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#I want him to be hale and hearty and living his best life!! I want him alive and well!!

catchperfectamericanpresidents · 3 years

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Early American Historical Figures and How Well They Cook

( Yes, I am aware that an overwhelming majority owned slaves )

George Washington: It’s not bad, but not exceptionally good, sort of bland. But I wouldn’t mind eating it out of the blue. 5/10.

John Adams: There’s a lot of flavor, is what I’m getting. 7/10.

Alexander Hamilton: A lot of sweet stuff. The tastiness of it fluctuates greatly. For some reason, he gives the feeling as someone who doesn’t care greatly about the taste as long as it looks pretty. 6/10.

Thomas Jefferson: Most of the time, he purposefully makes everything taste horrible so that people being forced to dine with him can’t use eating as a means to escape the conversation. Expect a lot of new recipes. 3/10

James Madison: Overly bland. The British genes are strong in this one. 2/10

James Monroe: As the black sheep of the Democratic Republicans, he’s actually pretty good. 8/10.

William Short: His taste buds are dead due to repeated exposure to Jeffersonian Cooking. RIP. 4/10

Aaron Burr: Lets face it, he just throws in whatever he can find together and call it a day. Relatable, but no. Depends on the ingredients. 4/10- 9/10

John Jay: He’s a good person and an even better cook. 7/10

John Laurens: He’ll probably go all out. 8/10

Marquis de Lafayette: He’s french. But he’s also pretty clumsy. But he’s french. 7/10

Benjamin Tallmadge: I’m sure he’s great. I wonder if he’s ever tried to sneak spy code into desserts. 9/10

Nathan Hale: He knows his stuff, that’s for sure. Might be too busy to try anything fancy. 6/10

John Andre: He’s perfect at everything. Never eaten anything better in your entire life. 10/10

Benjamin Rush: He’ll want to give everyone something healthy. Really depends. 6-8/10

Baron von Steuben: A good, hearty meal. Try not to get drunk. 9.3/10

Richard Kidder Meade: A human being that tries his best, and receives the best. Would probably be pretty creative with his stuff. 8/10

Tench Tilghman: He’ll probably be pretty considerate and try to accommondate to everyone’s tastes. May or may not succeed. 7/10

John Fitzgerald: He’ll try. He very much will try. But for some odd reason, I feel like he’d somehow end up burning the entire house up in the process but I can’t be sure. 2/10

Nathaniel Greene: Looks like the kind of person to be somewhat absent-minded at times if what they’re doing at the moment isn’t very vital. Might get a rough start. 4/10

Henry Knox: I have no doubt on this man. 10/10

Robert Hanson Harrison: A professional kind of person I guess? I think he’s the kind of person for recipes. 4/10

James McHenry: Yeah, he seems like a nice guy. But he’s Irish. 4/10

Joseph Reed: He just seems like a bad cook, honestly. 1/10

Hercules Mulligan: He gives the vibes. Besides, Hamilton was with him for a while, so I’ll give him some points. Might be too busy with other stuff now to actually pay attention, though. 8/10

John Trumbull: Guy’ll feed you paint and then boast about how awesome his cooking is and you’ll be too sick to argue. 0/10

William P. Van Ness: SOMEONE had to do it when he and Burr were living together. You really expect Burr to do this? 7/10

James Wilkinson: HE WILL THROW POISON INTO YOUR DRINK AND BETRAY YOU TO THE DEVIL, DO NOT TRUST.-100000/10

Herman Blennerhasset: You wouldn’t expect it, but I’m sure he can cook something nice. 5/10

Luther Martin: There’d be alcohol. Probably won’t be the best...but it’d sure be interesting. 4/10

Charles Peale: This poor, poor man. Just get him out of the kitchen. 1/10

Gilbert Stuart: Doesn’t seem like the kind of person to do things half-way. Seems like a perfectionist really. 10/10

John Hancock: I’m sorry, John, but unfortunately, not everything can be solved with money. 4/10

Sam Adams: He’s too committed to being a Patriot to even care about how he dresses, you really expect him to be a world-top chef? -1/10

Paul Revere: He’s a simple man with simple tastes. 4/10

Joseph Warren: Can be a dramatic bitch at times, but it’ll be fun. 7/10

Benedict Arnold: I hate to say it, but… 8/10

Edward Stevens: You’d expect him to suck, but like??? HOW? 6/10

I don’t actually know that much on Washington’s Aides so feel free to correct me.

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dycefic · 3 years

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The Wanderer

No prompt. This is essentially what would happen if I wrote a Wolverine au, IE he would be the best there is at Something Else Entirely.

Once upon a time there was a man without sons or daughters who raised a hundred children.

He was a wanderer, this man, moving through the world untethered, making his way by his strength in arms and his skill in battle. And while he was still a young man, he found a street-child digging through garbage in the dim light before dawn. “Boy,” he said, and his voice was kind. “Come with me. I will buy you a meal.”

The boy was doubtful, but too hungry to be wary. He followed, and the wanderer gave him food, and an old tunic to wear. He taught the boy his skills, and when the boy was grown, the wanderer found him a good place in a castle garrison.

“Father,” the boy said, “why are you leaving me?”

“I am a wanderer,” the man said. “But I will come back. Live well, so that when I return I will be proud of you.”

In another city, he found another child, and gave him food and clothing, and taught him what he knew. This boy became a soldier, given rank and power, and then the wanderer gathered up his belongings and left.

“Father,” said the second boy, “why are you leaving me?”

“I am a wanderer, and it is my nature,” the wanderer said. “But I will come back. Live well, so that when I return I will be proud of you.”

There were two children at his heels the next time he passed through the first boy’s town again, a boy and a girl. He introduced them to a man tall and strong, who greeted them warmly and named himself their brother. When the wanderer left, the boy stayed with his new brother, apprenticed to a blacksmith, his bond paid by the wanderer. But the girl, who had wandering feet too, stayed with him until she found love in a caravan of traders and stayed there, leaving the wanderer with a new child already at his heels.

“Father,” she said, “I am sorry to leave you.”

“Do not be,” he said, embracing her one more time. “We are wanderers, and it is our nature. We will meet again. Live well, so that I will be proud of you when we do.”

Some children stayed with him into adulthood, others only until he found the place in the world that suited them. For a year he carried a one-legged girl in a sling on his broad back, teaching her all the skills of his hands and wits, until he found a place for her with a childless weaver-woman who would treat her well. For three years he travelled with two boys born without hearing, learning their language of signs and teaching them to fight. He wandered into new lands, learning to use new weapons and speak in new tongues, and everywhere he found orphaned or lost or forgotten children. To each one he gave food, and clothing, and all the teaching he had to offer. From each one he learned what they knew, and what they wanted, and he helped them to find it.

Every child he left, sooner or later. But they were never forgotten. To every new child he named the brothers and sisters who had come before, scratched maps in the dirt of all the places they lived, and every new child met some of them on their wanderings. Some, not suited to the wandering life, settled with an older brother or sister. As time passed, those older brothers and sisters had children and grandchildren of their own, some by birth, others taking foundlings as the wanderer had done. Some died, and were mourned by the wanderer, who made offerings for them and remembered their names. A few fell into bad ways, and were reproached when he found out. But most lived well, as he had bade them, and made him proud.

He was a strong man, hale and hearty, and for more than fifty years he wandered. He was high in the mountains with his youngest child, a boy almost grown, when the body that had been strong for so many years finally weakened. He died among pine trees, with the tang of snow on the air, and was content. “Bury me here,” he told his last son, before he died. “This is a good place. And before you go, make a stone fireplace in that clearing, and cut wood for travellers, so that when other wanderers pass they will rest here, and I will hear their stories.”

The boy did as he asked, and then went on. They had been on their way to visit a sister, who lived by the sea. It was his duty now, he knew, to tell all his wide-flung family that their father had gone on his last journey.

The wanderer had wandered all his life, and so his road to the other world was a long one, for time has no meaning to the dead. When at last he crossed the long bridge and reached the lands of the dead, he was surprised to find that many officials and important-looking people had gathered to welcome him. They all knew his name, and bowed to him, and offered him new clothing and shoes to wear of fine linen and leather. “I do not understand,” the wanderer said to the tall woman who seemed to be in charge, and looked like a goddess from the wall of a temple he vaguely remembered, with golden earrings and long dark hair. “I am only a simple wanderer. Is everyone greeted in this way, when they reach the other land?”

“No,” the goddess said, and she ordered the others to fall back, and walked with the wanderer along a beautiful road. “It is different for each person.” They passed a hovel, outside which an old woman sat disconsolate. “She was very rich,” the goddess said, indicating the old woman, “and could dissolve pearls in vinegar to drink if she chose. But she was a cruel woman, and when she died she was not mourned. She has a place on her family’s memorial, but only out of duty, and offerings are made for her only once a year.”

“I see.” The wanderer went on, enjoying a pleasant breeze and the feel of a good road under his sandals, as he had in life. After a time, they passed a stand of trees, where a man sat in a little shelter made of branches and leaves, and scratched characters in the dirt before him and brushed them out, over and over. “And him?”

“He was a high official, powerful and important. But he used his power for his own benefit, not that of the people he served, and when he died they celebrated and cursed his name.” The goddess shook her head sadly. “Now only his family remember his name, and they make no offerings for him.”

The wanderer thought this was a sad thing, and was glad to remember that when his own children had died, he had made sure they were remembered, and made offerings for them. After walking for a while longer, they came to a large and handsome house, where an old man and woman sat in the garden drinking wine. “And them?”

“They were merchants. They raised their children with love, and treated all their dependents with kindness. Now they are remembered fondly, and their children and grandchildren and even their servants have made many offerings for them.” The goddess smiled. “They are happy here, waiting for their family to join them.”

They looked like nice people, and the wanderer thought he would visit, and find out if they had any good stories to tell. Then they walked through an orchard, full of beautiful fruit trees of many kinds that he had never seen growing together before, and they came to a very beautiful house built around a large courtyard, with so many rooms that only a great lord could have built it in the living world. “And this house?”

The goddess smiled. “This house,” she said, and her voice was very warm, “belongs to a man who had no son or daughter of his blood, but raised a hundred children. A man who loved each of them, and guided them, and gave to each of them everything he had, and yet still had it, for his treasures were in skill and learning and kindness. There are a thousand memorials to this man, for his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren treasure his memory, and his name is known everywhere.”

Then she opened a gate, and the children who had died before the wanderer were there, waiting to greet him and welcome him to his home. And the wanderer laid his staff by the door, and went into the home that love in the living world had built for him in heaven, and though he often wandered even in heaven - for that was his nature - he always returned to his home again, and often he brought the souls of children who had died forgotten or alone, to live there with him until they were ready to return to the world and live again.

#no prompt #new fairy tales #life after death #found family #love never dies

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shireness-says · 3 years

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A Fate Woven in Thread and Ink (2/5)

Summary: Two people are trained from childhood for a magical competition they don’t fully understand, whose stakes are higher than they imagine, all to be played out in a magical traveling circus. Falling in love complicates things. A CS AU of the book “The Night Circus”.

Rated M. ~16.5k. Also on Ao3. On Tumblr: Chapter One

A/N: I’m back! Thanks for your patience in waiting for the latest chapter of my @cssns piece. My apologies for the wait; these chapters are slow in coming due to my own overthinking and perfectionism, what I know where everything is going and this Will Be Finished.

Special thanks to my betas, @snidgetsafan and @ohmightydevviepuu, and to @eirabach for the absolutely gorgeous art she created for this chapter. Seriously, it’s like she climbs right inside my head to see what I’m picturing. Give her a BUNCH of love for all this.

Tagging the interested parties (and let me know if you’re one of those!): @welllpthisishappening, @thisonesatellite, @let-it-raines, @kmomof4, @scientificapricot, @thejollyroger-writer, @superchocovian, @teamhook, @optomisticgirl, @winterbaby89, @searchingwardrobes, @katie-dub, @snowbellewells, @spartanguard, @phiralovesloki, @profdanglaisstuff, @winterbythesea

