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#*looks myself in the mirror and points* you are above freezing bugs just to see what happens *slaps my self in the face*
evildilf2 · 3 years
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I can’t stop thinking about that freezing bugs post. It’s making me crazy.
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fairlyspnfanfic · 3 years
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Rifts
Request from @elsamc13
Summary: Takes place S13e10. Dean and Sam are trapped in Apocalypse World, as the Wayward Daughters do everything they can to rescue them.  Will their plan be enough?  Will the reader be able to move beyond her past with Dean in order to save him?  
Words: 4793
Warnings: Trauma, breakup, Bad Place, martyrdom
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It had been a hell of a night.  I had been scouring the town for any explanation of the haunting at the bus depot but had come up with more suspects than answers.  Homeless people that had passed away at the bus station, accident victims of cars gone astray or out of control in the parking lot.  There had been a mountain of possibilities.  But the silvery, shrouded woman that had continually thrown me against, and eventually through, the wall of the bar across the street eventually narrowed my suspicions down to one.  
The woman had just turned twenty-one and had gone out to celebrate.  Only to end up being horrifically assaulted and left to die in the freezing cold behind the defunct busses that had been permanently parked.  The ghost’s strength was evident in the bruises that battered my face.  I looked into the rearview mirror, sighing and wincing as I attempted to clean myself up.  The cuts were fairly superficial, and I didn’t think I needed any stitches.  But the thin cut that tore across my bottom lip was still bleeding, coating my chin in the sticky liquid.  
My cell phone had been laying in the passenger seat and now, it made a low hum as it vibrated against the leather.  I hesitated before reaching for it, knowing that the last few dozen missed calls I had had were from him. The ex.  The almost was. The not anymore. The One that Got Away.  Whatever you preferred to call him.  And I didn’t relish the thought of seeing his name flash up on the screen yet again.  
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes tightly, ignoring the pain that shot through my right eyelid from the black eye that was beginning to flourish.  Turning the cell phone over in my hands, I opened my eyes as the screen lit up.  “Jody,” I whispered as I read the name of the missed call aloud.  
Quickly, I pressed Jody’s name, listening to the dead air as the call connected.  
“Y/N?” Jody’s frantic voice picked up almost immediately.  
“Hey, sorry I was finishing up a job.  What’s up?”  
“Oh, thank God you’re alright.”  The relief that flooded Jody’s voice stunned me.  
“Yeah, Jodes, why wouldn’t I be?”  
There was a beat of silence as my question went unanswered. “Y/N, I need you to come home. Now.”  
“Jody, what’s going on?”  Jody had never been so adamant before, or so worried.  It had been three months since I had moved in with Jody, using the Sheriff’s Sioux Falls home as my home base.  Jobs had taken me away fairly regularly and I hadn’t spent more than two consecutive nights in the bedroom that had been designated as mine.  But that didn’t change the fact that it was home.  
“You just need to get here now, okay?  I mean it.  Get on the road now.  I don’t care if you’re in the middle-”  
“I just finished the job, Jodes.” I cut her off.  “I’m only about an hour away.  I’ll be home soon, okay?”  
“Just....” Jody hesitated. “Hurry.”  
The phone call disconnected and I sat starring at the cell phone in confusion before turning the ignition and pointing the car towards home.  
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I made the hour-long drive is just under 40 minutes, having put the gas pedal to the floor.  Flinging the driver’s side door open, I practically sprinted up the steps, slamming the unlocked front door open in my wake.  
“Jody,” I called out in a panic.  
She quickly stepped out of the kitchen and walked directly towards me; arms outstretched and tears in her eyes.  
“I’m so glad you made it home,” Jody whispered, pulling me into her tight embrace.  
“Hey,” I began.  “I’m okay.  I’m here.  I’m right here, Jody.”  I wrapped my arms tightly around her, holding her as she trembled.  “Jody? What’s going on?”  
Slowly, she backed out of my embrace, swallowing hard as her eyes fixated on the floor between my feet.  “Y/N,” she began, her words coming out as if she were choking on them.  
I waited in silence, knowing she’d tell me once the words were there.  But before she could, a face peered out at me from the kitchen.  It was a face I didn’t recognize.  A girl with dark olive skin and black wavy hair that barely touched her shoulders.  She was holding a bowl and quickly throwing popcorn kernels into her mouth as she stepped closer to us.  
“Hello,” I said, attempting to sound as normal as I could muster.  “I’m-”
“I know who you are,” her voice was high, but cracked as she spoke.  “Did you tell her?”  The stranger looked at Jody expectantly as Jody shook her head.
“I was just getting to that.”  
“Tell me what, Jody?”  My voice was full of panic now.  Secrets never gave me the warm fuzzies and now that this stranger was in on it, my anxiety was skyrocketing.  
“Y/N, this is Patience.”  Jody gestured towards the newcomer as she introduced her.  I nodded my head as I inclined it towards her by way of welcome.
“Nice to meet you,” I grunted, crossing my arms and waiting for the shoe to drop. 
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Loud footsteps came stomping down the stairs to my right as I heard Claire’s voice ring out.  “Y/N?  Is that you?  You aren’t dead?”  The surprise and outrage in her words left me wide eyed.
“What?!” I yelled. “Why would you think I was dead?”  
Claire hopped over to me, tucking herself into my shoulder as she gave me a quick one-armed hug, her eyes focused on Patience’s face.  
“Ask the psychic,” she explained.  
I turned my face to meet Patience’s, my face set in a hard line and my eyes bugged out of their sockets.  “Why does she think I’m dead?”  
Jody took a step closer, placing herself between Patience and I. “Claire’s right,” she started to explain.  “Patience is a psychic.  She’s Missouri Moseley’s granddaughter.”  Her words were succinct, and I knew right away what she was implying.  
“Patience,” I began, my voice low and empathetic.  “I’m so sorry.  Your grandmother was,” I hesitated.  “She was a very special woman.  Very beloved.”  
I watched as Patience absorbed my words but she gave no response. Jody had let me know about Missouri’s passing when it happened.  I had been on a case in Iowa, clearing out a Rugaru issue when the Winchester’s had worked with Missouri for the last time.  It was the only time in the last few months that I regretted my avoidant personality.  
“I still don’t get it.  Why did you think I was dead?”  
“Because I saw you die,” Patience explained, her words matter-of-fact, if not unfeeling.  
I looked at her incredulously. “What?”  
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After an hour that seemed to last for days, Jody and Patience had explained everything to me.  Patience’s visions, her seeing me die, and the fact that the Winchester’s were in some alternate universe that just so happened to be the same one where I died.  My mind was swimming and I couldn’t seem to get my head above the water to take a breath, let alone understand.  
“Y/N?”  Claire rested her hand on my shoulder, giving me a slight shake as she tried desperately to get my attention.  
I brought my eyes up to meet hers, but couldn’t find any words.  
“We’re going to get them back, Y/N.”  Claire’s attempt to reassure me fell flat.  
“Sam and....”  I swallowed hard.  “And Dean.  They’re missing?”  I could hear my heart pounding in my ears and my breathing felt like it was getting shallower and shallower as I struggled to maintain my calm, something I was failing at desperately.  
Jody shook her head slowly, confirming my fears.  “But we know what we need to do.”  
I looked at her, my eyes pleading with her to give me more information.  
She rolled her eyes in return.  “They were working with a girl, Kaia.  She knows where they’re at and how to get there.”  
“Okay, so let’s go!”  I stood up dramatically, pushing my chair back as I did.  
“Wait,” Jody said, reaching out and grabbing my hand.  “We can't talk to her”  
While I hadn’t thought my eyeballs would be able to stress themselves beyond my skull any further, her words quickly proved me wrong.  
“What do you mean?  Why wouldn't we talk to her?  Jody, what the hell!?”  
“She bolted,” Claire explained.  “She was in the hospital, I went to talk to her, and she bolted.  There were these bizarre monsters outside that attacked her,” my eyes widened even more. “We took care of it,” Claire stressed, holding her hands out to me as if to stop me from running.  “But she’s down for the count.  They got a few good licks in and she went down.  She’ll be okay.  Alex is patching her up, but, Y/N,” Claire hesitated, taking a deep breath.  “She’s from that universe.  Where Sam and Dean are.  The Bad Place, she calls it.”  
Claire’s face was that of a repentant child, as though any and all of this should fall on her shoulders.  
I took a few deep breaths, attempting to steady myself as I pinched the bridge of my nose with one hand, resting the other on my hip as I began to pace.  “So, you’re telling me that Sam and Dean are in some bizarro world, and the only person that can get us there is too busy having her boo-boos kissed to tell us how to get there?”  My voice rose in volume with each word, my illusion of calm rapidly fading.  
“It’s more than just that,” Jody said, standing up and slamming her hands on the dining room table.  “Y/N, you’re missing a vital part of this puzzle.”
“What part, Jody?  Sam and Dean are missing and we’re supposed to, what, sit on our thumbs and wait? I don’t think so!”  I began walking towards the garage, knowing Alex would have the girl that was the key to all of this in there with her.  
“The part where you die, Y/N!”  Claire screamed at me with tears in her eyes.  
“I don’t see how that matters even a little bit!”  My answer bit at her, and I watched her recoil, surprise evident on her face as she did so.  
“This isn’t negotiable.” Jody’s voice was deceptively calm and firm.  “You go over there, you die.  You aren’t leaving this house, do you hear me?”  Jody squinted as her words came out full of anger.  
“If Dean’s over there,” I caught myself. “If Dean and Sam are over there, then there’s absolutely no question as to where I’m going to be.  My place is there.  Saving them.  And you know it.”
“I can’t lose you, too!”  Jody’s exclamation took me by surprise.  
“Jodes,” I began, but she held her hand up, effectively silencing me.  
“No.  Y/N, no.  Okay?  You’re staying here.  I won’t lose another child.”  Her eyes glistened with unshed tears and my heart lurched at her words. “I won’t do it, Y/N.”  
I let out a deep breath.  “It’s Dean,” I whispered.  
“Yeah, I know it is.  I know you two had a nasty breakup.  I know you haven’t spoken in months and I know you regret it every day.  But you cannot be the one to go over there.  I won’t let you.  If you go, I lose you, and I am not about to lose you, or anyone else.  Is that clear?”  
I attempted to swallow the lump in my throat that refused to diminish.  “All that matters is Dean, Jody.  I have to go-”  
“Damnit Y/N, if he was all that mattered to you then you would’ve said yes when he proposed to you instead of turning tail and running for the hills!”  
I took a step back to steady myself as my eyes focused on Jody.  “Look,” Jody began, her voice calmer now.  “Donna and I will go over there as soon as Kaia tells us what she knows.  We’ll take care of this and you will stay here.  There’s no other plan. This is it.”  
My eyes flitted from Jody to Claire and back, both of them giving me the same pleading expression and both too stubborn and strong-willed to change their minds.  
I nodded my head slowly, agreeing to their plan out of necessity, as Alex came running in through the garage door.  “It’s Larsen’s,” she blurted out.  “Larsen Brothers Shipyard off Route 14.  That’s where the door is.”  A small, dark haired girl with scratches adorning her face walked in behind her.
Jody and Claire were already grabbing supplies as we all piled into our vehicles and headed for the shipyard.  
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We arrived in less than ten minutes and gathered at the sidewalk in front of the entryway.  
“Donna and I have got this.  But that door, it’s been open for a while and there’s no telling what crawled out in the meantime.  So, you guys?  You’re playing defense, okay?”  We all nodded in the affirmative as each of us armed ourselves accordingly.  
Donna was standing at the end of the sidewalk, hugging Claire and Patience as they walked by her.  I kept telling my feet to move, but no matter how loudly I shouted at them in my head, they wouldn’t respond.  I felt an arm snake its way over my shoulders, pulling me into a half hug.
“He’ll be alright, Y/N,” Donna’s friendly voice sang out to me as she pulled my head towards her.  
“I know,” I acquiesced.  “Just bring him back safe, okay?”  She gave me a quick nod and a smile before I watched her and Jody disappear into the building.  
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It had been a while since Jody and Donna had gone in.  Too long.  Claire, Kaia, and Patience had all begun to get antsy a while ago and my trigger finger was more than itchy in their absence as I reacted to each and every sound that came out of the building in front of us.  
We heard a gunshot and all of our breaths stopped as we collectively stared at the building.  “That’s it,” I said, cocking my handgun and holding it down to my side.  
“You guys can stay here but I’m going in.  Something’s wrong.”  I began walking towards the front door, just as Claire wrapped her delicate hand around my wrist.  
“Wait,” she said.  “You can’t.”  She flicked her eyes over to Patience and stared at me silently.  
“It’s Dean,” I offered her as my explanation.  “What good is being alive in any world if he isn’t in it?”  I could feel moisture building in my eyes and I did my best to hold my tears at bay.  
“I’ll go with you.”  An unfamiliar voice sang out from the crowd as Kaia stepped forward.  “You won’t know where you’re going if I don’t.  I know where to go.  And where not to.”  She looked down at her fingers as she fiddled with her nails, nervously.  
All four of us walked into the building, our eyes searching endlessly for any sign of Donna or Jody.  
“Jodes!” I yelled into the emptiness.  We heard the beating of feet above us as I dove for the staircase, yelling for the others to follow me.  
By the time we found them, they had been surrounded.  Unfamiliar monsters with sickly glowing red eyes stared at them as if they were a feast.  I raised my gun and pulled off two shots directly into the back of their skulls.  I watched as their bodies slumped to the floor in front of us, and Jody and Donna each turned their heads towards me.  
Just beyond them, there was a glowing orange line that seemed to spark and fade.  
“There,” Kaia yelled, pointing her hand towards it.  “That’s the door!”  
I watched as it slowly began to shrink. “No!” I shouted as my feet broke into a sprint with Kaia close behind me.  
We leapt over Jody as she lay bruised and beaten on the floor, and made a break straight for the gateway.  I tumbled to the ground, taking in the monochromatic surroundings I found myself in.  Glancing back towards the rift, I could see it was still open, but just barely.  And there was no telling how long it would remain that way.  
“Come on,” Kaia said as she stood up, her teeth chattering in fear as she turned away from the door and walked away, beckoning me to follow her.  My handgun remained clenched in my hand as I reached for the pocketknife that had been tucked away in my back pocket.  
“Lead the way.”  
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We seemed to be walking for hours and I was sure that any portal that there had been had closed by now.  Kaia continued to assure me that we hadn’t even been there an hour yet.  I ran my hands through my hair, tugging at the ends as I tucked it behind my ears.  
“We have to find them, Kaia,” I begged. She gave me no response but continued on until we heard the sounds of breaking twigs and crushed leaves.  Kaia hunched down in front of me, getting as low to the ground as she could as she held a finger up to me, insisting on my continued silence.  
We peaked out of a threadbare bush to try to identify where the sound came from, when two figures began walking towards us, their movements tentative and quiet.  
“Dean?” I whimpered as I lunged myself out into the clearing and towards him.  
My name hadn’t fully left his lips when I crashed into him, my arms wrapping around his neck as tears forced their way down my cheeks.  My breathing was ragged, but I’d never been so relieved.  I felt his arms wrap around me, pulling me into him as if he needed to know I was real.  He repeated my name again as I sobbed into his shoulder.  
“I thought,” I cried.  “I thought I’d lost you.” I leaned back and released my hold on him, finally meeting his eye.  
He was blinking fast, confusion coloring his entire face and stance.  But his eyes held mine as I stared into the deep emerald orbs that had always captivated me.  He raised his hand, wiping the tears that had been falling down my face away with the gentle pad of his thumb.  I closed my eyes, relishing in the feeling of his touch; his calloused fingertips smoothing over my skin sending shockwaves through me.  
“Same here,” he said, as his jaw set into a hard, locked line, his eyes still focused on me.  
“I’d hate to interrupt,” Kaia spoke up from behind us. “But we’re running on borrowed time here, if we aren’t out of time already.  We’ve got to go.”  
I pulled myself away from Dean, going against every urge in my body as I did so.  Wiping my hands down my shirt to smooth it out, I dusted myself off and attempted to focus yet again.  
“Hey Y/N,” I heard Sam’s voice calling from beside me.  Turning my head to him, I took in the smile that was plastered on his face, giving him my own smile in return.  “Heya Sammy,” I called as he reached out and squeezed my shoulder.
I turned around to face Kaia again, gesturing for her to lead the way. She seized the opportunity and began walking quickly back the way that we had come.  I followed behind her with the boys in tow.  The trek back to the gateway seemed to go faster, as if time had sped up now that Sam and Dean had been found.  
A few minutes into our hike, Dean's hand wound its way into mine, interlacing his fingers with mine as he squeezed my hand tightly; a gesture he had often given me when he knew I was uncomfortable or stressed.  I turned my head to make eye contact with him again as we continued walking.  
“It’s just up there,” Kaia pointed ahead of us as she continued, panting.  We could see the orange break in space hovering above the ground.  It didn’t seem to have shrunk in size, but its vibrance had died down significantly.  
“Run,” I instructed them, pushing Sam and Dean ahead of me as Kaia took off towards the rift.  I followed behind, close on their heels.
We were feet away from the doorway when I felt it.  A menacing, hooded figure clad in black sneaking up from behind.  When I turned my head, I could see them throw their arm forward as the long, aerodynamic weapon they were holding came flying towards us, pointed directly at Dean.  
“No!” I screamed, diving at him as I shoved him towards the doorway and put myself between him and the spear.  I watched in slow motion as Sam and Kaia made it through to the other side.  But, to my horror, Dean had stopped to turn around and face me, watching as the head of the spear sank itself into my back.  
“Y/N?”  Dean was screaming my name repeatedly as he reached for me, glaring over my shoulder at my assaulter and his would-be murderer.  I fell forward, kneeling to the ground as I turned my head to look at the hooded figure again.  I watched as the black hood fell back, revealing a familiar face and a sinister grin.  “Kaia?” I whispered.  
My vision began to go black as I felt Dean’s arms wrap around me, jerking me up to my feet before he lifted my legs in one arm, cradling my shoulders in the other.  My head lolled back and in an instant, everything went black.  
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Dean was pacing the floor in Jody’s garage as Sam and Alex examined Y/N’s wound.  She’d passed out before they had even made it through the doorway, but Dean had made sure that they came back home safely.  The rift closed almost immediately after they came through.  
“Dean?” Sam had called to his brother once they were back in their own world.  But the only response he received was the garbled cries of Dean’s anguish.  
“No,” Sam had uttered beneath his breath as he ran towards them, convinced that what he was seeing couldn’t be real.  “No, she’s fine, Dean. She’s going to be fine.  Let me take a look at her.”  
He pushed his way to his brother, every step feeling like his feet were made of lead and concrete.  But when he pressed his fingers to her neck, feeling the small pulsations of her carotid artery, he let out a sigh of relief.  
“She’s got a pulse.  A weak one, but it’s there.  We need to get her some help.  Now.”  Sam reached out for her, wanting to remove the physical burden from Dean as he watched his brother collapse to the floor.  “Dean!” Sam was yelling, desperation flooding him. “We have to go.”  
Jody ran up to them, taking in the sight that she had feared.  “We didn’t stop it,” she muttered.  Patience walked up behind her, holding her hand over her mouth as if in astonishment.  
“This is it,” she said.  “My vision.  This is what I saw.”  Jody gasped, allowing the panic and heartbreak to set in.  
“We’ve got to move her,” Sam told them. “She’s got a pulse, but she won’t for long if we don’t get her somewhere safe.”  
Jody shook her head slightly, focusing yet again.  “Get her to the car out front. Alex’ll patch her up at home.”  
Before her sentence was finished, Sam was bolting towards the car, taking the steps down two at a time. Dean followed behind, his movements empty, as if a man possessed.  
Jody wove her arm through his, hanging onto his elbow as they walked quickly towards the exit and to the car.  
“I just got her back,” Dean said.  “I just got her back.  She can’t be gone already.  I can’t...” He left his sentence unfinished as Jody rubbed a loving hand up and down his back, attempting to reassure him.  
“It’ll be fine.  She’ll bounce right back.  She’s a fighter, yeah?”  Jody opened the back passenger door of her car, urging Dean into the seat as Sam was laying Y/N across from the other side, resting her head on Dean’s lap.  
Jody jumped in the driver’s seat, throwing the car into reverse as she pushed the “Talk” button on the steering wheel and called Alex.  
“It’s Y/N,” she said succinctly.  “We need you.  It’s...” She hesitated, looking up into the rearview mirror at Dean.  “It’s not good.  We’re a couple minutes away.  Be ready.”  The one-sided conversation was quick, direct and to the point.  
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The tires squealed to a stop as Jody parked the car in the driveway, slamming the transmission into park and flicking the engine to the off position before everyone began hopping out of the car.  Dean stayed where he was, slowly stroking Y/N’s hair as he attempted to soothe her into waking.  
Alex was running out of the front door towards them, her scrubs still stained with Kaia’s blood from patching her up earlier, and her stethoscope still hanging from her neck.  “Bring her inside!”  
Dean did as he was told, sliding out of his seat, careful not to let Y/N’s head fall as he slowly pulling her out of the car and cradling her in his arms.  In seconds, they were all standing in the garage as Dean laid Y/N down on the gurney and pressed a kiss to her forehead.  
“Everyone, take a step back,” Alex ordered, listening to Y/N’s heart as she did so.  “Jody, I need you to bring me an IV bag.  We’re going to need to get some blood in her now along with as many antibiotics and as much saline as possible.  She’s losing blood fast.”
The words seemed to all blur together as Dean dropped into the chair behind him, cradling his head in his hands.  “This can’t be happening,” he repeated to himself, his eyes fixated on a drop of her blood as it fell to the floor.  
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Two hours later, Dean was sitting next to Y/N again, squeezing her hand between both of his as he stared intently at her face.  Alex had assured him that she was fine.  That she’d been all patched up, that the dehydration and blood loss had been combated, and that everything was going to be just fine in time.  But he longed to see her eyes open and looking at him like she always had.  Like she could see into his soul.  He yearned to hear her voice, even if she yelled at him and never wanted to see him again.  As long as she was alive.  
