's arm. He moved to withdraw, but Mu Qing was faster, bringing his own hand to clasp over Feng Xin's.
"He killed my deputies, Feng Xin." When Mu Qing looked up, his dark eyes were glinting around the edges with unshed but welling tears. "We should have been faster. It's... it's your fault..."
An accusation like that would usually earn him a punch in the face. This time, Feng Xin only flinched as Mu Qing closed the gap between them to bury his head into his shoulder, feeling the hot exhale of his breath against the silk of his collar.
The arm that Feng Xin wrapped around Mu Qing's shoulders was tentative. So was the way his lips brushed against Mu Qing's hair, in a way that left room for plausible deniability.
"We'll find him," he promised. "He won't get away with this."
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Empathy for the character bingo? :3c
THANK YOU!! I LOVE EMPAFY HE IS MY FAVORITE... <3
dear god i have so many headcanons about him and theyre all spoilers lmao… who knew writing a 24-chapter empathy-centric fic gives you a bajillion ideas about the guy!! anyway headcanon that empathy smells like seafoam and saltwater tears and the air before a heavy rain and the underlying scent of whoever or wherever you last felt you were at home :)
also its not everyone, but people who reduce him into the pure always-sweet baby cinnamon roll skill are wrong. dont infantilize him! give him nuance!! let him have character!! raughh!!!
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into the deep end - 30k T orufrey fic, focusing on memory trauma, disability, and romance.
the sweet oblivion of the victim, the poisoned freedom of the other.
for one moment - it had felt like two parts returned - the needed reunion of two disparate halves. no more secrets, no more pain.
the moment you get to give back what you never wanted to take. that moment, under the night-blooming flowers, when they had both let out the same single broken sigh of relief.
but they were never whole to begin with, were they?
qifrey swore he wouldn't say 'sorry' to this man any more if he could help it - sorry is cheap now. he didn't want to be in a position ever again where you only have 'sorry' left. so he just looks down into the threads of his blanket, strains his eye until it hurts, feeling his insides - his throat, heart and head - burn with pain. he expects more, but olly says nothing.
olly says nothing.
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There are white, glowing eyes on the other side of the lagoon.
Cleo freezes- wild animals are not to be trifled with, especially when she has no weapons and is missing half her clothes-
But- wait. She peers through the darkness, her only light coming from clusters of glowberries hanging down from above and the white glow of the eyes that are steadily approaching- that's Lizzie, isn't it? Not some wild animal, but maybe a siren is worse.
(Not her Lizzie. Her Lizzie could never be as bad as a siren)
The water ripples lightly as she approaches her captain. Her skin is blue and scaly, her eyes an ethereal white that is so different from the timid blue of that girl in the manor, all that time ago. She lifts her head fully out of the water, finned ears flicking, the gold earring in her left dripping along with her hair.
Cleo shudders as Lizzie's claws brush over her shoulders- Cleo lowers herself in the water, bending her knees for stability as Lizzie tries to sit on her.
Cleo laughs, a light, breathy thing, and hooks her hands under Lizzie's thighs, pulling her closer and helping her stay. Her tail flicks lightly around Cleo's ankles, and she loops her arms around Cleo's neck. Cleo has to look up at her, with the way they're sitting- the glowberries are giving her something of a halo- maybe a crown. There's barely a breath of space between them.
"Remind me," Lizzie murmurs, gaze flickering to Cleo's lips for only a brief moment, "did I ever thank you for saving me?"
"No," Cleo smiles, "I don't think you did."
"Well," Lizzie breathes, leaning in, "thank you."
Her lips are soft and sweet- the kiss is delicate and timid. Cleo leans into it, smiling against Lizzie's lips as the phantom heartbeat in her ear jumps, beating faster.
Lizzie pulls away. Cleo lets her go, still smiling.
"You're very welcome, trinket."
She snorts and leans in again, this time timidly kissing the corner of Cleo's mouth and trailing carefully up to her ear- gaining more confidence with each press of her lips- once she's reached her ear, her lips trail downwards until her head is resting on Cleo's shoulder, lips against her neck, smiling.
"I've wanted to do that for a long time," Lizzie murmurs, tail flicking idly, then wrapping around Cleo's thigh underwater.
Cleo laughs- adjusting her hold and managing to kiss Lizzie's cheek- "I'm glad you did."
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So @frostbitebakery tagged me in a last line meme, but in the spirit of six sentence sunday I am instead posting the last six paragraphs I wrote because I think they're chewy and tasty and deserve to be seen and likely otherwise won't be. Thanks Frost!
And Ice in turn looks undeniably, deeply sad. Not grieving or mauldin or hopeless or another dozen emotions that Maverick has seen of him that are shades of that feeling, but simply, obviously, incredibly unhappy. Ice carries an dissatisfaction inside him – different to the one that Maverick has, the one that has him burning like a star coming through the stratosphere, but there all the same – and there’s an underlying sorrow that accompanies that, always, but that’s not what this is. Now, he’s just sad, and Maverick has done that to him.
“We tried, didn’t we?” Ice asks, and somehow, even through that sadness, he smiles. Maverick wants to claw through the suddenly huge chasm of distance between them and cup his face in his hands, turn that smile into a true laugh, to make everything right again. To do anything to make Ice happy again. It’s intolerable that anyone hurt Ice. Even him. Maybe especially him.
“Yeah,” Maverick says through a thick throat, voice catching. “We gave it a red hot go.”
“I still would do it,” Ice says, eyes deep, seeing, knowing. Not moving from Maverick’s face. Like he wants to savour every second left they have together. “I’d still want to try, even if I knew we couldn’t make it work. I’d still want to know what I know of you, Mav.”
And it hurts like a bitch. Like Ice has stood up and suckerpunched the air out of him, except that would only be a physical pain, and this one instead scours itself deep onto Maverick’s heart. “You can’t say shit like that,” Maverick says, breathless, almost choking on his grief, and Ice closes his eyes, that shade of a smile disappearing from his face. Now, he just looks tired.
“It’s the truth,” he insists. “I don’t usually get to tell the truth, but I’m not going to avoid it here. Even if it was only for a summer – I’d want you to be mine.”
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