Enjoy - and let me know what you think!

~~~~~

Henry is six the first time he visits the Circus.

It’s a special treat for an orphaned boy like him; the nuns who run the Storybrooke Children’s Home, just outside of Portland, Maine, aren’t much given to frivolous entertainments like this. But a generous monetary donation had been made to the home when the Circus had set up just over the next hill, and tickets for all the children along with it. The nuns may not be much for frivolity, but they’re not ones for waste, either, especially where gifts are concerned. The next night, Sister Astrid and Sister Theodora collect all the children who want to go, and bring them to what, to Henry, feels like a whole other world.

Henry is a boy the adults already say lives in his imagination too much, and the magic of the Circus only enchants him further, calling to him in a way he doesn’t yet have the words to understand, let alone describe. There are trapeze artists who soar through the air, and jugglers, and lions and tigers and wolves so tame that they’ll take treats from his hands. Kindly confectioners slip him pieces of praline and boxes of popcorn to snack on through the night with a wink and a smile. It’s treatment such as he’s never experienced before, and it’s easy to wonder if he’s just wandered into some kind of dream.

(Even at six, Henry knows better than to disrupt such a lovely dream.)

It’s easy to get separated from the rest of the children in the dazzle of it all, and Henry finds himself wandering the curved paths alone as the clock strikes one, when the others in his group are preparing to return to the Home. Not that he knows it; he’s far too occupied by staring wide-eyed at the black and white tents where they soar to meet the stars and peeking beyond their entrance flaps.

That’s how the lady finds him - gawking with a craned neck at everything around him.

“Have you lost your group, young man?” she asks with a gentle voice. Henry likes being called young man; it makes him feel important.

“It’s okay,” he tells her earnestly. “They like to go faster than me. I can do it by myself.”

“I’m sure you can,” the lady laughs. She looks really pretty; her hair is yellow and curly and she wears a poofy white dress with black swirly bits and a black, long-sleeved jacket, the lack of color making it obvious she’s part of the Circus somehow. If this was one of the fairy tales Henry likes so much, she’d be the princess in hiding; here, at the Circus, that just might be true. “I was just planning to walk to the front gates. Would you care to escort me, young sir?”

Henry eagerly takes the hand the lady offers. “I’m Henry,” he tells her as they walk. “What’s your name?”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Henry. My name is Emma.”

“That’s a princess name. Are you a princess?”

“No,” she laughs, “but thank you very much, Henry. I appreciate the compliment. Are you enjoying the circus?”

“Yeah!” As they walk, Henry eagerly tells the lady - Emma, his new friend - about all his favorite bits - the animals and the dancers and especially the magician. Emma has a funny little smile when he talks about that, but Henry doesn’t think to ask about it.

When the front gates are finally in sight, Henry tugs on Emma’s hand. “I like it here,” he whispers. “Do I have to go?”

Emma crouches down, her skirts pooling around her and threatening to envelop him too. “Yes, Henry, you have to leave for now.”

“But why? I want to stay here. I could stay with you!”

“Oh, Henry, I’d like that so much,” she tells him, pulling him into a hug. “You need to go for now, until you’re older, but the Circus will always be here for you, okay? You’ll come back.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

Henry dreams of the circus that night, and for many nights after, though the visions his mind conjures up never quite match the mysticism of the real thing.

A week later, the Circus is gone.

(But here, in a small room in a cold, gloomy children’s home - a young boy remembers.)

———

Belle, unsurprisingly, proves to be a determined and reliable correspondent. She’s like his little window into the Circus, even when he can’t be there himself, as is so often the case - especially in those first few years. Five years pass of letters and far-too-rare visits, and yet Killian never feels left in the dark. That’s the magic of what Belle can accomplish with her words - let him feel as if he is present even when he can’t be.

Her missives contain the important things he asked for, of course - reports of new tents and changes in operations and unusual things his opponent, Miss Swan, is doing. They’re useful words, words that help him plan his own next moves. More than that, though, her letters are filled with wonderful little mundane details that make him smile. Belle tells him about the latest book she’s read and how fast the Zimmer twins are growing up and particularly funny anecdotes she’s heard. There are complaints about the weather, and discussions of the interesting or ominous things she reads in the cards. Always, always, there are chronicles of all the many places she has seen as the Circus crisscrosses the world, recountings of wondrous sights and marvelous people. Belle had wanted to see the world, and she’s getting to, five times over. It’s everything she deserves, only wrapped in an unusual and often demanding package.

“It’s not too much, is it?” Killian asks on one of the rare instances their paths cross - in Paris, this time, where Killian has come on an errand for Jefferson, sitting in a little cafe in the shadow of Notre Dame. “I never want to ask more of you than you can manage.”

“Don’t be silly,” Belle says, waving off his concerns like the steam from their coffee. “They’re merely letters, Killian. It’s no great bother - especially for something I’d be doing anyways. I’d be writing to you regardless, Killian - you’re my best friend in the world, and I’ll be terribly put out if you ever stop writing me back.”

And that’s that.

(Most days, Killian believes that Belle is a much better friend than he could ever possibly deserve. He makes a mental note to say something of the sort in his next letter back to her.)

(Of course, he forgets - but then again, he can’t imagine she doesn’t already know.)

———

As a child, growing up knowing she was destined for some magical contest, Emma had always been told that she’d understand what she needed to do once her competition actually started. As an adult, now smack in the middle of it all, she finds that is decidedly not the case. Emma does her best, but it still feels like she has no idea what in the world she’s supposed to be doing.

The Circus is meant to be a canvas for her abilities, hers and her opponent’s; that much is obvious. What exactly that means is… more up for debate. Emma tries to take on more of the Circus in little pieces, bit by bit, so that more of its operations run on magic than on man power. It’s more enjoyable to try and come up with new attractions, drawing upon her imagination to come up with something new. It’s not a particularly quick process - Emma spends a lot of time planning each idea, to make sure she doesn’t miss anything, and it means that she can only create maybe two new tents each year. It’s worth it, though, to wander through the finished product, and see the way her most fanciful ideas have come to life.

(“You need to be doing more,” Regina always scolds her on those rare occasions she makes the effort to visit her student. “This isn’t playtime. You can’t just make the effort when you feel like it, silly girl. Don’t you want to win this?”

“Of course, Regina,” Emma always says, making whatever promises she needs to in order to appease the other woman - all the while knowing that she will continue to act in her own way.)

(For Emma, the best thing about the Circus may be the separation from the woman who took her in. Regina does not often make the effort to check in on how her student is doing - and Emma more than likes it that way.)

There are traces of her mysterious opponent’s work, too. Sometimes it’s in the form of dramatic new attractions, things that push the bounds of possibility and perception; sometimes, it’s with more mundane things, like a wine-sampling tent tucked along a path that Emma is certain never existed before.

His or her greatest feat, however, is on the members of the Circus themselves. As the years pass by, Emma can’t help but notice that time doesn’t affect everyone who brings the Circus to life, with the exception of the Zimmer twins. It’s been more than half a decade, but Granny Lucas is still as hale and hearty as ever. Not a single face has gained extra creases, or a single head extra grey hairs. Something this unknown competitor did has stopped the clock for all of them within the iron fence, even as the grand timepiece above the front gates ticks on.

It’s an impressive piece of magic - one that must take a considerable amount of skill and effort. It’s the first time Emma wonders if maybe this is a contest of endurance, rather than skill.

Regina won’t tell her, however, and Emma puts the matter out of her mind while she turns her attention towards the night’s performances and the germ of an idea blooming in her head. Something fantastical. Something striking - and icy.

There’s always room for imagination and for creation at the Circus, after all - and despite her opponent’s impressive efforts, that’s exactly what Emma is counting on to one day prevail in this competition.

———

The Zimmer twins are special, Emma discovers, and not just in the way anyone who has loved a child claims them to be exceptional. In Ava and Nicholas’ case, it’s true.

There had been something in the air the night the circus opened, the night after the twins were born - something crackling and pervasive and magical. Emma has suspected for years - since that very moment - that the energy was something created by her still-unknown opponent. It’d been like a wave, rippling through them all at once and creating unknown effects. She thinks this might be one of those - powers growing in two children who, by all indication, shouldn’t have received them.

It’s especially noticeable to Emma, who not only has the ability to sense the powers running through their veins, but spends a considerable amount of time with the six-year-old twins. Ava and Nicholas grow up like the beloved niece and nephew of everyone involved with the circus, as though everyone communally agreed to test the proverb it takes a village. While the circus is open to visitors, and the children’s parents responsible for their little cart of carved treasures, everyone else watches the little boy and girl in shifts when they’re not performing - and Emma quickly becomes a particular favorite. She’s never been sure why; maybe they sensed the magic in her own veins, even as babies, and latched onto it. Maybe they simply like the way she thoughtfully humors every flight of fancy. Whatever the case - Emma knows her life would be far less interesting without the two in it.

Ava has magic that likes to shake out and twinkle at the edges of her soft hair, similar in a way to Emma’s own powers. Unusual things happen around her, if you’re paying attention; lost things are more easily found, snacks and sweets turn up in unlikely places, and on one impressive occasion, a pair of fluffy orange and white kittens crawled out from beneath her bunk.

“I can fix that,” she tells Emma innocently one day as Emma moves to throw a vase of wilted flowers out. She hasn’t prodded Ava about her powers before - it doesn’t seem the time to bring to the forefront all the things she can likely do, not when she’s still a little girl, not when Emma’s own childhood was largely sacrificed because of her own powers - but it’s a hard opportunity to pass up. It’s worth demonstrating to Ava, anyways, that her powers are simply a part of her, and nothing to make a fuss about.

“Can you show me?” Emma asks. It’s impossible not to smile when the little girl nods eagerly and furrows her brow in concentration, staring fixedly at the wilted daisies. Slowly but surely, the browned tips disappear, the petals straightening from their shrivelled state and the flowers once again lifting upright to seek the sun.

“That’s very well done, Ava,” Emma makes sure to tell her.

“I know,” Ava replies seriously with all the intensity of a child her age. “Can you do that too?”

“I can.” Emma doesn’t tell people about her magic, usually, but Ava seems like a necessary exception - to let the little girl know she’s not entirely alone in her special, unusual skills.

“I thought so,” the little girl nods sagely. “I could feel it.”

It doesn’t surprise Emma in the least.

Nicholas knows things that he shouldn’t - knows things that no one should know. Somehow, the stars speak to him in a language only he can understand. Nick sees things to come and things that have already happened, and sometimes divulges them readily and at the most unlikely times.

“Is the scary lady with the dark hair your mama?” he asks one day out of the blue, startling Emma before she collects herself.

“No. She was my teacher,” Emma explains.

“Oh.” His question asked, Nick happily goes back to playing quietly with his wooden lion. He’s less prone to chatter than his sister, happy to keep to his own thoughts when Ava isn’t pulling him into some other adventure. Emma rather wonders if it’s not because he has all the things he sees in the stars to keep him company.

“Is there a reason you asked?” she inquires as casually as she can. “Did you… was there something you saw?”

“She hurt you,” is all he’ll say. “Before you were here.”

Something from the past, then - not so immediately alarming, though a sign she’ll need to be vigilant about hiding certain portions of her memories that young, impressionable and trusting minds shouldn’t be seeing.

“It’s alright, Nickie,” she tells him. “She isn’t around to bother me very often.”

He nods decisively. “Good.”

As he turns his attention back to his wooden lion, bringing a tiger in as well, Emma reaches out for the magic constantly humming about her and draws it into herself, directing to play through her mind and cast something almost like her invisibility cloak around her more traumatic memories to keep Nicholas from seeing.

“Is there anything else?” she prods, mostly to test and see if the charm is effective.

Sure enough, the little boy’s face twists into a frown. “I don’t know,” he grumbles. “I can’t see.”

“Ah, well,” Emma replies in a purposefully light tone. “Maybe some other time.”

(She is not entirely sure she means it.)

Truth be told, Ava and Nicholas and their wondrous gifts are a beautiful mystery. All Emma knows is that it’s her responsibility to protect them from more sinister influences, the way she wishes someone had done for her. They deserve that. She deserved that. And she’ll be damned if they’re turned into pawns the way she was.

There are many good things to come out of the Circus - friendship and wonder and home - but Emma thinks the Zimmer twins, and the powers they should be able to wield for good without the interference of people like Regina - are one of the best.

———

There are attractions at the Circus unlike anything you’ve seen before, that you think may only exist within these iron gates. The Circus is a place where the otherworldly and impossible come to life.

This tent contains one such wonder, advertised with simple but mysterious words. This marker swirls and glistens in the moonlight, coaxing you inside to discover its secrets.

Stepping through the tent flap, brisk air tickles at your face - the first sign of what’s to come. Twisting through the interior are all manner of transparent structures, arranged in neat beds. The Ice Garden - just as promised. Each creation appears impossibly delicate and fragile, and by all logic, should be impossible on a warm summer’s night. There are lilies and roses and daisies, sculpted topiaries, winding vines, flowers that remind you of an illustration you once saw of tropical flora. A raised bed of cacti and succulents sprawls along one wall. Opposite, an apple tree, laden with fruit, arches gracefully at the edge of a silver-stoned path. There are little crystalline plaques, too, for all the plants whose names you’d never begin to guess: Shooting Star. Gayfeather. Anemones. Candelabra Primrose.

Every inch, every label, every petal, is made of ice.

Even at the Circus, such a thing should be impossible, This tent may be slightly, inexplicably cooler, but it’s by no means chilled enough to maintain this icy wonder. Though you know you shouldn’t touch, you can’t help but graze your fingers along an icy petal, just to make sure it isn’t cleverly blown glass. It’s a joyous mystery when they come away cold and wet, the sculptures revealed as ice in truth.

There’s no explanation for the Ice Garden - how it can exist at this edge of the Circus, seemingly unburdened by the laws of nature.

The longer you spend in the sparkling, colorless chill, the more you come to realize that beauty doesn’t need an explanation anyways.

———

Killian -

I know it’s not quite the update you were asking for, but I still feel compelled to share - something wonderful and charming and amusing, and so delightfully human. I couldn’t quite resist writing to tell you.

I could be wrong - but I believe a little fanclub has sprung up to trail the Circus. You’ll think it silly, Killian, but I am starting to recognize faces here - not of Circus members (I am not nearly so unobservant, or so rude not to recognize them by name after all these years!) but of visitors. There are a handful I could swear are coming over and over again. I’ll have to ask, next time I notice.

(Not that I can begrudge them of such - I certainly would be doing the same, in their shoes! It’s just that the fortunes get rather repetitive. I should probably let them know that the stars of fate do not change nearly as quickly as they seem to believe…)

There’s a certain awe, or maybe more like peace, that they wear on their faces as they move about the grounds that’s unique from all the other looks I see - almost like they’re coming home. I certainly know something about that - I think so many of us do. It’s wonderful, really - the way these visitors love the Circus so much that they feel compelled to return time and time again, joyously retracing the same paths over and over. It’s clear they love this place the way we do. Isn’t that just what we wanted, anyways? To make something for others to love, to play a part in bringing it to life?

(Yes, I obviously remember that you’re also doing this for your mysterious competition - but I don’t believe someone makes something so beautiful without a generous dose of love as well. Don’t try to deny it, Killian - you know I’m always right.)

I hope you are well; no other news from here. As always, I’ll let you know if anything changes.

Best wishes,

Belle

———

In time, the Circus gains followers.

It was probably inevitable, in a way; as the Circus winds its way across the world, through large cities and small towns, it touches countless lives as it goes, some more impactfully than others. There are those who visit once, and remember it fondly; those who take the opportunity to visit whenever the Circus is in their area, and look forward to it; and those who hold the memories close to one day tell their disbelieving grandchildren.

And then - there are the Rêveurs.

The Rêveurs start almost like a book club - groups of people who meet to reminisce about their favorite attractions, all the sights and smells and tastes that make the whole experience unforgettable. In time, the groups morph; they begin to go to the Circus together, and then travel to visit other Rêveurs when the Circus comes to their area. Particularly eloquent members begin to write into their local newspapers and magazines, beautiful editorials that convey love and wonder and coax thousands of others through the twisted iron gates. It becomes an entire movement, based off of a shared love, of people coming together to experience the Circus over and over again.

It is easy to spot the Rêveurs, if you know what you are looking for. In one of the editorials, an adherent mentions his own preferred way to experience the Circus - to blend in as much as he can, in all black and white, while still setting himself apart from those who bring the experience to life by adding a single touch of red. The trend catches on quickly; wandering the grounds, it is easy to spot splashes of red in the crowd, handkerchiefs peeking from pockets and roses or carnations in lapels and gloves and ribbons in hair.

Some Rêveurs make sure to visit new attractions each time they visit; some prefer to see the same over and over, lingering in the acrobat tent or on the carousel for hours. In a way, they prove that there is no right or wrong way to experience the Circus - there will always be new things to see, and old favorites to return to.

The members of the Circus are aware of the Rêveurs, too. Indeed, there are benefits to being in the same audience with that little flash of red, as performers bring out their best, most dazzling tricks and attempt new daring feats. Watching carefully, one might see a vendor slip a cup of cocoa or an extra serving of toasted nuts to a man or woman with that bare hint of color. All visitors to the Circus are valued, but the Rêveurs are treasured, in a different way, that makes every person involved in the endeavor want to do just the slightest bit more to bring the experience to life in a new way.

The performers and vendors and other members of the Circus are its engine, in many ways - but the Rêveurs just might be its heart.

———

Killian -

I just realized that it’s been a while since my last letter - two months, I believe! Everything is perfectly fine here, I assure you. In fact, I haven’t written because there’s been nothing particularly notable to report. I’ve been watching for new additions, just as I always do, but nothing has appeared. Ah, well. We must be in a quiet stretch on that front.

Meanwhile, the Circus trundles onward, as it so often does. This week, we’re in Morocco. I’ve never been - and oh Killian, it is wonderful. The air is hot and dry and tinged with all kinds of spices that I can’t quite identify. And the food! A little group of us went and wandered in one of the markets, trying things from the stands. I’ve never tasted anything like it. What boring lives so many people lead, happy to stay on their own little island and pretend they know everything. This is so much preferable. The weather is a wonderful respite, too, from the cold I know must be sweeping through now that December is well and truly here.

I do not know if we’ll be home for Christmas; I rather doubt it. I’ll miss our usual holiday feast, but I trust that you’ll have a lovely time with your brother instead. My regards to Liam, as always.

Yours &c.,

Belle

———

Killian is lucky, in a way. After all, he has Belle and Liam, who both know about this competition. They’re his support system, the people who keep him grounded to life outside of all this - especially Liam. Lord knows Mr. Gold has never sought to do that. He doubts Miss Swan has that. Maybe he’s wrong; for her sake, he hopes he is. How lonely it must be to keep that secret, otherwise.

Liam’s apartment is like a sanctuary at the end of a long day, where his brother waits with dark spiced rum and a roaring fire. Sometimes they venture out for dinner; some nights they stay in, and have the landlady send up something to eat. Mostly, Killian enjoys the peace of being in company that never expects more of him than he’s sure he can give. All Liam expects is companionship, and maybe for Killian to come with a nice bottle of spirits every so often. Killian can more than handle that.

(They do not mention that Liam does not seem to age, the same way all those attached to the Circus do not. If his brother has even noticed, he remains blessedly silent on the subject.)

“Do you wonder sometimes,” Liam asks one night, “what would have happened if you hadn’t been selected by Gold? If you had turned him down?”

Killian shrugs. They’re in the middle of their third drinks - just the time for philosophical questions like these. “Not really,” he admits. “What’s the use? It happened like it happened. You wouldn’t have as nice a place as this, that’s for damn sure.”

Liam snorts, and the atmosphere turns more jovial for a few minutes as both men indulge in a drunken laugh before things turn thoughtful again. “If you had to do it all over again… would you?”

“I would,” Killian agrees. “We were a couple of scrappy orphans, no prospects, nothing. I’ve never been given a reason to truly regret it.”

“Then I’m happy for you, brother.” Liam tops off their glasses and raises his drink in a toast. “To good decisions, then!”

“To good decisions,” Killian echoes. “Or at least ones we haven’t yet regretted.”

———

Some attractions are more conventional in name, their promises familiar and comforting in that way that the expected can be. But this is the Circus, and conventional simply doesn’t exist here in the same way.

You enter another tent to discover a hall of mirrors. It is a common enough attraction, at its core, one you have seen in other carnivals and street fairs. But true to the promise of the Circus, this version of such a fun house classic is more than you’ve ever seen. There are tall, full length mirrors, as you’ve come to expect, but small mirrors too, clustered on tables in every nook between their larger counterparts to reflect the lantern light in every direction. The mirrors don’t just distort your own reflection either; in addition to mirrors that cause your reflection to look taller or shorter or wider, there are mirrors to make you look older or younger, mirrors which change your hair, mirrors which duplicate your visage over and over again until you appear to be surrounded by a crowd of your own self in the mirror. There are even mirrors which somehow make it appear that you are someplace else entirely - by the seaside, the water slowly soaking your shoes, or in a fragrant flower garden, or wandering amidst ancient ruins. It is a clever trick, and one you won’t pretend to understand. In your heart, you never want to, for fear of ruining the illusion.

The world feels bright and new under the moonlight as you exit back outside the tent, like the hall of mirrors has helped you find a new way of seeing.

(And maybe, you realize, that’s the entire point.)

———

Killian takes small comfort in the fact that Mr. Gold seems pleased with his efforts. Truthfully, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows that somehow he’s supposed to demonstrate his abilities and magical knowledge on the canvas that is the Circus, but that only tells him so much. Killian adds attractions when he can, crafting things like the Hall of Mirrors in careful dioramas before sewing the plans into his master book, but it’s so hard to know if he’s on the right track.

Mr. Gold has never been particularly involved in Killian’s life, and that doesn’t change now that the competition has well and truly begun. As a child, Killian had been largely self-taught, relying on the books that his teacher provided and the man himself only dropping in periodically to test his knowledge and comprehension. This feels like much the same thing; once a year, Mr. Gold will appear in Killian’s office after one of the Circus dinners, or outside his flat door without warning. There may be a polite inquiry about what Killian is currently working on, especially if the visit occurs in his cramped and ruthlessly organized office; more often than not, there isn’t. Killian will make polite inquiries about his mentor’s health and business, all of which are carefully avoided. Mr. Gold will state that he is satisfied with the work of his student - exactly that, and nothing more.

Killian never expects an expression of pride; after all, he’s never received anything of the sort in all the years he’s been under his teacher’s direction. Theirs has always been a distant relationship, if it can even be called that.

“How will I know I’ve won?” Killian dares to ask on one of these visits. “What do I have to do?”

“You’ll know, dearie,” is all his teacher will say. “Trust me, it will be very obvious.”

It is not.

But Killian works onward, carefully building and manipulating things. Who knows? Maybe, one day, he’ll understand.

———

The relationship between the members of the Circus and the Rêveurs has always been unusual. If it weren’t for the fact that the two groups are inextricably linked, and indeed obviously treasure one another, the interaction almost might be called respectfully distant. There exists an unspoken, but obviously adhered to, separation between the two - that there are Circus folks and there are Rêveurs, and they do not socially interact. Though a vendor or performer might, surreptitiously and casually, mention an anticipated next stop to an awed visitor with that single splash of red, they will not be found together in the light of day, strolling in the public parks or sharing a coffee in one of the cafés. The Rêveurs, largely, prefer it that way; the mystical quality is somehow kept alive when the people of the Circus only seem to dwell within its gates.

Of course, Emma has never been one for formality, or fitting in with the rest of the crowd.

If pressed, she’ll claim that Marco is an anomaly - a man who fits between both worlds, and therefore special. It’s her own kind of loophole in the intricate rituals of the Circus and the Rêveurs.

(No one ever presses, though - to do that, they’d need to know that Emma writes to Marco in the first place.)

Marco, in truth, has been involved in the Circus since the very beginning - though he did not always know it. An Italian by birth, living in Germany and creating exquisitely crafted cuckoo clocks, Mr. Marco Gepetto had been the very man contracted by Mr. Booth, the architect, to build the massive timepiece at the front gates, back when this whole endeavor was still coming together. Marco hadn’t been aware of that, at the time; all he’d known was that an Englishman had offered him a frankly absurd amount of money and next to no direction, only to create something unusual and extraordinary for a circus venue he was helping produce. With his rambling imagination and careful craftsman’s hands, Marco had more than delivered, creating the masterpiece Emma has found comfort in watching many times.

That clock had always haunted him, he’s tried to explain to her many times during their correspondence, his mind running wild wondering exactly where it had been installed. Mr. Booth had sent a note declaring the producers delighted by the result, and Marco had never heard a peep again. Emma cannot blame him for wondering, truly, after all the months he had invested in the clock and all the personal touches he had poured in. The truth, he confides, is that he believed - nay, believes it to be his greatest work, all the while unaware that so many others were similarly touched. It was only years later that Marco had realized the grand project he had unknowingly helped bring to life, when an acquaintance had insisted they visit the traveling circus setting up just outside of Munich.

“It was wonderful,” he gushes to Emma as they walk down the streets of Naples several years later, the older man happily pointing out the location of all the haunts of his younger days. “It was more than I ever could have imagined - and so well situated! So perfectly blended with the rest of the design! I must tip my cap to Signore Booth for his work, and all his compatriots.”

Marco had fallen in love with the circus on that first night, as a venue for his masterpiece and as a creation all its own. It was impossible not to, he had claimed later in the first of many editorials and subsequent letters - it was like the Circus called to him, begging him to uncover all its secrets. It may be the work of several lifetimes; perhaps, that’s just the appeal.

He didn’t particularly mean to spearhead the Rêveurs movement, he’d explained to Emma in one letter. It was simply that he’d fallen in love, with a place and an experience, and wanted to share that with everyone else. It was just that he was the first, the first to not just talk about the Circus but publish his thoughts, that had made him the unexpected figurehead of the group. He’d been the one to come up with the idea of that touch of red, too, though he never admits it unless pressed.

Letters flood in, from across Europe and the globe, wanting to compare experiences and share in the joy of the Circus. Marco gladly responds; many, indeed, become friends. But none is quite like Emma, who he only first knows as a woman with unusual insight into the Circus when she first begins writing, just another person who reaches out after one of his editorials. He assumes she’s just another of his Rêveur correspondents at first, but her thoughts, so carefully measured but fond, strike a chord somewhere in Marco. A friendship blossoms over dozens of letters exchanged, comparing experiences and details noticed and treasured - until, finally, this summit, as Marco had visited an elderly aunt while the Circus docked along the Italian coast.

He takes the revelation that Emma isn’t merely some visitor, but a core member of the Circus, with an unexpected lack of surprise. “I wondered if you were rather closer to the matter than you let on,” Marco explains, patting her hand before tucking it into the crook of his elbow. “I shall consider myself uniquely lucky to have earned your friendship.”

And he has. Marco possesses a sharp mind and an affection for the little details that Emma loves, and an easy-going manner it proves near-impossible not to be charmed by. He fills something like a fatherly role, for Emma - always encouraging and delighted to hear about the latest improvements to her show. She doesn’t tell him that all the magic she does is real - but somehow feels that he understands, anyways. Marco is special like that, and perceptive. Somehow, Emma doubts that he’d be much surprised if she revealed the whole mess of the competition.

Marco may be physically distant from the ever-changing Circus grounds, and may not fully know what’s going on - but he’s a pillar of support, all the same, like Emma has never known.

(She only hopes he isn’t one more thing that’s just too good to last.)

———

Killian -

At long last - an update! I feel like it’s been so long since I’ve had anything to report to you. Not that I don’t enjoy our correspondence, of course - it’s always so wonderful to share with you a little slice of my life here and hear from you in return. I simply feel so much better when I have something concrete to report to you, as we agreed.

I’m stalling, though. The truth is… I’m not entirely sure how to put into words exactly what this latest tent contains. It defies description, I find. The little sign along the path reads ‘Wishing Tree’, but that doesn’t describe much, does it? That could be anything. The Wishing Tree, in truth, is… oh, where do I start? It is somehow both earthly and otherworldly. It is both wondrously fantastical and firmly rooted in the soil. It exists both on this plane and in the world of dreams and aspirations. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that it is a contradiction, in the most spectacular way. Most simply put, if I stop beating around the bush, it is like a living, growing wishing well - but so much better than that, in its symbolism. There are no words to do it justice.

If you couldn’t tell already, Killian, I am insisting that you come and visit the Circus grounds next time it is convenient. There is no other way to fully grasp the delight of this latest addition. If I were not so terribly fond of you, I’d offer a hearty ‘Bravo!’ to your competitor - so count yourself lucky!

Yours,

-Belle

———

The Circus’ tents are filled with wonders - large and small, loud and quiet, and everything in between. What unites all the disparate attractions is a mystical quality - one that’s hard to put into words, but that makes every move and every moment greater and more magical than any similar display you may have seen before.

The particular tent in front of you is tall, but narrow, with a delicate wooden sign carefully placed to the side of the silvery-paved path leading beneath the entrance flap. Wishing Tree, it reads in a painted cursive script. An attraction you’ve never heard of.

Lifting the tent flap reveals just what was promised on the placard - a tall, elegant tree, all in the colors of the circus, with white bark and black leaves. The tree’s branches twist and curve around the tent, creating a structure almost reminiscent of a basket. Where it could be grotesque, the way branches stretch and dip around your body, but the effect is somehow comforting - like the tree protects all that it surrounds. It is otherworldly, in the truest sense of the word, an effect only heightened by the clusters of pearly white candles on each branch. By the entrance sits a small table, with a basket of candles and a crisp white card, embossed with a simple instruction:

Make a wish.

A wish is a sacred thing, and this is a place that respects that. After making your own wish, lighting your candle with one of the many already waiting on the tree’s branches, you place it in the highest nook you can reach where two branches join. There’s a profound symbolism to it all - one wish ignited by another, left to become part of a beautiful mass of light, illuminating this little corner of the world in soft and beautiful light.

(That light will stay with you long after you slip back through the flap of the tent.)

———

At Belle’s urging, Killian makes the trip to see the Circus, and especially this new attraction, when they pass through Edinburgh. It is not precisely convenient - there are multiple trains involved from London, after all - but there’s no real telling when it will next be in the city, and he trusts Belle’s judgement that he must see this Wishing Tree for himself.

She’s right, of course. The Wishing Tree defies all conventional description. There’s a sense of possibility, and hope that just can’t be captured in a simple letter. Killian is sorely tempted to take a candle and light a wish of his own, but ultimately resists. The Wishing Tree isn’t just for some passing fancy - it is for the deepest dreams of one’s heart. As long as Killian is still unsure as to what his own dearest dream might be, it feels more appropriate to refrain from adding his own candle to the glowing branches. There will be time, later.

His immediate business for the evening concluded, Killian takes the time just to wander the grounds. It’s something he hasn’t had the opportunity to do in far too long - there’s always been something to worry about, something to take care of when he comes to the Circus. This is a bit of a chance to try and experience things the way all their unknowing visitors do - to see the beauty, and the wonder, without analyzing anything further. Once he clears his mind, it’s easy to see the things the way that normal visitors do, the way something special sparkles in the very air.

There are still stops to make, of course; Belle would never forgive him if he didn’t pop into her tent. The fortune teller’s tent is made up to be an eye-catching oddity, but there’s still something welcoming about it that always soothes Killian - though maybe that’s just the knowledge of his dearest friend waiting just inside. Just inside the tent flap, dark curtains speckled with silver flecks like stars drape, giving way to a beaded fringe that softly clicks when touched. He’s been known to fiddle with those beads as he sits and talks with Belle, like a soothing sort of fidget. Beyond the beaded curtains sit three comfortable armchairs with a draped table at their center; Belle always does like the romance of reading for couples. There are no crystal balls, or posters about lines on palms; just Belle, the table and chairs, and her deck of tarot cards. Killian knows one of the curtains stretched behind her hides the entrance into her private quarters, where she’s been known to duck for a quick cup of tea, but no one else who didn’t know would see that. The whole effect is decidedly unusual, even mystical, but in a way that feels cozy. It’s like sitting in someone’s living room, sharing a bit of conversation - but the conversation concerns all manner of possible futures, and how they’ll come to pass.

Belle looks like herself, mostly, elegant in shades of white and grey and black and silver. She hasn’t leaned into any of the stereotypes or cliches - no scarf around her head or massive gold earrings or patchwork skirts. She looks like she could be any shop girl, or personal secretary, or even a beloved female relation in her neat dresses in playful patterns, accentuated with pretty bits of lace. There are more formal options in her closet too, he knows, provided by the Circus organizers for her use, but she likes this better; it makes her feel more like herself, and not entirely subsumed by the role she plays.

“You came!” she crows with delight when he ducks his head past the beaded drapery. He hadn’t let her know he was coming, this time, happy to let it remain a pleasant surprise. Not that it matters much - Belle’s face would light up in delight in the same way, even if he had warned her to expect his visit.

“Of course I did, love,” he assures her with a grin. “You insisted, didn’t you? I seem to remember a very commanding letter, telling me I must come see this wishing tree for myself.”

“Yes, but there was always the chance you would get stubborn on me, or get called away on business for Jefferson, and I’d have to send another three to five letters until I finally guilted you here.”

“Alright, I suppose that’s true,” he admits. He does tend to get rather sidetracked much of the time, especially when there is work to be done and new, exciting ideas to explore.

“Instead, here you are! Only weeks after I wrote. A rare instance of agreeability - there’s hope for you yet,” she continues, only to plow forward before he even has a chance to defend himself. “But tell me - have you seen the Wishing Tree yet? Or did you come straight here first? I’m touched, of course, but really, you must —”

“I’m not nearly so foolish as to come here first, knowing you’d demand my own opinions on the tent just as soon as I arrived,” he teases fondly.

“Wise man. Tell me then - what did you think?”

“It’s everything you promised,” he tells her. “Utterly indescribable. I’m glad you insisted I come.”

The beam that graces Belle’s face at that simple agreement is a sight to behold.

“You’ll stay for a few days, won’t you?” she asks - cajoles, really, though Killian won’t take any convincing. “It’s been so long.”

“Of course. We’ll have dinner tomorrow, and you can tell me everything you’ve seen since I last saw you.” It’s an easy promise to make, and one he’ll be even happier to keep.

Though Belle is an expected friendly face, one Killian had already built into his loose plans for tonight, the person he runs into as he wanders down the path away from her little tent is rather more unexpected.

“Mr. Jones,” Miss Elsa Frost smiles warmly - a member of the creative team of the circus, whose eye for details had been invaluable in creating this world so many have fallen in love with. “I certainly didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Nor did I,” Killian admits, executing a short and polite bow of greeting. “Especially not here, so far from London. May I escort you around the grounds, if I may be so bold?”

“You may,” Miss Frost says, slipping her delicate hand into the crook of his proffered arm. “I was just about to go see the magician - Miss Swan, was it? I’m told she should have a performance starting soon.”

“Then it will be my honor to accompany you.”

Though Killian has visited the Circus on several occasions in the past years, on business and to see Belle and to examine the creations of his competitor, he’s avoided this tent. It somehow feels like cheating, to watch Miss Swan like this with full awareness that she’s his competitor when she hasn’t been privy to the same knowledge. That’s not to say he hasn’t been tempted; across all the spiraling stone paths, her magic calls to his own like a siren’s song, drawing him in. Tonight, with a companion on his arm, he finally has the excuse to cave. As they approach her tent as others trickle in ahead of them, Killian makes sure to draw a spell around him to mask his own magic like a cloak, the same one he’d used that first day he’d seen her. Even if he feels guilt at the advantage, Killian isn’t quite sure he’s willing to tip his hand yet, no matter how often he’s been tempted. It’s not the time for such a revelation.

(He doesn’t notice, beside him, the way Miss Frost’s forehead briefly creases as the spell settles around his body; it would not matter if he had, anyways, and the lady is more than happy to hold her tongue on the matter.)

The magician’s tent is small, intimate - a small clearing surrounded by a double ring of chairs. It’s a subtly ingenious way of heightening the drama and the enchantment of the performance: there is, quite literally, nowhere to hide, every angle visible to spectators as they space themselves around the center ring. A lesser magician would never be able to pull it off; it’s lucky, then that Miss Swan doesn’t have to rely on tricks.

Killian is the only one that notices that the tent flap has disappeared, two minutes past the hour. Everyone else is too busy whispering to each other, speculating about where the illusionist is and when the show will start. Unlike the rest of them, Killian waits patiently, knowing that the show has already begun.

No one misses the next trick, as a stream of flame chases around the tent above their heads. Gasps echo from the crowd, in excitement and wonder and no small dose of fear. A handful turn towards where the exit once was, only to discover that the way has been sealed and blocked by chairs during their inattention. Gasps turn to screams, panic quickly catching, until -

A single figure stands from the audience, a woman with dramatic black skirts and what appears to be a men’s top hat. As she moves towards the center of the ring, she casually tosses the hat onto the seat she had occupied - and as if on cue, the streams of fire chase around the tent once more before plunging downwards, downwards into the hat, which somehow serves to contain the flames instead of catching on fire. As the rest of the audience comes back to their senses, turning their attention towards the slight blonde woman now at the center of the tent, she flicks a finger, sending the hat tumbling through the air to land in her hand, where she jauntily tips the black felt back onto her head and takes a dramatic bow.