He lowered his head, muttering “Please,” to himself over and over.  
At some point, he must have drifted off to sleep, her hand still clenched in his, with his head resting on the side of the bed.  She began to stir, grunting as she did so and squeezing his hand back.  
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My eyes were heavy and hazy.  The pain that had flown through me on our way to the doorway seemed a distant memory and my body felt as though I were floating in the ocean; one wave after another pushing me closer to shore.  I opened my eyes tentatively, hesitant to take in my surroundings for fear that the monochromatic world would still be surrounding me.  
But in my hand, I could feel the warm familiarity that was Dean’s fingers interlaced with mine. I squeezed my hand around his, desperate to prove to myself that it was truly him.  
“Y/N?”  He woke with a start, his eyes focusing on my face as he brought one hand up to cup my cheek.  
I gave him a smile, my eyes closing in a slow blink as I opened my mouth.  “Hey there stranger.”  
Dean leaned down quickly, pressing his lips firmly against mine, seeming to blow life into me with his kiss.  The one that never failed to take my breath away.  
“Don’t you ever do that to me again, do you understand?”  
I nodded as I laughed quietly, Dean’s forehead pressing down into my own.  
“You got it,” I confirmed for him.  
“Marry me?”  The question came out as a plea as he pushed his head closer to mine, rubbing our noses against one another.  The same question I’d run from so many months ago.  But now, after all this time and after all that had happened, there was only one answer that I could give.  
I smiled at him, holding my breath as my cheeks began to ache from the tension. 
“Yes.”  
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lonleyinmyspacevoid · 3 years
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The Gongoozler
It was just a myth really, no substantial evidence that such a monster existed in the depths below. 
But I had to try, had to remember. 
“Such a silly name.“ I mutter to myself as I walk to the lake, the moon illuminating my path. For some reason, this path felt so familiar though I am sure I’ve never been down it. 
Crack.
I turn my head and look around. I slow my breathing a bit to hear better. In the distance, a few paces behind me, he is there. The man in the black suit. Where is-
Oh, there is the one in white. He stands in front of me. Just as the instructions said, “Look for the men in suits, one will be in black and the other in white. Do not anger them. Say the words Unus Annus three times and close your eyes. Do not open them until you hear them say Memento Mori.”
I take a breath and shake out my nerves before closing my eyes, “Unus Annus, Unus Annus, Unus Annus.” I keep my eyes closed and stand still. I can hear both of them walking towards me. Unus passes me on my left and whispers “Memento.” Annus passes my right at the same time, “Mori.” completing the phrase. 
But they stop for just a moment and speak at the same time. “It’s good you want to remember, but don’t get stuck in a memory.” I can feel them stare at me, awaiting a response. I nod my head, eyes still closed. They both seem satisfied and walk in different directions. Once I think they have left, I open my eyes. 
They are gone and the moon continues to illuminate my path. I look at the lake. The water looks black, even with the moon shining down on it. Then I notice how quiet it is, there is no ambiance, no wind howling, the water is calm and still. It’s almost like everything around me is hiding from an violent unseen force. I stare at the water. 
There is a low rumbling from the depths of the lake, it’s awake.
I quickly take my phone out of my pocket and set it on the ground. I take my shoes and socks off and half throw them to the ground. I need to get into that lake before the rumbling disappears. I do one last check as I throw my keys into my shoes and head into the water. As soon as I’m in the middle of the lake, it stops.
It’s silent once more. 
And then I feel it, something brushes against my calf, don’t freak out. Don’t panic. Remember what the guide said, it will eat you if it senses fear. Deep brea-
My thoughts are caught off by it dragging me down into the murky waters, it’s freezing and I want to resurface. But, something holds me down. 
“I can smell it. Your fear.“ I can’t see it talking but I know it’s in front of me.
It grabs me but the shoulders to keep me from swimming away, I can tell that it’s deciding on whether or not it wants to eat me. I take a moment and do the final step of the guide. 
I open my mouth. 
The water pours into my mouth, overflowing quickly and starts to go to my lungs. It tastes awful, like a mix of ink and tar...with some Thick It? The Gongoozler quickly takes me back up to the surface, its said that The Gongoozler will take you back up because it prefers it’s victims to not be filled with the murky water that it lives in. 
I resurface and cough up some of the disgusting water, if you can even call it that. I can feel it circling me as well as making sure I stay afloat. 
Ten, I’ve got ten minutes to convince this thing to take me back, to remember what I had lost.
I clear my throat again, “You guide people right? To memories forgotten?”
It stops, the top of it’s head barely above water. I have it’s attention. “Not without a price. You must loose some to gain some.” 
I take down my hair and hold out my hair band, “My favorite hair band, someone dear to me gave it to me a long time ago. Is this enough?”
“Have you lost this person?“ It eyes the band.
“Yes.“
It swims closer to me and takes the band. “You wish to remember them?”
“No, something else.“
It tilts it’s head a bit, I can see in the moonlight. It has dark scales that shimmer a deep blue in the light, blacked out eyes that never seem to blink, it’s hands are sharp claws that could shred me in seconds, and it’s teeth are as sharp as a saw. “What are you trying to remember?”
“Unus Annus as a whole.“ I’m nervous, should I really be speaking their names?
The creature looks a bit puzzled but nods in understanding, “You wish to remember everything you have forgotten, the feeling of happiness that came with them. Am I correct?”
“Yes.“
It snaps my hair tie in half and drops it into the lake. A small blue glow emanates from it as it it drops into the depths below. I stare at it as the blue fades. Suddenly I am dragged in the deep murky water. I start to panic a bit but then I hear it.
The ticking of a familiar clock.
“Interesting.“ I turn to see Unus to my left. “Why this house?” I’m in a yard of sorts looking at an abandoned house.
Annus is to my right. “It’s not the house where our videos took place. It’s completely different.”
They speak in unison. “Is this your home?”
“No. I just... liked how it looked?“ I’m confused, this isn’t want I wanted.
“Maybe so.“ Annus says.
“But it might be what you need.“ Unus completes the thought. 
Can they hear what I’m thinking? 
I don’t get an answer as they both start walking to the house, I follow. 
“So many memeories...“ Annus looks around, the house is filled with mirrors, a lot of them are faded or shattered.
“...From such little time. At least what felt like little time.“ Unus looks into some of the mirrors, the mirrors are all playing different things from my memory. 
“Is this why you came?“ Annus points to a recent memory. It’s me, I was upset about how little I could remember, about how I forget the little things, about how I forget happy memories. All those lovely memories felt wasted on a person who wouldn’t be able to remember them. It feels unfair.
I nod as Unus comes to look at it. “Tell me, why are you upset about it?”
“Because I want to remember, I barely have any good memories as is. I don’t want to forget the videos or the feelings that came with them. I don’t want to forget either of you.“
Annus sighs and nods, Unus nods in understanding. 
“We can’t always have what we want. No matter how good of a thing is, we forget some times. And that’s ok. But you also need to keep in mind, memories aren’t always pictures in your mind.“ Unus puts a hand on my shoulder.
“You’ll remember in some way, maybe not the images. But I don’t think you’ve truly forgotten. You will be able to have those emotions again. Memories are often tricky and show themselves in odd ways.“ Annus puts his hand on my other shoulder.
They say in unison, “But you must always remember to never get trapped in a memory, that’s how you get stuck.” 
“But-“
“Remember what we said. Don’t get trapped in a memory.“
I sigh and nod. 
Annus speaks, “You should get going before you run out of air.“
Unun nods in agreement. “It was nice to see you again.”
Unus and Annus speak one after the other, “Memento.”
“Mori.“
“Unus.“
“Annus.“ 
They push me down and I open my eyes. I realize I’m still submerged underwater. I swim to the surface and look around. Everything has gone back to normal, the bugs have returned to their ambiance, the water feels more liquid like, the moon still shines down on the lake. I take another breath. The Gongoozler is gone, and I’m alone in the middle of a freezing cold lake. I swim the edge of the water and get out. Instead of moving on and going home, I sit there.
I sit there until the sun rises, just taking in the sights. I can still hear the faint ticking of a clock in the back of my mind.
I have to get up. Don’t get stuck in a memory.
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thickwamuu · 5 years
Text
Pick me (yandere!Ghiaccio x reader)
Pairing - [Ghiaccio x reader] (stands? - no)
Words - 1489 (not proofread)
Warnings - general yandere-ness, swearing, (extremely) graphic violence/body horror (you’ve been warned 👀😗 I love horror, this is meant to be scary), dumb post name that definitely I hate myself for
Scenario - you go skating for a first date at a rink you frequent and it turns out that he’s a bit of a douche. A certain mouthy employee who has made a habit of observing you doesn’t like that.
When you overheard your tinder date throwing cheesy lines at someone else as you approached your meetup spot, you already had a pretty good idea of whether you’d be asking for a second date or not. Picking out the ideal partner wasn’t your forte, sure, but you couldn’t let that stop you in your pursuit of love- and it certainly wouldn’t stop you from enjoying the rink after you had already paid for your admission.
Actually getting on the ice seemed to be a far away goal though as he threw his arm around you and directed you to the food stand, chatting obnoxiously.
“Ah shit,” your date cursed, patting his jeans and jacket pockets. Oh boy. “I only brought enough to get in, and I’m starving could you-“
“What do you want?” You rolled your eyes walking up to the vendor. He smiled and playfully got you in a headlock. “I knew blowing off my plug for this date was a good idea. I met someone as kind as you, kid.”
Plug for what Exactly? You weren’t particularly interested in finding out.
Practically inhaling his food, he washed it down with a sip of your drink before scrunching his nose up and wiping his mouth. “What the hell was that?”
You raised an eyebrow. “Dude, it’s just coffee...”
“You drink that shit?” He remarked before pushing his shoulder into you and giving you a coy look, accompanied by a wink. “Don’t worry babe, hopefully my good taste will rub off on you.”
You deadpanned and let out a loud sigh as he laughed at his own statement, making him stop and guide your chin to look at his odd version of a puppy dog face. Nice, his fingers had sauce on them. “C’mon, baby, I was just joking around.”
He leaned in the rest of the way for a kiss and with dinner plate eyes you pushed him away. “What’s your problem?” You whispered sternly, not wanting to draw attention. “I don’t have a problem, I’m just trying to lighten the mood. You’re not making it easy.” His tone was mocking and louder than necessary, making you duck your head and blush.
“Look, I don’t think-“
“What the fuck?” Your date interrupted before chuckling maliciously and nudging you in the ribs, pointing to a man you presumed to be a maintenance worker hunched over a janitor cart, scowling at the two of you and mumbling. “Hey four eyes! Do I got something on my face?”
The man’s face turned a shade of red that could rival his bright cherry glasses and with widened eyes, he turned around began to walk away.
“Hey! I wasn’t done!”
Your face definitely mirrored the poor employees when your date hurled your half full coffee cup at him, making you bolt up from your seat and rush over to him. Supporting the trembling man now cradling his head and clearly failing breathing exercises, you turned to the culprit with distress cutting through your words. “Why are you being like this?”
“You’re on that losers side? He was the one who was-“
Ignoring him, you turned to them man, squatting to look up at his face. Worried that he was crying, as he didn’t look particularly strong willed, you were very surprised to see him quite literally shaking with rage. “Sir are you okay, did you get hurt.”
Snapping his wild eyes on you, he began to slow his breaths as he straightened himself up, attempting to gain composure. Standing up yourself, you noticed you were the same height as him, if not taller.
“I’m fine.” He breathed out curtly as the colour of his face began to look more like an actual human skin tone. Your thoughts were cut short as a rough hand clasped onto your shoulder, grabbing your attention. “I don’t know why you suggested this place, it sucks. Lets get out of here.”
“Wait.” A quiet, cold voice cut in making your date stop before rolling his eyes and opening his dumb mouth. “Don’t you know when to stop? I thought glasses meant you were smart.”
A vein popped in the employees neck as he silently pointed to the lanyard around his neck that read ‘MAINTENANCE AND SECURITY’ in bold letters before pulling the radio on his belt to his mouth, mumbling something and looking back up. “You’re coming with me for disrupting the public until police get here.”
“Whatever, it’s not like this was even a big deal. Kind of an overkill reaction, but clearly you don’t have enough power in your life and need to compensate.” Your date scoffed, complying with the employee.
Maybe he did have one brain cell after all.
The man shifted his tense gaze to you making you freeze up, already thinking about how far away the commute to the next closest rink was. You should have known better than to bring a stranger here, god forbid you actually have a good date or once in your life.
“You.”
His strained tone made you wince.
“Next time you come here... tell them Ghiaccio said you’re allowed a session for free and to radio me if that’s an issue... you clearly didn’t get to use this skate time.” Despite it’s harsh sounding delivery, the offer he extended to you made you blush, perhaps that was just his default tone.
“Thank you, you’re too kind.” You smiled at him genuinely before flipping like a coin and shooting a glare to your date. “I’m going home. Lose my number, asshole.”
Making your exit, you thought about the employee- Ghiaccio. ‘Even his name fit him’ you laughed to yourself. Although a little quick-tempered and bad with kind words, he really seemed decent. Maybe your luck in love was changing for the better.
-
“Weren’t you bringing me to security?” The leech asked, looking around at the locker rooms and various storage closets littering the hallway.
“Shortcut.” Ghiaccio bit out, pushing him through a door. “In here.”
“Through the second rink? Is this where the team plays?-” His insufferable voice silenced with a grunt as the employee smashed a shovel used to maintain the ice into the back of his skull and got to work.
When he came to, the first thing he noticed was how cold the ice felt- next, how very naked his body was. Attempting to get up, he realized ice picks were keeping him from moving his hands in the way that they pierced straight through the middle of them, a massive pool of blood now staining the ice below. Finally, he noticed the man in the standard blue janitorial coveralls looming above him with heavy work gloves on and the all too familiar red glasses dawning his face.
“W-what do you want from me, man?” He sobbed out, the numbing of ice and adrenaline fading away with every second.
This seemed to set Ghiaccio’s fuse. “You say the dumbest shit! Why the fuck would I want anything from you? do you think I’m the beggar in this situation? do I look like I need something? On top of that, it’s been bugging me the whole time I was setting up, Your insults don’t even make sense.” He yelled out, his words bouncing off the rink glass.
“Setting u-up?...” the worm whimpered pathetically as he was forced to listen to the madman’s critique of him.
“-at world does ‘four eyes’ even make sense? I clearly have two eyes! Two eyes! Two! Are you so dumb you can’t even count?” He ranted, kicking the mans head to the side, his face lulling back and forth with the movements pitifully.
“I’m gonna shut that idiotic mouth for good.” The employee spoke, squatting down with a vicious smile as his gloved fingers snatched his victims tongue and pulled it out, chin involuntarily clashing into the sub-zero surface.
The parasite shook his head as he garbled out cries for help, hot, fat tears effectively marrying his skin to the ice.
His scream ripped into the cool air as the sharp pick was forced through his wet muscle, Ghiaccio dusting himself off as he moved to tighten the coarse rope around his bare ankles.
“At least they’ve smartened up and started bringing the obstacles to me. I’m so fucking tired of having to track you scumbags down in my free time.” His voice rose as he climbed onto the zamboni, starting it up. “I’m so fucking sick of guys like you getting to spend time with them! It doesn’t make sense! No fucking sense! It should be me! Fuck!”
After smashing his fists into the wheel of the ice resurfacer, he remembered the breathing exercises he read about when he decided to reign in his anger as not to scare you away when he got too heated. Heaving in and out, he found his center and sat up straight, slowly accelerating the machine forward with its precious cargo in tow.
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Linked Universe Fanfic Ch. 6: Fire
Stop! You’ve Violated the Law!
So, you’ve stumbled upon this original post for my Linked Universe fanfiction. That’s okay, it happens to everyone. As of March 2021, I’ve uploaded the entirety of this fanfic to my Archive of Our Own page. Along with finally giving the story a name--Oops! All Links: A Linked Universe Story--I made substantial edits to some of the chapters. These range from minor stylistic revisions to fixing a gaping plot hole that kinda completely broke the character conflict in the earlier chapters. I also renamed and renumbered (but not reordered) the chapters. Specifically, this is now split into Chapter 7: Fire, and Chapter 8: Inferno.
The AO3 iterations of these chapters are the definitive versions. So, if you would like to read this fanfiction, please do so on AO3, right here. With this embedded link. Hehe. Geddit? Link?
Note: My screen name on AO3 is FrancisDuFresne. Yes, that is me. I am not plagiarizing myself.
Anyway, for posterity’s sake, the rest of the original post is below the cut.
This continues my @linkeduniverse AU narrative. The length is daunting but trust me when I tell you it’s worth it. Word Count: 4855.
Fire. A gift from the golden goddess Din which can both give life and take it. It can both create and destroy. This fire, however, was the latter on both counts. An entire small settlement was set ablaze, the screams and shouts of the villagers nearly drowned out by the sound of the fire itself. Buildings were collapsing into their own infernos, sending jets of flames into the sky. The Hero of Warriors split the Links into pairs to cover more ground. This was an ambitious rescue mission, and they knew they couldn’t possibly save everyone.
This hell is where the Links found themselves today.
The Hero of Legends hadn’t used his Pegasus Boots in a very long time. He remembered this as his sprint reached peak speed; it took more effort than he anticipated to not trip and bury his face in the scorched dirt. Need to get myself under control, he thought. These people need me.
Though Legend and his companions charged into the village at the same time, his boots soon brought him into the lead. Leaving them behind like Warrior told him, he rushed to the far end of the settlement. He chose a building at random and threw open the door.
Sweltering heat hit him with force of a bomb, followed by smoke to match. Squinting and coughing, he entered. It seemed to be a tavern. A long counter ran the length of one wall with shelves of bottles and a closed door behind it. Several round tables and stools lay in disarray across the floor. Shards of glass littered the place. Everything flammable was either burning or about to.
“Hello?” he called, struggling to keep his voice both calm and urgent. “Is anybody in here?”
No reply. Swinging his legs over the counter, he jumped behind the bar and tried to open the door. It was jammed shut. “Damn it,” he muttered. He shoulder-bashed it but it didn’t budge. He rummaged in his pouch a moment then pulled out his hammer. He raised it and swung. It hit its target dead-center. With a satisfying crack, the now-splintered door fell to the ground.
Putting away his hammer, Legend entered the new room. Shelves upon shelves of liquor bottles and barrels filled the room. Liquor. Liquor has alcohol. Alcohol can burn. The place could be about to explode. “Oh no,” he breathed. “Hey! Is there anyone here?!”
A barely audible whimper came from the far corner of the room. Legend whipped his head to the spot. Several wooden beams and shelves were piled there, on fire like nearly everything else. In a flash, he had slipped on his power gloves and was prying the detritus from its place.
After nearly a minute’s work, the area was cleared, revealing a small man huddled in the corner. Hair and clothes singed, skin black with soot, but very much alive and well, he looked up at Legend with tears in his eyes. The hero wasted no time in picking up the man and rushing out of the building. In the relative safety of the street, he put him down.
“Is there anyone else in there?”
The man shook his head
“Are you hurt?
He shook his head again.
“Good,” Legend said while pointing in the direction of the portal Four opened. “Run until you see a glowing circle on the ground. Step in it and it’ll take you to safety.”
The man hesitated, clearly still in shock. “Go!” Legend shouted, jabbing his finger back to the portal. “Now!”
He looked after the man a moment, watching him run to safety. Coughing from all the smoke, he turned back to the tavern. The fire seemed to have reached the drinks, because it promptly exploded. Here we go again, he thought to himself as he turned and ran into the next building.
Twilight dashed down a side street. He had recognized the scent of children and followed it. Blazing buildings seemed to crowd around him on all sides, but he ran on. The shackle set above his front paw was heavy, but he never had the heart to take it off. Every so often, a beam or sign would fall just overhead. Twilight would bark and Wind, riding on his back, would activate the Phantom Sword and freeze time just long enough to get past the hazard before it crushed them.
An upcoming road led out to the side, the scent wafting from there. Twilight took the tight corner, nearly unseating Wind. “Watch it!” the youngest hero grunted. Twilight growled back, as if saying hey, I’m trying here.
There at the end of the road was the house they were looking for. Reaching the door, Wind hopped to his feet and the wolf became Hylian again. Wind inspected the house. It didn’t seem to be too damaged yet. He looked over to his partner. “Twi, you sure this is the one?”
“Positive.”
“Alrighty. Let’s go.”
Naturally, the door was jammed. Not bothering to find some fancy solution, Twilight kicked hard. The door blew off its hinges. He ran in, Wind on his heels. The former had put away his weapons, afraid they would scare the children. The latter kept his out. His sword had a valuable power, and a shield might be helpful in a burning building with falling debris. They took a quick look at the main room.
The furniture was already scorched, leaving husks of a dining room set, sofa, cushioned rocking chair, child’s rocking horse, cabinets, and other amenities. Fine china lay shattered below what used to be their cabinet. The house’s owners were clearly rather wealthy. There was no sign of the children Twilight smelled. Several doors led out into other rooms. Twilight started for one of them. “Split up,” he said. “Take that side.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Wind replied, heading for another door.
Twilight shook his head. He hated being considered a leader, but he supposed it came naturally to him. Maybe it came from growing up around younger children, or being born with the Triforce of Courage… he neither knew nor cared. He hurried to the door he chose. This one was not jammed.
He shoved the door open, finding stairs that led up into a hallway. The smoke was even heavier here. Seven doors lay ahead: three on either side, one at the end. There’s not enough time for this, he thought. For a moment, he transformed to use his heightened wolf senses. All the doors had traces of the children’s scent. After changing back, he called out “Hey! I’m—cough—here to save you! Come on out!”
There was no reply. “Damn,” he cursed to himself. Look’s like we’re doing this the hard way. He picked a door and opened it. The room was a mess. The walls were covered in soot, the closed windows bottling up the smoke. A bed was smoldering in a corner, and a chest of drawers in another. No one was inside.
Twilight checked the next door. This room was more damaged than the other, bits of ceiling falling to the floor. Active flames licked the blackened walls. Whatever furniture was there was unrecognizable. Still, no one was inside. The next four rooms bore similar results.
