#I had many a night in a dark forest with a cloak and flashlight (candles not allowed)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

If a ghost says it, you have to do it.

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#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #wei wuxian #lan wangji #If you squint hard enough you can tell when this one was 'supposed' to come out. #comic break aside - It is nice to have a good buffer again! #did anyone else play around with spirits at sleepovers or hangout with your friends/cousins/siblings? #I had many a night in a dark forest with a cloak and flashlight (candles not allowed) #someone always takes the role of 'I am the sensitive spirit medium and you have to do as the ghost says' #in yunmeng sibling terms that was probably wwx. JYL went with it for fun but JC absolutely believed it and *loathed* it #Anyways. When you're the prankster you definitely get sensitive for people trying to pull the same tricks on you. #I think LWJ absolutely would be cheeky enough to pull a 'ghost said so' on WWX or the juniors #But not when he's on the clock. Work comes first and he's not going to play around. #He'd opt to play his guqin on the porch while he waits for wwx to come home and when wwx compliments his song he'd be like: #“Actually it was the spirit haunting the place. It says we have to kiss for it to be appeased” #and of course wwx is like “damn if the ghost says so I gotta.” because they area awful like that

[reyook]

The Sea Burial

[WW2 International Guerrilla AU (?\

USUK brotherhood

Wrote this six years ago for my highschool English class... Yeah, I’m graduating from college now yet still not good at English. Whatever.

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The sun was going down. A small piece of the moon appeared behind staked mists. Waves clasped the beach for only a few seconds, then faded in the vast ocean. The seagulls hovered above them and cried loud laments. The salty sea breeze stroked the leaves, the sands, the rocks, and his lapel.

How large the ocean was! Alfred felt he could not believe he and Arthur had passed the Mediterranean to come here two years before. In that time, he was only seventeen, and he knew nothing about war and danger. He still remembered that long trip, the harbors he had been to, and one time, the sea burial. 

Not every soldier could arrive at the battlefield safely. That morning, he woke up because of the noise from the deck — a funeral for a young Scottish sailor, who died from a gun accident. The white fabric covered his body on a wooden board. His girlfriend, a nurse who could not save her lover, played the bagpipe in the prow. The soft, mournful ballad waved with the winds. Some sailors uplifted the board and, at last, pushed it into the sea. 

Alfred did not see the spindrift. He only heard the sound when the wood hit the seawater.  The loud noise appeared like a drumbeat in the nurse's song. Suddenly she dropped the bagpipe, crashed into the crowd, shouted, and cried. She stretched her arm as a cross on the deck. She was not tall, but Alfred recognized her immediately. Her head overlapped the rising sun, and her prayer and weeping dropped into the vast ocean.

Being a sailor was not a safe job, the same as a soldier. It was the first thing Alfred learned from Arthur in this journey. He was the lucky one. After went through gunfire, land mine, death, defeat and victory, Alfred, as a sailor and also a soldier, was still breathing. Alfred could not tell if he liked life, but now, he had to love it, more than everything. 

He had to love this deep edgeless sea, this tranquil splendid sky, and the thousands of scintillant bleary lights behind him. Their brightness drew out the shape of towns and dimmed the Apennine Mountains into the nightfall. If a ship passed this beach in this kind moment, they would think this was only an ordinary seaside village. Only people who fought and lived here knew its splendid secret.

It was like one month ago when Arthur was still alive. They ran in the forests and woods with the guerrilla. In the early morning, they woke up with the cool grey mist. The moist fragrance from grass and soil melted into the chicken soup. Brooks flowed through flowering shrubs and wilds, like ribbon bound up in the hair of spring and summer. 

After the rain, the leaves dressed in a white veil, and all the trunks put on their dark cloak. The sky was always delightful, no matter how the weather went. At noon, the blazing sunshine smelt their guns, their homespun clothes, their old muddy boots, and their good warm-blooded hearts.

One dusk, after they annihilated a small enemy, Arthur and Alfred set on the roof of their headquarter (before the war, it was a villa for a rich man). The grand ridge stretched her arm and showed them her colorful jewelry that covered up her long dress. Arthur pointed to the flowers over the mountains.