And like that, the magician begins her show.

The displays that follow exceed Killian’s feeble memory of her audition, those several years ago. There are little miraculous bits she’s still using - the chairs still levitate, and the hat replaces the jacket as it turns into a beautiful black raven to fly about their heads - but there are new bits, too, as items disappear and reappear and visitors discover all manner of unexpected items in purses and pockets. Somehow, it all flows together seamlessly, one display of ability and control into another. At the very end, the fire returns again, chasing around and around and around her body until she can’t be seen anymore —

And when the flames disperse, all on their own, there is no one to be seen at all. The tent flap appears once again, and they all file out, awed in a way they hadn’t expected.

It’s beautiful, mysterious, magnificent - just like the woman herself. And Killian can’t remember why he ever stayed away.

———

Wandering the grounds of the Circus, it is impossible not to notice the statues scattered along the path. Some are monochromatic, fully pristine white or glistening black; some are so vividly realistic, in black and white and flesh tones, as to seem almost lifelike. There are single figures and couples, male portrayals and female, all beautifully detailed and caught mid-action. There is something mystical about them, something you can’t quite put your finger on but know separates them from anything else you’ve ever seen - a feeling that saturates the very air within the iron fencing.

Examining the statues reveals that the life-like state of the statues is no trick, no clever construction of hard stone and a steady chisel - no, these are merely people mimicking statues by standing so still and moving so slowly as to trick the eye. This isn’t some mere street performer, either, like you might see near the buildings tourists frequent en masse. No, this is something more special, more deliberate, more enchanting. It is almost like a dance, performed on a timeframe only the dancer can perceive. Watching closely, it is possible to see the movement - though it will take much patience. It is easier, in some ways, to pay careful attention to the stance of the living statue at the beginning of a set period, and then see how it has changed some minutes later.

It is said that if you wait long enough, the statues will bend enough to pluck an offering from your very hand. However, it takes a certain kind of person, with a certain kind of fascination, to even try. After all, why spend so long examining statues, when there are so many other wonders to see?

(Just before you walk away, you could swear the living statue of a young man winks an eye, all in impeccable slow motion - just one more memory of the Circus to treasure in your mind for years to come.)

———

The Circus returns when Henry is ten.

Ten is a sensitive age; it’s an age where one is still young enough to be excited about simple, playful things, but believe oneself to be too old to show it. Perceived maturity is beginning to be tantamount at this age, as is the idea of being cool.

Henry, for all his efforts (and a good bit of maturity, in truth), is perceived as neither.

“The circus is for babies,” Jack Hastings declares in the schoolyard when Henry makes the mistake of mentioning that he’d seen the tents. A keen observer might find humor in the fact that Jack’s proclamation was made as he and the boys played with a collection of small wooden soldiers; the boys, however, are not yet adult enough to see the irony. “I’m not going.”

“I don’t know,” Henry ventures cautiously. “I think I might like to go. It isn’t very often something like the circus comes to town.”

“That’s because you’re a baby,” Jack taunts. “Henry’s a baby! Henry’s a baby!”

“Am not!” Henry bites back hotly before anyone else takes up the chant.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“Then prove it.”

That’s how Henry finds himself examining the black iron bars that encircle the circus tents, searching for a way to slip in. It’s a dare - to sneak in, in daylight hours, and come back with something to prove it. Henry had agreed in the heat of the moment. Now, with school over, Henry’s got to do the deed, while all the other boys wait back in the schoolyard.

While Henry remembers the Circus practically crackling with its own special energy, things are quiet in the light of day. He supposes that makes sense; the Circus operates from sunset to sunrise, and it’s still an hour until dusk. Its performers need to rest and prepare and the like, like anyone else, and this is the time they get to do that.

After spending far more time than necessary carefully examining the outer fence, Henry finally finds a little out of the way stretch, framed by the back of two tents with no one in sight. The bars will be a tight squeeze, but he sucks in his stomach and holds his breath, and after a little bit of wiggling, manages to twist his way through. Quickly brushing himself off, Henry searches around for something he can bring back as proof for the other boys. The easiest thing to do would be to tear off a bit of fabric from one of the tents, but he struggles to bring himself to do it. The tents feel special, nearly sacred, somehow; it would be the worst kind of crime to ruin them in any way. Maybe, if he ventures a little further in, he can find something else —

“What are you doing?” a girl’s voice sounds, interrupting Henry’s thoughts.

Whirling around, Henry is met by a blonde girl he could have sworn wasn’t there before, about his age, dressed in a black and silver striped dress. He didn’t know people his age were allowed to join the circus; it catches his attention nearly as much as the look on her face. Though her words are accusing, her face only shows curiosity.

That does nothing to temper Henry’s shame, for better or worse. He didn’t exactly count on getting caught, after all. “There was a dare,” he blurts out. “To sneak into the circus.”

“Well, you managed that,” she observes.

“Yes.” The silence sits heavy between them. Henry knows he ought to leave, but also feels like he can’t. “I’m sorry,” he finally cuts in - practically begs - once the quiet gets too much and he can’t take that curious stare anymore. “I can slip back out again, or pay the admission, or —”

That finally makes her smile - a bright, lovely thing that makes something stir within Henry that he’s never felt before. “It’s quite alright, Henry. You don’t need to leave. Nick saw you coming.”

He has many questions about that - how she knew his name, what in the world saw you coming means - but he reaches for the easiest first. “Who’s Nick?”

“My brother,” the girl beams. “Twin brother, really. I’m Ava.”

“It’s very nice to meet you.” It’s obvious that there’s no real point in offering his name; Henry is curiously less concerned about her unnatural knowledge than he figures he really ought to be.

“Likewise,” Ava replies with that same smile, offering her hand for Henry to awkwardly shake.

(For the first time in his life, he’s left wondering if he should have kissed the back of her offered hand instead. Then again - that sounds gross.)

“Come with me,” she commands with a little nod of her head. Even knowing he ought to slip back through the fence, Henry can’t help but follow, pulled along in a way that he doesn’t quite understand. “You picked a good day to come - Nick says the Circus will be closed tonight for inclement weather,” she adds with a hand waved towards the quickly gathering clouds.

“Yes, they just called it,” adds a different voice - another boy, this one also their age and with a remarkable resemblance to Ava. The biggest difference, really, is the boy’s light brown hair, a contrast to her cheery blonde. It’s obvious this is the twin brother she mentioned - Nick, who somehow knows things.

“He was there, just like you said, Nickie,” she laughs. “I don’t know why anyone bothers to doubt you.”

“They don’t know better,” Nick shrugs.

“Nick has a gift,” Ava explains. “He sees things that others don’t - and they always come true.”

“Oh.” Henry isn’t really sure what to say to that, honestly. He doesn’t disbelieve it, really - Ava did know things she shouldn’t have, without what they claim being true - but he’s a little too flabbergasted at it all to say anything more comprehensible. Besides, if such a thing were to be true - well, it makes sense that it’d happen at the Circus. Where else is magical enough to shelter people with such talents?

Ava breezes right past it though. That must be characteristic of her, if the way her brother stifles a smile is any indication. “There’s always a party in the acrobats’ tent whenever the weather is too bad to open. It’s the biggest, you know.”

“You can come too, if you want,” Nick adds.

Despite the tempting offer, Henry frowns. “I’m not part of the Circus, though. Won’t anyone mind?”

“Circus people are welcoming,” Nick shrugs. “They won’t mind.”

“Besides, everyone thinks we need friends our own age,” Ava chimes in.

As the sun starts to creep below the horizon, Henry lets the twins lead him across the circus grounds. He wants to go, really - besides, there’s no reason not to. There’s no one waiting who will care if he doesn’t show up for dinner, or even for bedtime.

(Nick probably already knows that as well; perhaps that’s why neither of them ask whether he needs to be home.)

The inclement weather party is a different kind of marvel than the otherworldly splendor of the open circus that Henry remembers. It seems like everyone is crowded into the tent as raindrops start to patter down upon the canvas, yet somehow the space never seems claustrophobic. Half the collected mass is in their black and white and silver circus clothes, while the other half wears street clothes in all manner of colors and styles. Laughter colors the air, as small groups congregate only to disperse and remingle again. It feels like a family, like a great big reunion, even though Henry is sure they’re not all related.

(Then again, maybe family doesn’t have to be linked by blood and genealogical trees; maybe family is something that can be crafted with those you choose and care for.)

Ava tugs on his arm before he can get too lost in his thoughts and marvelling at the spectacle of the tent. “You should meet Emma,” she says. At her side, Nick nods in genial agreement. “You’ll like her. She’s the magician.”

She doesn’t quite bodily haul him across the tent space, but it’s close. Henry would complain, but it isn’t hurting; he can tell she’s just eager to share her and Nick’s world in a way she hasn’t with outsiders before. At least, Henry hopes she hasn’t shared all this with outsiders before; Henry’s never really had the chance to be special. It’d be a nice change.

Eventually, she halts in front of a cluster of women - three brunettes and a blonde. All smile fondly as Ava approaches with Henry in tow. “Emma, I want you to meet someone!” Ava bursts out as they pull to a stop.

“I can see that,” the blonde chuckles as her companions move away. Henry’s distracted for a moment by the movement of the other three ladies, but forces his attention back to meet the magician’s eyes.

And it’s her - the nice lady from the last time he was here. Henry’s face flushes red as he remembers his youthful question - Are you a princess?. She still looks like a princess, four years later, only in a burgundy dress with her hair in a simple bun instead of her sumptuous black and white dress from the last time they met. He can see the moment recognition sweeps across Emma’s face, and knows she remembers too.

“Henry, was it?” Emma smiles down at him. Somehow, he manages a nod of confirmation. “It’s lovely to see you again, Henry.”

Ava’s face drops a little in disappointment, and a hint of confusion. Seems this is one thing her brother’s visions didn’t reveal - or at least one thing he didn’t share with her. “You know each other already?”

“Only a little,” Henry hastens to explain. It somehow feels very important that Ava know he didn’t deceive her in this way.

“Henry and I briefly crossed paths the last time the Circus was here - what, four years ago?” Henry nods again. Emma and Ava and Nick and the rest of the Circus may have been to so many places since them that they don’t remember exactly how long it’s been, but Henry could probably tell them down to the day if he just had a couple of minutes to think. “He was kind enough to let me escort him back to the front gates. I must say, I didn’t expect to see him here tonight, though… is there anything I ought to know?”

“No!” Ava assures quickly. It’s not remotely convincing; Henry barely manages to smother a smile as she continues her blatant evasion. “We should go get a little something to eat. Come on, Henry, let’s go!”

To be fair, the spread that Ava leads him to - Nick pulling up the rear, laughing - is very impressive. There are all manner of little finger foods to carry with him, savory and sweet, and an older lady the twins call Granny who presides over the whole thing and makes Henry take another sandwich. All of the circus members - and it feels like Henry’s introduced to every single one - seem to treat the twins like a niece and nephew, or maybe even children. There’s an affection in the air amongst everyone that’s almost palpable, and like nothing he’s ever encountered before. It’s hard not to feel a little jealous of his new friends; it’s everything he’s ever wished for himself.

Eventually, he’s dragged across the grounds to what they’ll only call the cloud room after a stop by Emma again for a set of umbrellas that seem to actively repel water.

“It’s my favorite spot,” Nick explains as they shake off their umbrellas just inside the tent flap in a dim antechamber. Henry had barely caught a glimpse of the signage before he’d been bustled inside; Atmospheric Wonders had been less than illuminating a descriptor. “Ava’s is the carousel.”

“I like the animals,” she shrugs. “They’re interesting.”

“Yeah, well, so is this,” her brother quips back. “Henry, look.”

And when Henry does - it’s more than his imagination ever expected.

Somehow, there are dozens of fluffy clouds floating within the confines of the tent, the top of the peaked canvas not even visible for all the clouds in the way. They come in all sizes, all winding around a central, silvery structure with a platform at the top and a slide spiraling back down to the ground. Somehow along the stretch from the ground to the indiscernible peak, the stripes shift into a night sky gently dappled with stars. It’s mystical, and marvelous, and unlike anything he’s ever imagined.

Henry has barely processed what he’s seeing before Nick takes a flying leap onto a cloud hovering at chest height. Miraculously, it somehow holds his weight, bobbing gently in the air under the change of balance but showing no signs of capsizing.

“It’s really very sturdy,” he calls from his perch, grinning with glee. “There’s nothing to worry about, I promise.”

Carefully, Henry steps onto a different cloud hovering about his knees; that’s less distance to fall if there’s any problem. Under his feet, the cloud isn’t exactly firm, or stable - it’s more like if you try to step onto a mattress - but he can also feel that he’s not at risk of crashing down. Somehow, it’s just as safe as Nick promised.

(How did he miss this before? Now that Henry’s here, he’s not sure he ever wants to leave.)

Ava clambers up onto a cloud somewhere between him and Nick, abandoning grace to pull herself to standing. “It’s a newer tent,” she explains, brushing her skirt free of imaginary cloud dust and casually reading Henry’s mind. Maybe her brother isn’t the only one with special powers of sight. “It only went up a couple months ago, right, Nick?”

“January,” he confirms. “Just after the new year’s party.”

“Not a lot of people know about it yet - but it’s one of our favorites now. Nick and I like to come on the nights we’re not busy with other things.”

Across from them both, Nick obviously grows impatient with all the chatter, leaping to another, higher cloud. “Race you to the top!” he yells back, quickly becoming obscured from sight as he scrambles higher and higher.

Ava stretches her hand across the divide to help him forward. “You’re going to love it,” she beams.

Henry takes her hand, gladly, and lets a smile crease his face even as hers stretches impossibly wider.

He does love it, just as she promised. The view from the top is spectacular, like something out of a fairy tale, an impression only magnified by small tufts of cloud still hovering around, inviting them to lounge. It would be a good place just to sit and think, Henry thinks, if you lived with the Circus and had that chance.

Time passes both quickly and slowly at the top of the tower as the three of them sit and talk for what must be hours. Henry feels as if he’s known the twins forever, not just a night - like he fits with them, somehow, in a way he never has with his schoolmates or the other children at the Home, and can’t explain.

(It’s the same feeling he remembers from the first time he visited the Circus, four years before. Of belonging. Of home.)

All too soon, things much end, however. As the conversation encounters a rare lull, Henry sighs heavily, knowing he must draw this to a close.

“I have to go,” he tells his companions - now friends, he thinks - with the kind of regret that’s practically palpable.

Ava nods sadly; Henry scrambles to his feet to help her do the same. It’s what a gentleman would do. “We know. But this was lovely.”

“And you’ll be back,” Nick says decisively. “I know it.”

It’s not worth arguing with the boy with a gift.

Getting down from their perch takes a little more boldness. Technically, there is a slide they could all take advantage of, but Nick won’t let that stand.

“You’ve got to jump, Henry,” he cajoles. “It’s so much more fun. You feel like you’re flying!”

“More like falling,” Henry mutters. Even if he knows that Nick wouldn’t try to hurt him, like some of the boys at school might, looking down from this height makes his stomach turn.

Suddenly, a soft hand slips into his own. Ava, who slipped up beside him while he was distracted by the height. “We’ll do it together,” she promises, and somehow - Henry finds himself nodding.

Nick lets out a wild whoop and throws himself off the platform, gleefully tumbling down and down. Ava squeezes his hand tight, just the once, and then she’s running too, bringing Henry with her as they leap. It feels like he’s left his stomach up at the top, but it’s a little freeing too. At the bottom, a particularly soft cloud cushions their fall, surrounding them like a hug. Henry even finds himself laughing along with Ava and Nick as they pick themselves back up.

Ava walks him back to the main gates under the marvelous umbrella, Nick letting them go on their own after offering Henry a jolly wave goodbye. The door in the iron bars opens without even a squeak, letting the both of them slip through.

“I don’t want to leave,” Henry confides, the words spilling out of him almost without permission. “I don’t want to go back to the real world out there.”

“You’ll be back,” Ava promises. “We’ll see each other again - I promise.”

He wants to believe her - he does. But it’s a mean world out there, and he’s long since learned that nothing is guaranteed, and —

Ava presses up on her toes to drop a quick kiss on Henry’s lips - his first. It’s just a little peck, really, but it makes them both blush and sends something hopeful in his soul soaring above all the other negativity.

“To seal it. The promise,” she explains.

No explanation was needed, really - not to the perfect ending to this dream of a night.

(He does not return to the Circus this time, the Sisters punishing him with extra chores when he sneaks back into the Home long after bed checks. Though he would like nothing more than to return back to the Circus and his new friends, he somehow can’t regret it. Every moment was worth it.

Later, he finds a single glove, white with shiny black buttons, tucked into his pocket - proof for his dare. He never shows it off to the other boys; the little scrap of fabric is too personal, and too precious. Instead, he tucks it into the old cigar box he keeps all his treasures in, amongst the perfectly round stones and colored bits of glass and a brightly colored birds’ feather. Let them think he never managed it. They’ll forget soon enough anyways.

We’ll see each other again, Ava had promised - and Henry intends to wait.)

———

There’s a new attraction at the Circus again, Killian - the most wonderful carousel. There’s the usual carved horses, of course, all wonderfully detailed, but there’s all manner of other creatures too - giraffes and elephants and a particularly clever ostrich. There’s even some mythical creatures too. I’m particularly fond of the gryphon, though I suspect you might prefer the dragon. There’s even a bench seat with a kraken twining around it! It’s truly charming; the kids love it, obviously, but it’s wonderful to see the delight of grown men and women too. I believe I saw a young couple squabbling over the cow yesterday; the lady won, of course. Wise man.

If you hadn’t guessed already, the carousel is very obviously a creation of your winsome competitor. The ride travels through an enclosed portion at the back, ostensibly to parade the figures and their riders past a scrolling display of landscapes; however, having ridden the thing myself (I couldn’t resist, Killian! And obviously chose the gryphon, though I was tempted by a polar bear), it’s obvious that this tunnel somehow bends reality, stretches the track much further than it should ever go. Magic is obviously at play, here, though I believe the visitors are too enthralled (and, as usual, too oblivious) to realize.

There’s something else a little unusual about the carousel: Mr. Booth’s part in bringing it to life. He was here in Brussels to oversee installation, or I might not have believed it. You know as well as I that usually, new installments just… pop up, without explanation. His craftsmanship is evident in the construction, too, if you know to look - the smooth curves and the intricate carvings and the way the peak of the striped roof stretches up towards the sky. It’s lovely, really, and undeniably a joint effort between Mr. Booth and Miss Swan.

Does that mean he’s aware of her abilities? I can’t say for certain, but I have trouble imagining otherwise. It could be interesting to see if you could enlist him in a similar effort - though of course, that’s entirely up to you. I’m merely reporting your opponent’s most recent move on the chessboard, so to speak.

(Do come see the carousel, though; I promise you won’t regret it.)

Affectionately yours,

Belle

———

Killian folds Belle’s latest letter carefully, considering her words as he meticulously files the pages away, just as he always does. The new carousel sounds beautiful, of course; Miss Swan’s creations always are. The fact that she enlisted August Booth to create it captures his attention the same way it had Belle’s. That’s something he never considered - drawing upon others’ skills to create something that is not entirely mechanical, but not fully dependent on magic either. He should have thought of it sooner - after all, the Circus as a whole operates in a similar way, weaving enchantments in amongst all the physical manpower needed to bring the whole thing to life. It sets Killian’s mind running in other directions, other ideas that could be brought to life in the same way. And if Booth is aware of the things Miss Swan can do… perhaps he can serve as an intermediary, of sorts, in a way that could bring this competition to a new level.

But Killian is a patient man, a planner through and through. It’s his greatest advantage in his employment and in this game. So before he lets his imagination run away with him, drafting things that can never come to fruition, he calls upon Booth at his office to test the waters of what is possible.

“I didn’t expect to see you, Jones,” the other man says, smiling genially as he comes out from around the back of his heavy wooden desk to offer a handshake of greeting.

“It was a bit of an unplanned visit,” Killian admits as he seats himself in the offered chair.

“Well that’s quite alright. What can I do for you? Is this about the Circus, or are you finally looking to build something more comfortable than that little flat of yours?”

“It’s about the Circus.” Killian lets his gaze glance around the room before he speaks further, considering his next words. Though the furniture in the office at Booth’s architecture firm is heavy, with dark wood and intricate carvings and tall bookshelves lining two walls, the whole thing manages to avoid a feeling of claustrophobia due to a stretch of tall windows along one wall. A panel of stained glass is installed in the middle, with beautiful swirling patterns in all kinds of colors. The whole effect is a little whimsical, while somehow still ordered and elegant. In that moment, Killian can see exactly why August Booth was chosen as a partner to produce the Circus.

Drawing his attention back to Booth, Killian finds the man patiently waiting for him to start speaking, prompting him to gather his thoughts. “I understand you had a hand in creating a new attraction - a carousel.”

“Ah yes,” August smiles. His tone is fond, almost like a parent speaking of a favorite child. “Marvelous, isn’t it? Though, of course, I can’t take full credit - or even most of the credit, really.”

“So you’re aware of others’... unusual contributions, shall we say.”

Booth makes an amused, guttural noise from the back of his throat. “I may be a skilled designer, but not nearly enough to create space that’s not there. And I’m not nearly oblivious or egotistical enough to believe I can. Besides, Miss Swan was involved from the beginning. The carousel was her idea.”

That’s one question answered. “So how much did Miss Swan tell you about her… abilities, I suppose? And her influence on the Circus?”

“A rudimentary explanation, I believe - just as much as I needed to agree to assist her. All her illusions are real, true magic, and she’s engaged in a competition to be played out at the Circus.” Realization suddenly lights his eyes. “I suppose that makes you the competitor, then? She didn’t seem to know who they were.”

“Aye, I am. And I would appreciate it if you would keep that fact between us. This particular game doesn’t precisely encourage familiarity between contestants.”

August waves him off. “Of course. Now, are you here just to talk about the carousel - or do you have something else in mind?”

“You read my mind,” Killian says, letting a smile spread across his face. “I have an unusual idea, one that I think you can be of assistance with.”

———

Emma should have known that her opponent would hear of the carousel, and of her partnership with Mr. Booth. What she hadn’t expected was for Mr. Booth to send her a letter, detailing an idea her competitor had brought to him.

One they want her involvement in as well.

It’s a simple idea, on the surface - a maze of rooms. Its brilliance is in how it allows the two of them to interact and compete directly as they build off of each others’ ideas. Once the maze is brought to life, once visitors enter the tent, they reach a hallway lined with doors, each leading into other rooms with other doors, and so on. Some will be hidden; some will be obvious. It is entirely up to Emma and whoever she is competing against to build out each room, testing the limits of imagination and reality and magic.

It’s like a puzzle on a massive scale - each piece fitting into others which in turn fit into others. It’s fascinating to see the things her opponent comes up with over time - creations that play with structure, with scale, like golden bird cages and a room where everything appears so large as to dwarf the viewer. She treasures exploring each one, finding all the hidden doors and discerning the way everything fits together.

Emma has a niggling feeling that this is not exactly how their competition is supposed to play out - but as she opens another door, she can’t bring herself to care.

———

Maybe it’s ridiculous - but Killian feels like he comes to know the lovely Miss Swan a little better through the room maze and each addition she crafts from her imagination.

She focuses on creating an atmosphere, he finds - the little things that make each space feel like an environment, rather than a room. There are lush green jungles and arid desertscapes and the illusion of a lovely rose garden. He wonders if she feels trapped; all the illusions of open spaces make him think she might.

He can tell she truly loves the circus in all the little details she weaves in, too. It must take her incredible effort, but it’s worth it to see how leaves glisten with dew and the barest scent of earth or flowers tickles his nose and heat or chill dances along his skin. There’s pride to be found in the work she creates - all the things that take each room of the maze from the illusion of a space into something tangible and believable as its own natural world.

She’s smart, too: the hatches and doors out of her rooms are cleverly hidden, and often require searching for a key first. Killian thinks she might be trying to stump him, for all the time he spends searching for the way out in some rooms. Would she laugh if she could see him? Is he reacting in exactly the way she anticipated, or even intended?

(Would he even mind?)

He’s not such a fool as to fall a little in love with his opponent in the rooms that she builds, but he does delight in receiving these little insights to her personality. It reminds him that Miss Swan is more than his opponent - she’s a person, and one he’d love to know under other circumstances.

Only time will tell whether that makes things easier or harder.

———

To no one’s particular surprise, Regina does not approve of the maze.

“This is a waste of your time,” she proclaims to Emma on one of her rare (and never welcomed) visits. “You’re supposed to be competing, not… collaborating.” She spits out the word like it’s a profanity; who knows, it likely is in her mind. Emma wouldn’t be entirely surprised.

“Isn’t this just a different way of competing?” Emma asks. Truthfully, she doesn’t see the fuss. “I’d think it would be easier to compare, when we have to share the same structure. Well, even more than we usually do.”

“This is not how things are supposed to work,” Regina snaps. “I didn’t train you to be so stupid about this, Emma. You know better - this is… frivolous!”

“I like it,” Emma says, letting her voice display a quiet defiance. “I think it’s wonderful.”

That’s why she’d led Regina to the maze in the first place, instead of simply taking tea in her compartment as usual - a little childish thought that maybe her mentor would see all the careful crafting she had put into each chamber. That maybe she would appreciate this unusual way in which Emma was stretching her abilities beyond what she thought was possible, challenged by the necessity of working around someone else’s ideas in the most literal, compressed way. That maybe she would be proud.

Pride, at least for others, is not something that’s in Regina’s vocabulary, however - something that Emma has never been more aware of than in this moment, standing amongst the hedges of a shifting maze within a maze. It’s an ever-changing creation, one that Emma had been particularly proud of.

It’s easier simply to wind their way to the closest exit than to attempt to convince Regina any further; Emma has long since learned her mentor is an immovable force. If Regina hasn’t been swayed by the creativity and brilliance of seeing the maze in person, no words will do it. So they’ll exit the maze and slip back into the backstage rooms, where Regina can berate her about her work ethic and how it seems like Emma doesn’t even want this while still failing to offer any concrete details or advice, until Emma can make her escape to perform another show, displaying her abilities to a kinder audience. That’s how these things always seem to go, and now that her foolishly hopeful little bubble has been broken, there’s no reason they won’t go that way again.

Then again, there’s alway room for surprises and changes from the norm; Emma should know that, after so many years here at the Circus. As they exit into the chilled night air, Emma - and more importantly, Regina - clearly didn’t expect to run into Mulan as the sword swallower wandered back towards her own lodgings.

Most days, Emma almost forgets this other source of magic buzzing around the circus. It’s like white noise, almost; something Emma is subconsciously aware of, and can focus on when she chooses, but fades into the background most of the time. They’re friendly, but not quite friends - happy to spend time with one another, but rarely seeking each other out. Mulan is closer with Ruby, or with Belle. It’s easy, in that way, for Emma to forget the higher force that binds the two of them together - Regina herself, who has been a teacher to both of them.

It is visibly obvious the moment they catch sight of one another: both straighten to their most rigid posture, Regina’s face shifting into something even more haughty than her usual mien, and Mulan shifting to something cool and dangerous. The air between them practically crackles with restrained magical energy, sending the hair on Emma’s arms to stand on end. Emma sends a silent thanks to whomever may be listening that this meeting occurred firmly in public; while the confrontation is primed to be bad as it is, she wouldn’t relish being forced between them in a private setting. Or a dark alley.

For all of the danger sparking the air, it is almost anticlimactic when each party finally finds their words. “Regina,” Mulan says, coolly polite and with the barest incline of her head. Regina only jerks her chin in a broken nod in response.

And then they’re moving their separate ways, the whole thing over. Maybe it’s better that way; it would be a pity if the Circus was razed to the ground, after they’ve all put so much effort into the venue. There’s a story there, though, one Emma doesn’t know but can’t help but wonder about. She’ll have to ask Mulan, later; she knows very well that asking Regina will bear no fruit.

(She never does, of course, just another intention lost to time and her mentor’s berating. Not that it would have done any good, anyways. Mulan keeps her secrets locked as tight as the most impressive safe.)

———

Emma knows Belle, of course - they’ve both been with the Circus for more than a decade, and Emma isn’t entirely self absorbed. They’re even friendly, in that way two people who work together but aren’t particularly close can be. But never once in all that time can Emma remember actively seeking the other woman out - for her skills or anything else.

Belle’s particular skill unsettles Emma, she supposes. It feels a little hypocritical - Emma has magic, after all, she shouldn’t feel so uncomfortable about fortune-telling. There’s something about the talent to see glimpses of the future, however, that has never sat quite right in her mind - that has always made her ever so slightly uncomfortable. It’s not Belle’s fault; Emma knows as well as anyone that sometimes, these kinds of gifts choose their recipient instead of the other way around.

There’s something in the air, though, something Emma can’t quite identify. There’s a niggling feeling of anticipation, like a reverse deja vu, where Emma knows something is coming, but doesn’t know what or how or when. She’s never been particularly good with that kind of uncertainty, searching for control wherever possible. It’s that search for control that brings her to Belle, seeking answers anywhere she can find them. Unusual times call for unusual measures, or some other such cliché.

Emma goes at night, while the Circus is open, in between her own performances - just like any other querrant. It’s a simple thing to blend into the crowd - after all, no one is expecting the illusionist to wander among them, especially in a dark coat and skirts turned crimson red with the touch of a finger. It takes no magic at all to slip down the silvery paths and duck into a tent labeled Fortune Teller: Feats of Fate and Prophecy.

Belle snaps into character as soon as Emma brushes past the beaded curtain welcoming visitors into her space, only to relax again as she recognizes Emma’s face. “What a lovely surprise,” she comments with a pleased smile. “Sit down, sit down. What can I do for you, Emma?”

“I was hoping for a reading,” Emma explains as casually as possible - as if this is no great favor. Still, it shoots the brunette’s eyebrows up towards her hairline in surprise.

“I must say, I didn’t expect that,” she comments. “I don’t believe you’ve asked such a thing of me before.”

“I haven’t felt the desire before.”

“Ah. You must face some kind of crossroads, then.”

“Truthfully, I am not even sure enough to say that much,” Emma admits. Summoning a few coins into her hand, she pushes them across the table - payment for services rendered, as is typically custom in Belle’s little nook. “I hoped you might be able to shed more light on the matter than I can currently discern.”

Belle pushes the coins back. “Keep your money. Consider this a gift for a friend. Now, shall we?” As soon as Emma nods, Belle begins shuffling the cards - a quick, hypnotic motion, as each card flies past again and again. Once she’s satisfied with the shuffle, she carefully fans the cards across her table, face down. “Pick a card to represent yourself, if you please.”

Emma contemplates her options; truthfully, the tarot has never called to her, and this moment is no different. After some short examination, she selects one barely visible towards the left-hand side.

Belle chuckles a little as she turns the card over - and Emma can see exactly why, as soon as she sees the card. The Magician.

“Now, this card often represents a plethora of abilities or options you may not be fully aware of, especially in the face of impending change or disaster,” Belle explains. “And that may still be the case. However, under the circumstances, I suspect this card is supposed to be taken rather more literally in this particular reading, Madame Magician.”

Belle shuffles again, before cutting the deck into three portions and directing Emma to select one. Replacing the selected stack back at the top at the pile, she quickly doles the cards back out, in practiced patterns and an unexpected elegance. There are flashes of cups and swords on the cards between them, interspersed with picture cards of women and wheels and a couple reaching for one another.

(Emma does not think she has the time for whatever a card like The Lovers may symbolize.)

“I see what you mean,” Belle says after a long moment. “There are significant changes here - in circumstance, in thinking, and in feelings. Whatever knot you have been working at in your mind will begin to unravel - one change that will spur many more. Now these changes - they seem imminent.”

“How imminent?”

Belle cocks her head, examining again. “There’s rarely an evident timeline that I can see,” she admits, “but I would wager in the coming weeks or months.”

Emma nods. It’s not really an answer - but it feels like validation, somehow. Like someone else can sense that something is on the horizon.

“Now, I asked about a crossroads, before we started,” Belle continues. “The changes that are coming - they will not be your crossroads. This will not be the moment you have to make that decision. But each change will compound upon each other until it leads you to that crossroads - a choice you’ll make that will change everything, again. It will not be for some time yet, but those seeds are being sown now.”

Emma nods slowly, taking it all in. There is an odd comfort in Belle’s words, even as Emma tells herself not to put too much stock in it. “Thank you,” she finally says. “Is there anything else you can see?”

Belle shakes her head ruefully. “Not that I can see now, no. But I’ll keep looking. Sometimes, these things make themselves clearer given a few hours to think on them.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

Emma ponders the words as she emerges back into the night. A momentous change to come seems inevitable - both from her instincts and Belle’s own readings. All that’s left to do is brace herself and face that change with an open mind and courage.

The weeks and months to come may change everything - and Emma intends to be ready for it.

———

We’ll be back in England next month - just in time for the rains, I’m sure. As if they ever stop. I anticipate many inclement weather parties in my future, and I don’t even need the cards to tell me that.

Speaking of which - be on the lookout for something, Killian. Change is in the cards and in the air. Something is on the horizon, and I think it’s best you be ready for whatever that might be.

We’ll have tea one afternoon next time I’m in town, and you can buy me an absurd amount of books. I have several recommendations to give you from the last batch. I expect you’ll feign interest and the time to read, just as always, but I don’t particularly care. You’ll do it because I’m your friend, and you love me.

Yours &c.,

Belle

———

That same feeling of anticipation, of something in the air, only intensifies when the Circus returns to London for a short stretch. It’s been growing ever since Emma spoke with Belle, becoming more urgent as time goes by. A breaking point must come soon - though what that will herald, Emma doesn’t pretend to know. There’s no use continuing to worry over something that will only reveal itself at the right time.

Emma throws herself into rediscovery instead, wandering all those places she used to know. It’s hard to call London home, even though she grew up here - that designation has only ever belonged to her cramped and cozy little train compartment - but the city is familiar in a way that’s comforting. She spent the first 24 years of her life here, after all; even trapped under Regina’s thumb, she was able to discover little corners of the city all her own, park benches and cafe tables and backstage theater rooms.

(She doesn’t intend to visit her benefactor during this stop, if she can at all help it; bringing Regina into things always invites trouble that Emma would rather avoid.)

It’s raining on their first day in town, of course, like her own meteorological welcome. Emma smiles a bit at the thought of the clouds and raindrops and wind whispering a hello - though truthfully, she’s seen odder things. She’s orchestrated odder things. The soft patter of raindrops on her umbrella is almost soothing as she walks down the cobbled streets to a favorite remembered cafe. Emma loves the Circus with every fiber of her being, both as her creation and as her home; still, sometimes it’s nice to escape for an afternoon and enjoy the anonymity of people watching or reading a nice book. Some days, she wants that distance; to be just another face in the crowd.

The afternoon passes quietly and uneventfully with her tea and scone and a silly novel. It’s easy to blend into this little corner of London, tucked into the corner of a quiet street off the main road. Emma has always liked this place, and tries to visit whenever she’s in the city; it’s something about the way that light dapples through the wide windows at the front, always perpetually just the slightest bit grimy, like dirt had accumulated just as soon as some poor soul had taken the efforts to clean them off. The used bookstore just across the street is a wonderful bonus too, where Emma sometimes finds unexpected treasures. Here, she can be just anyone else - no expectations, no grand fate. Just a woman at a weathered table.

All too soon, the clock on the wall chimes 4pm, prompting Emma to gather her things to leave. This time of year, even though spring approaches, the sun still sets early, heralding the opening of the circus’ wide gates. Emma is lucky enough to set her own performance hours during the night, generally aiming to do three or four shows in an evening; however, it’s still important that she’s fully ready for the evening by the time the first visitors trickle into the grounds, regardless of the fact that she won’t make her own dramatic entrance for at least another half hour.

As she bustles out the door, she mentally runs through her checklist for the night of tricks she might like to perform. That’s the freeing thing about performing with real magic; not having to depend on mechanics means that she can improvise, that every single show can be different as she feeds off the audience and her current whims.

She’s so busy running through her possibilities for the night that she doesn’t notice she’s grabbed the wrong umbrella - not at first, at least. It’s just one amongst a cluster of black fabric in the umbrella stand, each nearly identical to each other. Emma’s put a special charm on hers that repels the rain; that slight buzz of magic is the only thing that differentiates hers from all the others. She picks it out by the feel alone, absentmindedly, before exiting into the deluge.

Something is off, though - something she realizes the further she walks from the cafe and comes back to full awareness. The charm on the umbrella is wonderfully effective, as always, but there’s something… wrong about the magic. Emma’s own magic has a particular warm feel to it, one that largely fades into the background of her mind until she barely notices it. This, though… the buzz continues, like a pricking or a tickle under her skin. Foreign.

Not hers.

Realization draws her up short. This umbrella - clearly imbued with powerful magic - magic like her opponent would possess - in the cafe at the same time -

A polite clearing of the throat causes Emma to whip around, revealing an unexpectedly familiar face: Jefferson’s assistant, the handsome one, who she remembers lurking at the edges of ballrooms and the back of theatres and in the densest of crowds. Jones - something with a K. Or a C? Kelvin? Carson? No —

“Excuse me, Miss Swan,” Killian Jones smiles warmly, “but I believe you have my umbrella.”

#cssns20 #captain swan #cs ff #captain swan ff #A Fate Woven in Thread and Ink #magicians!CS #The Night Circus #they finally meet guys!#twenty some odd years later #also henry is real cute #and i just want you to know that

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elenathehun · 4 years

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Mito/Sasuke either writer's preference or "You did all of this for me?"

Or: the story where Mito survives not just husband, her brother-in-law, and her entire people, but also her successor.