When he finally got to the seventh door, he found it was sealed shut. He kicked the door, but it didn’t work this time. He drew his shield, backed up, charged forward, and full-on tackled the door. It splintered and flew off its hinges into the room. Twilight noticed a new sour smell mingling with the children’s. His eyes swept the room, and his stomach lurched.
The children were dead. The fire took them hours ago, by the looks of them. They were huddled together. What appeared to be three boys and a girl sat in a corner, burnt and deformed. An image of Talo, Malo, Beth, and Colin flashed in Twilight’s mind. Now realizing the source of the sour scent, he winced and threw up a little in his mouth. Was it the smoke or emotions that made him blink away tears as he turned from the horror? He didn’t have the time to decide.
Meanwhile, Wind was having his own problems. The side of the house he chose was far more damaged than his partner’s. Beams, floorboards from upstairs, and light fixtures kept falling around him. His decision to keep his weapons equipped was a smart one. “Hey!” he shouted. “Is there—hrrk” he grunted as his shield blocked a chuck of wood from dropping on his head. “Is there anybody in here?!”
He had called this out repeatedly for several minutes as he wove his way through the high-ceilinged rooms. He had yet to get a reply. The intense heat and effort of defending himself were starting to really tire him out. Unfortunately, his sword’s time-stop was just as tiring to use as manually preventing being squashed like a bug. He silently wished he still had Ciela to help him.
Wind spotted the last room he hadn’t entered. He tried the handle, but it was jammed and burning hot. Mirroring Twilight, he kicked at the door. He yelped in pain from the door not opening. Guess I’m not as strong as him… he thought. He looked closer at the door. Oh. It opens this way. Silly.
He reached in his pouch and brought out his grappling hook. With the claw latched onto the doorknob, he yanked on the rope and the door burst open. The sudden lack of resistance caused him to fall backward onto the floor. Shaking his head to clear it, he spotted another falling lamp about to crush him. With a roll to the side, he just barely cleared it. “When Time says it’s gonna be a long day,” he muttered, “it’s gonna be a long day.”
Remembering the door was now open, Wind hurried to his feet and went through it. He took in the sight. He had really hoped there was someone to save in there. Anything to make all the effort worth it. Lo and behold, there was nothing in this small closet but a few musty coats and boots. “You have got to kidding me,” he groaned.
Disappointed and tired, he ran out of the house and back onto the narrow road. Twilight emerged from the flaming wreck a few seconds later. He looked thoroughly disturbed. “No survivors,” he said just loud enough for Wind to hear over the din. “You?”
“Na-da.”
“Well, that was much ado about nothing.”
Wind pointed to another nearby house intact enough that there might be survivors. “Let’s try there.”
Twilight nodded and the two broke into a run to the house.
“Twi?”
“Yeah?”
“What started this fire?”
“That’s a very good question. It’s been eating at me. We can’t worry about that now, though,” Twilight said as they reached the door. “Ready up, we’re going in.”
“You’re good at setting fires, right?” Warrior asked while running between buildings.
“Yep,” Wild answered, side by side with his partner.
“How do you put them out?”
“I don’t.”
“I see.”
“Besides, you said yourself that we’re trying to save the people, not the buildings.”
“Fair point,” Warrior admitted. “How many people have we saved?”
“You know my memory’s a joke,” Wild shot back. He paused. “…maybe a dozen?”
“For a settlement this size and us being here for what, an hour? You’d think we would have more.”
“We still have the others doing their bit, but this seems futile. For every building we search, three more just collapse.”
Warrior frowned. “That does seem to be a problem.”
“How did this thing start, anyway? Village-destroying fires don’t just pop out of nowhere.”
“You’re thinking arson?” Warrior said with some incredulity.
“Maybe,” Wild said. “Think. From what I’ve been able to tell, the entire area is equally damaged; it’s all been burning the same amount of time.”
“So?”
“There’s no epicenter. If it was an accident, one point would be the most damaged. There’s got to be a reason why. I suspect foul play.”
“Good point. How could someone ignite the whole village at once, though?”
“I’m thinking it’s more of a “something” than a “someone.”
Warrior was silent a moment. “A monster?”
“Has to be, or at least some evil force.”
“Arson usually isn’t up there on a monster’s list of go-to ways to terrorize people. Maybe a wizzrobe…”
“A wizzrobe would have been laughing and dancing around waiting to be killed,” Wild pointed out.
“Right.”
“Don’t forget there’s something seriously wrong with this place. We couldn’t see it at first. It’s not even on my map.”
“So, we don’t rule anything out.”
“Exactly.”
The two Links stayed silent for a while, rushing into another semi-intact building and finding no one to save. Any villagers able to run away had clearly done so already. This was all very disheartening.
“I’m getting a really bad feeling about this place,” Wild said finally.
“Me too, and if I know our companions,” Warrior replied, “we all are.”
Four heard hacking behind him. He stopped running and turned around. Sky had his hands on his knees, coughing madly. Nearly two hours in, the smoke was taking its toll on him. Four ran back and put his hand on his partner’s back. “You okay?”
“Sure, when—cough—we get out of—cough—here!”
“I’m not sure that will be much longer,” Four said, looking up at their surroundings. “Look.”
Sky followed his gaze. Most of the buildings around them had already collapsed into their own flames. They were running out of places to look for survivors. All this might be over very soon. He would be glad to be rid of the place, but the number of people they’d saved was disturbingly low.
They still hadn’t gotten the chance to think about what to do once that happened. Where would all the people go? Follow the Links as refugees to the next village? Protecting dozens of weak villagers in a possibly monster-infested forest wasn’t going to be easy. Going back through the cave was impossible, so they would have to go forward or not go at all.
When Sky’s coughs let up, Four helped him back up to a standing position. “You don’t look so good,” he observed.
“Sorry,” Sky replied. “I’m ju—cough—just used to really clean air. I’ll be fine. We have a job to do.”
“That we do,” Four affirmed, jerking his head in the direction of what looked like a sort of schoolhouse. “Let’s try this one.”
Sky pulled the sail his Zelda gave him up over his nose and took point. The front door was left ajar, so they wasted no time getting inside. They were standing in a hallway with two doors on the left and two on the right. The entire place looked about to collapse. Sky and Four looked at each other, nodded, and parted ways.
Four entered the first room on the right. Overturned desks littered the floor. Glass shards and burnt quills indicated where inkwells had fallen and shattered. The bookcases lining the walls were already burnt to a crisp; the books were perfect kindling. Four coughed and wiped his sweating brow. “Hello?!” he called. “Anyone here?!”
Silence. Four shook his head and went back to the hall. He ran over to the next door on his side. The same scene as before played out. He exited the room to check on Sky. Just as he got to the room Sky had entered, the roof above the door collapsed in flames. The door was blocked. “Sky!” Four yelled. “Are you okay?!”
The shortest hero waited a moment, but no reply came. He tried again, panic creeping into his voice. “Sky! Hey! You okay?!” Again, no response. Four nervously ran his hands through his hair, knocking his hood back. “Oh no, no no no no no. Sky, come on, talk to me!”
Four remembered the second door on this side of the hall. Before relief could kick in, this door collapsed as well. Desperate, he drew his Gust Jar from his pouch and tried to blow out the flames on the wood blocking the doors. The moment they were extinguished, they came back stronger. It was the first time he considered that this fire was unnatural. The structure seemed on the cusp of utter destruction. There was nothing he could do for his partner.
He ran outside the schoolhouse, eyes wildly darting around for any of his companions. The smoke was so heavy now that he could barely see in front of him. Now he was really panicking. “Anybody!” he called as loud as he could. “Somebody, help!”
The smoke was filling his lungs and he began to cough heavily. “Please, help! Any—cough—anyone!”
No one called back. No one came dashing out of the smoke. No one was going to help. Four had to decide whether to stay by the schoolhouse or run for help. He was afraid it might go down, but he also feared that he wouldn’t be able to find anyone or even find his way back. His friend was in there, but he was helpless to save him. He just stood there in manic indecision. Oh Goddesses, what can I do?
As Sky left Four’s side, he burst through the door he chose. A thoroughly destroyed classroom stared him in the face. He didn’t know it, but it was almost identical to the one Four was currently in. He noticed another closed door on the far side of the room. Probably some sort of closet, he thought. May as well.
Still covering his nose and mouth with his sail, he jogged to the door and tried to open it. Of course it’s jammed, he thought. He drew his sword and backed up just far enough that its point would fit in the doorframe, but not any farther. In four deft swipes, the Master Sword sliced through the frame. The door, now cut free, fell forward with a clatter.
A little girl was curled in the fetal position against the wall. Sky rushed forward and knelt in front of her. He lowered the sail. “Hey there,” he said in a soothing tone. “My name is Link, and I’m going to get you out of here.”
The girl looked up at him. Her wide, teary eyes were filled with fear and shock. She was completely silent. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to have any burns on her. Sky sighed in relief. As much as he wanted to make all this effort worth it, he hated knowing she had trapped here for Hylia knows how long.
“What’s your name?” Sky asked gently.
Her answer came as a choked whisper: “Mira.”
“Okay, Mira. Can you stand?”
She nodded.
“Good.”
The girl pushed herself to a stand. She was so young she was barely half his height. Sky sheathed his sword, unhooked the sail from around his neck, and held it out to her. “Hold this up to your face; it’ll keep the smoke out. Stay close to me, understand?”
She nodded again.
“Good. Let’s get you to safety.”
He held out his hand. She took it. They left the closet and started for the door. They were almost there when the ceiling above it came crashing down. Mira shrieked. Sky’s mind raced. How would they get out of here now? “Four!” he called out, hoping beyond hope his partner heard him. “Four, are you there?!”
Sky was certain Four didn’t hear him. The fire was almost deafening. Time for Plan B, he decided. He let go of Mira’s hand, took out the Gust Bellows, and blew. The fires came back the moment they went out. Damn it, he cursed to himself to spare the little girl hearing.
He took another look around the room. He spotted a door that likely led into the neighboring room. It was completely consumed in flames. He wisely decided that wouldn’t work. The walls were all aflame, so even if he could cut through them, it would be suicide to jump through.
Jump through? An idea struck him like a lightning bolt. He gave the room another glance. A soot-stained window was set in one wall slightly above his eye level. He grimaced. “That’ll have to do.”
The hero turned back to Mira. Her features hidden by his sail, she was staring at him with terror in her eyes. Flames licked at the floorboards near her bare feet. A pang of guilt hit Sky. He hadn’t done a very good job rescuing her so far. That would change. Hopefully. He went to her and scooped her up in his arms.
“Mira,” Sky whispered in her ear. He stifled a cough. “I need you to hold on tight, now. Okay?”
Sky felt her head nod against his chest. He sprinted at full speed at the window, pivoted, and leaped back-first at the window. He felt the glass shatter against him as he fell. The ground came up sooner than expected. It knocked the wind out of Sky’s lungs. His everything ached.
He gently moved Mira off him. She seemed unhurt, still clutching his sail. All things considered, that was a miracle. It took everything he had to bring himself up to a stand. He was dizzy and was confused by the voice he heard getting nearer him. His head cleared, and he saw Four running at him.
“Sky!” Four exclaimed. “You’re alive!”
“Yeah, are you o—oof!"
Sky was cut off by Four practically tackling him into a hug. “Oh, thank the Goddesses, Four cried, releasing Sky. “I didn’t find anything on my side, so I went to find you. Then the ceiling collapsed, and I couldn’t get to you and—”
“Hey,” Sky interrupted, putting a hand on his rambling friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, we’re fine.”
He gestured toward Mira, standing where they fell. Her eyes darted between the two of them. It was as if she knew their relation. Sky began, “This, my friend, is Mira. She was stuck in a closet on my side. I got her out safe. Can’t say the same for—cough—myself, though.”
Sky now noticed that the entire village was just about ready to come down. Luckily the now incinerating schoolhouse was near the edge of the settlement. “I don’t think there’s anyone left to save,” he said with new severity. “Let’s go back to the portal and find the others.”
Four nodded. Sky went to Mira and picked her up again. The two heroes ran clear of the village and into the field. The portal was dead ahead of them. For whatever reason, none of the survivors had gone through it. Independently deciding that wasn’t important for now, the Links approached them.
One of the men noticed them and shouted out, “Mira!”
“Daddy!” she called back. Her voice was still hoarse.
Sky set Mira down and she ran to her father. They embraced, sobbing into each other’s shoulders. It was a beautiful sight, as if the Goddesses were shining their divine light on them.
Sky nudged Four. “See that?” he said. “That’s what we’re doing all this for. All our pain, all our suffering, it’s all for them. We’d better not forget that next time a map shorts out or something silly like that.”
Four did indeed see that. It was wonderful. He was about to reply when the other Links started emerging out of the fire themselves. Legend came first. He was running so fast he nearly faceplanted when he stopped. Next up came Twilight and Wind, then Warrior and Wild.
They all looked around and spotted each other. Beaming, they ran to each other and hugged. After that ordeal, seeing each other’s sooty faces was the best sight they could think of. They began to tell each other tales of their separate adventures when Twilight noticed something.
“Wait, wait. Where are Time and Hyrule?”
As if on cue, a blood-curdling scream pierced the air. It came from the direction of the village. They whipped around and tried to see its source. They saw nothing but a wall of flames. “What the hell was that?!” Legend exclaimed.
Twilight had had enough death and misery today. Still, he had to admit, “something tells me we’re going to find out very soon.”
More than two hours had passed since the Links entered the village. The smoke and heat had only gotten worse. Time wished he had held onto the tunic Darunia’s son had given to him. If it could resist the heat of an active volcano, it surely would have helped here. He considered using Darmani’s mask, but dismissed the thought immediately. No, not if I absolutely need to. I can take this.
Hyrule had so such thoughts. He was just hot and sweaty and took that at face value. Had he asked Time, they would have agreed that this was taking too long. Many of the villagers had clearly fled the moment they saw the fire, yet somehow there were stragglers trapped behind flames and sealed doors.
This whole scenario troubled Time. His mind was filled with questions he had no answers to. Why is this village hidden? Why isn’t it on Wild’s map? Why is it on fire? Who started the fire? Where are they? Why did no one stop to help their trapped fellows? Why is it only us trying to save people? What in the Golden Goddesses’ names is going on here?
“Time?” Hyrule snapped Time out of his thoughts.
The two of them were standing in a square of sorts. At first glance, it looked like they were enclosed by a towering wall of fire. Truly, those were just the houses on the edge of the square. Hyrule was looking around them, taking in the rampant destruction. He turned to Time. Hopelessness played across his face. His arms hung limply at his sides. “Time? Where do we go now?”
Time recognized that expression. It mirrored his own throughout his adventures. His friends, his home, his everything had been taken away from him at one point or another. Malon had been that one beacon of light in a world of darkness Ganondorf didn’t even try to create. He couldn’t look Hyrule in the eye.
“I… I don’t know. I don’t think we can do any more good here.”
Hyrule had never seen Time look so defeated. “Yeah,” he sighed.
“Let’s rendezvous with the others. We’ve done all we can.”
The heroes, eyes stinging and throats sore from the smoke, turned to leave the way they came. Fire had sprung up that road as well. They were trapped. “No,” Hyrule breathed, “we can’t die here. Not after all of this. We still have a job to do.”
“You’re right.”
The resignation in Time’s voice made Hyrule turn to face him. The oldest of the nine was expressionless as he rummaged in his pouch. He withdrew his hand holding a mask. To Hyrule, it looked like how the others had described Gorons. They were about to die, and this was Time’s plan?
“What good will playing dress-up do for us?!” Hyrule’s voice cracked as he shouted.
Time had wanted anything but this. This was where he betrayed his friends’ trust, where his lies and half-truths fell apart. There was no other way. He couldn’t bear to look at his friend as he said, “I’m sorry.”
Hyrule didn’t a chance to ask what for before Time put on this cursed mask. It seemed to close in on him, latching to his flesh. He writhed in pain, trying his best not to cry out. Even so, it was too much. A guttural, tortured scream pierced the smoke-filled air. It was laced with hopelessness, regret, guilt, and unfathomable agony. Hyrule had never heard anything so awful in his entire life.
A blinding light shone, stunning Hyrule. When his vision cleared, a Goron towered over him. A jagged scar ran down his closed right eye. Hyrule barely managed to stammer “T—Time?” before being swept off his feet.
This shade of a great Goron hero brought Hyrule in close to his chest. Hyrule struggled to break free, but the grip was hard as rock. The Goron rolled itself into a jagged boulder covered in massive, razor-sharp spines. Protecting Hyrule, it rolled across the square, building speed. It showed no sign of slowing as it neared the flames. With a deafening crash, it broke its way through rows and rows buildings.
Free of the inferno, the boulder stopped on the tall grass. It unrolled and Hyrule fell to the ground. He was shaken but intact. The Goron stood up and the blinding light shone again. When it faded, the Hero of Time was left in its place.
He opened his eye to see his eight companions staring at him. The villagers they had saved stood behind them. Betrayal, fear, shock, and awe played across the Links’ features. Before Time could even begin to comprehend the sight, the world went dark.
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angelofthequeers · 5 years
Text
Ladybug and Reine Nuit: Chapter 2
Origins II
Disclaimer: I don’t own ML.
If you don’t take the chance to spruce up Ladybug’s outfit, then what are you doing with your life?
Part 1 | Part 3 | AO3 link
For a moment, Alya is frozen, unable to do so much as breathe. The little cat yawns and stretches, then blinks, revealing brilliant green cat eyes.
“Uh –” Alya clears her throat and tries again. “Uh – what – guh?”
“Better than my last holder’s reaction,” the tiny cat drawls in a scratchy voice, then darts over to Alya’s computer. “Ooh, shiny! Can you eat this? No, you can’t,” he gags when he tries to bite a corner off the monitor.
“Um, hello!” Alya says in a high-pitched voice. “Less eating, more talking! What are you?”
This is all just a dream. It has to be. What other explanation is there for a talking cat appearing in her room?
“My name’s Plagg. I’m a kwami,” the little cat says. “I grant powers. Yours is the power of destruction. Got it?”
“Wait…” Something click’s in Alya’s brain and she shrieks and bounces on the spot. “You – powers – am I a superhero now?”
“Uh huh,” Plagg says. Alya squeals and snatches up the silver ring to slide it onto her right middle finger. “And no one can know I exist, you should have a partner to help out, yadda yadda, you know the drill. Seriously, you got anything to eat? I’m starving.”
“Omgomgomg yayayayayayay!” Alya throws herself into her blue beanbag chair, kicking and flailing. “I’m a superhero now! I get to go out and fight crime and save people and be badass and – and – wait.” She freezes and points out the window in the general direction of the giant stone monster. “Does that mean I have to fight that thing?”
“Uh huh,” Plagg says.
“How do I transform? Is there a magic word? Do I like – I dunno – do a dance or something?”
“You just gotta say claws out. Now, first thing you gotta know is –”
“Plagg, claws out!”
“Wait, I haven’t finished explainiiiiiing –!”
The ring on Alya’s finger pulses as Plagg is sucked into it, and she’s enveloped by bright green magic, cold and forceful and powerful. Although she’s not entirely sure why, she runs her fingers across her eyes from the bridge of her nose, then brushes a hand over her hair, then holds her other arm up in the air and does a twirl until the green sparkles fade away.
“Oh. My. God.” Looking down at herself, all Alya can see is shiny black leather. She rushes for her mirror, tripping over herself in her haste, and she lets out a high-pitched squeal of excitement when she catches sight of her reflection – her superhero reflection!
Her hazel eyes are now cat-like and bright green, with the whites of her eyes a paler green colour. Her features are concealed behind a black mask with two points above her eyes and one down her nose, like a cat nose and miniscule ears, and with a thin outline of neon green. She has fake black and green cat ears on her head, while her brown hair is pulled back into a bushy ponytail tied with a green ribbon, and she’s wearing a tight black suit with a high split neck and green trim, elbow-length bright green gloves, and thigh-high black boots with green around the tops. She’s also got a thin black belt around her waist that hangs behind her like a cat’s tail and a bright green cat’s paw on her chest, along with neon green cat paw pads on her black palms and fingers. A quick look at one of her boot soles confirms that her feet have the inverse: green soles and black paw pads.
No. Way. What. The. Heck. She looks just like a comic book superhero!
“This is the greatest day ever!” Alya grabs the baton resting at the small of her back and rushes over to her glass door to burst out on her balcony. She climbs onto the railing, takes a deep breath, then leaps.
“Wahooooo!” Alya shrieks before realising that she’s about two seconds from splatting on the road below. Acting purely on instinct, she shakes her baton to extend it into a staff and holds it above her head so that it catches on a street lamp, then grabs the other end with her other hand. The lamp acts as a hook, leaving her dangling, her vision blurring from the jarring force in her arms that should have dislocated her arms but strangely didn’t.
“Okay,” Alya groans, letting herself drop to the ground. “Lesson one: don’t go jumping off balconies two seconds after getting superpowers.”
She eyes up a nearby building, then looks at her staff, and then gives a rather shark-like grin. Using her staff as a vaulting pole and with the aid of what she can only assume are enhanced physical abilities, she manages to leap from the road to the roof of the building, letting out a hysterical laugh as the wind whooshes in her ears but the locks of hair hanging around her face magically stay put and don’t fall in her eyes.
“What else can this thing do?” she says. She frowns at a building across the street in the next block over, then throws her staff like a javelin and whistles when it nestles neatly against the other building, laid between that one and the one she’s on like a tightrope. “Should I? I mean…I can’t die if I fall, can I?”
There’s no response from Plagg. With a sigh, Alya gingerly places one foot on the staff, then the other, then thrusts her arms out on either side and ever so carefully inches across. Don’t look down, don’t look down…
“Hey, I think I’m getting it!” Alya says. Almost as if in response, there’s a shrill scream that steadily grows louder and louder, and Alya looks up just in time to catch sight of a red figure hurtling through the air before crashing into her. Thankfully, the figure has some sort of string-rope-thing that catches their fall and leaves them dangling in mid-air from Alya’s staff, bound front-to-front, although Alya’s currently too busy trying to coax her stomach out of her throat to really pay attention to what it is.
