The man asked, who are you.
I am death, and I make all equal.
The day Jamil turned seventeen, he received a herb.
The herb was as long as his hand, its sheen a dark green, its leaves broad and scent something fresh. It was just a herb, and yet Jamil held it in between his fingers earlier with such a furrow on his brow and a frown on his lips.
"Oh, don't make that face," Najma says. "C'mon, if you don't know what it is or what it does we can just boil it or sell it."
Jamil sighs. "No need. I already know what it does."
"Huh. Then what's the problem? Who gave it you, anyway?"
"... My godfather."
"... You had a godfather?"
"Najma."
She dabs away at her eyes with a cloth, but she does not face him. Jamil crosses his arms across his chest and leans on the doorframe.
"... What do you want."
"... Your friend. Where does she live?"
Najma turns around, eyes red and glaring. Jamil does not flinch or move from where he stood, his figure ominous under the dim light.
"Why do you need to know?"
"What did you do!?"
Jamil pries Najma's shaking hands off his forearms, steps a few paces away from her. Stray strands of her hair are sticking to her sweaty face, her nose was red and running a bit. Her voice rasps with both exhaustion and shortness of breath.
"But... but... they all said... only three... three... three days left... but how...?"
Jamil looks past his sister, to the hut behind them. Through the open window one could see a family of three huddled together in a tight embrace - two adults and one healthy child in the center, all smiling and tears streaming down their faces.
"She's alive now," Jamil says, reaching out to rest a hand on top of Najma's head. "Isn't that enough?"
One day when Jamil was about to step out of the hut with a satchel strapped to his waist, Najma drops her half-woven blanket to run after her brother and tug at his sleeve.
"I'm coming with you," she says.
Jamil narrows his eyes. "You don't need to - get back to work."
"I'm going, whether you like it or not," she huffs.
They just stand there for a moment, glaring at each other until Najma pushes past Jamil and walks out of the hut.
"So where are we going?"
Light clinking sounds rung out from Jamil's satchel each step he took; no doubt coming from the pouch inside that held enough thaumarks that would feed them well for the rest of the month and then some. The sound was akin to little bells, one that Najma had her herself whistling along to as they walked their way back home.
"So its like a cure-all," Najma says. "like magic in fairy tales."
Jamil snorts at her comment.
"But both those things don't exist," he replies, moving onward.
"Hey."
"What."
"So what kind of person is your godfather, then?"
One could say that like anybody else, Jamil was a creature of habit. He was one whose mornings started with the bow and arrow at the crack of dawn, one whose afternoons were spent bargaining with the merchants of the markets and one whose evenings were knit deep with wool or thread until he had burned his midnight oil. His routine ran as steady like water and like clockwork was his every toil; but that was how he had lived the ten years of his life with his younger sister under his wing.
"Aren't you going to eat?"
Najma asks him this halfway through her meal, eyes round and blinking. Jamil had not touched his own portions yet, but both were warm and fragrant under his nose.
A loaf of freshly baked white bread. Stew with generous portions of meat and vegetables.
Removing the weight tied to his waist, he sets the satchel on one end of the table then picks up a slice of bread.
"The chief was looking for you."
"It's about his son, isn't it."
"Yeah. You going?"
"You're the one halfway through the door, though."
One could say that like anybody else, Najma had read fairytales. She was one who had read about wide kingdoms and kind rulers, one who had dreamed of knights and princesses and witches, and one who had wondered about magic and miracles. These are the worlds she had traveled to when she was still a small child wrapped in the warmth of her parents' embrace, but now that she was older and able to stand up on her own, she grew wise enough to learn that her world was vastly different from those in fairytales.
Maybe that is why she gives the old lady her shawl - it is perhaps too colorful, too long, too thin; but it is received carefully and with whispers of tearful thanks.
"Let's go," Jamil tells Najma.
A nod, but Najma's eyes still linger to the old lady - the shawl that Najma gave was now being wrapped around someone else's shoulders; around a young noble boy who was too pale, too small, too frail for such a large bed.
"Can I buy some cloth? One bolt of whatever material would do. Nothing colorful either."
"What are you making?"
"Gonna try making shrouds."
Three months.
It had been three months since they had left the comfort of their hut, their village.
Three months since they have gone around the country, visiting the ill or the ill finding them.
Three months since they have been sought after by kings, queens, nobles, commoners.
Three months since Najma had been making shrouds.
Three months since Jamil had met his godfather.
Three months.
The herb was as long as his hand, its sheen a dark green, its leaves broad and scent something fresh. It was just a herb, and yet Jamil held it inside his fist with such a furrow on his brow and a frown on his lips.
"Oh, don't make that face," Najma says as she draws her hand out from under the covers to swat at her brother's arm. When Jamil would not raise his head to face her, his head still so close to lowering itself on her mattress; Najma closes her eyes and her voice becomes something small.
"Ah... Has your godfather come to visit me, too?"
— godfather death. | 1812
2: going grimm's fairytales!au ft. twst cast for this month's ficathon! the indented text above is an excerpt the actual fairytale + a link to the full tale. there's also a link tied to the fairytale's title at the end of the fic - it shows the different translations/renditions of the tale in other languages.
3: a tl;dr version: godfather death is a story about a poor man with twelve children - when he had his thirteenth child, he immediately sought out a godfather. he meets two people: god then the devil, but he makes neither of them a godfather. instead the man chooses death as his child's godfather, and when the child had grown older death gives his godchild a herb as a present. death says he will make his godchild a celebrated physician. whenever there would be a patient, death would be there too: if death stands by the patient's head, then the godchild would say that the patient could be cured with the herb death had given. however, if death would stand by the patient's feet, the godchild must say that the patient cannot be cured - the patient would be taken by death, so the godchild must not interfere.
4: and since i don't want to clutter this space anymore or flood my tags, each story comes with post-reading notes!
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Hey so I think everyone needs a reminder on how to interact with people:
It's fine to "spam like" a person if you're just going through their stuff during the day you find said creator. If they're a popular tumblr user I doubt they'll notice if you spam their notifications after the fact cause they probably have them off anyway.
However, I am not a big tumblr user, I keep my notifications on and check here when I see them so I tend to notice the same person spamming me. This is about those of us that check notifications cause we be small and want to see the interactions.
If you're going through someones posts and you're constantly on their notifications for 11 days straight because you keep unliking and reliking their content, that's fucking creepy.
I don't mind the spam likes if it's literally just one maybe two days of someone seeing my content and liking it. (Especially the Ben 10 or Young Justice posts).
But like 11 days? That's too fucking much for me to see you in my notifications when I haven't posted much, if anything, during that time frame. Especially when it's been stuff that was already liked prior. I don't have enough Ben 10 posts that you haven't seen in one or two goddamn days. You don't need 11 days to stifle through all my Ben 10 content.
Like constantly spamming my notifications won't get me to answer your long ass ask faster, in fact it made me put it off even longer. Originally it was cause it was so long I needed to answer on my laptop so I could read it as I responded. But I also kept getting busy and forgetting to respond. So I'll take responsibility for not answering it, doesn't mean it's okay to spam like my shit for almost 2 weeks because I didn't answer you.
In fact said person even chatted me about it the other day and I explained why it took so long. (Although they apologized for it being long over asking why it took so long.) Then they proceeded to spam like content they already liked again.
Spamming won't get a creator to notice you, they'll just straight up fucking block you.
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