~~~~~~

“You did all of this for me?” The boy asks, an uncertain note in his voice. The room isn’t much - just a place to roll out his bedding and sleep - but it can be personalized later. It’s far better than returning the boy to the blood-soaked grounds of the Uchiha estate. The little boy - because that’s all Sasuke really is, just another innocent little boy, another sole survivor of a terrible, terrible massacre - will not be returning there, not now, perhaps not ever. It might be best to sell the land, or re-purpose it to some kind of investment property after it’s been cleansed and purified. A charnel-house is no fit place for a child to return to, and Mito can’t quite believe that Hiruzen was about to acquiesce to Danzo’s foolish idea, especially given his part in the whole disaster.

Instead, Sasuke will remain under her care until he’s ready to rule himself. Who better than a Founder of the Village to raise the boy and ensure his loyalties are correct? Ah, but Mito is too old for this, or at least, she should be. Danzo had certainly made that argument, much good that it did him. Hiruzen is certainly flagging in his second turn as their ruler. But holding the Fox for so long had…changed her, emphasized certain parts of her being that would have rusted, otherwise. So here she stands, the Lady Mito, hale and hearty with the energy of a woman half her age, the undisputed leader of both the Senju and the Uzumaki, those that still lived. And now proxy for the Uchiha, a clan of one. No one will gainsay her word, not yet. Not ever, if she has her way.

“Yes, I did this for you,” Mito finally replies. "But you should not think of it as a favor. It is my duty to care for you until you reach your majority, Lord Uchiha. It is only what you deserve.“

Sasuke’s face crumples in grief. Mito takes no pleasure in causing him pain, but this is a wound that should be lanced immediately, lest it poison him like she had seen it poison so many others.

Mito doesn’t think of Tsunade. She doesn’t allow herself that weakness. Sasuke masters himself quickly, for a boy who was only ever the spare. Then again, she had known something of Fugaku and Mikoto, at least before their travesty of a betrayal. They would not have cossetted even a second son, any more than Butsuma had cossetted Tobirama.

“Now, let me introduce you to my heir. In an hour we’ll attend dinner together,” she tells him. She can rely on Naruto to distract the boy until then. Kushina’s boy has a light touch, when he wants to use it. He won’t do Sasuke any harm.

“Will anyone else be attending?” Sasuke asks, less cautious now that he knows her a little better. They only just met when she took custody at the hospital.

“Yes, a former apprentice, Jiraiya of the Legendary Three,” Mito allows herself a smile, thin and cold. "He is trusted by me, and is Naruto’s godfather besides. I will be leaving on business in three days, and he will remain to care for you both in my absence.“

Sasuke doesn’t question that, but he is most likely exhausted. He was only released from the hospital a half-day ago, and his surgeon had indicated that it would take time, patience, and extensive therapy to regain his health after what his brother had done to him. The psychic torture alone had been horrific, let alone the chakra drain from activating the Sharingan for the first time at such a young age.

Mito herself believes that his recovery will be considerably aided by the sight of his brother’s decapitated head. She’s known far too many Uchiha over the course of her life to think otherwise. And Itachi is far too dangerous to allow his freedom, or his life. It’s been years since Mito has seen work as thorough as the Massacre. In truth, at 85 years old, she’s probably the only person who still remembers the horrors of the Warring Clans Era as an actual participant, when work like that was common and expected. War to the knife, knife to the hilt; yes, she remembers the old ways very well. Danzo does not, and he will die tonight, after darkness falls.

Mito is now Sasuke’s guardian, and that is true in all matters, including his vengeance.

#shipping prompts #naruto #the author as tyrant

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prhyst · 3 years

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interview~

He was getting cold feet.

Cold hands too.

If he wasn’t mistaken, even the tip of his nose was chilled despite the temperate light breeze rustling through the monastery town. Rhys shook his head at himself, hands clasped within the sleeves of his flowing white robes. Things were different now, he was different; yet his steps were haunted by the weighted memories of rejection and failure, the sympathetic looks on laborers and guardsmens’ faces as they gently sent him off, and his parents’ assurances that he was a good lad, they were still proud, yet he couldn’t help but wish he could contribute.

Things were different with the Greil Mercenaries, but what of now, on his own?

The light tapping of his staff against his back in time with his stride helped ground him as he entered the monastery proper. He was a mercenary. If he earned his keep once, he could do it again. He was no child. His gifts had developed. He forcefully reminded himself of his own credentials as he hiked up a couple flights of stairs to his interview. For all the forts, fortresses, and castles he’d stormed into, the monastery was still a mix of stimulating and intimidating that swirled together into awe. His eyes darted around, trying to take it all in. He’d been inside once before to inquire after the position, but could still foresee himself getting lost.

The tinted glass of the greenhouse was a welcome sight. At least the tedious harvesting of herbs could be done more efficiently than foraging around plants that were left to the whims of wildlife. He was so preoccupied he found his destination before realizing it.

Out of nerves or a need for circulation, he was unsure, Rhys rubbed his hands together and took a deep breath, reaching out to rap his knuckles lightly on an office door.

“Come in!”

Rhys steadied himself and entered with what he hoped was a hale a hearty complexion, a smile coaxed onto his face. “Hello. I’m Rhys, I’ve been staying in the town just south of the gates. This is where my interview is, right?”

“Yes. Sit down, please.”

Rhys settled himself in the chair across from the interviewer.

“You said you’re interested in a teaching position?”

“Yes. My specialty is white magic.” Rhys kept his tone light. “It’s my only strength on paper, actually. I was a member of a mercenary group as their medic.”

“You would be willing to go into combat?” The interviewer asked smoothly with only a slight pitch up in surprise.