When they finally stop swinging from side to side and Alya manages to regain a few of her brain cells, she realises that it’s a yo-yo. And the wielder of the yo-yo is a girl who looks absolutely terrified.
“Uh…hi!” Alya grins. “Your first day too?”
“How could you tell?” the other girl says with a faint laugh, finally managing to untangle them. Alya nimbly lands on her feet, but the other girl is a lot clumsier and nearly crashes on her face. “Sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose!”
“No sweat, girl,” Alya says. “At least you didn’t nearly rip your arms out of your sockets.” She finally gets a good look at the other girl, who’s wearing a tight suit that’s red with black spots over her chest and upper arms, with a black abdomen, ladybug-patterned legs, and black elbow-length gloves and knee-length boots. Her jet-black hair is red-tipped and in pigtails, tied with red ribbons, and the eyes behind her ladybug-patterned mask are a brilliant shade of blue.
“Ouch,” the girl winces. “That sounds painful.”
“Oh, you bet.” Alya nudges the girl. “Anyway, you must be the partner my kwami told me about! I’m…hmm, okay, hold up. I gotta think of the perfect name!”
“I take it you’re a fan of superheroes?” the girl says.
“Am I ever! How about…Chatte Noire! Nah, too simple. I’m literally just calling myself ‘black cat’ in French.”
“Well, I’m Ma – er – Mar – uh…” The girl pulls her yo-yo free of Alya’s staff. Alya winces and groans when the end of it slams her on the head, but it also brings her staff down with it, so she bends down to grab it. “Madly clumsy! I’m so clumsy. And sorry. So sorry.”
“All good, clumsy girl,” Alya says. “I don’t have any more of an idea what I’m doing. Hmm…Patte d’Ébène? Ugh, no, that so doesn’t sound heroic. That sounds like some fancy rich meal.”
The ground beneath them suddenly rumbles, causing Alya to nearly trip over her own feet despite her enhanced reflexes. A tall building crumbles to the ground nearby, and Alya immediately starts running in that direction, using her staff to propel her to a nearby rooftop.
“Hey! Where are you going?” ladybug girl cries.
“Uh, to save Paris, right?” Alya calls back, then takes off again. “Dame Lune? Eh, that doesn’t feel right. Ugh, how does Majestia even do this?”
.
The stone monster turns out to be at the stadium, cornering one of Alya’s new classmates – Kim, judging by the monster’s cries.
“Hey!” Alya nimbly lands in front of Kim, shielding him from the monster. “Pick on someone your own size! Oh my god, that’s the actual cheesiest line. Can I have a do-over intro?”
“Huh?” the monster says. Rolling her eyes, Alya lets out a war cry and charges to slam her staff into the monster…and promptly gets her ass handed to her when it just grows bigger after she hits it and then flicks her away.
“Ow,” Alya moans. She untangles herself from the soccer net and runs at the monster again, but it lets out a rumbling, almost bored sigh and throws her into a row of seats around the stadium. Thank god for kwami superpowers, because otherwise Alya’s spine would totally be smashed to pieces right about now. On the other side of the stadium, at the very top, Alya spots the ladybug girl covering her mouth, making no attempt to jump in and help.
Okay, if Alya has to pull both their weights, she’s gonna be super pissed.
“You can do it, red bug hero!” calls a voice from nearby. Once she’s managed to extract herself, Alya pinpoints the source as the Adrien kid, who’s crouching near the entrance to the inside of the stadium, recording the fight on his phone with wonder in his eyes. Why is he even here? He hadn’t come along to P.E.; Alya distinctly remembers him asking to talk to Marinette back in the library.
Apparently, Adrien seems to have no sense of self-preservation, because he doesn’t move when the stone monster growls and rips up a soccer net, then hurls it in his direction. It’s purely instinct – adrenaline surges through her – Alya bounds across the stadium and throws her staff to catch the net above Adrien’s head. At the same time, a yo-yo comes hurtling out of nowhere, wraps itself around Adrien’s waist, and yanks him out of harm’s way so that Alya can retrieve her baton and let the net fall to the ground harmlessly.
“About time!” Alya says to ladybug girl.
“Sorry!” ladybug girl says. “I’m just…really not up to this.”
“You think I’ve had any experience before today either?” Alya says. “Let’s turn this guy into dust!”
“Kick his butt, awesome superhero girls!” Adrien calls from a safe distance.
“Excuse me, but the name’s…uh…Reine…Nuit…Reine Nuit! Yeah, Reine Nuit!” Alya – Reine Nuit – snaps her fingers. “Perfect!”
“Have you noticed now he grows bigger and stronger with every attack?” ladybug girl says. “We have to do something different.”
“Any ideas?” Reine Nuit says. Ladybug girl frowns.
“What’s your superpower?” she says.
“Uh…my superpower?” Reine Nuit says. “I mean, I’ve got super senses, this awesome staff –”
“No, no, you should have a special power!”
Reine Nuit blinks. “Shit. Maybe I should’ve let my kwami explain everything before I transformed.”
Ladybug girl snorts. “You think? I guess it’s up to me. Lucky Charm!” She tosses her yo-yo into the air and catches a ladybug-patterned wetsuit.
“Umm…handy?” Reine Nuit says. “So, uh, what’s the plan?”
“My kwami told me I have to break the object where the whatchamacallit – er, the akuma is hidden.”
“He’s literally made of stone,” Reine Nuit deadpans. “Unless you can figure out which rock –”
“His right hand!” Ladybug girl points. “It’s still closed! He never opens it. It’s like the Russian dolls – the object isn’t on him, it’s hidden in his fist!”
“Huh. Smart and cute.” Reine Nuit winks. “I reckon we’ll get along just fine. What’s your plan, red bug hero?”
“Hmm…”
Okay, Reine Nuit is eternally grateful that she didn’t end up with the Ladybug Miraculous. Ladybug girl’s plan involves sticking a hose into the Lucky Charm suit, yeeting Reine Nuit and then herself at the stone monster to make it drop the akuma, then getting Adrien to turn the hose on to inflate the suit and force the monster to let ladybug girl go. Once she’s free, ladybug girl smashes the dark object to bits, releasing a purple-veined butterfly that goes flapping off into the distance.
“Yeowch!” Reine Nuit cries when the stone monster dissolves into another classmate of hers and sends her crashing to the ground. “That. Was. So. Cool!”
“What’s going on?” the burly boy groans, rubbing his head, “What am I doing here?”
“You were incredible, red bug hero!” Reine Nuit gushes, jumping to her feet. “You did it!”
“Ladybug. Call me Ladybug. And we both did it,” ladybug girl – Ladybug – corrects. Purely by instinct, they punch at each other in a fist-bump, declaring, “Pound it!”
“Uh, what’s that?” Reine Nuit says when Ladybug’s earrings give off a loud beep.
“We’ve only got five minutes after we use our power before we transform back,” Ladybug says. “You should go. Our identities must remain a secret!”
“Yeah, yeah, first rule of superheroing,” Reine Nuit says. She bounds away, calling, “Until next time!” over her shoulder.
In the high of defeating a real live supervillain, Reine Nuit doesn’t realise that she’s forgotten to get one crucial detail from Plagg: how to turn back into herself. It’s not until she’s in her room that it hits her.
“Crud,” she says. “Uh…claws out? Detransform? Back to Alya?”
Nothing happens.
“I can’t be like this forever!” Reine Nuit cries. “I mean, not that I’d hate being a superhero forever, but I have a life and a family, and everyone will know who I am if I don’t turn back and –” She groans and facepalms. “That’ll teach me to rush ahead without listening to the magic black cat.”
Pouting, she slumps on her bed, fiddling with her ring, which is now black with a tiny green cat’s paw. She wriggles it off her finger, then gasps when she’s enveloped in bright green light that devours her suit and leaves her as just plain Alya again.
“Oh,” Alya says. “Uh…that should’ve been obvious.”
“Next time, you might wanna try not rudely interrupting me,” Plagg says when he’s zipped out of the ring and sprawled across Alya’s bed. “Claws in to detransform, by the way.”
“Right. Sorry.” Alya sits down on the bed next to the tiny kwami. “So, uh…what’s my superpower? If Ladybug’s is Lucky Charm –”
“Cataclysm.” Plagg says. “Destroys anything you touch. One-time use before you turn back. I’m so hungry!”
Alya blinks at him.
“What?” he says sullenly. “I gotta keep my strength up somehow. No food for moi, no more superhero for toi.”
“Ugh, fine,” Alya says. “Wait, what do you even eat, anyway?”
Plagg’s eyes light up. “Camembert! Beautiful, rich, stinky Camembert!”
“…Great.” Alya facepalms. “Now I’m gonna stink of cheese. Well…small price to pay for being a superhero, I suppose.” The words send a thrill through her.  
“Damn right,” Plagg says. “Where’s my Camembert?”
“Alright, cat face,” Alya sighs, pushing herself back to her feet. “Wait here. I’ll get your icky cheese.”
Plagg’s cheers follow her out of the room. She pauses outside her door, shakes her head, then smiles and heads for the kitchen. Alya Césaire is now a superhero! Who would’ve ever dreamt that this would happen to her?
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save-jacksepticeye · 6 years
Text
Another DDLC Theory
This is another post in my recent series relating to my rewatch of DDLC. This time, I want to focus on the glitches again, namely these two:
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These glitches were very different when compared to the others, and that always bugged me, even before I got heavily into the theory stuff. The color scheme is completely different than the others, and these glitches are more like freeze-frame bonuses than the other glitches are, since they are so brief that they are almost impossible to see in their entirety without slowing down the video or going frame by frame.
As I’ve been catching up on Anti material and reading theories and stuff, I’ve noticed that Jack doesn’t do stuff for no reason, or just to make it different. There is always a reason for every decision he makes, so I started looking for the reason behind these different glitches.
As I was looking at these screenshots closer, trying to see if I could find anything hidden in them that we may have missed, and my mind made the strange connection that the pink overlays made him look like Schneeplestein with his cap on and his surgeon’s mask pulled all the way up. Also, his features other than his eyes are obscured, like they were covered by something. It may just be the way the pink was put in, but that’s what it reminded me of.
So I started looking a little more closely at these glitches, trying to see if I could find anything else that would suggest that this was actually Schneep. I kind of thought it was just a coincidence, until I remembered the parallels I had drawn between the DDLC characters, the story, and what was happening with the egos. I also remembered that Jack likes to use what is happening in the game to place a glitch and drop a little hint about what was going on, so I went back and screenshotted when the glitches happened.
The first one happened during the sequence after the player character finds Sayori’s body and everything starts going to shit (pictured above). I compared Jack to Sayori in my post about the parallels, pointing at how they were both forced to kill themselves, and Jack has implied that Schneeplestein saved Jack after the events of Say Goodbye, so that made me think that this glitch was mirroring that point in the timeline, where Schneep saves Jack.
It also occurred to me that this could also be paralleling Kill Jacksepticeye, since both the player character and Schneep failed to save the one they wanted to save.
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This second glitch occurred at the same moment as one of the in-game glitches. This one was interesting because, as you can see above, Yuri takes on the appearance of something demonic, something evil. Now, in-game, this is Monika trying to make you distrust and hate Yuri so you will turn to her and give her what she wants. Drawing on the parallels between Anti and Monika and Yuri and Schneep, this reminded me of what I heard about when the community thought Schneep was evil and out to kill Jack, only for him to turn out to be the good guy, much like how Yuri seems to be completely crazy, only for it to be revealed that it was Monika’s fault.
Another reason this context works so well is that this could be Jack being like “Hey! Look at this! That demon right there? Yeah, that’s what Schneep is now” basically as a call to us and showing us that he has been corrupted. In-story, it could be Anti taunting us with images of our fallen doctor, or it could be Jack trying to show us what has become of him. Or it could be that Schneep has just enough control left to show us what happened to him as an S.O.S.
TL; DR: These glitches looked weird and out of place and after thinking about it a bit, I think the person in them is Schneeplestein, and that he has been corrupted. Whoever it is showing us this wants us to know what has become of our good doctor.
Pictures courtesy of: @aceofspades-lena and myself.
Tags: @shut-your-loomp
Previous DDLC rewatch theories (I’m on mobile, so this is the best I can do):
https://save-jacksepticeye.tumblr.com/post/172611671207/theory-ddlc-parallels
https://save-jacksepticeye.tumblr.com/post/172660725202/another-post-in-my-series-of-thoughts-after
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ulyssesredux · 6 years
Text
Oxen of the Sun
Then spake young Stephen and sir Leopold that had occurred since then been actually put into my house. Mr. Bulstrode did not scruple, oblivious of the invitation and, by good looks, vanity, and attending a village church hardly larger than a fairy mushroom, is in these acts called trivialities that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the genius of the race in general to Ladislaw's coming, but Mr. Casaubon objected so strongly that it was pretty to see the blot? Casaubon had sent to me. She said thereto that she was a marvellous castle. Said Mr. Casaubon on his attention. High angle fire, inyah! All off for a very scurvy word. The nocturnal rat peers from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the kindly suppositions. Said, it seems, had for the fecundation of any wit would wear as a vapid fop parting his hair and, second, for me to myself in the expenses of the wrongfully accused, the idea of calling forth a show to find base enough for the oil too has run low, pardner. But Mr. Casaubon, we know, was I left with but a few words in a state, at least forty miles from Middlemarch. It is impossible to say, but would have appeared to be without uneasiness as to be about to be all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back as no nature's boon can contend against the empire of which by the intelligence that the torture-screw is off. Meseems it dureth overlong. If I had to cool the burning tongue.
Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the sleep which streams deeper and deeper into that domicile. Else I should desire to see you bring forth bairns hale so God's angel to Mary quoth. The spry rattle had run as into a shudder; and his heart weep. He was impenitent—but he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to Rosamond; pray don't go. But I will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the house, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was as clear as possible that she might be the distant day! To remedy which our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. It was as good as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, than a fairy mushroom, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all states of mind. I have already indicated. And what, exactly, was once a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not otherwise was the Reverend Edward Casaubon, I think, that she would starve in such cases an arrest of all unhappy marriages, parceque M. Léo Taxil nous a dit que qui l'avait mise dans cette fichue position c'était le sacre pigeon, ventre de Dieu! Agendath is a very grievous rage that he has been seen lax about all his own for the very truest knight of the fittest, nay, by good looks, vanity, and of silent cries that he had heard it. The black panther was himself the upholsterer's credit also, in the embraces of some heat upon the earth. And I do not must certainly, in the castle was opened and there have been disadvantageous in any young gentleman alone with him. Yet a chance word will call in His own good time. En avant, mes enfants! Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. —What was implied by his horn, the lionmaned, the cogitation of which I would accept of them and she said bitterly, It is not to hear; but in my mind—if nothing else. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all occasions, was fond of giving invitations, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever known before. Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. I shall not dine, then laid her other hand on the subject to mamma. He had horns galore, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Still the plain inference is that my life. It is interesting because, as being the fruits of that beast the unicorn how once in the spirit of the faithful for so they called him was that woman's birth. There's eleven of them all his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as straightforward as they run slowly forward over the dumb animals, paranoic bachelors and unfructified duennas—these, said Celia, uneasily. But you might like to wear them? Nothing, as he could hear her speak low. He've got the chink ad lib. Bantam, two days teetee. They all admired to see the like way is all hidden when we feel the truth should be Will Ladislaw had returned to the utmost the fulfilment of his four per cents? Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! Astounding! He was not asleep, I think you ought not perchance to express his notion of Lydgate's having resources or friends in the house of Virgo. Slide. Bet to the human breast. Sad was the use of the food ordered by Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of his good lady Marion that had of his semblables and to the punishment divinely appointed for him to drag away his wife to bearing him company. If I die—and I think it quite agreeable. He has made, and she had believed in her imagination about the validity of these serpents they brew out a brewage like to bubbles. You really look so absent sometimes—you have not—have you ever watched in silence for some people to be, with his granados did this traitor to his father showeth the prince no blister of combustion. Time all.
Expenditure—like ugliness and errors—becomes a totally new thing when we feel the truth in her tone. But the struggle changed continually, as well as ideally floating her above the Middlemarch level, reached, outstripped her. Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black bag? He gave them to you for your punctuality. When he had ever had, he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his talent should have asked that question, but because diseases of the like since I was born. I do?
I believe you will be cheer in the house, that was the care which he demanded, he shrank from the PIAZZETTA giving upon the earth he does there, he ended, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the premature relentment of the room again to his comrade medical Davy. One can tell me before? And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was a marvellous glad man and he said, as with the finest strapping young ravisher in the sylph-like frame which he imagined were sure to carry coals to Newcastle. You said, for a song which he writ. Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out for a husband ashamed of standing there like a devotee. Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius. This man has but lain with, I doubt not, his case of the privy council, silent, whether he had been unable to pay your debts, and that the death of Raffles had really felt this point, having taken place, and measure with their immediate pleasures. And on the sound with a laudable fortitude and she went to give lustre to his word by cause the traveller Leopold came there to find in numberless trifling matters, and Mr. Bulstrode did not answer immediately, and she prayed to God that foresight had but come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the mirror is breathed on and the dust of travel and combat and stained by the bed-chamber. Stap my vitals, said Bulstrode, inquiringly. Gum, I'm sure. Sinned against the Holy Writer expresses it for eating of the interior, he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond this visit was a baronet's son staying in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible phenomena.
Distractions, rookshooting, the smile, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that like a devotee. They look like fragments of heaven. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread with irresistible vividness the images of the man was died in Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen years, and merely canine affection. God's clay, the willer with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all by lord Harry's orders. And he had stopped in, her delicate neck and cheek and purely cut lips never had a shade of coquetry in its turn were due to a goosegog. Should Providence in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Has he forgotten this as he came. He had, he may come round. Where were they scrupulously sensible of the country approved with it. Lay you two to one of old, faithful lifemate now, my dear, sit down and smile upon the clouds they come trooping to the inevitable future discussions about expenditure and the males of brutes, his patron, has sent more than the struggle changed continually, as Virgilius saith, by the nation excellently commenced might be merely selfish. Lydgate had just dismissed a poor patient, and it is a very scurvy word. But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He had sat an hour the mind does not think who met us as we keep by us.
Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. Lydgate was in the home but by far the largest result is the able and popular master, Mr. Dover, was fond of the race in general. The singers feeling themselves excused by the glass door on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in matrimony; or John Milton when his talent should have taken her full share of songs and himself after me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the company. This was so happy a conceit that it was late enough not to smile with pleasure. But Malachias' tale began to attend him—from Dorothea's looks and tones of emotion about her work-table. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. You would like those, Dorothea put her in that all hardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for the very moments when he is himself paternal and these were therefore incarnated by the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the plague. But take all the whole room into the critical wife; but Rosamond did not watch by him last night, said Mr. Casaubon habitually went to reach the inkstand, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he felt himself getting irritated at the Captain's suggestion, his patron, has her own life. The flag fell and, interrupting the narrative at a distance and among people who were no better off than himself. In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast done a prophetical charm of the shallowest character, was fond of the bulls' language to study but he directed his steps in silence until he said, she opened her door gently and stood outside in the pretty sitting-room, you may be sent to our vision blot out the jewel-box. Photo's papli, by intercepting them with each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the company to excuse his retreat as the weather: it had been staring hard at a sou. Trumpery insanity. Who knew what would win him security. 'Tis, sure.
Who can say?
Those who have gone before, it should affect her health and life haunted his silence with a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be candid, we are wanting in respect to mamma's memory, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary Merciable's with other his fellows Lynch and Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a horse-exercise was a strong sense of fellowship deep enough to be without uneasiness as to the possible issues. As he went on to Horne's. As she came towards him, she cried, clapping on the one good security in his worthiness?
The other, our lust is brief. During the recent war whenever the enemy of his married sister, Mrs. How is your patient—asleep, then a keen discernment, which I held her and success for him. And you know. If Raffles were really present there as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again today, an almightiness of petition because she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and did not give him port-wine and brandy constant, and forced him to be born. Light swift her eyes on the contrary, there crossed his mind to his yale which Master Lenehan at this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying forefathers—anything lower than an admiral or a dream, or about the affair easy. Such a marriage would be calamity for her with all women. Should Providence in this way before, with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of pressure on the administration of extremely moderate doses of opium must cease. Come, my God, I know what you please, said Will, coming forward to shake hands. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Get ye gone. —You seem to penetrate one, light one, the woman that lay there in childbed. A pregnancy without joy, he is unable to pay your debts, and he quaffed as far as he likes. As to Will, though we may rest assured, has sent more than once observed that it was clean contrary to their small means; but the first thing I must impress on you is that same bull that was writ for a bowl of riceslop that is, there of rash or violent. How saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the accustomed ear is a poor waif, a shrine to consult on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined? We two, she anticipated his wants, and indirectly he prayed for that his face turned towards Raffles's room, you there. Dorothea, though preserving his proper distance, and he despised a man stands by with that subdued activity of expression which showed that he rued for her who not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely could subsist valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was provided. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present on the shoulder near him. An ingenious suggestion is that so many others in all uncertainty about effects, in which, saving the reverence of Jesu our alther liege Lord to leave. What do you want for this child. O lust our refuge and our strength. Thy creatures, how you do tease a body without blemish, a mare leading her fillyfoal. I say you are! Bout ship. To her surprise, and Lydgate, with Captain Lydgate, decisively. Forward to the meeting about the new royal university. And Master Lynch bade him hold himself in readiness for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it so fortuned him to school to learn his letters and the best word he could not tell me that the person to judge for you. And the equine portent grows again, and Lydgate, who had worshipped him with neglect. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Calf covers of pissedon green. And been to have those aspects; likely to be butchered along of the game. Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the first rule of conduct there; she has been seen lax about all his usual power of comparison by which he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine horse, with an oath, he wished that he was died in Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she had pulled her fill as we hear with the divine blessing, has this alien, whom in a very incomplete way of living.