"You know what?" His intonation enhanced unconsciously, "We should live here. You, me, mom and dad, move here and live together when the war ended. We can build our own house and have a garden. I can plant some roses. It is just not the right place to fight, to destroy by guns and shells. It is a place to sleep, to enjoy nature, to sing and play music, to sail, to catch some fish. It is a place to live life, but not only exist." 

Alfred stared at Arthur. He could see in his elder brother's emerald eyes, the magnificent highlights. His eyes had the same color as the verdant woods, and his thick eyebrows, which had been mocked by Alfred so many times, at this moment, unfolded with evident expectation, like the expanded wings of seagulls.

However, this was merely a dream. Even if Arthur had survived, he would not stay in a mountain and live a peaceful life. They were the sons of sailors. Their hometown was Liverpool, the best harbor in the world! No real sailor from Liverpool would stop the journey until death. The places they have been to, no matter how beautiful they were, could only be a memory. They only had one home to stay forever: the sea.

Arthur loved the Apennine. Now, Alfred took this responsibility. He would love here, as deep as he loved Liverpool and the sea. But before that, he needed to send Arthur back to his HOME.

Chiara Vargas came back. She brought a big basket with countless flowers–white and red roses and some purple lilies, covered with leaves and mud. Alfred could even smile the familiar aroma.

"I bought this candle." She took out the red candle, "I don't want to bury him in darkness." 

He took it with an amiable smile.

"Thank you, Chiara…… little sister." He always called her by name. In the whole troop, only Arthur called her "little sister." Chiara blinked her eyes. he tears moistened her pale face.

They removed the flowers from the basket to that little boat, where Arthur was. Some petals dropped on his golden hair, like roseate clouds decorating the offshore thatch. Alfred put that red candle on the prow and ignited it. The tiny flame jumped for a few seconds and started to burn quietly. Alfred boarded on the boat and rowed it into the Mediterranean.

The world was silent. Alfred's arms were moving, but all his mind and sight were on Arthur. He did not even know what he was looking for. Maybe he wanted to find just a few trails from their childhood. He needed to remember something before his brother disappeared from this world. For a few seconds, he felt like Arthur was a stranger, but after another couple seconds, he realized that this is still his brother.

The moon came out. The shadows on Arthur's face changed. He recently began to look on the glistening waves under the boat. The ocean wobbled the boat like a mother wobbled the cradle. His heartbeats were in the same frequency with those waves. Arthur's heartbeats were like the waves in the deep, deep sea, where all things lived in darkness, silence, and safety.

Finally, he thought, he is ready. He looked back; the lights on the shore were so remote that he felt like they were a part of the Milky Way. He picked up the chisel and drilled a hole in the bottom of the boat. The chilly seawater came up stoutly, inundated his feet, and Arthur's hair. The flowers floated in the boat, slowly and softly.

Alfred jumped out of the boat. He backstroked without knowing the direction. He just swam, as Arthur taught him twelve years ago. The only thing he could hear was the heartbeats of the sea. But the thing he could see was much more amazing.

Stars. The cloudless starry night firmament covered his view. The stars were like iron nails on the warship, like sugar on homemade bread, like the tears on Chiara's face, like the lights in Arthur's eyes. They were there for a long time. They would be there forever. They did not know the cold of the water, but they needed to bear more loneliness than any human could do. 

Today, they twinkled to Alfred; the moonlight clasped he and his brother. They were the distinguished guests of this funeral. He did not know why the stars became vague and brighter. He kept swimming in this endless space, like swimming in heaven. The shimmery spindrift created another starry sky, and he was just a small traveler in it.

The flashlight interrupted his illusion: Chiara rowed another boat and found him. After he got on the boat, she gave him a towel and asked, "Has your brother……arrived home?"

He eventually observed the distance. He did not miss the direction, but nothing was there now. Only the deep mirky ocean answered this question.

"Yes, he has."

The sailor laid on the boat as he slept on a warm bed. The sailor slept in the sea as he slept in his mother's embrace. Arthur went back to that high eternal home, with thousands of splendid flowers and stars.

End.

#aph hetalia #hetalia #aph #usuk #aph america #aph england