Rhys nodded eagerly, nerves giving way to enthusiasm. “Yes, absolutely! I’ve been fond of the idea of teaching for years, but I feel best when I’m where the action is. Better to heal someone right away than have them suffer complications on the way to the infirmary. I’ve had years of practice.”

“Experience is a definite benefit, but just to be clear, you only use magic?”

It was bound to come up. “Yes. I have difficulty even lifting an axe.”

“So you can’t use armor either?”

No, he’d had Gatrie and Titania to hide behind. Rhys winced. “No. Not heavy armor. Just use of terrain and keeping everyone safe saw me through. Every team member is important.” Even me. “Someone has to watch out for them.” Running around in groves and thickets like a squirrel wasn’t glorious by any means, but he was alive.

Rhys had saved his comrades from enemies, and even from themselves. Tried to, anyway. He didn’t mean to be a mother hen, but some people had needed it.

Sometimes he still wondered what someone like Kieran was doing unsupervised.

“We’ll have someone evaluate your healing abilities, but I think we’ll be hiring you. The monastery can always use more healers and professors with battle experience. It’s a military academy after all.”

Rhys smiled, genuinely this time as his heart leapt. “You are? That’s wonderful! I can’t wait to meet everyone!” His excitement was difficult to curb, bounding out of him with more youthfulness than expected from a priest. “Really, thank you! I’ll work hard for my students! And also for the knights! You can count on me!” He spoke too fast for the interviewer to get a word in. Realizing this, he settled on one question he did need answered. “How big are classes? Do the clergy have other duties here too?” Two questions. “Are there a lot of others from around the world here too? Maybe from the Tellius continent?” Three questions.

His interviewer waved gently. “We thank you for wanting to help out. As best as I can tell, class sizes could be as small as a handful of students, or around twenty. Our clergy act as general healers and as aides to our students and communities, much like you already do. For the last question, yes. We are proud to welcome foreign students and faculty from many places. No doubt some people from your home too.” They looked down at their desk. “One last question for you, as a bit of an icebreaker. If a play were made about your life, what role would you play?”

It was so out of left field that Rhys had to pause. “Uh. I’m in the audience, honestly.” He didn’t correct himself in realizing they were talking about theoreticals.

“But what I really want? I’d be the main heroic figure! We’re all the star of our own small lives. No matter what we are in our work, how poor we are, or what we can or cannot do, doesn’t everyone dream about that? It’s a core part of humanity to dream of something, and then to strive for it. It isn’t necessarily greed or ambition, but just to wonder what it’s like in shoes bigger than yours, even if you’ll never reach it. That’s how we grow." He couldn't imagine living without a sense of wonder and curiosity for everything outside of himself.

“I’ll be me for the rest of my life.” Rhys had made peace with it, as every human has to. “I spent a lot of time dreaming, but it doesn't compare to actually doing things. So I’ll do all I can."

Even if I don’t think it’s much.

#interview #application #about the muse

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dearyallfrommatt · 4 years

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My late father loved Krystal burgers. Even after his diabetes blossomed into something his battered old body could barely control, if he came near a town that had a Krystal, he’d make Momma drive him by it. When my brother got married in Athens, GA, and a mix-up of Daddy’s meds put him in a serious fog, he had enough presence of mind to have us make a run to the one on Prince Avenue.

Long story short, the Krystal burger chain is filing for bankruptcy. Founded in 1932 and famous for those little hamburgers like you’d get at White Castle up North, the company has a hearing in the North District Court of Georgia Wednesday, citing debts up to $100 million dollars. Regardless how things turn out, some of the 320 restaurants in nine different states will remain open thanks to franchising, but that still makes life a little worrisome for the 5,000-plus people who work for the company now, mostly at part-time wages, of course.

The last time Krystal went bankrupt was 1997 and that was due to millions of dollars of unpaid overtime owed to employees. The company was bought by a private equity firm, Port Royal Holdings, for $145 million dollars. As an aside, the original Port Royale was a famous pirate haven back during what’s called The Golden Age of Piracy, roughly 1620-1720, before becoming a center for “legitimate” shipping and trade in the Caribbean, but I’m sure that’s a coincidence.

Since 1997, Krystal has bounced from private equity firm to private equity firm and has had eight different CEO’s. The last one, Paul Macaluso, left after the company eliminated franchises and management positions, not to mention slashing basic staff, in an effort to not actually turn a buck but the stave off their mounting creditors. The company declared bankruptcy the day their last loan deal with a creditor ran out. At the same time, the company’s dealing with an investigation into their payment practices and a “security breach”.

I doubt this will mean we’ll see the end of Krystal, but maybe. What’s most likely is that yet another private equity firm full of people who care nothing about anything beyond making more and more profit and damn the torpedoes, will swing in to rescue it, finding new and better ways to screw over workers. Because they can never make enough money.

I don’t understand rich people, I really don’t. People who can’t just enjoy their wealth and good fortune, I mean, the ones that have to have more and more lucre. Wrestling legend Jim Cornette - stay with me here - once said the main thing he could not understand about former boss and WWE CEO Vince McMahaon is why he couldn’t just enjoy his billions. He had to have more and, not only that, fuck over other people as much as possible while doing it.

For your edification, after the end of the Monday Night Wars in 1999, the only professional wrestling company that made money was the WWF. McMahaon - who bought the company from his father Vince Sr. in the late ‘70s for one dollar - was literally worth billions. On top of that, it didn’t look like the they’d ever stop making money bringing the rabid fan base the best in sweaty men in small pants pretending to fight.

And then Vince got greedy. First they tried to bring the world two billion-dollar flops in the XFL and a restaurant in Manhattan. I really don’t know from the restaurant except that it crashed and burned, but being a fan of football, I watched the XFL saga with fascinated horror. Going against the NFL is a rum’s game - ask the USFL and President Trump - but the XFL was set up to actually take down - or pretend to, keeping with the wrestling theme - the pro football juggernaut.

The lads from at Old School Wrestling can sum it up better and more entertaining than I could. After all was said and done, the league lost $138 million dollars with their deal with NBC, it cost Vince himself $69 million, and by the time the thing washed out, Vince was no longer a billionaire. In short order, the wrestling boom ate itself and money that could’ve been spent to give their employees some sort of health insurance security went to creditors. Even in the football league, the highest paid athlete made five grand a week and, of course, no health insurance for players.

Now, I’m not ragging on the WWE or even professional wrestling. I firmly believe that one of America’s greatest contribution to world culture is professional wrestling - no, seriously - and a full understanding of the United States’ development and evolution, at least in the 20th century. But this is a fine example of how greed destroys whatever it touches. Call it capitalism’s inevitable outcome or whatever you want to call it, but this is now seen as How Things Are Supposed to Be.

The last decade saw a plethora of long-running businesses go flat broke and have to shutter their doors. Financial experts blamed the death of Toys ‘R’ Us on Millennials not having kids and the spread of Amazon, for example, but the fact is the private equity companies - including Mitt Romney’s Ban Capital - cut and sliced everything they could in the run for more profits and less overhead. ‘Cause that’s all that matters.

I used to do an internet streaming radio show with a libertarian who once tried to enlighten to me the evil of taxation in maybe the dumbest way possible. A friend of his, he said, worked at a private equity firm, putting in 80 hours a week, and because of taxation, she was only able to bring home $180 thousand out of the $200 thousand she “earned” each year. Needless to say, that didn’t cut it.

But again, this is how the world is Supposed To Work. Providing a good consumers either need or really enjoy and in some way makes their lives a little better, that doesn’t even pretend to matter anymore. Taking care of your employees, paying them enough to live on and keep themselves hale-&-hearty because workers that aren’t living in terror of getting sick or a raise in rent are better workers, that’s not profitable.

Well, it is profitable and a smaller, self-contained businesses can totally do that, but the American Way is to gobble up as much as possible for some reason. Instead of enjoying your wealth and the sense of stability never having to worry about which bill you’re going to have to skip this month or if your landlord is going to increase your went for whatever the hell reason, our society encourages the very richest to accumulate and horde as much wealth as possible. If you can step on someone’s face in the process, even better.

And if you fail, no big worry. In 2008, Delta Airlines fired their CEO, Richard Anderson, after four months because the company lost over $70 million. Anderson nevertheless walked away with a severance package that included over $11 million dollars plus a corner office on Peachtree Street in Atlanta. More recently, due to on-going scandals involving their 737′s, Boeing booted their CEO Dennis Muilenberg after ballooning losses and deadly crashes of two of their planes. They did punish him by denying his full severance package, though. Luckily, he still walks away with $60 million in stock options and pension benefits.

So, what is the answer, I hear you say. Hell, I don’t know. These practices are an ongoing problem, but the acceptance of such behavior by the hoi palloi is even worse. We see this as natural and good, the American way. We elected a president who was born rich and was a big mover-&-shaker in a field his father already plowed, and companies under his control went bankrupt at least six times. Had he spent the last 50 years funding art galleries and weaving baskets, just letting the interest do it’s work, he’d arguably be richer than he is now.

Is socialism the answer? Can capitalism be saved? Do we need to look for an entirely different paradigm when it comes to economic survival? Again, I don’t pretend to have any answers. Indeed, my whole approach to anarchistic theory isn’t searching for a specific end result way to “make things work” so much as using the tools I can live with to get by as best I can while maybe making the world a better place along the way. But since no one is ever really punished or suffers from such actions that have proven to be, at best, a crap game, we’ll see more of this.

More profit, that’s all that matters.

#krystal #capitalism #anarchism #WWE #xfl #Delta Airlines #Boeing #greed in America

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cat-at-dawn · 6 years

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IN DEFENSE OF THE DEATH OF ████████ , AND AN ARGUMENT AGAINST SUICIDE

This one’s for the manga readers! Post-volume 19 meta, spoilers aplenty! read at your own risk

Though the literal iteration of the death of Ash Lynx can be viewed as a purposeful shuffle from this mortal coil, a specific decision made with weight to return to the New york Public Library to live out his last moments dwelling on Eiji’s letter only to intentionally fade away, here stands a lonely argument; out of the entire cast, no one person deserves death in the same capacity more than Ash Lynx does, and his death is not a suicide. Let’s break it down.

Out of all of the MANY problematic elements of Banana Fish, not even trying to hazard which offense is worse than the next, we can all simultaneously agree that one of the most heartbreaking twists of the series comes at the end of volume 19, when after receiving Eiji’s goodbye letter, which essentially amounts to an incredibly pure love declaration, Ash allows himself to be mentally distracted long enough for Sing’s brother Lao to deliver a killing stab to his intestines. Though Lao dies shortly after Ash’s retaliation, Ash continues to linger in a liminal place. The question hangs in the mind of the reader, if Ash approached a happy ending, why would he not seek hospitalization? Why would he allow himself to bleed out? The manga strikes back hard at the reader with a quite prolonged death sequence, in which Ash retreats to his favorite place to be alone, the New York Public Library, where, with a smile on his face, he falls into a peaceful sleep and dies at a reading table while clutching Eiji’s now bloody love letter. What is the nature of his mindset which dictates this course of action? Why, with Eiji hale and hearty, would Ash choose death instead of medical treatment and a possibly much happier ending to this tale of woe? At this point, I can only wonder if we, the readership, have read the same story. The ending of Banana Fish is hotly debated, and even though as a queer storyteller myself I fundamentally have trouble with gay death as a narrative element, I can’t help but question why people can’t empathize more with Ash’s decision. When judging the manga as a standing piece, I can’t think of a more satisfying, or simply more correct turn of events.

Directly out of the gate, Ash’s death is foreshadowed in the title of the series. A Perfect Day For Banana Fish is a short story by J.D. Salinger which follows the last day in the life of mentally ill World War 2 veteran Seymour Glass, who befriends a little girl while on vacation at the beach. He invites her to catch bananafish with him, and explains that the greedy fish enter holes to gorge themselves on bananas, but become too large to escape again and instead perish in the hole. Later, Seymour returns to his room where his wife is sleeping, and he kills himself. Salinger relates this as a metaphor for his own personal experience in the war, specifically to his time at the Battle of the Bulge and in Nazi concentration camps. He is quoted saying Seymour is an iteration of himself, and has gone so far as to say that he “found it impossible to fit into a society that ignored the truth that he now knew.” The point of the story has always been to examine the irreversible damage done to the human psyche by war. The Perfect Day referenced in the title is exactly that; the quest of a broken man lacking the power to overcome his trauma to find exactly the perfect day to die. So it also is with Ash, we understand from the very beginning that making this direct analogy to Salinger means the manga will be the slow disclosure of someone who is irrevocably damaged by their circumstance as they come to terms with the moment of their own death. From the very first panel you see him, Ash’s death is already fated, and truly the most heart-rending struggle of the series is watching him grapple with this identity, up to nearly the very last second. As a reader, we continuously keep hoping and praying that he might, against all odds, find salvation despite literally every piece of contrary evidence suggesting otherwise. We have violent affection for Ash as a hero, and we want him so badly to live on, to make it to the other side. He both finds salvation and doesn’t find it, because like everything else about this manga, Ash operates thematically on contradictory levels all the way through the story and on to the bitter end. Let’s break it down even further, by considering exactly just how fucked Ash really is.

Ash is born Aslan Jade Callenrese, and then quickly discarded. He briefly experiences a short period of normalcy with the love of his brother and distant father before Griffin is drafted. Almost immediately after, Ash is raped by the Bluebeard of Cape Cod and then blamed for it, and from then on, his life is a progression of non-stop horror. He is kidnapped by Marvin who repeatedly rapes him over a period of years. He is sold into sexual servitude at Club Cod. He somehow manages to avoid getting addicted to the opioids that all the child prostitutes were fed to keep them tame, and when Ash escapes, it is only because he is instead personally taken under Papa Dino’s wing, who specifically sexually abuses him while simultaneously not knowing or caring that Marvin continues to rape Ash, among presumably a handful of other people. Blanca is a small, bright focal point for Ash at age 13 when Ash lets himself briefly believe he has autonomy, and he is released to start his own gang. Ash’s fundamental humanity and inherent leadership magnetically draw people to him, and for the first time in his life, Ash briefly entertains the idea of having a private romantic relationship of his own. He is attracted to a girl he likes very much, but she is murdered almost immediately due to her association with him. He afterward throws himself into the business of his gang without ever fully extracting himself from Papa Dino’s hold. It is only with the discovery of the capsule containing Banana Fish that Ash for the first time in his short life discovers a bit of real leverage he can actually use against Dino. The subsequent drug war sees him beaten, sent to jail, raped many more times, and sent on a cross-country mission on the lam from the law, as well as from Dino’s goons, both Corsican and Chinese. Yut-Lung proves to be a worthy adversary in LA, and his teaming up with Arthur sees Ash murdering his best friend Shorter in cold blood who is forcibly high on banana fish in order to save Eiji from an especially savage disembowelment. Ash is later declared legally dead, sent to a private insane asylum to be experimented on, tortured with the mangled bits of Shorter’s brain, and then after escaping yet again, still forced into a corner when Dino tricks and threatens him into becoming officially adopted, once more in order to prevent Eiji’s death. Ash is drugged, literally blinded, beaten, and emotionally and physically torn down. He nearly dies from intentionally wasting away, and is hospitalized. When he eventually once again manages to escape, it is only to regroup long enough to prepare to engage with his men in actual guerrilla warfare. The mercenary Foxx kills nearly all of Ash’s remaining gang, and once AGAIN, Ash is raped. Ash is ultimately deprived of his revenge when he then has to witness Papa Dino’s death by the hand of someone other than himself. These are the major plot points, and don’t even touch on the myriad of lesser cruelties Ash has dealt with over the course of his short life, of which there are many, many more. (See: The death of most of his friends, that fucklord Arthur, everything about Cape Cod, the pain of using his sexual wiles as a weapon, the pain of knowing if he opens up to others that the lives of his friends will be in danger, the pain of being unable to give his loved ones proper burials, his one hundred issues with classism, his complete inability to trust others with important tasks, the list goes on.)

Around volume 10, I started, in a serious way, feeling like Ash deserved death. Not in the way that a dog is put out of it’s misery when it is sick, but more in the way that when the path is this hard, the reward at the end should be equivalent to the struggle. Being a CSA survivor all on its own demands a certain level of understanding, especially when approaching volatile, sensitive subjects like suicide. The act of taking one’s own life is so deeply personal and hotly debated that there is no true narrative argument legitimate enough to address it’s purpose. All of it is too subjective. However, in the case of Ash Lynx as the thematic hero, the case stands that he never, except for perhaps the small corridor between the ages of 0-7, lived a life anywhere remotely near average, so his many brushes with near-suicide are chillingly understandable. At one point, when forced to either shoot himself in the head or watch Eiji die, Ash even goes so far as to grab the gun and immediately try to blow his brains out. When the gun is proven empty, instead of breathing a secret sigh of relief, Ash only demands that Yut Lung give him a bullet.

Though this emphasizes Ash’s near fanatical devotion to protecting Eiji, whose innocence he both disdains and canonizes, it also represents his constant readiness to die. This flirtation with the reaper is emphasized over and over in the official art, where a sexual element is often present in his interactions with death. Ash wishes for death to embrace him, he literally desires it. This is mostly on a subtextual level, but other times his desire is stiflingly surface-level.

The extent of Ash’s damage is so severe and was inflicted on him so early that his ability to live a normal life was only ever subject to his situation. An argument can be made that his unusually high IQ kept him from the brink of emotional destruction for the majority of his life, but in spite of his incredible virility and strength of character, Ash’s prospects as he aged were always bleak at best. Ash the adult is almost unfathomable. He was literally never allowed to be a child during a key developmental period, and even the manga infers that Eiji’s presence as a romantic element is strongly tied to Ash’s desire to return to a time of innocence. Ash is permanently trapped in a never-neverland of sorts, sexually defiled to the point where his own sexual awakening has been completely obscured beyond his own recognition. His relationship with Eiji is painfully asexual, one, because literally everything about Banana Fish is painful, but also because it is unclear if Ash may have been naturally asexual in the first place or if he was made into an asexual as the result of his childhood trauma. Either way, he certainly doesn’t have a lot of choice about the way that he is, and that way is, fundamentally, morally, and spiritually exhausted. It is only his tenacious spark, his survivors grip to life, and his affection for others in his life whom he loves that are weaker than him, that keeps him stubbornly clung to his own mortal vessel until the very end.

Eiji’s presence as a guiding light is, in THE definitively heartbreaking turn, the permission Ash needs to allow himself to finally die. He has always known that he would die, probably even thought that he should have already died, many, many times over. He is permanently and irreversibly damaged by the course of his life, and though we scream and cry and pray in the hope that Ash can make it, that he can still pull through and come out on the other side living and thriving in love, he was ultimately just never meant to make it that far. Even when Eiji tries to convince Ash that he is not the leopard, that he can come back down from the mountain, we are distantly still aware that this is not true, despite how difficult it is to accept. This difference of character is most clearly seen in Ash’s foil with Yut-Lung; both boys are the savant products of rape-and-murder-riddled childhoods. However, where Yut-Lung lacked anyone to give him acceptance and affection as he grew, Ash ended his time knowing love. Where Yut-Lung survives to the end and goes on to an even higher position of strength, he still has an emotional arc to complete. Yut Lung must discover for himself the value of human life. Ash already knew this value from the beginning, because his moral compass, which sometimes admittedly became scrambled, more or less always pointed true by the end of things.

The argument can be made that as the embodiment of the concept of Salinger’s short story, Ash is fated to die. Eiji, who in many ways is the window through which we experience this world, refuses to bend to fate. He insists in innocence again and again that Ash can change his fate, and for a moment, when Ash finds the plane ticket to Japan in Eiji’s letter, we really, really want to believe him. So, of course, because this manga is singularly cruel, it is here that Ash is stabbed. Of ffffucking course, after everything, death comes for Ash in a fashion which is completely mundane against the grandiose, bombastic scale of the story. An old grudge settled by someone Ash didn’t even have the time to hate in the first place. Ash let himself believe in a real life with Eiji for a single moment, and that proved to be his downfall. When he let his guard down, he let death in. He realizes his destiny immediately, because he is not stupid. His death is not a suicide, it is an understanding.

According to Akimi Yoshida, fate always wins out, but what the manga adds to this sad experience is this; despite everything, unlike Salinger’s broken Seymour, Ash’s heart in the end is full of love. His perfect day to die is the day he reads Eiji’s letter, the letter that declares them permanently bonded. Falling in love allows Ash to let go of himself gently, instead of the infinitely more brutal end he would have met at a villain’s hand otherwise, if he hadn’t fought tooth and nail for his very last scrap of autonomy up until that moment. Eiji’s love as an act of compassion is most perfectly realized; because Ash’s Perfect Day is one of is own making. All the circumstances together form a perfect conclusion. He didn’t see the knife coming, and he didn’t need to. After Papa Dino’s death, after Eiji is gone, Ash can finally stop. He can accept that his trauma is greater than even him. In a life spent being forced back and forth according to the violent winds of his circumstance, he chooses to, (and that’s important, he chooses to,) retreat like a cat to a quiet place of safety to live out his last moments. In this way, Ash’s death is merely a setting down of something unbearably heavy. Because he is loved, because Eiji is safe and far away, Ash is at last released from the prison of his life.

Other Banana Fish Meta: CAPE COD AS PURGATORY AND ASH’S BREAK FROM INNOCENCE

#banana fish #meta #death as a reward #ash lynx #eiji okumura #spoilers #oof #OOF I SAID

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cabinboy100 · 6 years

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MR. ROBOT: Season 3: Some Pre-finale Big Picture Theories…

Hello, Friend.

Gonna ramble on some Big Ideas that might explain what’s going on in the WhiteRosey sectors of MR. ROBOT…

WHITEROSE CAN HACK REALITY.

The universe is a simulation, or at least effectively functions and exists as one, and WhiteRose is able to hack it. Currently only to a degree. She can copy and paste elements that exist and have existed in the universe. She can edit them, but only in certain ways. She currently has limited write permissions.

We've seen her do this when she copied a young Angela from the past and pasted her into the present to interview the adult Angela.

We also saw *someone* do this when Trenton's brother (who actually left town with his parents) was copied and pasted onto the beach next to Elliot. Each of these instances was edited, tailored to accomplish a certain task. This is the kind of "undo" that WhiteRose has promised and tantalized Irving and Angela with.

However, she cannot yet deliver what Angela wishes for—the return of her mother and Elliot's father, hale and hearty. Editing them to the degree that they would be cured and healthy is currently beyond WhiteRose's power. She needs to proceed with her Congo project in order to gain that ability. WhiteRose's ultimate goal is to be able to edit the universe so that she can make lasting and stable changes, for herself, and to herself. In order to achieve that, anyone and everyone may be expendable, but also revivable.

WHITEROSE HAS A TIME MACHINE.

WhiteRose already possesses time travel capability, and she's used it countless times, each time tweaking events to get closer to an ultimate desired result. She doesn't believe in coincidence because when it occurs around her, she's had a hand in manufacturing it. In the events and timeline we see unfolding on the show, Elliot Alderson is the right person with the right connections and experiences in the right place at the right time for what WhiteRose needs to be done. I do not think that WhiteRose's time travel allows for a person to get into a DeLorean in 2015 and step out of it in 1985. Instead, what she can do is send herself (and maybe others) information. Maybe it's "psychic," a la PRINCE OF DARKNESS, but I prefer to think it's electronic, a la STEIN'S GATE. An email with an attached document sent from her personal server in 2015 to her AOL address in 1990.