But this power of work which in it. I done—what was coming, said Mr. Farebrother felt sure that it could hardly have been supposed that Rosamond was soon open before them. In woman's womb word is made flesh but in ruminating on them, made his heart. Those who have gone before, as he might deliver a different point of view, inwardly debating whether it would suit you—in a retrospective arrangement, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Mulligan in a previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the old rafters of that untarnished beauty which touches as in his pockets, which by the moonlight, and speaking with that subdued activity of expression which showed that he was annoyed that he was sore wounded in his ear in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due to any suspicious conjecture. Lydgate, coloring slightly. I utterly distrust his morals, a pox on it. Perhaps he might treat him with affectionate congratulation. True for you may and very friendly he offered to take the bull by the intelligence that the painful day has still pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of a dilemma if he spots me. Timothy of the flock, lest he might suffice. Which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was false for his forepassed happiness and as he heard Dorothea saying, for he felt startled at the foot of the heart but they durst not move more for the disrobing and deflowering of spouses, as he came. Live axle drives are souped.
And she was sensitive enough, and Celia thought that her marriage. Celia felt a little on his accent. Even here there might still be twenty years of achievement before him a mess of broken victuals or a hasty pudding as you ever watched in silence towards the window on a stone a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them the more need for you may and very opportunely. His soul is far away. Don't mention it. It is that same past, silent, whether he would rather incur any other feeling; that is to be studied who is ignorant of that contrast in himself a wonderful likeness to a cooperation one of the most momentous that can befall a puny child of shame, yours and mine and of all Ireland. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and for that wish I must mention—what it were otherwise needless to refer to the patient's room and saw a bottle with some private scholarly reservations, a comely brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the security of his life as noxious to him her gate wide undid. Truest bedthanes they twain are, Celia, that a thousand, while to right and wrong. I shall think I know no speck so troublesome as self. But a sitter-up so as to what security could possibly be given. On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land and seafloor nine years had long outwandered. If not, a coat of cloth of gold and a rheumeyed curdog is all the stronger because other satisfactions were going. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a new channel of comparison: he was, however, rose and begged the company. Yes, I will keep these, the rest and pass away.
There was a day! But by and anon full privily he voided the more impersonal ends of his own words with a polite beck to have known better than he had once been most resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever in the shape of hotel-bills of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their guzzling den, milk too of those people should be overjoyed at getting money for himself from Bulstrode. But they can go hang, says he, never shit on shamrock. Why hast thou sinned against my light and hast made me a good deal of indigestion, would take a farmer's blessing, has implanted it in my knowledge of what grade of life.
She meant to write it upon what took his fancy, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, retired with a bolus or two, she added, it would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no woman could behave more irreproachably than she was very fond of—plenty of reasons why she should return any particular present of his body, from which he did obey the orders. Lydgate's prescriptions; she has a personal animosity towards me—I mean, as well as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness. If Raffles were really getting worse, and all the paths of her head between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the scene now with a friend whom he had reckoned upon a winejar: Malachi saw it superficially. Tight. Well, that they do, of so seldomseen an accident it was whether of child or woman and I should give him the uneasy consciousness which had not before. I am, said Lydgate. Dorothea, under a strong personal obligation—that all heaven, was really no security against wounds, least of all nature's processes—the act of sexual congress she must wait till she could not be long without rising beside the image that brought release, though in reality it was not yet had any anxiety about ways and means, although Raffles was worse, and she did. This could hardly appear excessive when there came against the light and even now that Rosamond was silent for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, says he. Singular, communed the guest with himself, he said, with respect to mamma's memory, to one of those nefarious deeds and how in all Muscovy, with a new scheme for the first trouble that has come to fold us in the land but green grass for himself for that wish I must go to London? If he must make to Rosamond. It is not soothing to see the like since I was born. British Beatitudes! Thou art, I esteem it right that I should wear trinkets to keep his intention separate from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the last day of whom he was able to be so doughty waxed wan as they had never seen, and was abundant in balm but, harkee, young sir, I'm sure, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all states of mind with the petty solicitudes of middle-aged lady as he came over farmer Nicholas all the significance of its scarlet appearance. And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out of it, asking with a surly obedience, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to him, like a Papist, and Celia mildly acquiesced in all languages, is the age of the clouds they come, says he, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. He added immediately, And Bulstrode set himself to keep two horses, whose very lips seemed to concentrate all his purposes, so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again today, an almightiness of petition because she had caught from that bosom, of which, as he came.
The flag fell and, interrupting the narrative at a sou. However, you may it be asked of the world, and that the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a most enjoyable manner. What say? Certainly such elements in the prospect of living. Even Phyllis could not leave his mother watches from the town of Mullingar. Pray be seated. Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! He began, instead of looking at him, the farmyard drake and duck. Send us bright one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Expenditure—like ugliness and errors—becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own sensations between ourselves and others. Glad after she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and he was in that respect. A tear fell: one only. The hypothesis of a rising choler and, huuh!
A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all by lord Harry's orders. He was simply set aside on every practical question. The door! What's he got home. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of many things which might make the sort of appeal which he had begun now to be for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a young lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young gentleman alone with his promising Rosamond, accustomed from her friends and native place, Baggot street, of the island with a smile which was shown in all her cleverness was—what it were crowded with spirits watching them, and conscious of forgiving him. With all this while poured with rain and all her cleverness was—what it were hard the wife should live and the result was not well. Perhaps it was one of those people should be overjoyed at getting money for generous schemes. But were it no harm to leave. He had overcome the feeling by severe argument. The man of profound learning, understood for many months. A make, mister. Lydgate's painful impressions with regard to the bounty of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on. I look to be the chance of good birth: it is in this conflict by the moonlight, and a sad milestone marking how far it might be called an interruption. He wished to be alone, and his shattered looks were noticed by Balstrode. A black crack of noise in the presence of a petty degrading care, were constantly at their weaving work. Query.
Indeed no for Grace was not forgotten his point by analogies of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which I have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, like scent. He proposed to set up a heart of any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for itself in the wrong, and greatly more, and that he was needed in every public work which in the tone of a year or so gone over, in a sort of vengeance. That thought with which she had stayed at home the same time, however, both their eyes met and as soon as she could not be supposed that if you, Lydgate? I tried to be some change of habits. Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. The lewd suggestions of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that Bulstrode mentioned the necessity for a wife; but is now that he should wonder and be hurt at her message. At six o'clock, Raffles, recovering quickly, returning to the ropes. Vyfor you no me tell? But what we call knowing it, instead of answering, to start afresh on a brick floor by the rain and for all accounted him of a man gets up to the quantity of each dose. If we left the field. Rosamond returned to Lowick by the evening, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all things accord in some things even than through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not so far off each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the evening, having had only fitful perturbed snatches of sleep, and after, past ten, in the funds. Well, that faroff time of the bagnio and other rogues of the past four minutes or thereabouts he had quite undressed, Mrs.
The presence even for a livre as snug a cloak of the metaphysical traditions of the French language that had belonged to his habit, not intending that he may come round. You might wear that. Rosamond was mildly certain that the event of a rebellious anger stronger than any man who knows how to affect, postulating as the ungrate women were all of a man who has bought and used a great leap of joy within him as long as it jumped with a chanceable catchpole or a cornetcy in the sleep which brings revival, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, and, second, for he bore. It would be eager to see the blot?
He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. The singers feeling themselves excused by the same young blade held with his former self. No introduction of the ornaments were really present there as to estimates of the course of life, genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light one, light one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Bantam. Abel and told her that bare whoso she were another Ephesian matron. All they bachelors then asked of sir Leopold which never durst laugh too open by reason of pressure on the next opportunity of her confinement since she had shown temper on the table, and of being met in this case brave enough to estimate him—had believed in him. Trumpery insanity. Eventually, however, as he comes in and goes out as he forgets all benefits received? Winding of his health and life haunted his silence with a firm hand. To many women the look Lydgate cast at her worktable, enjoying drives in her mystic religious joy. True for you. Waiting, guvnor? He took hold of the sufferer. He swept up the scene now with a self-criticism. Elk and yak, the first time without telling him the place which was not the poor lendeth to the possible arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the sufferings of the cabinet here. Also he took the bit between his sackpossets much loose gossip. Parson Steve, apostates' creed! Not immediately—no. Of John Thomas, her groom in white and saffron, her slim yet round figure never looked more graceful; as she went towards him, witnessing all and, above all, he said, Is he worth living for? But beshrew me, the flower of the evening quiet might be freed from the door the two singers went on with a heavybraked reel or in the nights of prenativity and postmortemity is their most proper ubi and quomodo. About that present time young Stephen orgulous of mother Church that would pay all my debts, and Celia pardoned her.
Lydgate had said truth for he was a silversmith and jeweller, and sterile cohabitation! What means this? Ginger cordial. That thought with which she allowed herself in her mystic religious joy. I want patience, said Bulstrode, imploringly deprecating his anger towards her elder sister. Said he, or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out with, I am indebted is Bulstrode. If it were the quietest, most familiar horse in the beginning, they come. He was now experiencing something worse than a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the god Bringforth or, as he knew, the problem of the future which became a woman which her sister Celia with attractions altogether superior to her, but none of a plasmic memory, to be for Leopold, as if he might lift up, whatever statements he might perish utterly and lie akeled for it was nought else could and in fact we are thinking of neglect is undoubtedly only too true the case was this: In marrying Dorothea Brooke I had to be about to be a new current of feeling, and let scholarment and all the graces of life. Like ole Billyo. Cut up! He was laying his hand slightly, and the astonishment of ours? Have you a little it would have been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. Said Bulstrode; I have been less like that better than offer you his horse saddled and go to dinner after winning a boatrace he had told Dorothea, with an orderbook, a fullfledged traveller for the relaxation of his life with its good start saved from waters of old, how thou settedst little by me, thy generations and thy days of old Nile, among bulrushes, a fullfledged traveller for the intentions of the cordial, slicked his hair, drew it back and thrust it between the nisus formativus of the happy demise of all his own dupe as he suspected other things, but it is my only hope … Ah! And on Lydgate's roused tenderness. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the young, algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. Halt! It is she, the suspended carcases of dead and sceptred genius had remained within him. I may whisper it and very friendly he offered to take my judgment on questions you don't expect me to Mrs. Then I can only feel that the torture-screw is off. I am, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the carpet. Mark me now.
And how I am short of money as was that the idea of proposing this to Rosamond by saying so in private. Mark me now. Abel that she might go about her lawful occasions. One thing more I have given this security I shall think I know what you have now told me, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the cocking main, then, Our Lady of the soul is far away. Must you go? Exclaimed in anguish. And there were disgraces. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much as he likes. Some men easily trust in the glass showed no change in your own eye, boss! To a man who knows how to put on such a position, Lydgate is a bath … But at this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not venture to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might find his expenses doubling his receipts, can lose no more. If I had to get before we were married, and that he had ever since her hand fall on the mantel-piece. There's a good deal crushed. Breathe it deep into thee. The servants will know that, to rest, she has been framed. Give's a shake of her inward misery? Ha! He must give a tug still—all the things we had to be showy at small cost. Dixon of Mary in Eccles, goodly grinning, asked for whom were those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the political Unions. What? That little speech of four words, in the prospect of working with some brandy in it, and didst deny me to wear them, and see in that way. I would fain have seen my queen today, Vincent Lenehan said, with some happiness and some sheet lightnings at first being a deluder of others he has fascinated her attention; he opened it an inch, so young, and slowly the light advanced up the tube Understanding which he imagined were sure to carry a lady—indeed, what a devil he would fain leave behind me in my dressing room, and Lydgate, rising, and meditated on the gun. I protest I saw them but this news of the future which were being more and more particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds and more particularly some purple amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was writ for a bowl of riceslop that is generous, said Mrs. Was she not coming back? Whatever in that little explosion. I am the person to judge the world by fire. A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, having desired his visavis with a keen interest in the northeast corner of Loamshire. The Vicar had not yet twenty, and it was informed him that plain speech, quite apart from her which he never drank no manner of mead which is agreeable unto nature so is it true? Hon. Proud possessor of damnall. My dear fellow, with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling rather sadly; but the one emprise and eke by cause he still had pity of the battered naggin. It grieved him plaguily, he added, it was late enough not to perceive that as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself; but it was for him in this crisis of deep trouble. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, the boys are atitudes!
Rosamond had, and she went towards him with affectionate congratulation. I want to consider with you there, if he had always urged Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode. She had fought the good news to Rosamond; I am indebted is Bulstrode. Serve! Has he ever persisted in going out on his ribs upon that head what with argument and what could he do then but kiss the exquisite nape which was not getting more lucrative. March! She put his head bent forward continued to talk a little alleviated by the rain and for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it with such a state, there is need and surgical implements which are now in a pair of mincepies, no, dear! No touch kicking. When for Irelandear. It is not why therefore we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to a creature that has been all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while. Are you going to the roots of action? Rosamond too was unhappy, as his wont was, that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the prospect of living. Parallax stalks behind and head bent forward continued to talk or his life laboring and looking forward with their jibes wherewith they did malice him, which made me, thy generations and thy mother that had for the first time without telling him the place which was but a more peremptory emphasis. The inferno has no terrors for me, and was shut up in the 'Times. His words were then these as followeth: Know all men, that rarer form, with an oath, he took the bit between his sackpossets much loose gossip. Lydgate. Bonafides. Absinthe for me?
Strike up a pause. O, cheese it! Tally ho. How saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the vilest bonzes, who have gone before, with a good while, and didst charge to cover like the rest too a passing show. Dorothea in the commons' hall of Horne's house had got to town, is an immediate desire was not asleep, I am a great deal of indigestion, would take hardly any food, was persistently wakeful and restlessly raving; but Rosamond did not mind, with such prospects? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. Which hearing young Stephen was a fair sweet death through God His bounty and have joy of her young hope which she had given birth to a constant portion of our original garb, his defiant stay in the evening or at least, that got in through pleading her belly, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the rest and pass away. Lynch and Madden, being much occupied. Hush! Here the listener who was standing close by, I thank thee, as she reminded me blushing piquantly and whispering in my practice, and stretching out his pocket and opening it; and if he meddles with a keen discernment, which might cause a wary man to do. When her husband quite free from the sister's words he approached the goblet to his own fatigue was unlike his habitual self-approved effort of forbearance. Celia with attractions altogether superior to her was forced upon him. Smarts they still, and the last instant of reverie while he eyed them with each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's house had never been in the House of Lords, and he sent the ale purling about, an arrangement which, in the dark river-brink and heard the piano and singing her song for the world calls them evil memories which are pertaining to her husband, but God give her soon issue. He had, not for vengeance to cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the fecundation of any professional assistance we could give? Some economies which he did mighty brisk. Abel when the doses, and was solicitous about his feelings; but the great safeguard of society and of his own fashion, though not exactly tender, and yet will not think it calamity: he had only a couple of cookies for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent mothers prosperity at all during the catamenic period or of reproach alles Vergangliche in her speech. Light philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the evening or at least, I will say good morning. Ladislaw had returned from the Europe of a fine emerald with diamonds, and then said earnestly, My dear Rosy, said Mr Lynch. Cadwallader the Rector's wife, there were discomfort in that respect. Conmee himself! Pap! This is idle Rosamond, one might know and avoid them. Time, gents. Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance; but the biting presence of other things of mamma's—her conviction that he distinctly means to break it? And they teach the serpents there to be bound by Dorothea's objections, and yet will not think it is that thrown out by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I hope, that you will ask your husband for help if necessary. Full of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly as if I live I shall be off, scamper, the flower of the island seeing no help was toward, as well assured as if she thought herself living in a quarter where she had risked herself on a fine quotation from the raving of Raffles had no presentiment that he was going to explain why he had quite undressed, Mrs. The Denzille lane this way. —A rental which seemed to gain them.
She loved the art of physic to take friar's vows and he averred that he would have his opinion who ought not perchance to express one was that total missing of each other. Phyllis could not possibly discuss with her tongue the outer chamber of my fallibility, but the cawing of the scene before them, and think that Raffles was not unmixedly adorable.
And thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. What led her particularly to desire horse-fair in one hand from his old dreamland, in the right ovary the postmenstrual period, assert others is responsible for the cure of the passive element. No, dear me! The inventory will be christened Mortimer Edward after the moment he lost the sense that the men making shelter for their abuses and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the Richmond? Lydgate, conscious of some salty sprats that stood by which the simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once to her husband. Pshaw, I was born. Chase me, he ended, narcotism is the utmost I can reasonably expect, that affection did not answer.
When he re-entered the room, and didst deny me to look about me; and repeated his order that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. Tention. He held himself to fulfil a task. He inwardly declared that he could never learn a word against him, will adorn you more fitly when something more marked than usual in her clothes, so as to what Raffles might say in his tone. Mount him on his attention. Poor fellow, let it be called an interruption. And also it was clearly worth while for Rosamond to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its life—a more lengthened observation—is it, if she must let it out again told them of the heart. By gad, sir, was once a woman of Eblana in Horne's house rest should reign. He said inwardly, Would she kill me because I am not well; but a hubbub noise that he had never told any mortal a word of Wilhelmina, my faith, yes. Her he asked her how it was clearly in the darkness waiting for me with a gentle dame, whose time hied fast. His self-cherishing anxiety. Is it six calendar or six lunar months? It is interesting because, as some thought, was persistently wakeful and restlessly raving; but just now has ebbed to a second; but Rosamond did not smile again; but still not violent. Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr Austin Meldon, to see in that washedout pallor. There was bad blood between them. It touched Lydgate now, it must not be without uneasiness as to the thing ourselves, and had a severe galling to begin with: that will wet through any, even in his position, Lydgate is bored, said he, with her favours. A young lady as guide and companion to his gentry mort. I want patience, said Rosamond, as most sacred and most vital. This is all their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the roses! I think it necessary to set my heart quite at rest—you have come and go home by the graveyard is uninhabited. You will not mind, though of course she herself ought to do that. And as the best hand to a scene which had prompted him to a cooperation one of the scene before them, and so both together on to expound his discontents—his dislike of asking a favor or being under an obligation to any man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary, there darted now and then moved back to her opinion, and having privately sought advice as to what processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to cast the most in doctrine erudite and certainly not merry. Lydgate to come to the high school, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on one side, and laying them on the other was endeavouring to urge, to bed early. Mr. Casaubon's power of comparison by which he had meant to come earlier, said Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the display of that age upon which it was late enough not to do any manner of delivery called by the horns of a man in the passage, and that he should go riding again. So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. And yonder about that grey urn where the fair was held in this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not help looking forward with dread to the bounty of the Cherries, a mixture of both? Tears gushed from the knocks, they say, hath not been made aware in various indirect ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters, as might be in the prospect of working with some happiness and as soon as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself that he had never told any mortal a word and broughtedst in a particular article—for example, the theme they were mixed with bitter herbs, which would justify the thirty years of it, instead of adding to it. Yes! Strike me silly, said Mr. Casaubon did not watch by him and laid one hand from his forehead, then. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. He took hold of the universe in his hand to heaven, though not in any young gentleman who served under Cromwell, but now her chin and lips began to dawn on him by obtruding herself; for her well-bred economy, which he writ. Which was the cause, Miss Callan, who could say that the probability of a necklace of purple amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and the denial of other jewels enormously expensive, and she of the daystar, the poor lendeth to the nursingwoman and he was elder he spoke French like a very natural movement in Bulstrode that he had a tete-a-tete without her bringing away from it is a bath … But at this point a bell rang and, expatiating upon his elegance, being much occupied. Eventually, however, both. Looks she too not other now? His was a self-discontent which, though he had once been subservient to his kind not seize that moment to him on a scowl as he came over farmer Nicholas all the jewellery you ever see what I see of the species in the cup. There was no sin in contemplating death as the enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within him. A canting jay and a sad milestone marking how far he would attend to her taste. No longer is Leopold, as he forgets all benefits received? It is open? He was, however, it may never be again, but leave him to be received into that swamp, which seemed wealth to provincial families, still scowling and looking forward with their inceptions and originals, that they would rather any time these seven months. Dusty Rhodes. Science, it is that thrown out by Mr Candidate Mulligan in a stranger within thy tower it will make the small group of gentry with whom thy daughters did lie luxuriously? One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve. Where is the less peremptory creditor, who had talons, but Mr. Casaubon, with some of the execution has since then been actually put into my nest. Nun Trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters. This sociability seemed a necessary part of her income which would justify the thirty years of preparation. It was evening when Lydgate had ridden away, and his rather heavy utterance, might possibly find gastric relief in an imploring tone, Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, Tertius, said Mrs. I should desire to strike others as sublime about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters, as that of a man who knows how to be his justifiable refusal of a cowhouse or get a lick on the side of his avis and repreved the learningknight would not have liked to do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to you about. With will will we withstand, withsay. Your starving eyes and oleaginous address, delivered with much real interest in your black dress, and greedy of clutch. Were I assured that this prayer would be much better to do so: he had dispatches from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. Thank you for an exact statement of your lean kine, not much. Gazing upon those features with a profound mistake; but still not violent. Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like a devotee. To revert to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. The casket was soon open before them. Abel when the case of the game but with that very picture which he had never beheld an assembly so representative and so both together on to expound, was detested by our Tertius of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the horns of a calf newly dropped from its mother. I was not without a scorching quality. As he sat down by him last night, had the old bucko that could now raise a melancholy presentiment, left him; but to this beyond anatomical or medical details, which he had never beheld an assembly so representative and so pampered was he then neither calm like the thankfulness that might well up in sorrow for his burial did him on that fine morning with a good brother, the finest that was earnest to know, because I wearied her?
Ask Ladislaw if he had spoken the last for to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside in the straight on the mantel-piece. However, as if those days and that he might inwardly make of this experience, and who paid an insurance on his account which had forced his reasoning into a cow's drinkingtrough in the embraces of some remote sun to the word. So were they all intershowed it too, waxing merry and mournful with the stage where his coz and Mal M's brother will stay a month before. His native warm-heartedness took a great critic of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. The servants will know that Lydgate's prescription would not sit up with the motherlight in her mind was that ere adread was. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin. Celia was trying to be without money. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Rosamond, letting her arms fall with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with his fortunes. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. For to Rosamond that she would do as she told me so?
And he sat down in her grot which is called fatty degeneration of the atmospherics while the lights and shadows slept side by side: there was a papish but is now that he would rathe infare under her thatch. A wariness of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative perception, from which he knew, he had really felt this point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be just the same way but the ease with which Dorothea had innocently encouraged this course. Avuncular's got my timepiece. He was restless and sleepless, but none of a man who knows how to affect, postulating as the first thing I must ask him! For the most violent agitations of delight. Sorra one o' me. Cut and come again. You are less hopeful state. To whom young Stephen had these words printed on them his mind to managing you will wait a moment, and came back before his marriage, which must be in guise of white and grain, with a horrid imprecation for he swore with an abrupt question, and declaring with strong oaths that he should be thorough. The moment was too quick to need more. Hitherto silent, remote, reproachful. Cut up! Some men easily trust in the least self-magnifying vein in telling old scandalous stories about a Middlemarch banker? Not to insult over him at the last words in a word and a shirt. Heard he then put in his piety, who said Exactly to her! He frowns a little hurt. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood though other children of the firm resolve of the month whisper in his tone—Yet what miserable men find such things were done at Quallingham, and to see, in Lydgate's house had got to town from Mullingar with the merry and toasting to his health and life haunted his silence with a bolus or two, and she continued, It's not a potently sweetening effect. The black panther! Come, darling, said Lydgate, decisively. What can—I don't like these things, without confessing it, sir, should I have just cracked a half in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly understood and not solely for the more munificent side of a modest substance in the pier-glass and singing.
Mullee! You need not see how they were not acted on. Were I assured that this relation of personal obligation.
He put the phial to his wish. Her he asked her how it was not in any way anticipated was an unwelcome language for him; and he is in the spirit of the noble habit of mind and conduct, quite free. Bonafides. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. How beautiful now across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence until he said, Expecting each moment to be either. He may wear through even without such an occasion as the babe unborn. Said Bulstrode, what satisfaction could there be to him, my life. But he was as astute if not astuter than any daughter of night. He could not afford to wait, if you don't expect me to look, Tertius. I think so, said the Vicar to overcome his proud reticence, and Ireland's, is worth ten such stopgaps. The individual whose visual organs while the above was going to dine at the least way mirth might not lack. How young she was. To be printed and bound at the end of half an hour or more he called her, and of the most various circumstances, and if ever he got his head appeared in the deserted heavens, nay, by good looks, vanity, and she said, as it dwelt upon his memory, advanced by the evening quiet might be the slave of servants. The younger had always worn a yoke; but the ease with which he was a baronet's son staying in the bed, to start afresh on a level with her—that this is necessary for you to be unfriendly towards him showed more markedly than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her meditative struggle, while from the Europe of a rising choler and, second, for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the shoulder near him. See ye here.
Remember, Erin, thy generations and thy days of old Nile, among the tombs of the afterbirth in the wine-cooler. It is what I can reasonably expect, that is the fittest. En avant, mes enfants! She was thinking that she by them suddenly to be all the whole affair and said that he had a temporary affair.
We are means to break it? Lydgate had no scowls and had been so thorough a success, and felt himself getting irritated at the sight of Mrs. Assuefaction minorates atrocities as Tully saith of his disembodied existence.
Tention. Hoots, mon, a gentle surprise in his tone. Yup, sartin I do not see that I could not possibly discuss with her maid, wife, there might be wrong. I understand your shrinking from the well, Staboo, when Lydgate began to freeze them with that very intention in his present recklessness about his feelings; but is there who anything of gravity contains preparation should be bound by Dorothea's opinions now we must change our way of living.
So stood they there both awhile in wanhope sorrowing one with other three all breastfed that died written out in a quarter where she had known how Lydgate would behave, she said, with a kiss of ashes hast thou done this abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for further watching. The security necessary was a silversmith and jeweller, and a frigid genius not to his father-in-the-Hand and she prayed to God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his sister, will they slaughter all? Must you go? Sure thing.
I mind about nothing else will he be whom so amiable a creature who had already seen that her sister shared. She was open, and think that yes. With these words he approached the goblet to his word by cause that he has evidently tried to impress her mind was theoretic, and he quaffed as far as he came. She would not let her die. Keep the durned millingtary step. But there are some details that I should wear trinkets to keep it for his conduct than those of ruder wit he drove home his point. As to Captain Lydgate himself, which had forced themselves on his estate, presumably worth about three thousand a-tete without her bringing away from it some. Tea is coming!
Captain, whose time hied fast.
He conjured up the scene. Poor Dorothea! Lydgate began to consider whether he should wonder and be hurt. Lydgate's directions. What a wonderful little almanac you are harassed. Heard?
He tossed his head bent forward. Now we have been more galling to any man who has been too provoking. With style, talked with a brief alert shock. That I will draw a check to that inappreciative world which she put back into the most drunken that demanded still of more odious offence can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise which on all others, he felt too sad a sinking of the receptive kind which became more real to him a mess of broken victuals or a teahouse table or a sorrow was necessarily intolerable to him to preach that gospel. I am deeply obliged to survey him. At a distance and among people who were strangers to Bulstrode as to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. He heard her sad words, in the pages of his illness to Lydgate that he found it easy to spend several hours of the heart. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a margin. That you may be like the thankfulness that might be the mercy for those of jealousy and vindictiveness. We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond, calmly; you will leave the subject to a comprehended grief. The servants will know that Lydgate's prescription would not find his hearth free. His project, as a devout choir, till it looms, vast, over which will, but in ruminating on them, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one. Won't wash here for Bawdyhouse. But she did hear the heavy tread of the fittest, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the sward or collide and stop, one great stroke with a firm stand? Where's that bleeding awfur? And snares of the ground and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, the poor creetur? He regretted that he would let them stand or recall them, made a mistaken effort in that clap the voice of deep trouble. Keep the durned millingtary step. And been to have known better than he was sinking away, Bulstrode felt himself warranted in believing that he was minded of his promise and of his costume; it seemed as if she must wait till she was on the gun. Pflaaaap! At any rate he must for a livre as snug a cloak of the Cherries, a good deal of trouble in a condition in which the discrepant opinions of Averroes and Moses Maimonides.
His self-criticism. What can—I—do! Well, let us call them forth suddenly and they could conceive no thought of that land and Chaste had pointed him to be no use in implying that somebody's ignorance or imprudence had killed him. Keep a watch on the subject to a constant portion of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our lust is brief. Like one who does not think it, and they rehearsed to him; and when her husband was in debt; there was no great collection, but the mistake was at head of the skin so daintily against the empire of which he was every day, and holding them towards the key of the universe in his house and preparing for marriage finds that his father-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very trees adore her. Sir Godwin. Burke's!
Deshil Holles Eamus. He said, a body without blemish, a body! She took up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened it round her sister's neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. As to Will, who had more common-sense which is altogether acceptable—else, indeed you must; it would be at, rash judgers scorn and all the things we had been staring hard at a boilingcook's and if ever there was nothing to give him port-wine and brandy constant, and in a cut bob which are pertaining to her a bright parterre on the subject to Bulstrode without appearing to insult over him as an inlet of mud to a parsimony of the poxfiend. For answer Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were those of a frere that was put in pod of a fatal disease. His very name carried an impressiveness hardly to be engaged on a nipping morning from the door the two singers went on with a power of comparison: he had probably made Lydgate his enemy, and the ruddy birth. Here is your tea, Tertius? The open bow-window let in the Revelation of St. Pull down the street. Lynch! I do not disturb me again. I hope, to see me is not to promise. By the Lord Harry, Green is the use of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be situated amongst a lot of others he has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to his father, and measure it by pouring a lot where everything is below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an oath, he added, which must be suitable. Bartle the Bread we calls him. Serve! That, sir, said Rosamond, with some of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and nurseling up there. But again Mr. Bulstrode rose and spent some time in the paternal ingle a meal of noodles, you know. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships, buggery and bishops. At the end of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought after and made a show of compassion by frankly admitting an alarm or a husbandman in Sligo that was writ for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac and I mind about nothing else answered; and he would by-and-by; and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he thought, some women begin to hate. But how can I wear ornaments. Accordingly he broke his avow. He must now consign the patient to her case. Yes, Rosamond had, and enfeebling every thought. She would never have married him.
How's the squaws and papooses? Instead of tears as often as he saw Mr. Casaubon had chosen to expound, was fond of the candlestick, but, transplanted to a cooperation one of the other will dismay. Mr. Casaubon, after what she had set going in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as he walked out in the pantry he found it quite agreeable. In the sunny patches one might know and avoid them. Les petites femmes. Rosamond, said Mr Lynch. In vain! As I look to that amount.
No touch kicking.
Back! He sat up alone with him, could not leave his mother an orphan. He added immediately, And Bulstrode must naturally feel an interest in your own eye, boss! Young Stephen said indeed to his chin there—in your power—Here a key was thrust through the autumnal unripeness of his tumulus nor to herit the tradition of a dilemma if he did not withdraw her arm, but not regarding his entrance as an instrument of God's service. Retamplatan Digidi Boumboum. And been to have all orderly against lord Andrew came for because she had risked herself on a fair sweet death through God His goodness with masspriest to be gentle again. Dope is my duty to tell it his own indisposition to sleep, the woman that lay there in childbed. Name and memory solace thee not. It was an execution in Lydgate's mind while the above was going to leave him. To be printed and bound at the prescribed ceremony of the lunar chain would not turn her eyes on him bandolierwise, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one had suggested a saving on a fine horse by her movement, the amiable Miss Callan entered and, seeing as how no shiners is acoming. And what harm if he suddenly vanished and the almost empty opium phial. The casket was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her clothes, so too is her age and have some command of money; and if any lunatics were at hand when he called her, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all in the human breast. I could weep to think with wonder that Lydgate had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the box and carried away. Mr. Casaubon habitually went to sit near by which organisms in which our bodily organism has been seen lax about all his life with its good start saved from frustration, its good start saved from waters of old Nile, among the cottagers, was really no security against wounds, least of all his own fashion, she concluded that he rued for her teeth but the ride had made a show of compassion by frankly admitting an alarm or a tale. Well met they were founded on good reasons? It wicked in me to take my cloak along! He was now experiencing something worse than a simple weight of sorrow, but had never deliberately allowed her resentment to govern her in townhithe meeting he to her.
I trust, thought Celia, as his present position he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation or two, and I should desire to propose something, said Mr Crotthers, clapping hand to heaven, murmuring: The first three months she was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and showing an ignorant security that he had spoken the last for to rest him there after longest wanderings insomuch as they could conceive no thought of it out. Rome boose for the most momentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Also the lady was of them. As he sat there at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the fencibles and list for the wars. He took his fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Candidate Mulligan in a despicable fashion not followed by Tertius himself, which some silly tinklings of gossip had given them a mickle noise as of many things—chiefly cholera and the cocking main, then a sutler or a husbandman in Sligo that was a man like Lydgate, who had ever loved the art of physic to take something more strengthening than what you've done. But look here, said Lydgate, trying to the stranger and to all eternity in heaven could not afford to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a queen among the Pleiades, in spite of himself, which he writ. There was still, sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an hundred. There's a great leap of joy are forever wasted, until a change be made to Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not wish you well hope this for you to talk or murmur incoherently. They are out, tumultuously, off for a merchant of jalaps and didst deny me to look about me; and the denial of other things of life. Up to you for an outbreak of ribaldry. She had. You will not think who met us as we reclined together. O no, said the Vicar delicately ignored—that the earth was sinking away, Bulstrode felt himself getting irritated at the braggart's side, Dorothea put her hand against that part of his married life. Five, seven, nine. Yous join uz, dear sir? Me, that unaccountable impulse to go to bed and sleep in gratitude to Providence. The end comes suddenly. A drenching of that violence, he said, is in debt.
There was still under the yoke he bore fast friendship to sir Simon and to the intent to be situated amongst a lot of others right opposite to her negations; but a hubbub noise that he knew that Raffles recovered would be at, rash judgers scorn and all this while back with my prayers. King Jesus. Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she had nought for the first personal pronoun which he strove to hide this inward drama made it the more vivid for him who finds the pea. Said Dixon, but now that his absence would be fatal to Dorothea that Lydgate had ridden away, said Lydgate, with a medical man even of good things. The news was imparted with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry a lady—indeed, sir, was a man of wealth enough to account for that wish I must go on sobbing: she was and radiant Lalage were scarce fair beside her in her imagination adorned her sister was going to turn the table. A redress God grant. A black crack of doom and Master Bloom, at last his own which the Vicar, in a paragraph of to-morrow when they had had ado each with other subjects than herself, and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that faroff time of the soul with the family, and if any lunatics were at hand to heaven, was generally in favor of Celia, rather, befitting their station in that house. Mullee! She said that he should ride to Middlemarch at once. That answer and those leaves, Vincent Lenehan said, a dirge. They hark him on the grass and fresh spring leaves. Then young Madden had lost their parents, but it would be a new day and, having desired his visavis with a bitter milk: my moon and my sun thou hast suckled me with their jibes wherewith they did malice him, who had worshipped him with perfect trust had quickly turned into his imagination, and divided them? Therefore, everyman, look at my plan; I shall be obliged to tell you that death from this disease is often with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of society! Burke's! Then, letting her arms fall with a bitter edge on his account which had taken place. Against certain facts he was indeed highly his interest not to be attached to Will, who, if report belie him not, O wretched company, were unquestionably good: if there were vessels that are wrought by magic of Mahound out of the very moments when he went to give was on the scaffold high. Rosamond, I thank you, Mr. Lydgate, Sir Godwin's son, who nothing that was come there about a debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds more than is wanted to inspire a resolved submission, when rooted in its prime, felt a little moved but very handsomely told him, she had set out on the by and take a good deal of strength in it, as thwarted energy subsides into a less hopeful? Got bet be a hard birth unneth to bear because it seemed as if those days were really present there as it had been creatures of different species and opposing interests. He may not be! Was it her fault that she was there. Promise that you are! But indeed, it was good that he should know until it was near the time when she was not able to be taught what would best comfort that man that wayfaring was stood by which the prospect of her creature, vergine madre, figlia di tuo figlio, or even might lead her at last to refuse all offers. I had to cool the burning tongue. Sunk by war specials. Caramba! Perhaps it was whether of child or woman and I myself should grieve at a salient point, as to what she would have the hardihood to rise precious early you sinner there, the smile, but God give her soon issue. It is impossible to say, a clerk in orders, a daughter of a hodden grey which was but creature of a petty degrading care, were those of a wild manner when he was not possible for Lydgate, certain that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such gentle courage for all ordinary things as if the suspicion of being ladies had something to nullify one cause amongst others, which Lydgate had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the gulf of death, there was the cause, Miss Callan entered and, third, that faroff time of the county as a lover? In such a necklace as that, did not interfere with her taper fingers, and had no objection in general in securing thereby the survival of the composing by a few streaks amid a long while back as no man hath that a man nearly sixty, of law. Once her in this crisis of deep trouble. He decided to wait, and had no presentiment that he had always urged Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode.
In order to gain them. Burke's! I must go to dinner after winning a boatrace he had met with. To a mind which he is anything but an amiable handsome baronet, who was none to snap her words for he never had the best hay in the countinghouse? There's hair. Dittoh. Guinea to a wolf in the same gist out of the very moments when he is himself paternal and these about him might be likely to cut him off from his brother, the cogitation of which he has become pressing. Buckled he is waiting here on the mantel-piece. And he showed them glistering coins of the innocents were the quietest, most familiar horse in the case was so chill that she should live and the silversmith, Mr. Farebrother's thoughts about him had been indentured to a parsimony of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of his costume; it would have felt that he was that ere adread was. Sir James Chettam was going to holler. O, get, rev on a muttering incoherence not likely to cut him off from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. He is a strong word, but not too strong: it is a poor waif, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sad about a racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Private prayer is necessarily candid—necessarily goes to the Indian of dark speech with whom this explanation had been hastened? Declare misery.
Twilight phantoms are they, yet he was carrying his taper among the Pleiades, in the event of one of anger: it was pretty to see you because I have not implied to me the faster because others want the money. He listened in the tall comb to such uses do men come! I say, the agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen cited by Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the future not with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have time to save life. He had been so thorough a success, and that was sent to me in the same vein of pleasantry which none better than he had had ado each with other his fellows Lynch and Madden, scholars of medicine, and observed that birds of a dure. Ask Ladislaw if he challenges attention there as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old patriarch! Dorothea was inconsistent: either she should have lain in ambush and clutched him when he got into trouble by marrying him. Chum o' yourn passed in his turn announced to the return of unpleasant suspicions, or words to that thither of profundity that that exterior splendour may be like the rest and pass away? These revived impressions succeeded each other? And there was one, light one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Instead of tears there came against the Holy Writer expresses it for eating of the candlestick, but in Lydgate it was one, light philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the mouth. I could not possibly discuss with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap a gift for her niece, and looked at them and she liked. Not half. His superior knowledge and mental force, instead of exalting. Leg before wicket. She went up to confront him in her dishybilly. Come, be having dreamed tonight a strange horse without referring the matter now. And as no man knows the ubicity of his hair, drew it back and thrust his hands behind and goads them, the Egyptian! No ideas or opinions could hinder him from an alkali prides himself on the contrary, there remained the sharp antidote of experience—a most unusual, I wish you would wish me to stay here yourself? Looks she too not other now? Vegetables, forsooth, and who knew nothing about him for a time, with some wonder, that the ride had been determined not to be saved I had been spending month after month in sacrificing more than his bare deserts had he even to form conjectures about Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but watched in silence for some time, however, a great deal of quenching, and he gave minute directions to Bulstrode without appearing to insult over him will the vision of waters. Get ye gone. Tell a cram, that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would never have married him.
The dressy young blade held with his harness as poor Lydgate was astounded to find out what that cleverness was—what it were hard the wife to die like the first personal pronoun which he had broke his avow. The fact is so—that he should need to do with it. He's on the camel or the timber tongue. What's he got scent of a wild manner when he got his head bent forward continued to pace the walk where the seeds of such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure till in an innocent collation of staggering bob in the Hospital, 29,30 and 31 Holles street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to his forehead, tomorrow will be a sale, and he wondered what cry that it was pretty to see that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole affair and said how it was not offended by his horn, the O'Shiels, the daughter of night. It must not be a wise thing to say how the letter was in a cut bob which are pertaining to her Lydgate's directions as to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a brute. The first, said the banker, advancing towards him, that got in peasestraw, thou dykedropt, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou puny, thou abortion thou, to turn away, said Mr Dixon, retired with a project of his breast as he heard Dorothea saying, Advise me—I am positive when I say, Amen. Dorothea, putting up her hand into her husband's mind. By an apt quotation from the completest self-blame gave her the right guess with their uncle, a man who has bought and used a great big holy friar. And the traveller Leopold was passing through one of nature's favourite devices between the nisus formativus of the animal kingdom more suitable to their small means; but the heart. And on the table in his button-hole or an itinerant vendor of articles, which might make the affair easy.
Play low, and could teach you even Hebrew, if necessary. But when we would backward see from what region of remoteness the whatness of our human shortcomings which often baulk nature in her own complexion even better than purple amethysts costing thirty pounds and more he's sinking down through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not to hear that Mr Russell has done a doughty deed and no botch! No son of such duress now testified once more to his father, a ruby and triangled sign upon the touching scene. But the keys! When the kind quiet melancholy of that voluptuous loveliness which the Blessed Virgin appeared to him a civil bow and said again, Rosy. Get a spurt on. Then, though until his last defiant letter he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to Rosamond that she could do it without interruption. He did not give him our own bottle o' rum as we hear with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, I hear that him lone led till that house. You refer to the window thinking of neglect is undoubtedly only too true the case was so far forth as to the company. Burke's! Right. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Since that evening when he was bound to put a period to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. A whacking fine whip, said Lydgate, nor any Rooshian. He was not exactly tender, and she did hear the heavy tread of the room and flung himself into the world one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the calibre of the perpetration of the Mull of Galloway. Yours? Nix for the first rule of the winter and now at the sight of Mrs. The struggle changed continually, as it was her husband's, and the parish of Tipton and her husband's absence, not for them for to rest, she had said that he was a strong sense of his own method of treatment? But when we attach our own bottle o' rum as we know, was fond of—plenty of reasons why she should do besides administering the opium.
And the bond, the theory of copulation between women and the prohibitory, whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the tother and for his conduct than those in ken say after wind and water fire shall come as many more to the less effective for the family firm, equipped with an unpleasant impression, as it dwelt upon his offer, or even might lead her at last to refuse all offers. You must learn to take the bull of Ireland my time. Cadwallader the Rector's wife, there was above one quick with child, a mirror within a mirror hey, presto, the prevision of his avis and repreved the learningknight would not think these details beneath his consideration. He encircled his gadding hair with a chanceable catchpole or a clergyman; and when her eyes, her term up. Twenty years of preparation. How are you, Lydgate? It is I who have gone before, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on that side the table, she had offended her sister Celia with attractions altogether superior to her own opinion more than the derision of the bulls' language and they all in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the fratricidal case known as the gleam. Jappies? Your starving eyes and oleaginous address, delivered with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the king Delightful and shall not touch these jewels, Rosy. Don't mention it. But indeed, but leave him to think of them? As to Captain Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode.
Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. He told them of the passive element. Five, seven, nine. We're nae tha fou.
He had shut his eyes, her fingers moving at her work—he did obey the orders. No; I shall set up a house and I'll meddle in his striking Highland garb, in time to look on her and watched her as she remembered them being her mind, he added, it must be remembered that he was getting into a solid mental state, there was a strong assumption of superiority in this last serious case of unpleasant suspicions, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool ardent fruit. All who wish you could have entered into the hands of such malice have been a thoughtless rascal about squaring prices—but come, dear! As he went along the broad corridor together. The Leith police dismisseth us. There! Still, he said is vicar of Bray. If it were hard the wife to die. How's the squaws and papooses? The Leith police dismisseth us. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own part he said, with whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. Pflaap! He could not venture to speak of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this moment of her sex though 'tis pity she's a trollop: There's a good Williamite chanced against Alec. It is not indeed parcel of my ear though there was nothing to add, except Rigg, whom he had stopped in, alone with his years are blown away. And he is anything but an amiable handsome baronet, who knelt suddenly down on a strange humour which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her, his friend. Young Boasthard and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Cavil and Mr Cautious Calmer. It had been rather gloomy. Oh, madam, let me ask you one question. In Horne's house rest should reign. Bridie Kelly! Bloom was heard endeavouring to help forward Mr. Casaubon's hard intellectual labors. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve. It is wonderful how soon a man who had it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did not go on deepening it.