How would this help WhiteRose? I'm gonna run thru a couple of *hypothetical* loops to demonstrate…

Let's say that in a previous iteration of the universe, WhiteRose identified Edward Alderson, Elliot's dad, as a useful tool in a takedown of ECorp and the global economy. He was poisoned by ECorp and had the coding/hacking chops to damage them. WhiteRose could have used her resources to encourage him to make the attempt. It fails. Edward can only do so much damage to ECorp in the 90s before he dies. However, his son grows up to be an accomplished hacker at a time when ECorp is committed to digital records and vulnerable to a catastrophic attack. But for whatever reason, this Elliot doesn't have the drive to pursue such a course. At the same time WhiteRose, Zhang, and the Dark Army try many paths to sink the economy and gain leverage for acquiring the Congo, but none pan out.

When WhiteRose believes she's exhausted her options in that iteration, she assembles an information payload—added to the one she received from her previous older self—for her younger self. ZIPs it, attaches it to her Chronomail, and hits [SEND]. The next iteration begins. This time, WhiteRose tweaks details at the Washington Township plant so that Edward dies earlier (perhaps by stepping up the timeline of her pet project there?). In the wake of his father's death, this Elliot makes toppling ECorp his lifelong goal. He grows up and assemble the fsociety team, but he's too reckless, and he gets himself caught or killed. His aggression needs to be tempered. He needs to be introduced to some already available channels instead of brute forcing his way every step of the way. Again, WhiteRose has many irons in the fire, but none prove successful. She assembles a new payload, updated with this iteration's edits and outcomes, and clicks [SEND] again.

The next iteration begins. This time, WhiteRose engineers events so that Elliot has a sister and a best friend who share his interests and motivation. Darlene is another hacker, naturally more reckless than Elliot, enough so that Elliot has to step up his responsible side. Angela is another victim of ECorp, whose shared orbit guides Elliot to a position beside her at AllSafe. This Elliot wants to take down ECorp, has the skills and access, and is levelheaded enough to accomplish it. However, when he does the math and comes up with an unavoidable body count, he cannot go through the hack, at least not 100%. WhiteRose takes notes and launches the next payload into the next iteration.

This time, WhiteRose somehow gets Edward to reveal his illness to Elliot in secret, leading to the first time Edward pushes his son out the window, and so, the introduction of Mr. Robot. Everything goes nearly perfectly, but the hack is thwarted. There's one piece missing, and WhiteRose thinks she's located the raw material from which to carve it. She adds her new experiences and insights to the next payload and begins the next iteration.

This is the one we're watching. The one in which Elliot breaks his father's trust, angering him enough to push him out a second story window, creating Mr. Robot. The one in which Mr. Robot recruits fsociety and plans the hack. The one in which Angela's influence gets Elliot to the place he needs to be—Allsafe—to enable Mr. Robot's hack. The one in which they both meet Tyrell Wellick, the final (perhaps) piece of the puzzle, and low and behold, a bloodless 5/9—well, y'know, not counting the aftermath—and leverage enough for WhiteRose/Zhang to acquire the Congo!

If this is the furthest that WhiteRose has gotten, then she is in truly uncharted territory. We've seen how she has numerous strategies in play (influencing the media to pump up a certain pompous buffoon's Q rating), and I think it's in that same vein that she turns to Grant for his advice in light of Elliot's proposal of Stage 3, something that would not have come up in any previous iteration of events. WhiteRose has the coltan mines of the Congo now. Maybe Elliot *has* outlived his usefulness. No doubt she's already made notes for her younger self to take steps to quell the unrest in the Congo so that her pet project can be transported there hassle-free in the next iteration.

And what is her pet project? Her ultimate goal? Y'know, assuming she's already got this method of time travel? What could top that?

What about the ability to run these iterations as simulations, allowing her to not have to *live* each iteration? Not that she feels it, but intellectually, for a hacker of time, that's got to be aggravating, right? Of course, each of those simulations is an iteration, too, so a subjective, paradoxical advance.

How about hacking reality? Basically, the ability I discuss in my first theory. I feel like WhiteRose's ultimate goal involves taming cosmic forces to perhaps selfishly right a personal (cosmic) wrong. Did Zhang ever have a sister? Do Zhang and WhiteRose each wish to live as two separate beings? Or is WhiteRose her true self, and Zhang a mask? Would WhiteRose wish to recode herself as a biological woman? Or somehow able to transform at will? Perhaps her pet project, once complete, can realize these wishes.

This would also make her promise to Angela a deliverable one, as I describe above.

TIME TRAVEL AND STUFF…

I would *love* for WhiteRose to have or be working toward, classic pulpy scifi time travel, but I just don't see it working out. Assuming that's the goal, and that she achieves it, she can't use time travel to go back and change or fix anything without endangering the machinations she engineered to enable it in the first place. Which logically means she can only go forward in time, and aside from hoverboards and gambling, where's the fun in that, right?

Huh. Something (zany) just occurred to me. Maybe she wants to go *all the way* forward, to the Singularity and/or Omega Point. Sorry, "and/or" because I forget if they're mutually exclusive. I’m fuzzy on the details of each. In any case, once then-there, assuming there isn't some fascist super villain who's somehow able to dominate the state, WhiteRose can live or relive any life she would want…or something. Right?

Yeah, like I said, that *just* occurred to me.

Multiverse-hopping also sounds like fun, but I'm not seeing the upside to that, either.

Maybe WhiteRose has been contacted by an alternate version of herself and given instructions on how to bridge and cross 'verses, but to what end? A Council of Cross-Time WhiteRoses who manipulate markets and technology across timelines? I'd *love* that, but it seems incongruous with the fabric and feel of the MR. ROBOT we've watched for three seasons.

Maybe WhiteRose speaks of these things in earnest with certain parties in order to manipulate them, as dramatically seen with Angela. Irving has mentioned that he doesn't find the possibility of some kind of undo (Angela and Irving never name it) completely unbelievable, and I love the idea that such a promise is part of Irving's motivation, but just as likely is the notion that Irving is toeing the line with Angela, saying what he's supposed to say to keep her motivated.

But you *know* Irving wants WhiteRose to deliver a reality in which BEACH TOWEL is a huge best seller and optioned for an HBO series, right? =)

Some last bits of crazy talk…

Washington Township has been the home of WhiteRose’s project for a very long time. If time travel is in play, maybe it’s only available for the lifetime of the functioning core of that project. How the heck is she having that “packed up” and moved to the Congo? Or is she having a second/newer facility assembled there?

What properties of the DRC region and/or coltan would be so valuable to the presumably exotic science involved in WhiteRose’s project? EM radiation? Magnetism? Radioactivity?

The Mandela Effect is visible everywhere in the show—and I *love* it—but maybe that's just the reality that this show lives in.

I'd like for there to be an opposing force to WhiteRose, someone we haven't met yet, who's playing the game at her level, or maybe even one level above, unknown to WhiteRose. Maybe it's a future Elliot. Or someone we've been told is dead. Or an alternate WhiteRose. Maybe Elliot's landlord (is that Guillermo del Toro or G. G. Martin? =) is the Yoda to WhiteRose's Emperor?

I think that someone or organization has repurposed Flipper's chip and is using him to track or spy or spoof Elliot and Mr. Robot. Krista's dick ex returning Flipper to Elliot as a curse on him was just a bit too dramatic for me to be legitimate.

Does WhiteRose know that Elliot shares his body with Mr. Robot? Does she *recognize* this dual persona existence because she does the same with Minister Zhang? Were WhiteRose's parents exposed to the same poison cocktail that killed Elliot and Angela's parents, but under different circumstances?

I know I've got more crazy talk in my rusty innards, but it's not coming to me just now. Hopefully events and revelations in this week's episode will rule some of it out. Just as likely, tho, it will inspire more. =)

Be seeing you.

Keep on keepin' on~

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oddferalair · 4 years

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characterization quotes

Robin Support See, now you're just not thinking logically. We've killed countless people in this war— what's a few more souls on the ledger? Seems like an arbitrary line to me... But all right. You're the tactician! No more unholy summoning sigils. Heck, I always obey orders! Well, except for stupid ones like "don't fight the enemy." If someone tried to tell me that, I'd cut 'em in half and feed them to the crows! Lissa Support If you don't rest up before a battle, you might find yourself resting up in a grave. That does seem like a problem. War is killing and death, ya know? Keeping people you care about alive means making the other guy dead. Nya ha ha! Just a little touch of Henry's Super Sleepy-Time Magic! ...The nonlethal version. First you don't want any allies or enemies to die, and now BIRDIES are off the table? ...You're a strange one, Lissa. Nya ha ha! Me? Sweet? That's a new one. Besides, you're the one who's always concerned about people dying and stuff. I don't know how you do it, honestly. I couldn't go a week! I'm not much of a mood guy, I'm afraid, unless we're talking gruesome bloodshed... Well, how about this: I did get you a ring! Will that work?

Frederick Support

I want my dying thought to be about blood! ...Or maybe ichor. H-hey, Frederick! Easy with the bear hugs! These little bones might snap like...Oh, whoa! Are you CRYING?! You really think people notice what I do around here? 'Cause I doubt it. I mean, what kind of things do they say about me now? Nya ha ha! If you lay it on any thicker, I'll be smothered to death! But I'm not training to make myself look good in front of my comrades, you know? Well, because the more I practice, the more stuff I'm able to do. I like being good at lots of things. Sully Support Absolutely! I'll need a pound of flesh, seven fingernails, and your left kidney. Nya ha ha! I jest. A single hair will do just fine. Yep yep! That's it, all right. I can curse till I'm blue in the face, but if their will's stronger than mine? Pbbt. Aw, you're going to make me blush. I'm nothing special. Miriel Support You have? That's great! I cast hexes all the time, and I've never come up with ONE theory about them. Nya ha ha! Oh, stop it, Miriel! You'll make me blush. Although it's pretty much true. When it comes to hexing folks, I'm the master. Why, this one time at mage camp, I killed 100 people with one curse! Er, I don't remember when. ...Or where exactly. But it totally could have happened. Henry: Well, you know that town we passed through a few days ago? I saw a pregnant lady on the main street with a load of cheese and fruit in her arms. She looked pretty tired and worn out, so I stopped to help her carry her wares. Right?! Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I realized pregnancy is dumb. So I'm planning to help the mothers of the world by inventing a special curse. I'm gonna create a hex that conjures new kids right out of thin air! Sumia Support I'm a mage! I just wave my wand and mutter a little incantation... Humina humina humina... Presto! The busted bowls are busted no more! Yeah, it's just a temporary hex, unfortunately. Tomorrow they'll be in pieces again. But at least folks won't have to eat out of their hats tonight. Oh, that spell can certainly be used for evil. All it does is reverse time. See, so if something bad happens to someone and you cast it on them... They have to experience that same tragedy over and over again! Nya ha! Isn't it obvious? You're me, and I'm you! Clever curse, eh? Well, you're about as magic as an old sock, so this was the only way. And while you cast some hexes, I'm going to ride your pegasus all over camp! Woo-hoo! I'm gonna swoop down on people and drop stuff on their heads! Ricken Support Oh? I thought word had gotten around. Yeah, Gangrel was toppled before I got the chance to fight any real battles. A shame, too. It would've been fun to face off against the Shepherds! Then there was Mustafa. He always gave me a bag of peaches whenever I visited. He said I reminded him of his son and that I should consider myself part of his family. Yep. Dead as driftwood, they are. And it was you Shepherds who killed 'em! Their friends and families are probably still crying their eyes out. No! I'd be very sad and angry. And I'd find out who did it, hunt them down, and exact bloody revenge! ...Oh yes. There would be blood. When I was with Plegia, I didn't think much about this kind of thing. Maybe because in that army, I didn't have real friends like I do here. I guess, sure. Honestly, I'm not much good with touchy-feely stuff. You know what I'd rather talk about? The next battle! Maribelle Support Talking to the flower. She says she's very grateful that you spoke to her. Also, she says she'll stay strong as long as you do, too. I'm not feigning anything. I'm just really in touch with the natural world. I can talk to any living thing you want. Trees. Flowers. Maggots. Ooooooh... Maaaggots... Meh, not to me. Everyone kicks the bucket at some point, so why fret? See, now that I can understand. But get this—I've got a special curse ready, see? Been working on it for a while now. If you're mortally wounded, it kills you off before you suffer any pain! Just...poof. Off ya go! It's 'cause I'm not scared, Maribelle. Fighting is actually pretty simple. I just have to kill the other guy before he has a chance to kill me. Panne Support That's not very neighborly, now is it? What difference does one's religion make? I just want to be friends! Ylisse is weak enough as it is. If the exalt were assassinated, I worried they'd lose the war in a week! That would have been a terrible waste of a perfectly fun war. Er, the beast half, I guess. I love animals! I wish I could be one. Even a half one would be okay with me. My parents abandoned me in the woods when I was little. So it was mostly the nice animals there who raised me. I still love their smell. It relaxes me in a totally nostalgic sort of way. So if I went out and killed them all, could we be friends? I'm not that young, and I don't think I'm stupid. But hey, who knows, right? Cordelia Support Oooh, lucky guy. I wish someone would make ME a nice cozy scarf! Ooooooooooooooooooooooooh. Say, what if the wife was dead? Could you give it to him then? That's kind of like making yourself sad on purpose, isn't it? You want help? 'Cause I've got a curse that'll REALLY make you miserab— I asked Lissa for advice, and she told me to take you on a big shopping trip. She said a few hours trying on dresses and armor would fix that broken heart, pronto! I don't really get all this "feelings" stuff, but if you say so. Er, but if you're REALLY grateful, you could join me for a fruit pie... Nya ha! No, it's a scheme to make you fall in love with me. Nowi Support Yep! They're probably quivering in fear under their beds and crying like babies. But no worries! There'll be more victim—er, that is, village kids—at our next camp. Right. You can't actually touch her. My magic is good, but not THAT good! Hey! I spent a lot of time and effort on this, you know! Tharja Support Hee hee! Smiling? This is how I always look. Sorry! Nothing sinister over here. I'm just a hale and hearty mage. Nope! Not me! Although I do own a cloak and a couple daggers. Aw, I don't get into politics. I just want to toss fireballs at bad guys. Hey! Tharja! You forgot to remove the curse! Oh, well. I suppose it'll fizzle out eventually. La la la... Do you need a death curse? Please say you need a death curse. Yeah, dispelling curses is kind of my specialty. Right now, whoever cast that curse must be in one confused pickle! Too bad we can't be there to see it. That would be swell! Oh yeah. I guess so, huh? Although you didn't really need to put a truth curse on me, you know? I don't have anything to hide, and I've never told a lie in my life. Olivia Support You're a crazy lady. Why would I do that? I love doggies! I want to save his life! Right, boy? Who's a good boy? Aren't you glad the crazy lady wants to help us? Yes you are! Hey, that's a medical condition! Show some respect! Oh, will you look at that? It's blood! ...Wonder where it came from? *Lick* ...Oh, hey! It's MY blood! Nya ha! I must have been wounded in battle! Oh man, good times. Oh, I've got a high pain threshold. It's a genetic thing. Nerve damage. I've had a lot worse than this! When I was a kid, my parents put me in this exclusive wizard school. Well, as you can imagine, some of the experiments got a biiit out of hand. Once, I almost set my face on fire! Nya ha! Those were the days... Meh, my parents didn't care what I did as long as I wasn't expelled. Heck, the whole reason they sent me to wizard school was to get rid of me. But hey, no worries! I turned out fine! That's what all my psychiatrists said. But nope! Not true. I'm just a happy guy. Look, crazy lady. I like you. I really do. But you have GOT to let this go. I smile because I'm happy, all right? There's nothing more to it. Olivia? H-hey, Olivia. ...You being crazy again, Olivia? Olivia?! Aw, come on, Olivia! You can't die now! NOOOOO! OLIVIAAAAAA! Come back to me, Olivia! Stay out of the light! STAY OUT OF THE LIIIIIIGHT! Cherche Support Sure have! She's as cute as a button, that one. ...Well, if buttons were cute. We had wyverns in Plegia, you know, and also the occasional fell beast. But we didn't have a single wyvern that was as pretty as Minerva. Yep! I make four-legged friends wherever I go! And even some two-legged ones. I'm also pals with a three-legged bear, but that's a story for another time. Well, when I was young, my best friend in the entire world was a giant wolf. My parents ignored me most of the time, so that wolf became my whole family. Then one day she came to visit me, and some hunters in the village... They shot her full of arrows. Killed her on the spot. But they paid... Oh, how they paid... They paid in BLOOD. Er, but yes. None of my magic could bring my beautiful wolf friend back. So I guess that's why I hang out with you and Minerva. 'Cause it reminds me. I know I'm here a lot, but I always feel safe and happy when I'm with Minerva. Kellam Support I think I get it now. Seems to me you're barking up the wrong tree, tin man. Visibility isn't the problem—you're just lonely! So all we gotta do is find a way to make you stop feeling lonely! It's true. When I was a kid, my only friends were wolves, so they ended up raising me. Thing is...that made it tough for me to learn about basic human warmth and affection... Like just now. I tried to be nice to you and show you that I care and stuff, right? But I got it all wrong and instead made you freak out. Sorry about that... Gaius Support Not many, no. Back in Plegia, we hardly have any cakes or sweets at all. We don't get the plentiful harvests that Ylisseans and Feroxi enjoy. So the dishes we make are kind of basic, you know? Nothing like those, anyhow. Yup. It's hard to make cakes out of turnips, though that doesn't stop people trying! Anyway, the point is, I've never seen so many tasty-looking treats all in one place! Well, thanks for showing me your treasures, Gaius. It's been lots of fun! ...Oh, I almost forgot! I brought something to show you too! Yeah...something like that! They're baked in special ceremonies as offerings to Grima. Never eaten one myself, but as you're the expert, I figured you'd like to try it! Libra Support Like, I dunno...you're a priest, but you wield a weapon and smash people with it, right? I bet it causes you all kinds of anguish to have to splatter the life out of others! Aren't you overthinking things a little? A weapon's just a tool for killing! Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to just accept that and move on? Who knows—you might wind up like me and start to really savor the joys of slaying! I mean, when you get down to it, aren't you and I both doing the exact same thing? I mean, I guess it's hard for an altruist like yourself to respect an egoist like me, but... They do, huh? Well, I don't believe in the gods, so it doesn't really matter what they think! (in response to Libra calling him out for saving other people) ...

#long post #blood mention #abuse mention

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dfroza · 4 years

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love each other, be deep-spirited friends.

A point made in Today’s reading of the Letter of Philippians in chapter #2:

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.

[Rejoicing Together]

What I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you’ve done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.

Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.

Even if I am executed here and now, I’ll rejoice in being an element in the offering of your faith that you make on Christ’s altar, a part of your rejoicing. But turnabout’s fair play—you must join me in my rejoicing. Whatever you do, don’t feel sorry for me.

I plan (according to Jesus’ plan) to send Timothy to you very soon so he can bring back all the news of you he can gather. Oh, how that will do my heart good! I have no one quite like Timothy. He is loyal, and genuinely concerned for you. Most people around here are looking out for themselves, with little concern for the things of Jesus. But you know yourselves that Timothy’s the real thing. He’s been a devoted son to me as together we’ve delivered the Message. As soon as I see how things are going to fall out for me here, I plan to send him off. And then I’m hoping and praying to be right on his heels.

But for right now, I’m dispatching Epaphroditus, my good friend and companion in my work. You sent him to help me out; now I’m sending him to help you out. He has been wanting in the worst way to get back with you. Especially since recovering from the illness you heard about, he’s been wanting to get back and reassure you that he is just fine. He nearly died, as you know, but God had mercy on him. And not only on him—he had mercy on me, too. His death would have been one huge grief piled on top of all the others.

So you can see why I’m so delighted to send him on to you. When you see him again, hale and hearty, how you’ll rejoice and how relieved I’ll be. Give him a grand welcome, a joyful embrace! People like him deserve the best you can give. Remember the ministry to me that you started but weren’t able to complete? Well, in the process of finishing up that work, he put his life on the line and nearly died doing it.

The Letter of Philippians, Chapter 2 (The Message)

A chapter of the New Testament accompanied by chapter 6 from the book of Exodus:

God said to Moses, “Now you’ll see what I’ll do to Pharaoh: With a strong hand he’ll send them out free; with a strong hand he’ll drive them out of his land.”

God continued speaking to Moses, reassuring him, “I am God. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as The Strong God, but by my name God (I-Am-Present) I was not known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the country in which they lived as sojourners. But now I’ve heard the groanings of the Israelites whom the Egyptians continue to enslave and I’ve remembered my covenant. Therefore tell the Israelites:

“I am God. I will bring you out from under the cruel hard labor of Egypt. I will rescue you from slavery. I will redeem you, intervening with great acts of judgment. I’ll take you as my own people and I’ll be God to you. You’ll know that I am God, your God who brings you out from under the cruel hard labor of Egypt. I’ll bring you into the land that I promised to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and give it to you as your own country. I AM God.”

But when Moses delivered this message to the Israelites, they didn’t even hear him—they were that beaten down in spirit by the harsh slave conditions.

Then God said to Moses, “Go and speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt so that he will release the Israelites from his land.”

Moses answered God, “Look—the Israelites won’t even listen to me. How do you expect Pharaoh to? And besides, I stutter.”

But God again laid out the facts to Moses and Aaron regarding the Israelites and Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he again commanded them to lead the Israelites out of the land of Egypt.

[The Family Tree of Moses and Aaron]

These are the heads of the tribes:

The sons of Reuben, Israel’s firstborn: Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi—these are the families of Reuben.

The sons of Simeon: Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jakin, Zohar, and Saul, the son of a Canaanite woman—these are the families of Simeon.

These are the names of the sons of Levi in the order of their birth: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. Levi lived 137 years.

The sons of Gershon by family: Libni and Shimei.

The sons of Kohath: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. Kohath lived to be 133.

The sons of Merari: Mahli and Mushi.

These are the sons of Levi in the order of their birth.

Amram married his aunt Jochebed and she had Aaron and Moses. Amram lived to be 137.

The sons of Izhar: Korah, Nepheg, and Zicri.

The sons of Uzziel: Mishael, Elzaphan, and Sithri.

Aaron married Elisheba, the daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon, and she had Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.

The sons of Korah: Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaph. These are the families of the Korahites.

Aaron’s son Eleazar married one of the daughters of Putiel and she had Phinehas.

These are the heads of the Levite families, family by family.

This is the Aaron and Moses whom God ordered: “Bring the Israelites out of the land of Egypt clan by clan.” These are the men, Moses and Aaron, who told Pharaoh king of Egypt to release the Israelites from Egypt.

“I’ll Make You as a God to Pharaoh”

And that’s how things stood when God next spoke to Moses in Egypt.

God addressed Moses, saying, “I am God. Tell Pharaoh king of Egypt everything I say to you.”

And Moses answered, “Look at me. I stutter. Why would Pharaoh listen to me?”