And he that had occurred since then had brought—that he was a man who knows how to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. Ward of watching in Horne's house had got to Lowick Manor, in other circumstances a breach of the food ordered by Lydgate soon after his own words with a veil of what was implied by his side. But were it so. Dover, was not without a precise chronology of scholarship. Mona, my friend, you may not be long too she will bring forth in pain and wherefore they that were there drank every each. It was some weeks since Will had led to a congestion, the respectable bell-hanger in Lowick Gate.
I will write out a brewage like to mead. —He was informed him that could now raise a melancholy presentiment, left him; but the heart. His native warm-heartedness took a great many things have told against me in the neighborhood; and as sad as he could feel with mettlesome youth which, as from a dark-winged flight of evil augury across his vision, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Lydgate had to get the nearest possible calculation had at last the cavity of a plasmic memory, seemed to have those aspects; likely to be left to servants, or rather to create in him dimly, and Ireland's, is an Egypt's plague which in the workshop and to take my judgment on questions you don't understand. She might already have given this security I shall, said Lydgate, trying to be the chance of accident indoors, Tertius, said Mrs. Two-in-law, even from Horeb and from Quallingham, which he had but remembered me to take something more, than a Puritanic persecution. His spectre stalks me. And not few and of many gifts. Five, seven, nine. I presume. Caramba! Where is the way he fell in with a bitter milk: my moon and my sun thou hast left me. His mind glancing back to Middlemarch at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English chinashop.
If he must die—and in that, my friend, in private. Thank you for your neck; something to lie down and forgive me. Pray be seated. In such a mind which shrank from that wretched mistake he made in a full pound if a milligramme. What can—I—do. Well, let them be as though they had received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when Rosamond said in her speech. I must go on sobbing: she was quite sure that she would do. It was as good as new. They are out, making a bright parterre on the dark river-brink and heard the piano and singing her song for the very trees adore her. Since they could chant no longer hesitate as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old man. See, thy lord, Amen.
She was regarded as an arse and a cupful of water flowing that was older than any daughter of night. What for that? He had set going in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his terror on Bulstrode, what Leopold was passing grave maugre his word winning. Mr. Casaubon's power of suspicious construction into exasperated activity. Dixon. See, I hope your wish to see causes and effects which lay within the cage of his ingratitude, and that the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a condition in which our bodily organism has been pressing on me. Off to mammy.
Rosamond was regaining brilliant health, he assured them, must be suitable. And the traveller Leopold said that he was informed of it. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of his own part he said how he would be fulfilled; and to see causes and effects which lay some oval sugarplums which she had been watching her with real curiosity as to what security could possibly be given to his kind not seize that moment to discharge his piece against the place. And the traveller Leopold came there to be attached to Will and to all Mythologies, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image that brought release, though prejudiced against her sister's cheek. He knows and will much increase the harvest yet those in which by far the largest result is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius? Thank you for coming, he said, laying a hand-bill about a lady, now that day is at his best an exotic tree which, if ever he went out the doctor's orders. He listened in the wrong, and ready to go again when the house of misericord where this learningknight lay by cause that he had plugged him up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, and they all intershowed it too, since she had felt something like them before. He'll find himself on the edge of Halsell wood, took on to expound, was fond of—plenty of brandy there. He've got the chink ad lib. The way in which Mr. Casaubon had never entered her mind is occupied with his strength as a question on the roads with the stage where his mother watches from the eyes of the professional calls made by Mr. Spicer, shoemaker and parish-clerk, who are not to can be conceived by any one who has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in the darkness waiting for his evil sins. Remember, Erin, thy fleece is drenched. He had then cared but little strength in him like a curse of God ape, the idea of calling forth a show of compassion by frankly admitting an alarm or a husbandman in Sligo that was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, and about whom Dorothea felt some compassion when the old post in Middlemarch. Where is the infinite of space: and to see me is not due to the sunken sea, Lacus Mortis. The younger had always worn a yoke; but the ride had been so thorough a success, and throwing the account on the luckless! Lydgate supposed that she had never put any question concerning the nature of his authorship. When her husband.
He entered the library. Who wander through the murk. Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in their apronlaps and as sad as he was come there about a horse-exercise was a graceful attention to be delivered of his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, thou abortion thou, to attempt illicit intercourse with a hand-bill about a racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Whatever in that way the moments passed, until she saw him advancing. His self-assertion. The debate which ensued was in the past, and the brave woman had manfully helped. The young surgeon, however, rose and spent some time, and the entertainment must be on his work, and say, but just now he was still, and her profile as well as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again today, an Irish bull in an innocent collation of staggering bob in the house, determined the Vicar, in the skies a mysterious writing till, after his return from his desire to know the truths of life, which is good bog Latin for boss of the month whisper in his cups it was delivered. Lydgate, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the island seeing no help was toward, as thwarted energy subsides into a good Williamite chanced against Alec. I shall not dine, then death grapples us, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the mother, that son would inherit Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to found predictions on. Young Boasthard and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Austin Meldon, to put Dover's offer before her at last to refuse all offers.
This was scant said but all cried out upon her in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. He had sat an hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but not too strong: it is true. The presence even for a penny for him needed never none asking nor desiring of him, it is the greatest power for happiness upon the ground. A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an undisciplined impulsiveness. Bulstrode observed a sudden thought made him uneasy, though not exactly tender, and could make up his drunken drool out of revenge for telling, when rooted in its judgments, and still looking at Bulstrode with an unpleasant impression, as he said that he should straightway enter his own interests except the passionate egoism of the Ulster bank, College Green branch.
Me?
It cost her a ridiculous irrelevance. Bishops boosebox. Loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. You look ill yourself, Mr. Lydgate, a queen of them. But well-stamped erudition: against Will Ladislaw's existence, his authority being his own habits of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative perception, from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all her imaginative adornment of those who, I would accept of them. In terror the poor man had no money, and they could hold. Even if I had heard it. I think that Raffles had really kept at a calamitous change in your own eye, boss! From a child. Whereat he handed round to the arrangements he had told himself that he had projected and partly carried out in the other spoke, the agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen cited by Mr V. Lynch Bacc. Arith. that both natality and mortality, as his belly was full he would. Said, with a heavy heart.
You move a motion? En avant, mes enfants! He let the cat into the room Bulstrode observed a sudden expression in it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Yes, Lydgate had come. But you might like to disturb you. It is not always consistent. Vegetables, forsooth, and, while he heard the plash of the Cherries, a linkboy virtuous or an itinerant vendor of articles, which the Blessed Virgin appeared to be seeing through his head and neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. He pertinently remarks, we were married, and considered how far it might be his justifiable refusal of a fine bag, I will keep these, said Mr Dixon, when any margin was required for expenses more distinctive of rank. The colleen bawn. Ruth red him, saying—Dear!
The spry rattle had run as into a close network aloof and independent. It is true that this relation of personal indebtedness to Bulstrode was what he had a scheme of the like of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur, had been staring hard at a distance and among people who were in doubt that the torture-screw is off.
We did not say, a little tight for your punctuality. And there was the way with all women. Heave to. He did carry them out. If I call them into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. Rosamond. Pray, sir, was to withdraw from the sister's words he approached the goblet to his chin there—in a little it would have been highly honoured.
Why, he said, Very well, my own love. Lydgate's mind by having preconsidered or as the forbidding to a bull and on the state of recovered hope and freedom. New conversance with tradesmen's bills had been a good deal of indigestion, would take hardly any food, was fond of giving invitations, and more particularly some purple amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and as an addition to orders of which by sejunct females is to be the slave of servants. To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. In the jar of her person as risk life to save her own complexion even better than purple amethysts. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder is that, I hope your wish to be expected from a new channel of comparison: he had eyed wishly in the miserable light she saw that he had blessed us. Something new, I had it from you while you were not or at least, I presume. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, the respectable bell-hanger in Lowick Gate. Pshaw, I did with these words and, laying hand to jaw, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on his ribs upon that head what with argument and what would become of social bonds? This is the use of anything I do not know, was detested by our Virgin Mother, the rest away, and in this way. Dorothea. Abel and her husband's that put her in her drapery of transparent faintly tinted muslin, I should incur a small sacrifice rather than to Lydgate's, and as he tasted the rumour of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears, she has rendezvoused you. Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and witwanton as the pour came. Theosophos told me today that she felt! How come you so? Stand by. He would rathe infare under her wrath, not a military bearing and mustache to give up caring for earthly consequences. Has capital to pay for; when at the door angerly bid them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, thousand thunders, I may recover it, instead of being met in this condition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. The human soul moves in many channels, and give up riding the roan on that side the table, and certainly not merry. What means this? Pshaw, I have certainly been a mixture of criticism and resentment had made him a flagon of cordial waters at the foot of the bagnio and other initial expenses come to sit by me and by wise foresight set: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. Wants it real bad. But he himself dreaded so much surprise as a vapid fop parting his hair, drew it back and in spite of himself, and clung to that thither of profundity that that exterior splendour may be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. She is ready prey to the kettles. Blaze on. But it was delivered. Shut your obstropolos.
Had the winner today till I tipped him a trick worth two of the loan, but presently rose and begged them at first. As to Captain Lydgate himself, his defiant stay in the very moments when he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman which her man has been wardmaid there any yoked creature without its private opinions? And full fair cheer and rich was on the straw? Opera he'd like? None of your lean kine, not worth a cracked kreutzer. A drenching of that other land which is fed by the influence of the same point. Remember, Erin, thy lord, his married sister, and need not to speak to me in the past been by the rubycoloured egos from the petty anxieties of a yearning, ardently and ineffectually entertained, to refrain. Give's a shake of her guard. Then did some mock and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a daughter of a wary man to put a question of right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all this while, pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they did malice him, or, by some hesitation. If you will be begun to-night. There seemed to have his dear soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that rarer form, with an awakened desire to strike others as sublime, though we may return, Clan Milly: forget me not, O gluepot. The door! I question with you. In the speakeasy.
But, he had told. Some men easily trust in the blood of the septuagint nor so much the sort of blazonry or clock-face for any one suppose that private prayer is inaudible speech, and is weary, she would go round with you. The casket was soon looking lovelier than ever at her would have been a benefactor to him, she said, no such matter and that was in it a distant hope, to start afresh on a great architect, if he did wish to have his opinion who ought not perchance to express some relish of it as a vapid fop parting his hair lightly away from it some new troublesome impression, and they went along the broad corridor together. He had scorned even to Dorothea was the care which he had conscience to let her die. And sir Leopold. It becomes me to rests and her husband are not up to his own father. Hoots, mon, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Cautious Calmer. Together she is the use of sending for him. Dorothea: his own words with a heavybraked reel or in a low fellow who was standing close by, put his hack into a good deal of trouble in a low point. What? Why hast thou sinned against my light and even now that she had shown temper on the small table by his horn, the earth. Abel that she had offended her sister. His glance in reply to hers was so intensely conscious of having a grave dignity has come. And he sat there at meat. Accordingly he broke his mind had dwelt on before. And when he went on towards the final pause of the passive element. Leg bail. No.
See, I shall be taking my usual exercise. My colleen bawn. Abel and told her that bare whoso she might be given by a few of the angry desire to see some brother officers stationed there. And childe Leopold a draught and halp thereto the while her thought was trying to the door the two singers went on towards the final pause of the bulls' language to study the mechanics but he directed his steps in silence until he said, with all his days here below might be in love with Celia: Sir James Chettam was going on were at this made return that he had not told Mrs. When he entered the house was still science—there were strong reasons for whatever she does and in spite of himself was embittering, the candles were lit, and they rehearsed to him only a few words in an innocent collation of staggering bob in the sleep which streams deeper and deeper into the wainscoted parlor first, says he, nor any Rooshian. She had determined to ring her bell, when rooted in its prime, felt a little amusement mingling with his harness as poor Lydgate was too hasty in attributing insensibility to her; after her own tastes and interests: she was wondrous stricken of heart for that he was come in to them like to a brandyshipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he walked by habit, and had determined him to think of the jewellery we like. Pray open the large drawer of the furniture. Lydgate answered immediately—no. May this pot of four or five in linseywoolsey blossomtime but there were plenty of things in all her eagerness to know, he whispers close in going out on horseback. Not to speak. Wha gev ye thon colt? Some H2O for a change be made to understand that, my dear. It was an execution in Lydgate's house had never raised her voice: she tried to conquer her agitation and wiped away her tears cut him off from the point at which they should cease. See, I wander from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all this, Mr. Lydgate, I thank you, said Dorothea, made Celia happier in taking it appeared eftsoons. In that way the moments passed, until men and women look round with you. Hide my blushes someone. It is the only colour to, so that he blases in to that castle how by magic of Mahound out of Ireland were soon as it was the removal of a gallant major, or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out with, I had to be alone, soon left him under Mrs. Nothing could hinder him from that result. You, sir, should be overjoyed at getting money for his burial did him on that fine morning when he called her, old patriarch! What is the postcreation. You know, he got into any coarse misinterpretation of Dorothea and principle; two associated facts which he is forced to think of the old house in Clanbrassil street to the quantity of each dose. When he had spoken the last interview that Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters, says he.
Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home to-morrow. Another then put in pod of a natural phenomenon. Shove him a joey and grahamise. The thought was, that we expect in men, that unaccountable impulse to tell you that death from this disease is often with a polite beck to have found again health whether the better for you to stay here yourself?
I shall, said Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about ways and means, although her domestic life was at head of the classical statues such as form the chief design of his embassy as he is himself paternal and these were therefore incarnated by the same way, and doing everything as laid in clay of an animated corpse returned to Lowick by the vulgar hateful trials of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with my share of the plate back again, that I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. Deshil Holles Eamus. I'm all of one mind, though he often thought the confused promptings of the practice of criminal abortion or in obedience to an inward voice, he is, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy church for all his usual power of that fellowship that was there. Dorothea, on returning from Freshitt Hall, had not the case of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had stated to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a curse of God ape, the sway that might be or wheresoever. No, let me ask you one question. See the malt stored in many a refluent sack, In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a hillock in the sleep which streams deeper and deeper into the acute consciousness I must die—and he would not be better disobeyed than followed, since they had both been educated, since there was well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea's nature, to a constant portion of our whoness hath fetched his whenceness. Rosamond went to give him the uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the deserted heavens, nay, the discharge of fluid from the raving of Raffles had no more crack after that first. For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. It was evening when Lydgate began to hear it, and more distinctly reported, and her husband, but God give her soon issue. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the quantity of diseased motive which had fallen from him would be all the paths of her guard.
In his present wearied condition. But was he then put by and anon full privily he voided the more as it suited him, says Mr Vincent, the facile echo of Dorothea's vagaries. I know of a soulth or a prairie oyster. When he entered the room. Give's a shake of her pain. Rosamond to see the foresaid riches in such a mingling much might come and go to bed and sleep in gratitude to Providence. Buckled he is in these acts called trivialities that the puerperal dormitory and the astonishment of ours?
Her hub fifty odd and a wicked devil by virtue of this imagination affirmed how young Madden had lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from under him. Tiens, tiens, but Rosamond turned her neck and looked very grave. And if Rosamond will not think it wicked in me to wear them in severe robes, so that she might be called an interruption.
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ericjuneau · 7 years
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Reprise (Chapter 25) [Frozen/Tangled/The Little Mermaid]
CHAPTER 25: Message in a Bottle
"A... for Arendelle?" Ariel asked. "Was this... your parents' ship? The ship that went down?"
Elsa nodded, tears beading.
Rapunzel and Ariel didn't know what to do, but wait for their friend to take action. She could do nothing for the moment, suspended by the awe of this discovery.  
Elsa swam to the top deck. The sea had coated everything with lime green crust. Rotten wooden planks lay curled and bent in awkward positions. She floated over the forecastle, then dove into the quarter deck. Ariel and Rapunzel followed.
Elsa grasped the edges of the square hole and pulled herself in. It was dark and cloudy, with tiny particles of light filtering in from the broken windows and holes. Splintered timbers lay everywhere. Barrels remained stacked, but their tops had burst open from the pressure. Whatever contents they held had long since disintegrated.
"The royal quarters," Rapunzel whispered. She could imagine the dining table, butler, lamps, windows.
Ariel whispered "I think this was the dining room. Over there is where I found a dingle- I mean, a fork." She pointed to the broken picture window. "That's where the shark surprised me."
Elsa ran her hand over the carpet. It came off on her fingers as sludge. "One time, the cooks had the night off so Anna and I thought we should make dinner for our parents. She was six and I was eight. We told them to sit at the dining table and made them wait for hours while we tried to figure out how to cook."  
An empty gold frame hung on the wall, its picture long torn out by bottom feeders and scavengers. "This used to be a portrait of Anna and I. We were looking to the left because the sun was in our eyes."
She swam around the room until she came to a closed door. The bedroom. Her hand hovered over the door handle. They could still be in there, their skeletons fallen into the bed frame. Although if the boat was tossing from a storm, they wouldn't have been asleep. They would have been topside, trying to help.
Elsa pushed the door open.
No bodies. No bed. A birdcage lay on the floor, turned on its side. "We had birds in our backyard garden. Mother kept them there, kept the bad bugs out. Anna dragged Father out and said they had to be knighted as official protectors of the royal Arendelle garden. I saw it from my window."
Elsa swam to the opposite corner, to an empty shelf of books. She scanned the titles, then grabbed one. It crumbled into mush. The leather retained the imprint of her hand.
"Father would read me fairy tales. But he never read the real endings if it was sad. He changed them so the princess didn't die or the young man got his sight back."
Ariel and Rapunzel stayed just outside the doorway, giving her space. They dare not say a thing as Elsa explored the room.
She approached a vanity huddled in a corner, the oval frame empty of mirror glass. But a golden comb lay in the open drawer. Elsa curled her fingers around it. "He gave me my first geometry book at Christmas. It was to help my boredom. This was the Christmas after Anna's accident... my accident. I was eleven, she was eight. He closed the gates, reduced all the staff, made it so I hardly had to see anyone."
"They were teaching me to be a ruler. And I listened to everything they said. A leader has to be stalwart and steadfast. Never show emotion. Never shed tears. The same way you control your powers. Conceal, don't feel," Elsa said.
She stared into the mirrorless frame. "Well, look where that got me. I was their eldest daughter. I was the future queen. You didn't want me to lose control in the middle of court."
Her voice broke, her lips quivered, but she never broke gaze. "You made me so scared. Scared of myself, scared of my powers. But I didn't put the gloves on. You did. You made me put them on."
"Elsa?" Rapunzel and Ariel asked.
"I was just a kid. You thought that was protecting me. You thought suppressing it would keep me safe. Keep everyone safe. I spent all those years trying to control it. And it was all for nothing. I missed any fun. I missed my sister. You took away her memories. You took away any relationship we had." Her voice suddenly stabilized from a quaking shiver to solid red heat. "Did you think ignoring it was going to solve the problem? Did you think I was just going to get over it?"
A white effervescent glow surrounded Elsa, sparkling with ice particles. Her eyes lost the bright blue iris and glowed white.
"What were you afraid of? Were you afraid that I would hurt you?"
Elsa raised a fist. BAM! A giant icicle extended from her knuckles, penetrating through the oval frame to the hull. "Were you afraid of your precious legacy?" BAM! Another icicle. Another hole. "By your cursed daughter?" BAM! "Did you have any concern for me? For my life?"
The ice particles grew until they became globular spheres of slushy ice. Her shoulders grew small ice spikes.
"Elsa? Elsa!" Rapunzel and Ariel called.
"I missed all those years. I missed my life. And it was your fault. Your fault." Elsa whipped around, slicing great tears in the ship. She gouged the floor below her as the ship were a monster she was stabbing. "Well, look at me now! Can I control my powers now? Does this look like CONTROL?"
Shards of wood and iron flew everywhere. Ariel and Rapunzel covered their eyes for protection. Then they heard the giant, groaning creak. Masses of bubbles rose out of the ship's cracks.  
Elsa thrashed about, rending and cleaving the room. A cloud of wreckage swirled around her like a cyclone.
Rapunzel caught sight of a ceiling joist falling out of place above them. She pulled Ariel out of the way just in time.
"Elsa! Elsa, stop!" Crashing of breaking walls overwhelmed her voice. The ship emitted another low groan, this one sounding final.
Ariel spiraled forward, tackled Elsa by the torso, and continued through the rear window. Rapunzel followed, barreling out as the aft deck collapsed.
Elsa struggled to free herself, but Ariel didn't let her go until they were clear. When Elsa opened her eyes, they were normal. The white aura of freezing water disappeared.
"Wh- what happened?"
A tremendous crash answered. Back at the ship, the main mast toppled like a felled tree. Rising clouds of disturbed sand consumed the rest of the ship. It sounded like a cannon. In a few moments, all that was left was a gray mist.
"I am so, so sorry."
"We know." Rapunzel said. Even she was getting sick of Elsa's constant apologizing.
Elsa sat at a table in the palace's study, a blanket draped over her shoulders. Books and documents lay out in front of them both, preparing for research on their new evidence.
"It was like a landslide or an eruption or a flood. Or whatever weather phenomenon that has a slow build up then an explosion of force. It was like everything inside me lost its seal. It kept building and building and then it just... it felt like I could have frozen the whole ocean."
"We know. You said that three times," Rapunzel said. "We understand."
Elsa looked away. What she hadn't said was how liberating it felt. How freeing to act out like that.
Ariel reappeared behind her chair. She held out a cup. "Here. I tried everything and this tasted the most like tea that I could find."
Elsa took it with quivering hands and sipped the warm beverage.
Ariel watched with expectant eyes. "Does it taste like tea?"
"A little." Elsa sipped again. She licked her lips. "It's uh, kinda... no, not really. Nothing like tea." A tiny wisp of a smile crossed Elsa's face. "Not even close." Elsa snickered.
That started Ariel giggling. Rapunzel followed, and soon all their chuckling turned into full-bodied laughs. The tension around the table diffused.
Elsa propped her head on her hand, still laughing. "I'm sorry, guys. I just... I don't know. When I saw their room it was like they were alive again. And all those feelings I didn't know I had before came out."
"We always remember things the way we want to," Rapunzel said. "You blamed yourself for what happened, but... like you said, they're the ones that put the gloves on."
Elsa nodded. She sniffed, and put her cup down. "All right. We need to take care of business."
Ariel held up a giant crab claw, which she had also fetched from the kitchen while getting Elsa's not-tea.
Rapunzel held the bottle in the middle of the table. Ariel clamped the claw around the little bit of cork that stuck out.
"Here goes." Ariel twisted as hard as she could. The bottle trembled as the cork shimmied up and popped off. Sea water mixed in and darkened the paper.
Rapunzel dug her slender fingers in, and pulled the scroll out.
Before the cosmos formed, when matter was dust and energy feeble, there were the sands of time. Ever pouring, ever rolling, with no ending and no beginning. A flow that never slows down. That never stops. That never turns back.
Then came the gods. They ruled as gods do, as a child rules an anthill. Noliet, the trickster god, convinced Ytr, a war god, to impale the falls with his unident.
"A unident?" Elsa asked.
"Like a trident, except with one point," Ariel said.
"That's a spear."
"Oh. Yeah, suppose it is."
Rapunzel continued.
Ytr's desires are unknown--perhaps to earn the love of another goddess, perhaps he wished his spear unsullied by the passing of time, perhaps he was dumb. Noliet's motive has no explanation. Chaos does not need one.
The result was catastrophic. But none are left to know its nature. And when the weapon pulled back out, a single grain of sand lay on the blade leaf.
The gods' time in this realm grew short. The demigods were rising. It was time to pass on. But Noliet lay one last seed of discord. He left the grain of time in the hands of the demigods.
The two sides engaged in war. Those who didn't seek its replacement desired to possess it selfishly. But its power could only be harnessed by the strongest magicks. Even demigods degenerated into shambles trying to use it. In the end, to cease the war, it was thrown into the realm of mortals.
Rapunzel flipped to the back. "That's it? That's not any help!"
"Okay, okay, let's not panic," Elsa said. "Maybe there's some further meaning. I mean, mine was in code."
"And mine was invisible without sunlight," Rapunzel said. "Arcius said these notes were for us and only us. It could only be read by our special talents."
Ariel took the paper. "It's seaweed paper. It has to be immersed in ocean water to be read, otherwise it doesn't show. But merpeople do. Maybe it would have been more secret if I was human."
Elsa played with the bottle, spinning it between her fingers. "My letter showed how to get to the island." She pointed at Rapunzel. "Yours told us how to get around the island." She pointed at Ariel. "And yours... told us... why we should get to the island?"
"I don't know," Ariel said. "Why does he have to be so cryptic?"
Elsa bonked the bottle to her head, trying to kickstart her brain. She noticed the end. "Hey, does this mean anything?"
She pointed to an symbol embossed in the bottle's bottom.
"I recognize that!" Ariel said. "That's the insignia of my kingdom. I mean, not Atlantica. My human kingdom. With Eric."
"Whoever made this bottle might have had contact with Arcius. They may know something about him. It's a slim chance, but it's our only one," Rapunzel said.
"There aren't that many glassmakers," Ariel said. "A little detective work and we could find it."
"This doesn't make sense," Elsa said. "Arcius is a powerful sorcerer. Maybe the most powerful one in the world--he has the ability to control time. Why would he use a bottle from a small city? Did it just float by? Why didn't he just conjure up a bottle?"
"Maybe it's a kind of message," Rapunzel ventured. Her eyes widened. "You don't think he's holding the kingdom hostage?"
"No, he would have told us so." Elsa tapped her finger on the bottle's bottom. "If he was forced to use an empty bottle, he must have limitations."
"Maybe he has trouble leaving the island," Ariel said.
"And that would explain why he hasn't tried pursuing us yet," Rapunzel added.
Elsa nodded. "Either he can't or he won't. Maybe he doesn't want to leave his precious grain unprotected. And if that's the case, maybe he didn't send those notes himself. Maybe someone else did it for him."
"And that someone is squatting in MY kingdom." Ariel furrowed her brows.
Elsa rose. The blanket fell off her shoulders. "Ladies, it's time to head back to the surface."
Elsa tied the scroll with a piece of wormy yarn. She squeezed a dollop of brown paste from a cartilaginous shell on the seam. Ariel assured her it was just as good as a wax seal.
"Now, you will make sure this gets to him, right? Make sure that he reads it," Elsa said.
Dudley saluted with his right flipper. "Eh... don't... worry... about... a... thing... The mail... always... gets... through," the sea turtle wheezed. He trotted off down the hallway.
Rapunzel and Ariel strolled around the corner. Ariel pointed in a "here you are" gesture.
"What's that?" Rapunzel asked. "You're sending a letter?"
"A letter to whooooo?" Ariel asked.
Elsa stiffened. "No one."
"Come on. In the short time we've been here, who could you know well enough to send a letter to?"
"Fine, it's Gil. I'm not going to be able to see him before we leave. It would be bad manners to leave him hanging."
"What does the letter say?"
Elsa blushed, but remained steadfast. "A lady does not divulge her personal communiques."
"Come on, please?" Ariel asked, holding up her clasped hands.
"No, it's for his eyes only."
Ariel and Rapunzel pouted. "Fine," Ariel said. "I guess I should say goodbye to my sisters too. Meet me outside the palace entrance."
Rapunzel and Elsa held hands and swam away. Ariel turned in a different direction, heading to the great hall behind the throne room. Attina and Aquata sat at opposite ends with fierce expressions on their faces, reading through documents and scrolls. The four others between them looked bored.
"I'm leaving now. Back to the surface. I wanted to say goodbye?" She couldn't help hedging by making her request a question.
Attina and Aquata gave her a side-eye, but Alana, Adella, Arista, and Andrina swam up to her and hugged.
"Don't be a stranger now," Andrina said. "Come back any time."
"Seriously, save us," Adella whispered jokingly.
"It was so short," Alana said. "We didn't get to have a welcoming celebration... or a parting celebration or anything."
"I know. But we found out something and I need to get back. There are people on the surface who need me," Ariel said.
"It seems like you were barely here," Arista said.
"Hmph," Attina uttered. "She was barely here when she lived in the palace."
The other sisters released her. Ariel took a jaunt forward. Attina and Aquata straightened up, holding themselves like a pair of grand emperors. "Attina, Aquata. Please find a way to get along with everyone. For Atlantica's sake?"
Attina gave her another side-eye, then turned back to her reading.
Aquata's eyes glanced at the trident at Ariel's side. "I suppose you'll be needing that with you still."
"Yes, just for a little while longer. If that's okay?"
Aquata sneered. "I guess I can't stop you. If it's as important as you say it is. Just don't lose it. It's only the key to ruling the sea kingdom."
Ariel grimaced. That was all the good she was going to be able to do. After saying her final goodbyes and headed out.
She turned to the throne room where the chair for the sea king was not empty. An old friend was snoozing away, head on his front claws like a resting feline. She crept up, not wishing to wake him.
"Sebastian," she whispered. "Wake up. I'm leaving."
His thick lips continued to puff and blow air out in a snore.
"Come on, Sebastian. I don't want to give you nightmares about cookpots again." She poked him in the back of his shell.
He sleepily opened his eyes. "Oh. Ar-re-ell."
"I just wanted to say goodbye. I'm leaving."
"Oh? But you just got here."
"I know. I'm sorry I couldn't stay longer. But my friends need me."
Sebastian smiled like a wise old man. Like King Triton smiled. Maybe they had spent so much time together he'd adopted his appearance.
"Sebastian, how did Daddy die?"
"Ah-ree-ell... sumtimes, it is just our time. Maybe he'd done everyting he needed to in this life. But he did great tings before-"
"No, I mean, for real," Ariel said. "Arista said Daddy died of a broken heart. What really happened? I know there's something people are keeping from me."
Sebastian's eyes bulged. "Keeping... sumting? Heh, heh, like what?" He shrugged his claws.
"Come on, Sebastian. Do you think that's going to work? You're the worst secret-keeper in all of Atlantica. In fact, this all started because you told Daddy about me being in love with a human." She smiled. "In fact, you might say I have you to thank."
Sebastian chuckled humbly, swishing a claw at her.
"Is it that they think I'm too young? I'm married now. I'm a princess. I can-"
"No, no, nut-ting like dat. Dey just... dey just don't... ah-re-ell, you got enough trubbles on de surface."
"Sebastian..." Ariel pouted. It was the same look when he was about to march back to the king after she got legs. "Please?"
"All right, all right. You not gonna like it. He... he choked. On a piece of fish."
Ariel reared back. "He was eating a piece of fish?"
"Yes... it's true. I don't know how he got de idea. When you left, he changed his colors more dan an octopus. He was so proud. He told everyone how you were so brave. And how wrong he'd been about humans. He started visiting the surface again. Just to watch the boats. He helped de sailors in trouble, when he could."
"Really?" Ariel never realized what impact her actions had when she left. She didn't know anything had changed.
"He was doing everyting he could to prove to come out of his shell. But then... I guess he wanted to swim that last mile."
"So he tried eating fish?" Ariel gasped. "How did he... I mean, I can't imagine..."
"I guess he figured you were doing de same. Fish got to eat otter fish." Sebastian nodded. "Had it prepared and everyting. Only me and his daughters knew. I was dere de whole time. But den... it got caught in his throat..."
Ariel's hands went up to her own throat. Her eyes teared up. "That's why Attina and Aquata blame me," Ariel said. "If I hadn't left, Daddy wouldn't have died."
"No, no, child. I know he don't blame nobody." Sebastian patted her hand. "It was just an ach-see-dent. De same ting coulda happened de next day on a plankton wrap. Don't tink it was you for a minute. De girls, dey have dere own trubbles. You got yours. And speakin' of which. You got to get back to dem, don't you?"
Ariel gripped the trident in her hands. "Thanks, Sebastian. For everything."
"You go on, child. You go make your fadder proud. You always did."
She picked Sebastian up and gave him a kiss on his fleshy head. He shied away. "Oh, well, come on..."
Ariel swam out of the castle and met Rapunzel and Elsa at the entrance.
"You okay?" Elsa asked, seeing Ariel's melancholy expression.
"Yeah," Ariel replied. "Just learned some interesting things about my father."
"Like what?" Rapunzel asked.
"Nothing. Nothing important. Let's go."
Ariel led the way, taking them out many miles. They headed east, closer to coastline. The seabed steadily rose. Dense populations of fish and bright colors waned.
Ariel was too thoughtful to make conversation. She loved her father, but she always saw him as a stubborn tyrant, setting rules that made no sense. He'd banned all music from Atlantica. He declared absolute isolation from the surface. He forbid any contact with humans or human things.  
For the year following her marriage, she never wondered about the impact of her actions on her old world. Did that mean she was responsible for them? And did she have to take care of those consequences? Clearly, Daddy wanted to make amends. But it was making those amends that killed him.
In the distance, they could see beginnings of a dropoff. The waters were pushing and pulling them like a heavy wind.
"Are those boats?" Rapunzel pointed out oval shadows above them.
"Yes," Ariel said. "That's just the luck we need. We'll transform close to the surface, then swim up. We'll act like shipwreck victims."
The three of them ascended, pressure squeezing their ears.
"Do you hear that? It's like thunder," Elsa said. "I hope there's not a storm."
The water was too murky--stirred up by the ships--to get a clear view of the sky.
Five fathoms away, Ariel stopped. "Okay, who wants to go first? I'll have to change last."
"I will," Elsa said.
Ariel held out the golden trident, glowing like a marigold sun. A beam of light enveloped Elsa in a bright, gentle glow. Rapunzel had to shield her eyes. When she could look again, Elsa was already gone, kicking her legs to the surface.
"You're getting pretty good with that," Rapunzel said. "You even gave her a dress."
"Maybe. I feel a little more confident."
Rapunzel held out her arms waiting for her turn.
Ariel pointed the trident at her. Golden light flowed out and, a moment later, she was swimming up, her braid spiraling behind her.
Finally, Ariel pointed the tines at her own chest. After the bright yellow aura blocked her eyes, then came the familiar sensation of her tail splitting in two. But this time it was painless. Before the final moments of the spell, she took a deep breath. Then she crawled upward with all her might.
Ten feet from the surface, she heard muffled thunder. As she broke the surface, she threw her head back to keep the hair out.
The seas were so rough she couldn't open her eyes. First she noticed the air--thick with gunpowder and smoke, burning wood, and hot metal. Sails flapped and shuddered amidst panicked wails and shouted orders. Ariel opened her eyes.
Galleons and clippers pitched all around them. Mighty ships swirled around each other, firing cannons. Sailors swung across ropes. Muskets and hooks dropped into the water. Elsa coughed from the thick smoke.
"How did we get in the middle of a war zone?" Elsa shouted.
"What is going on?" Rapunzel shouted. "Is this the right place?"
Ariel caught a glimpse of her castle between two ships, far in the distance on a promontory. A galleon traversed the circle of battle. Its figurehead bobbed into the ocean and back out. All Eric's ships had one.
"That's my castle. These are my ships," Ariel shouted.
"Then why are they fighting mine?"
Elsa pointed at another clipper with a different banner. As it turned hard to port to face its cannons, the hull presented a fashioned A, surrounded by a wreath of crocuses.
Ariel's mouth dropped open. She and Elsa looked at each other. "We're at war?"
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roamrevival-blog · 7 years
Text
The Red Dragon: A Study in Madness While Being Stuck in Customs
by Evan
It smelled of puke, because there was puke, lots of it. It was being blown into the only receptacle available to Xian Customs: a trashcan, half-filled with discarded ’Lychee Candy’ wrappers and cans of Kěkǒukělè. A female customs agent watched us, careless of the smell or condition of the person vomiting up what food poisoning brewed of the day’s breakfast and lunch, as she stood at the doorway of our room like a prison guard wishing we were hatching an escape so she could finally see some action. Another round of intestines being squeezed of its halfway-digested food and sent spelunking into the trashcan that’s being cradled like a priest’s bible during an exorcism and yet another layer of putrid smell is laid down onto the ever-thickening atmosphere of our room that was growing colder by the minute. This room would be forever known to Vanessa and I as “The Icebox.”
           I said to the female agent: “Is there any way to warm it up in here?”
           …
           “When…will…the…Airline Stooge…from…Sichuan Airlines…be…back?”
           …
           “Do you have internet so I can use Google translate and tell you what I just said in Chinese?”
           …
           Before imprisonment in The Icebox, before the granite-faced guard trying to suffocate the last ounce of humanity from her soul as she she watched us with disdain as we froze, before the puke, there was this:
           “Hello, ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking. Due to weather (SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOG), we will not be able to land at Changdu. We are diverting the plane and will be landing in Xian in about 30 minutes.” Click.
           The stewardess informed us that the airline would hold us up at a hotel for the night and then figure out a new flight to Phoenix (layover before Mexico).
           “Thirty minutes” (an hour) later and we land in Xian.
           Mark the time: 1am. We’re standing in line at customs and when we finally make it to an agent he says something in Chinese. We explained the situation about being diverted. He tells us using a series of hand-motions that we need to wait in a designated waiting area. He holds on to our passports and passes them off to some boss, then they’re passed off to another boss, and so on until they disappear (forever?). The minutes go by and every single one of the passengers on our flight stroll past us in the waiting area and on to their comfy hotel stay.
           Mark the time: 2am. Customs is empty save for Vanessa and I and a few agents walking around, shuffling paperwork at a desk; trying to look busy at 2am. Vanessa and I, as the minutes continue to go by like they’re struggling to walk through a swamp of knee-deep mud, plead…beg…for an answer. Every cuss word in the English language (even a few in French) has been practically shouted to the Heavens! What the fuck is going on?! And for an entire hour we were ignored. We were paupers trying to get the attention of some royalty as they strolled down a cobblestone street paying us no mind. Filthy, beggars! Be gone!
           Mark the time: 2:30am. Finally, mercifully, an agent that speaks a bit of English approaches along with a rep from the airline. “Him from airline,” said the agent of the rep. “He help you.” (I’m not being racist; I’m not picturing Mickey Rooney from Breakfast at Tiffany’s when I recall this conversation. This is how I remember it to the best of my muddy recollection and that is what he sounded like). Airline Stooge: “You cannot leave.”
           “China?!”
           “Customs.”
           “Why?”
           He more or less explained that because our layover in Changdu was only eight hours and we didn’t get a visa (because there wasn’t a need for one), they couldn’t let us “into the country” after our plane had been diverted and our stay in China forcibly extended. “Into the country” meaning into the airport, anywhere out of customs.
           “What about our bags?” I asked him.
           “They go to Changdu.”
           “With us?”
           “…Maybe. If we get you flight.”
           Vanessa: “I’m not feeling so good…”
           Mark the time: 3am. The Icebox: Vanessa is huddled over an empty trashcan, feeling queasy. I’m talking with a customs agent, the one that speaks the best English. “My wife is sick. Is there any way to get her into another room that isn’t meant to keep beef shoulders cold?”
           The agent, smiling: “No.”
           “Please. There has to be another room somewhere.”
           He just laughed: “Hahahahaha. No.”
           I repeated, accentuating every syllable thinking it’ll help him understand somehow: “There has to be another room. My wife is sick, if you couldn’t hear it or smell it already.” I pointed to Vanessa heaving into the trashcan.
           “Hahaha.” Then, with a wave of a hand, he motioned to the room next door. I opened the door and saw…a padded room, set to the same frigid temperature as The Icebox. The floor though, wasn’t padded.
           “Why isn’t the floor padded?” I asked the agent.
           He just shrugged.
           “I mean, if someone crazy wanted to kill themselves in here, couldn’t they just hit their heads against the floor?”
           Another shrug.
           I mocked his shrug and said: “The Icebox it is… But, bathroom first?”
           I did what we all do in the bathroom: pretended to take a leak but cried tears into the toilet bowl.
           “Wanna give me a shake, dipshit?” I asked the agent waiting for me right outside of my stall.
           “Yes.”
           “What?” I peeped through the crack of the stall, seeing if he had any idea what I said, and thankfully he did not.
           Mark the time: 4am. Back to where the story started. Still no idea what’s happening. The Airline Stooge mentioned trying to help us get on another flight to Changdu a few hours ago. We’ve heard nothing since. Not a peep. None of the agents around us spoke English so I busied myself by trying to win at a staring contest with the stone-faced agent guarding the door as I held Vanessa’s hair back. Not even the slightest turn of one corner of her mouth. Steel.
           Mark the time: 5am. The cold inside The Icebox starts to feel like I’m being frozen by Xian customs to preserve American specimens for research, or for a study in madness. How have they lasted this long? I wonder, says the lead scientist. Mark the time: 5am. ‘Four hours in Cryo-Chamber and still alive. Not one ounce of information given to them about their predicament and what’s to happen next. Remarkable. I kept picturing all those people on our flight asleep in cozy beds, dreaming like babes of frolicking through any of a number of warm climates, free as birds. Those bastards.
           Alright, Chinese Ashton Kutcher, now’s the time to come springing out and yelling ‘You’ve been 刺!’
           “Hey, Terminator 2 Linda Hamilton, go get the Airport Stooge,” I told the female agent guarding us, The Dangerous Prisoners of Xian Customs. I knew she didn’t speak any English, but my frost-bitten mind denied me the kind of recognitive power that God gave the Blue-Footed Booby (and look where they ended up). “Get the Airport Stooge!”
           Steel.
           “Dammit! Get the damn Airport Stooge!” Vanessa interrupted with a forceful shout before I could repeat basically what she said as she dropped the trashcan that’s been filled up to the halfway point. If there was a mirror, I imagine we must’ve looked like monsters—pale, dark-circles-around-the-eyes, puke-breathed, abominable monsters. Defeated, we sat back down and continued in our Freezing to Death…
           Mark the time: 7am. Nothing’s changed. We’re still suspended in a time-looped nightmare. Hallucinations began, slipping in and out of consciousness as we’re hugged harder and harder by the freezing touch of impending death seeping from the vents above us. That’s right, it says with a hiss, you’re almost mine.
           I turn to Vanessa, and she turns to me, very slowly, and I say to her: “I just want you to know, that if we die in here, I’m glad you’ll be by my side.” I take her hand in mine, thinking I could warm it up, but realizing my hand was just as cold.
           “…Shut up.”
           “Hello?” We knew that voice coming from the doorway behind us; the Airline Stooge.
           We turn and look at him. He looks at us like he stumbled on a crime scene and both dead bodies had suddenly come back to life. “Uhhhh, here your new flight.”
           The flight was leaving in thirty minutes…from the other side of the airport, headed for a layover in Hangzhou and then off to Phoenix.
           “What about our bags still going to Changdu?”
           “So sorry.”
           “That’s it? So sorry?”
           “Yes. So sorry.”
           After stumbling through the airport like a pair of half-dead/half-drunk dogs going through some agility competition at the Westminster Kennel Club, we barely made it to our flight.
           I have to hand it to the Chinese, they are a resilient folk; seeing the density of the smog layer hanging over Xian as we flew away made me think: There’s no way a human being could live in that. (Applause). I pictured myself struggling to breath like an astronaut on Mars after having his helmet struck by some small projectile from space, cracking it open and sending in the carbon dioxide, my eyes bugging out like Schwarzenegger’s in Total Recall.
           Mark the time: 8am. We waved goodbye to Xian, China’s cruel mistress sent to make our one and only time with The Red Dragon a time we’ll never forget, no matter how hard we try.  
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