The Book of Exodus, Chapter 6 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for monday, march 23 of 2020 with a paired chapter from each Testament along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

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incursionparagon · 7 years

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Knight knight || Frederick & Cordelia

frontline-knight:

Ah. That voice, it was certainly familiar! If he’s not mis-remembering anything then that voice belongs to a certain prodigious and well-accomplished Pegasus Knight! He’s not yet exactly close with her but he’s watched her in combat several times and he is more than sure that if the two of them were to spar, chances of her defeating him in armed combat are extremely high, a prospect which does excite him! After all there’s almost no one around of his caliber when it comes to fighting. But then again, he’s been receiving training for several years– almost an entire decade of training! Yet, he considers Cordelia a far more skilled warrior than he is. She combines the advanced combat skills of a seasoned combatant and war veteran with the swift grace and blinding beauty of an angel. How jealous he is of Phila. He can only wish to have someone as experienced and as dutiful and selfless on his army unit to name as successor. Alas though, this is not the time for him to be thinking about this or about her.

“Milady, it has been quite a while since we last spoke indeed. I take it fate has been treating you well. Certainly, you look as lively as I remember you. I don’t think I could ever forget someone who leaves an impression as strong as you off though. It’s always an insurmountable pleasure to speak with you milady, I thank your concern for my well-being. You likely have already seen me engage in my off-duty activities to aid the Shepherds before, today I am doing that as well, thank you for asking. I take it you have been doing fine yourself as well, milady?”

Though his voice is stern, there’s a certain… Happiness in Frederick’s smile and his eyes are bright and full of life! Something she’d be able to easily tell if she were to be staring directly into his eyes. It does seem like he is rather fond of speaking with the red-haired Pegasus Knight! Hard not to be though when she’s a model and exemplary soldier, perhaps– no, he’s certain she’s going to be one of the best and strongest soldiers Ylisse has ever seen! He respects her and has grown to wanting to foster a deeper, more meaningful friendship with the girl thanks to these attributes of hers. Hopefully one day he can consider the girl a true friend in the purest sense of the word, but for now he fears they are only acquaintances… He’d like to change that, and what better way to do so than with conversation!

“Are you perhaps searching for milord? Most everyone within the Shepherds know of your… Fixation towards him. If you’ve come to ask me for directions regarding his whereabouts, he’s in his tent. I’ve been keeping a close, watchful eye on it since milord went in and prohibited me from invading his privacy.”

Frederick you have got to chill someday.

Milady, he’d said. He’d always been so courteous, as far as she could tell; she was hardly his equal, especially when it came to experience on the battlefield, but it was easy to admit that she found that politeness endearing. Not that she had ever detested how informal some of their comrades were, but it had been... jarring, in a sense, coming to the Shepherds from the Pegasus Knights. There, she had rarely felt like she belonged, but among the Shepherds, there were many who practically oozed friendliness. ...She was grateful for it, more so with every passing day.

“That’s quite the compliment, Frederick,” she replied lightly, a teasing tone to her voice-- but the slight flush of her cheeks betrays how truly pleased she is to hear them. She had always trusted him to keep good judgement on all matters not pertaining to Chrom; to hear him praise her so was... She was happy. Her smile grew wider and softened, if only slightly. “But you’re right-- I have seen you hard at work like this before. Few, if any, would ever be able to match your dedication.” A brief, almost mischievous chuckle escaped her. “I’m glad to see you’re well. And yes, I’m fine as well, thank you for asking.” Better now, now that she’d seen with her own eyes that he was as hale and hearty as ever.

Her grace was quick to flee her, however, when the great knight finally broached the topic of a certain well loved prince. Cheeks burning, she brought her hand to her mouth in an attempt to stifle her startle cough. Well. She’d been told time and time again that her hidden affections were not so well hidden, but to hear it said so bluntly flustered her to no end. “That’s...” The redhead cleared her throat, struggling to regain her composure (and eventually succeeded, save for the crimson shade about her cheeks). “That’s--” Wait, he just said he’d been prohibited from-- no, that hardly mattered right now. “...Very kind of you, Frederick, but no; I actually came here to speak to you.”

She took a moment to offer him a true smile in full, expression warm for the brief moment before it faded back into her usual calm demeanor. “I was wondering if there was any way if I could help you with your tasks today. I finished my own chores earlier than expected, and, well...” He did not need to know she’d worried for him. “...I’m glad to see you’re back.”

#knight knight #get it because #there is no joke here i just desperately needed a thread tag #frontline knight

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supersaiga · 7 years

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Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig

Oh what a book. What a book! What a book! Read the book. The day after the US Presidential election my uncle and I went to a cafe, and as I walked to the table with the tea and scones every single table I passed was worrying about Trump and what is going to happen to us all. Future historians of our epoch will one day record that in the year 1937 almost every conversation in every country of this distracted Europe of ours was dominated by speculation as to the probability or improbability of a new world war. Wherever people met, this theme exercised an irresistible fascination, and one sometimes had a feeling that it was not the people themselves who were working off their fears in conjectures and hopes, but, so to speak, the very air, the storm-laden atmosphere of the times, which, charged with latent suspense, was endeavoring to unburden itself in speech. I hope I am just paranoid and my feeling of connection with that other time and place is childish.. it is what it is I suppose. What must be shall be. The first chapter was probably the best first chapter of any book I have ever read. Do not read on. Spoilers. Do not even google its name because the google results contain spoilers without you even needing to click a link. And do not read the introduction of the book, because it contains a summary of the entire plot and no real analysis. Never read introductions until afterwards, if they don’t tell you the entire story they will at the very least tell you the ending.

Beware of Pity

Our anti-hero, the ring-tailed fool, dillydallies between two views. To be kind and self-sacrificing, or to be selfish and independent.

Were people really made so kind and happy by seeing others display kindness and pity? If that were so, Condor was right; if that were so, anyone who made a single person happy had fulfilled the purpose of his existence; it was really worth while to devote oneself to others to the very limit of one’s strength, and even beyond. If that were so, every sacrifice was justified, and even a lie that made others happy was more important than truth itself.

Is pity incompatible with love?

Only now did I realize [...] why my pity so enraged her. Obviously she had realized with a woman’s clairvoyant instinct that pity is far too lukewarm and fraternal a feeling, and but a sorry substitute for real love.

From selfless:

Even if I had gone further than in all honesty I should have done, my lies, those lies born of pity, had made her happy; and to make a person happy could never be a crime.

To selfish:

For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone that identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.

Perhaps in his selflessness he was dishonest and in his selfishness he was honest. At many points in the book people take an inexplicable liking to him, at one point he even notices and is puzzled himself. If he would only stop and see what a coward he is, or if someone would look past his gentlemanliness and his Aryan eyes and realize what he really is and point it out to him before it’s too late.

Is it a crime to marry someone you don’t love to make them happy?

How often has it been committed?

For vanity, too, inebriates; gratitude, too, intoxicates; tenderness, too, can blissfully confuse the senses.

Sometimes insightful, now blind:

What a mercy, I thought, that the crippled, the maimed, those whom Fate has cheated, at least in sleep have no knowledge of the shapeliness or unshapeliness of their bodies.

There is something so horrible about this. The man is so obsessed with this person’s disability that he can at no time think of the person without thinking of the problem. And he for some reason assumes that the person is equally plagued by it and never thinks of anything else. He assumes that because he has reduced them to nothing but a condition that this is truly all they are and they are aware of it. I’ve seen people say this book is a-political. Those people are blind! This way of thinking leads down a clear road to the years where 11 million people were killed in concentration camps because they were defined according to one and only one aspect of themselves, ranging from race to chronic illness to sexuality to political belief.

The fact that the object of pity in this book is Jewish, like the author himself, can surely be no coincidence. The Herr Lieutenant is haunted by the idea that his family and friends might find out he is romantically associated with a “Jewess”.

Narrow-minded person that he is, every single moment he is with her he pities her. He never forgets why she is sitting down. When she tries to show him her strength and perseverance, tries to show him that she can, in fact, walk, all he can see is weakness:

She wanted, out of a kind of mysterious vindictiveness born of despair, to torture us with her torture, to arraign us, the hale and hearty, in the place of God.

She is constantly aware of his pity and it is a constant reminder to her of her situation. It destroys her:

A lame creature, a cripple like myself, has no right to love. How should I, broken, shattered being that I am, be anything but a burden to you, when to myself I am an object of disgust, of loathing. A creature such as I, I know, has no right to love, and certainly no right to be loved. It is for such a creature to creep away into a corner and die and cease to make other people's lives a burden with her presence.

On self-deception:

The instinct of self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at the bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them nonexistent, and a warning such as mine against cheap optimism was bound to prove particularly unwelcome at a moment when a sumptuously laid supper was awaiting for us in the next room.

One should not always let the wish be father to the thought. Only a numskull is pleased at being a so-called “success” with women, only a dunderhead is puffed up by it.

On courage:

During the war practically the only courage I came across was mass courage, the courage that comes of being one of a herd, and anyone who examines this phenomenon more closely will find it to be compounded of some very strange elements: a great deal of vanity, a great deal of recklessness and even boredom, but, above all, a great deal of fear — yes, fear of staying behind, fear of being sneered at, fear of independent action, and fear, above all, of taking a stand against the mass enthusiasm. It always demands a far greater degree of courage for an individual to oppose an organized movement than to let himself be carried along with the stream — individual courage, that is, a variety of courage that is dying out in these times of progressive organization and mechanization. Even in the last war he had not met many men at the front who had either unequivocally acquiesced in or opposed the war. Most of them had been whirled into it like a cloud of dust and had simply found themselves caught up in the vast vortex, each one of them tossed about willy-nilly like a pea in a great sack. For the first time in my life I began to realise that it is not evil and brutality, but nearly always weakness, that is to blame for the worst things that happen in this world.

Other interesting bits:

It seemed to him to be more important and sensible to become rich than to be regarded as rich one might have thought he had read Schopenhauer’s wise paralipomena with regard to what one is or merely represents oneself to be).

Sometimes one is amazed that the good God should trouble to give the six or seven hundred roofs of a little town of this sort the background of a different sky and a different countryside. -

What a wonderful line. It says so much and so early on about the narrator.

It is only the immeasurable, the limitless that terrifies us. That which is set within defined, fixed limits is a challenge to our powers, comes to be the measure of our strength.

There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.

Love is illimitable, all finiteness, all moderation, is repugnant, intolerable to it. In every sign of constraint, of restraint, on the part of the other it suspects opposition; any reluctance to yield utterly it rightly interprets as secret resistance. And there must have been a trace of embarrassment and confusion in my behaviour, of disingenuousness and gaucherie in what I said, for all my efforts were no match for her alert expectancy.

For a young and inexperienced person almost invariably forms a picture of real life and experience that is a reflection of the world of which he has heard or read in books; before he has experienced life at first-hand he inevitably moulds his ideas of it on second-hand experience. Our decisions are to a much greater extent dependent on our desire to conform to the standards of our class and environment than we are inclined to admit. A considerable proportion of our reasoning is merely an automatic function, so to speak, of influences and impressions which have become part of us.. I felt like a murderer who has buried the corpse of his victim in a wood: the snow begins to fall in thick, white, dense flakes; for months, he knows, this concealing coverlet will hide his crime, and afterwards all trace of it will have vanished forever. And so I plucked up the courage and began to live again. Since no one reminded me of it, I myself forgot my guilt. For the heart is able to bury deep and well what it urgently desires to forget. So often in fiction, films and TV more than books, people are, in the end, good or bad. This person, oh and I despise him, this person is both. He is so real. He’s insightful at times, but incredibly blind. Kind, but impossibly cruel and selfish overall. Honorable, but despicable. Brave, but as cowardly as they come.

#Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig #Beware of Pity #Stefan Sweig

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andya-j · 6 years

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Night descended on Interstate-90 as I crossed over into the Badlands. Real raw weather for October. Snow dusted the asphalt and picnic tables of the deserted rest area. The scene was virginal as death. I parked the Chevy under one of the lamp posts that burned at either end of the lot. A metal building with a canted roof sat low and sleek in the center island, most of its windows dark. Against the black backdrop it reminded me of a crypt or monument to travelers and pioneers lost down through the years. Placards were obscured by shadows and could’ve pronounced warnings or curses, could’ve said anything in any language. Reality was pliable tonight. Periodically a semi chugged along the freeway, its running lights tiny and dim. Other than that, this was the Moon. I loosed Minerva and watched her trot around the perimeter of the sodium glow. She raised her graying snout and growled softly at the void that surrounded us, poured from us. Her tracks and the infrequent firefly sparks on the road were the only signs of life for miles. Snow was falling thick, and those small signs wouldn’t last long. It was back to the previous ice age for us, the end for us. I kind-of, sort-of liked the idea that this might be the end, except for the fact sweet, loyal Minerva hadn’t asked for any of it, and my nature—my atavistic shadow—was, as usual, a belligerent sonofabitch. My shadow exhibited the type of nature that causes men to weigh themselves with stones before they jump into the midnight blue, causes them to mix the pills with antifreeze, trade the pistol bullet to the brain for a shotgun barrel in the mouth, just to be on the safe side. My shadow didn’t give a shit about odds, or eventualities, or pain, or certain death. It just wanted to keep shining. So, Minerva pissed in the snow and I ticked off the seconds until the ultimate showdown. My ear was killing tonight, crackling like a busted radio speaker and ringing with good old tinnitus. The sensation was that of an auger boring through membrane and meat. My back and knee ached. I lost the ear to a virus upon contracting pneumonia in Alaska during a long ago Iditarod. The spine and knee got ruined after I fell off a cliff into the Bering Sea and broke just about everything that was breakable. Resilience was my gift, and I’d recovered sufficiently to limp through the remainder of a wasted youth, to fake a hale and hearty demeanor. That shit was surely catching up now at the precipice of the miserable slide into middle age. All those forgotten or ignored wounds blooming in a chorus of ghostly pain, reminders of longstanding debts, reminders that a man can’t always outrun provenance. Sometimes it outruns him. I checked my watch and the numbers blurred. I hadn’t slept in way too long, else I never would’ve pulled over between Bumfuck, Egypt and Timbuktu. Since suicide by passivity was off the table, this was an expression of stubbornness on my part, probably. Grim defiance, or the need to reassert my faith in the logical operations of the universe if but for a moment. What a joke, faith. What a sham, logic. A hunting horn sounded far out there in the darkness beyond the humps and swales and treeless drumlins that went on basically forever, past the vast hungry prairies that had swallowed so many wagon trains. Oh, yes. The horn of the Hunt. Not simply a horn, but one that could easily be imagined as the hollowed relic from a giant, perverted ram with blood-specked foam lathering its muzzle and hellfire beaming from its eyes. A ram that crunched the bones of Saxons for breakfast and brandished a cock the girth of a wagon axle; the kind of brute that tribes sacrificed babies to when crops were bad and mated unfortunate maidens to when the chief needed some special juju on the eve of a war. Its horn was the sort of artifact that stood on end in a petrified coil and would require a brawny Viking raider to lift. Or a demon. That wail stood my hair on end, slapped me awake. It rolled toward the parking lot, swelling like some Medieval air raid klaxon. Snowflakes weren’t melting on my cheeks because all the heat—all the blood—went rushing inward. That erstwhile faith in the natural universe, the rational order of reality, wouldn’t be troubling me again anytime soon. Nope. I whistled for Minerva and she leaped into the truck, riding shotgun. Her hackles were bunched. She barked her fury and terror at the night. Sleep, O blessed sleep, how I longed for thee. No time for that. We had to get gone. The Devil would be there soon. *** Years ago, when I raced sled dogs for a living, I knew a fellow named Steven Graham, a disgraced lit professor from the University of Colorado. He’d gotten shitcanned for reasons opaque to my blue collar sensibilities—something to do with privileging contemporary zombie stories over the works of the Russian masters. His past was shrouded in mystery and, like a lot people, he’d fled to Alaska to reinvent himself. Nobody on the racing circuit cared much about any of that. Graham was charming and charismatic in spades. He drank and swore with the best of us, but he’d also get three sheets to the wind and recite a bit of Beowulf in Olde English, and he knew the bloodlines of huskies from Balto onward. Strap a pair of snowshoes to that lanky greenhorn bastard and he’d leave even the most hardened back country trapper in the proverbial dust. All the girlies adored him, and so did the cameras. Like Cummings said, he was a hell of a handsome man. Too good to be true. Steven Graham got taken by the Hunt while he was running the 1992 Iditarod. That’s the big winter event where men and women hook a bunch of huskies to sleds and race twelve hundred miles across Alaska from Anchorage to Nome. There’s not much to say about it—it’s long and grueling and lonely. You’re always crossing a frozen swamp or mushing up an ice-jammed river or trudging over a mountain. It’s dark and cold and mostly devoid of sound or movement but for one’s own breath and the muted panting of the huskies, the jingle and clink of their traces. Official records have it that Graham, young ex-professor and dilettante adventurer, took a wrong turn out on Norton Sound between Koyuk and Elim and went through the ice into the sea. Ka-sploosh. No trace of him or the dogs was found. The Lieutenant Governor attended the funeral. CNN covered it live. The report was bullshit, of course; I saw what really happened. And because I saw what really happened—because I meddled in the Hunt—there would be hell to pay. *** Broad daylight, maybe an hour prior to sunset, mid March of 1992. All twelve dogs in harness trotted along nicely. The end of the trail in Nome was about two days away. Things hadn’t gone particularly well, and I was cruising for a middle of the pack finish and a long, destitute summer of begging corporate sponsors not to drop my underachieving ass. But damn, what a gorgeous day in the arctic: the snowpack curving around me to the horizon, the sky frozen between apple-green and steely blue, the orange ball of the sun dipping below the Earth. The effect was something out of Fantasia. After days of inadequate sleep I was lulled by the hiss of the sled runners, the rhythmic scrape and slap of dog paws. I dozed at the handlebars and dreamed of Sharon, the warmth of our home, a cup of real coffee, a hot shower, and the down comforter on our bed. When my team passed through a gap in a mile-long pressure ridge that had heaved the Bering ice to an eight-foot tall parapet, the Hunt had taken down Graham on the other side, maybe twenty yards off the main drag. This I discovered when one of Graham’s huskies loped toward me, free of its traces yet still in harness. The poor critter’s head had been lopped at mid-neck and it zig-zagged several strides and then collapsed on the trail. You’d think my own dogs would’ve spooked. Instead, an atavistic switch was tripped in their doggy brains and they surged forward, yapping and howling. Several yards to my right so much blood covered the snow I thought I was hallucinating a sunset dripped onto the ice. The scene confused me for a few seconds as my brain locked down and spun in place. The killing ground was a fucking mess, like there’d been a mass walrus slaughter committed on the spot. Dead huskies were flung about, intestines looped over berms and piled in loose, steaming coils. Graham himself lay spread-eagled across a blue-white slab of ice repurposed as an impromptu sacrificial altar. He was split wide, eyes blank. The Huntsman had most of the guy’s hide off and was tacking it alongside the carcass as one stretches the skin of a beaver or a bear. Clad in a deerstalker hat surmounted by antlers, a blood-drenched mackinaw coat, canvas breeches, and sealskin boots, the Huntsman stood taller than most men even as he hunched to slice Graham with a large knife of flint or obsidian—I wasn’t quite close enough to discern which. Meanwhile, the Huntsman’s wolf pack ranged among the butchered huskies. These wolves were black and gaunt as cadavers; their narrow eyes glinted, reflecting the snow, the changeable heavens. When several of them reared on hind legs to study me, I decided they weren’t wolves at all. Some wore olden leather and caps with splintered nubs of horn; others were garbed in the remnants of military fatigues and camouflage jackets of various styles, gore encrusted and ingrown to the creatures’ hides. They grinned at me and their mouths were . . . very, very wide. Nothing brave in what I did, or at least tried to do. My befuddled intellect was still processing the carnage when I sank the hook and tethered the team, left them baying frantically in the middle of the trail. I wasn’t thinking of a damned thing as I walked stiff-legged toward the Hunt and the in-progress evisceration of my comrade. Most mushers carried firearms on the trail. There were moose to contend with and, frankly, a gun is pretty much just basic equipment in any case. We toted rifles or pistols like folks in the lower forty-eight carry cell phones and wallets. Mine was a .357 I stowed inside my anorak to keep the cylinder from freezing into a solid lump. The revolver was in my hand and it jumped twice. I don’t recall the booms. No sound, only fire. The closest pair of dog men flipped over and a small part of my mind celebrated that at least the fuckers could be hurt. It wasn’t like the legends or the movies; no silver required, lead worked fine. The Huntsman whirled when I was nearly upon him, and Jesus help me I glimpsed his face. That’s probably why my hair went white that year. I squeezed the trigger three more times, emptied the gun and even as the bullets smacked him, I had the sense of shooting into an abyss—absolute hopeless, soul-draining futility. The Huntsman swayed, humungous knife raised. The blade was flint, turns out. Worst part was, Graham blinked and looked right at me and I saw his skinned hand twitch. How he could be alive in that condition was no more or less fantastical than anything else, I suppose. Even so, even so. I still get a sick feeling in my stomach when I recall that image. Apparently, the gods of the north had seen enough. Wind roared around us and everything went white and I was alone. Hurricane-force gusts knocked me off my feet and I barely managed to crawl to the team, almost missed them, in fact. Visibility was maybe six feet. Easily, easily could’ve kept going into the featureless maelstrom until I found the lip at the edge of a bottomless gulf of open water and joined Graham, wherever he’d gone. That storm pinned the dogs and me to Norton Sound for three days. Gusts of seventy knots. Wind chill in excess of negative one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. You wouldn’t understand how cold that is. I can’t describe it. It’s like trying to explain how far away Alpha Centauri is from Earth in highway miles. The brain isn’t equipped. Froze my right hand and foot. Froze my face so that it hardened into a black and blue mask. Froze my dick. Didn’t lose anything important, but man, there are few agonies equal to thawing a frostbitten extremity. I actually managed to cripple across the finish line. Suffering through the aftermath of physical therapy and counseling, the memory of what I’d seen out there was wiped clean from my mind with the efficacy of a kid tipping an Etch A Sketch and giving it a shake. Seven or eight years passed before the horrible event came back to haunt me, and by then it was too late to say anything, too late to be certain whether it had happened or if I’d gone round the bend. *** Snow drifted both lanes and the wind buffeted the Chevy, and goddamn, but I was reliving that blizzard of ‘92. The fuel gauge needle fell into the red and I drove another half an hour, creeping along in four-wheel hi. Radio reception was poor and I’d settled for a static-filled broadcast of ’80s rock. Hall & Oates, The Police, a block of Sade and Blue Oyster Cult, all that music our parents hated when we were bopping along in mullets. “Godzilla” cut in and out during the drum solo, and a distorted animal growl that had nothing to do with heavy metal issued from the speakers. My name snarled over and over to the metronome of the wipers. A truck stop glittered on the horizon of the next off ramp. Exhausted, frazzled, pissed, and afraid, I pulled alongside the pumps and got fuel. Then I hooked Minerva to a leash and brought her inside with me. She curled at my boots while I drank a quart of awful coffee and ate a New York steak with all the trimmings. The waitress didn’t say anything about my bringing a pit bull to the table. Maybe the folks in Dakota were hip to that sort of thing. Didn’t matter; I’d gotten the little card that proved Minerva was a service dog and of vital importance should I experience an “episode” of depression or mania. Depression had haunted me since my retirement from mushing, and a friend who worked as counselor at the University of Anchorage suggested that I adopt a shelter puppy and train it as a companion animal. The local police had busted a dog-fighting ring and one of the females was pregnant, so Sharon and I eventually picked Minerva from a litter of eleven. A decade later, after my world burned to the ground—career in ashes, wife gone, friends few and far between—Minerva remained steadfast. A man and his dog versus the Outer Dark. I patted her head as we went through the door, and wished that I possessed more of her canine equanimity in the face of the unknown. The diner was doing brisk trade. Two burly truckers in company jumpsuits occupied the next booth, but most of the customers were gathered at the counter so they could watch weather reports on TV. Nothing heartening in the reports, either. The storm would definitely delay me by half a day, possibly more. My ardent hope was that I could just bull through it and be in the clear by the time I crossed Wyoming tomorrow. I also prayed that the pickup would hang together all the way to Lamprey Isle, New York, my destination at the end of the yellow brick road. My plan was to reach the home of an old friend, the eminent crime novelist, Jack Fort. Jack also happened to be a retired English professor. Jack claimed he could help. I had my doubts. The pack and its leader were eternal and relentless. A man could plunk a few, sure. In the end, though, they simply reformed and kept pursuing. The Devil’s smoke demons on the hunt. Be that as it may, I’d decided to go down swinging, and that meant a hell-bent for leather ride into the east. Currently, my worries centered on weather and equipment. The drive from Alaska via the Alcan Highway had been rough, and I suspected the old engine was fixing to give up the ghost. I could say the same thing about my heart, my sanity, my luck. Sure enough. Minerva snarled and bolted from her spot under the table. She crouched beside me, shivering. Foam dribbled from her jaw and her eyes bulged. Graham strolled in, taller and happier than I remembered. Death agreed with some people. He loomed in Technicolor while reality bleached around him. His long black hair was feathered with snowflakes, and the lights hit it just right so he appeared angelic, a movie star pausing for his dramatic close-up. In his right hand, he carried the ivory hunting horn (indeed a ram’s horn, albeit much more modest than its report); in his left he carried a faded cowboy hat with a crimson and black patch on the crown. He wore the Huntsman’s iceberg-white mackinaw, ceremonial flint knife tucked into his belt so the bone handle jutted in a most phallic statement. He ambled over and slid in across from me. I noticed his sealskin boots left maroon smears on the tiles. I also noticed puffs of steam escaping our mouths as the booth cooled like a meat locker. I cocked the .357 and braced it across my thigh. “You must not be heralding the great zombie invasion. Lookin’ great, Steve. Not chalk white or anything. The rot must be on the inside.” He flipped his hair and smirked. His trophy necklace of wedding rings, key fobs, dog tags, driver licenses, and glass eyes clinked and rattled. “Likewise, amigo. You’ve lost weight? Dyed your hair? What?” “This and that—diet, exercise. Fleeing in terror has the bonus effect of getting a man in shape. Divorce, too. My wife used to fatten me up pretty good. Since she split . . . you know. TV dinners and Johnnie Walker. I got it going on, huh?” I gripped Minerva’s collar with my free hand. Her growls were deep and ferocious. She strained to lunge over the table, an eighty pound bowling bowl; rippling muscle and bone crushing jaws and, at the moment, bad intentions. My arm was tired already. Tempting to let my girl fly, but I loved her. “I’m yanking your chain. You look like crap. When’s the last time you slept? There’s a motel a piece up the trail. Why not get room service, watch a porno, drink some booze and fall into peaceful slumber? You won’t even notice when I slip in there and slice your fucking throat ear to ear.” Graham’s smile widened. It was still him, too. Same guy I’d gotten drunk with at Nome saloons. Same perfect teeth, same easy manner, probably sincere. He’d not intimated any malice regarding his intent to skin me alive and eat my beating heart. This was business, mostly. He inclined his head slightly, as if intercepting my thought. “Not so much business as tradition. The Hunt is a sacred rite. I gave you the head start as a courtesy.” He was telling the truth as I understood it from my research of the legends. To witness the Hunt, to interfere with the Hunt, was to become prey. I’d wondered why the emissaries of the Horned One waited so long to come after me, especially considering the magnitude of my transgression. “Well, I reckon that was sporting of you. Twenty years. Plenty of time for Odysseus to screw his way home from the front.” “Yep, and you’re almost there, too,” Graham said. “Crazy ass scene on the ice, huh? Sergio Leone meets John Landis and they do it up right with razors. Man, you were totally Eastwood, six-gun blazing. Wounded the Huntsman in a serious way. Didn’t kill the fucker, though. Don’t flatter yourself on that score. Might be able to smoke the hounds with regular bullets. That shit don’t work so well on the Huntsman. We’re of a higher order. Nah, when that storm hit, some sort of force went through me, electrified me. I tore free of that altar and jumped on the bastard’s back, stuck a hunting knife into his kidney. Still wouldn’t have worked except the forces of darkness were smiling on me. Grooved on my style. The Boss demoted him, awarded me the mantle and the blade, the hounds, more bitches in Hell than you can shake a stick at. I’ve watched you for a while, bro. Watched you lose your woman, your career, your health. You’re an old, grizzled bull. No money, no family, no friends, no future. It’s culling time, baby.” “Shit, you’re doing me a favor! Thanks, pal!” “Come on, don’t be sarcastic. We’re still buds. This is going to be super-duper painful, but no reason to make it personal. Your hide will be but one more tossed atop a mountainous pile beside a chthonic lagoon of blood and the Horned One’s bone throne. The muster roll of the damned is endless, and the next name awaits my attentions.” “Okay, nothing personal. Here’s the deal, since I’m the one with the hand cannon. You hold still and I’ll blow your head off. Take my chances with whomever they send next. No hard feelings.” I debated whether to shoot him under the table or risk raising the gun to aim properly. Graham laughed. “Whoa, chief. This isn’t the place. All these hapless customers, the dishwasher, the waitress, the fry cooks. That sexy waitress. If we turn this into the O-K Corral, the Boss himself will be on the case. The Horned One isn’t a kindly soul. He comes around, everybody gets it in the neck. Them’s the rules, I’m afraid.” A vision splashed across the home cinema of my imagination: every person in the diner strung from the rafters by their living guts, the hounds using the corpses for piñatas and the massive, shadowy bulk of the Horned God flickering fire in the parking lot as he gazed on in infernal joy. Like as not this image was projected by Graham. I glanced out the window and spotted one of the pack, a cadaverous brute in a threadbare parka and snow pants, pissing against the wheel of a semi. In another life he’d been Bukowski or Waits, or a serial killer who rode the rails and shanked fellow hobos, a strangler of coeds, a postman. I knew him for a split second, then not. Other hounds leaped from trailer to trailer, frolicking. Too dark to make out details, except that the figures flitted and fluttered with the lithe, rubbery grace of acrobats. I said, “Tell me, Steve. What would’ve happened to you if I hadn’t interrupted the party? Where would you be tonight?” He shrugged and his movie star teeth dulled to a shade of rotten ivory. “Ah, those are the sort of questions I try to let lie. The Boss frowns on us worrying about stuff above our pay grade.” “Would you have become a hound?” “Sometimes a damned soul gets dragged over to join the Hunt. Only the few, the proud. It’s a rare honor.” Cold clamped on the back of my neck. “And the rest of the slobs who get taken? Where do they go after you’re done with them?” “Not a clue, amigo. Truly an ineffable mystery.” His grin brightened again, so white, so frigid. He put on the cowboy hat. The logo was a red patch with a set of black antlers stitched in the foreground. Sign of the Horned God who was Graham’s master on the Other Side. Minerva’s snarls and growls escalated to full-throated barks as she bristled and lunged. She’d had her fill of Mr. Death and his shark smirk. One of the truckers set down his coffee cup, pointed a thick finger at me, and said, “Hey, asshole. Shut that dog up.” Graham’s eyes went dark, monitors tuned to deep space. A stain formed on the breast of his lily-white mackinaw. Blood dripped from his sleeve and the stink of carrion wafted from his mouth. He rose and turned and his shoulders seemed to broaden. I caught his profile reflected in the window and something was wrong with it, although I couldn’t tell what exactly. He said in a distorted, buzzing voice, “No, you shut your mouth. Or I’ll eat your tongue like a piece of Teriyaki.” The trucker paled and scrambled from his seat and fled the diner without a word. His buddy followed suit. They didn’t grab their coats or pay the tab or anything. Other folks had twisted in their seats to view the commotion. None of them spoke, either. The waitress stood with her ticket book outthrust like a crucifix. Graham said to them, “Hush, folks. Nothing to see here.” And everyone took the hint and went back to his or her business. He nodded and faced me, smile affixed, eyes sort of normal again. “I better get along, li’l doggie. Wanted to say hi. So hi and goodbye. Gonna keep trucking east? Wait, forget I asked. Don’t want to spoil the fun. See you soon, wherever that is.” Yeah, he grinned, but the wintry night was a heap warmer. “Wait,” I said. “You mentioned rules. Be nice to know what they are.” “Sure, there are lots of rules. However, you only need to worry about one of them: run, motherfucker.” *** I never fully recovered from the incident in ‘92; not down deep, not in the way that counts. Nightmares plagued me. Oblique, horror-show recreations as seen through the obfuscating mist of a subconscious in denial. Neither me nor the shrink could make sense of them. He put me on pills and that didn’t help. I sold the team to a Japanese millionaire and moved to the suburbs of Anchorage with Sharon, took a series of crummy labor jobs, and worked on the Great American horror novel in the evenings. She finished grad school and landed a position teaching elementary grade art. Ever fascinated with pulp classics, when the novel appeared to be a dead end I tried my hand at genre short fiction and immediately landed a few sales. By the early aughts I was doing well enough to justify quitting the construction gig and staying home to work on stories full-time. These were supernatural horror stories, fueled by the nightmares I didn’t understand, until it all came crashing in on me one afternoon during a game of winter golf with some buddies down at the beach. I keeled over on the frozen sand and was momentarily transported back to Norton Sound while my friends stood around wringing their hands. Normal folks don’t know what to do around a lunatic writhing on the ground and babbling in tongues. A week on the couch wrapped in an electric blanket and shaking with terror followed. I didn’t level with anyone—not the shrink, not Sharon or my parents, not my friends or writer colleagues. I read a piece on the Wild Hunt in an article concerning world mythology and it was like getting socked in the belly. I finally knew what had happened, if not why. All that was left was to brood. Life went on. We tried for children without success. I have a hunch Sharon left me because I was shooting blanks. Who the fuck knows, though. Much like the Wild Hunt, the Meaning of Life, and where matching socks vanish to, her motives remain a mystery. Things seemed cozy between us; she’d always been sympathetic to my tics and twitches, and I’d tried to be a good and loving husband in return. Obviously, living with a half-crazed author took a greater toll than I’d estimated. Add screams in the night and generally paranoid behavior to the equation . . . One day she came home early, packed her bags, and headed for Italy with a music teacher from her school. Not a single tear in her eye when she said adios to me, either. That was the same week my longtime agent, a lewd, crude alcoholic expat Brit named Stanley Jones, was indicted on numerous federal charges including embezzlement, wire fraud, and illegal alien residence. He and his lover, the obscure English horror writer Samson Marks, absconded to Mexico with my life savings, as well as the nest eggs of several other authors. The scandal made all the industry trade rags, but the cops didn’t seem overly concerned with chasing the duo. I depended on those royalty checks as my physical condition was deteriorating. Cold weather made my bones ache. Some mornings my lumbar seized and it took twenty minutes to crawl out of bed. I hung on for a couple of years, but my situation declined. The publishing climate wasn’t friendly with the recession and such. Foreclosure notices soon arrived in the mailbox. Then, last week, Graham reappeared to put my misery into perspective. Prior to this latter event, Jack Fort theorized that Sharon didn’t run off to Italy because she was dissatisfied with the way things were going at home. Nor was it a coincidence that Jones robbed me blind and left me in the poorhouse. (Jack also employed the crook as an agent, and from what I gathered, the loss of funds contributed to his own divorce.) My friend became convinced dark forces had aligned against me in matters great and small. Later, I told him about the Hunt and what I’d seen on the ice in 1992, how that particular chicken had come home to roost. He wasn’t the least bit surprised. Unflappable Jack Fort; the original drink-boiling-water-and-piss-ice-cubes guy. The night I called him we were both drunk, and when I spilled the story of how Graham had returned from the grave and wanted to mount my head on a trophy room wall in hell, instead of expressing bewilderment or fear for my sanity, Jack just said, “Right. I figured it was something like this. From grad school onward, Graham was headed for trouble, pure and simple. He was asshole buddies with exactly the wrong type of people. Occultism is nothing to fuck with. Anyway, you’re sure it’s the Wild Hunt?” “Graham referred to himself as the Huntsman. So. It happened almost exactly like the legends.” Granted, there were variations on the theme. Each culture has its peculiarities and so focuses on different aspects. Some versions of the Hunt mythology have Odin calling the tune. Under Odin’s yoke, the Hunt is an expression of exuberance and feral joy, a celebration of the primal. Odin’s pack travels a couple of feet off the ground. Any fool that stands in the way gets mowed like grass. See Odin coming, you grab dirt and pray the spectral procession passes overhead and keeps moving on the trail of its quarry. The gang from Alaska seemed darker, crueler, dirtier than the storybook versions; Graham and his troops reeked of sadism and madness. That eldritch psychosis leached from them into me, gathered in effluvial dankness in the back of my throat, lay on my tongue as a foul taint. The important details were plenty consistent—slavering hounds, feral Huntsman, a horned deity overseeing the chase, death and damnation to the prey. Jack asked what happened and I gave him the scoop: “I was hiking along Hatcher Pass to photograph the mountain for research. Heard a god-awful racket in a nearby canyon. Howling, psycho laughter, screams. Some kind of Viking horn. I knew what was happening before I saw the pack on the summit. Knew it in my bones—the legends vary, of course. Still, the basics are damned clear whether it’s the Norwegians, Germans, or Inuit. The pack wasn’t in full chase mode or that would’ve been curtains. They wanted to scare me; makes the kill sweeter. Anyway, I beat feet. Made it to the truck and burned rubber. Graham showed up at the house later in a greasy puff of smoke, chatted with me through the door. He said I had three days to get my shit in order and then he and his boys would be after me for real.” Jack remained quiet for a bit, except to cough a horrible, phlegmy cough—it sounded wet and entrenched as bronchitis or pneumonia. Finally he said, “Well, head east. I might be able to help you. Graham and me knew each other pretty well once upon a time when he was still teaching, and I got some ideas what he was up to after he left Boulder. He was an adventurer, but I doubt he spent all that time in the frozen north for the thrill. Nah, my bet is he was searching for the Hunt and it found him first. Poor silly bastard.” “Thanks, man. Although, I hate to bring this to your doorstep. Interfere in the Hunt and it’s you on the skinning board next.” “Shut up, kid. Tend your knitting and I’ll see to mine.” Big Jack Fort’s nonchalant reaction should’ve startled me, and under different circumstances I might’ve pondered how deep the tentacles of this particular conspiracy went. His advice appealed, though. Sure, the Huntsman wanted me to take to my heels; the chase gave him a boner. Nonetheless, I’d rather present a moving target than hang around the empty house waiting to get snuffed on the toilet or in my sleep. Graham’s flayed body glistening in the arctic twilight was branded into my psyche. “You better step lively,” Jack warned me, in that gravelly voice of his that always sounded the same whether sober or stewed. A big dude, built square, the offspring of Raymond Burr and a grand piano. Likely he was sprawled across his couch in a tee shirt and boxers, bottle of Maker’s Mark in one paw. “Got complications on my end. Can’t talk about them right now. Just haul ass and get here.” I didn’t like the sound of that, nor the sound of his coughing. Despite a weakness for booze, Jack was one of the more stable guys in the business. However, he was a bit older than me and playing the role of estranged husband. Then there was the crap with Jones and dwindling book sales in general. I thought maybe he was cracking. I thought maybe we were both cracking. Later that night I loaded the truck with a few essentials, including my wedding album and a handful of paperbacks I’d acquired at various literary conventions, locked the house, and lit out. In the rearview mirror I saw Graham and three of his hounds as silhouettes on the garage roof, pinprick eyes blazing red as I drove away. It was, as the kids say, game on. *** Rocketing through Indiana, “Slippery People” on the radio, darkness all around, darkness inside. The radio crackled and static erased the Talking Heads and Graham said to me, “Everybody on the lam from the Hunt feels sorry for himself. Thing of it is, amigo, you’re tuned to the wrong tune. You should ask yourself, How did I get here? What have I done?” The pack raced alongside the truck. Hounds and master shimmered like starlight against the velvet backdrop, twisted like funnels of smoke. The Huntsman blew me a kiss and I tromped the accelerator and they fell off the pace. One of the hounds leaped the embankment rail and loped after me, snout pressed to the centerline. It darted into the shadows an instant before being overtaken and smooshed by a tractor trailer. I pushed beyond exhaustion and well into the realm of zombification. The highway was a wormhole between dimensions and Graham occasionally whispered to me through the radio even though I’d hit the kill switch. And what he’d said really worked on me. What had I done to come to this pass? Maybe Sharon left me because I was a sonofabitch. Maybe Jones screwing me over was karma. The Wild Hunt might be a case of the universe getting Even-Steven (pardon the pun) with me. Thank the gods I didn’t have a bottle of liquor handy or else I’d have spent the remainder of the long night totally blitzed and sobbing like a baby over misdeeds real and imagined. Instead, I popped the cap on a bottle of NoDoz and put the hammer down. *** I parked and slept once in a turnout for a couple of hours during the middle of the day when traffic ran thickest. I risked no more than that. The Hunt had its rules regarding the taking of prey in front of too many witnesses, but I didn’t have the balls to challenge those traditions. The Chevy died outside Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Every gauge went crazy and plumes of steam boiled from the radiator. I got the rig towed to a salvage yard and transferred Minerva and my meager belongings to a compact rental. We were back on the road before breakfast, and late afternoon saw us aboard the ferry from Port Sanger, New York, to Lamprey Isle. What to say about LI West (as Jack referred to it)? Nineteen miles north to south and about half that at its widest, the whole curved into a malformed crescent, the Man in the Moon’s visage peeled from Luna and partially submerged in the Atlantic. Its rocky shore was sculpted by the clash of wind and sea; a forest of pine, maple, and oak spanned the interior. Home of hoot owls and red squirrels; good deer hunting along the secret winding trails, I’d heard. Native burial mounds and mysterious megaliths, I’d also heard. The main population center, Lamprey Township (pop. 2201), nestled in a cove on the southwestern tip of the island. Jack had mentioned that the town had been established as a fishing village in the early nineteenth century; prior to that, smugglers and slavers made it their refuge from privateers and local authorities. A den of illicit gambling and sodomy, I’d heard. Allegedly, the name arose from a vicious species of eels that infested the local waters. Long as a man’s arm, the locals claimed. Lamprey Township was a fog-shrouded settlement hemmed by the cove and spearhead shoals, a picket of evergreens. A gloomy cathedral fortress reared atop a cliff streaked with seagull shit and pocked by cave entrances. Lovers Leap. In town, everybody wore flannel and rain slickers, boots and sock caps. A folding knife and mackinaw crowd. Everything was covered in salt rime, everything tasted of brine. Piloting the rental down Main Street between boardwalks, compartment of the car flushed with soft blue-red lights reflecting from the ocean, I thought this wouldn’t be such a bad place to die. Release my essential salts back into the primordial cradle. Jack’s cabin lay inland at the far end of a dirt spur. Built in the same era as the founding of Lamprey Township, he’d bought it from Katarina Veniti, a paranormal romance author who’d become jaded with all of the tourists and yuppies moving onto “her” island during the last recession. A stone and timber longhouse with ye old-fashioned shingles and moss on the roof surrounded by an acre of sloping yard overgrown with tall, dead grass. An oak had uprooted during a recent windstorm and toppled across the drive. Minerva and I hoofed it the last quarter of a mile. The faceless moon dripped and shone through scudding clouds and a vault of branches. The house sat in darkness except for a light shining from the kitchen window. “Welcome to Kat’s island,” Jack said, and coughed. He reclined in the shadows on a porch swing. Moonlight glinted from the bottle in his hand, the barrel of the pump-action shotgun across his knees. He wore a wool coat, dock-worker’s cap snug over his brow, wool pants, and lace-up hiking boots. When he stood to shake my hand, I realized his clothes hung loose as sails, that he was frail and shaky. “Jesus, man,” I said, shaken at the sight of him. He appeared more of an apparition than the bona fide spirit pursuing me. I understood why he didn’t mind the idea of the Hunt invading his happy home. The man was so emaciated he should’ve been hanging near the blackboard in science class; a hundred pounds lighter since I’d last seen him, easy. He’d shaved his head and beard to gray stubble; his pallid flesh was dry and hot, his eyes sparkled like bits of quartz. He stank of gun oil, smoke, and rotting fruit. “Yeah. The big C. Doc hit me with the bad news this spring. Deathwatch around the Fort. I sent the pets to live with my sister.” He smiled and gestured at the woods. “Just you, me, and the trees. I got nothing better to do than help an old pal in his hour of need.” He led the way inside. The kitchen was cheerily lighted, and we took residence at the dining table where he poured me a glass of whiskey and listened to my recap of the trip from Alaska. “I hope you’ve got a plan,” I said. “Besides blasting them with grandma’s twelve gauge?” He patted the stock of his shotgun where it lay on the table. “We’re going out like a pair of Vikings.” “I’d be more excited if you had a flamethrower, or some grenades.” “Me too. Me too. I got a few sticks of dynamite for fishing and plenty of ammo.” “Dynamite is good. This is going to be full on Hollywood. Fast cars, shirtless women, explosions . . .” “Man, I don’t even know if it’ll detonate. The shit’s been stashed in a leaky box in the cellar for a hundred years. Honestly, my estimation is, we’re hosed. Totally up shit creek. Our sole advantage is prey doesn’t usually fight back. Graham’s powerful, he’s a spirit, or a monster, whatever. But he’s new on the job, right? That may be our ray of sunshine. That, and according to the literature, the Pack doesn’t fancy crossing large bodies of open water. These haunts prefer ice and snow.” Jack coughed into a handkerchief. Belly-ripping, Doc Holliday kind of coughing. He wiped his mouth and had a belt of whiskey. His cheeks were blotched. “Anyway, I brought you here for another reason. This house belonged to a sorcerer once upon a time. Type they used to burn at the stake. An unsavory guy named Ewers Welloc. The Wellocs own most of this island and there’s a hell of a story in that. For now, let me say Ewers was blackest in a family of black sheep. The villagers were scared shitless of him, were convinced he practiced necromancy and other dark arts on the property. Considering the stories Kat told me and some of the funky stuff I’ve found stashed around here, it’s hard to dismiss the villagers claims as superstition.” I could only wonder what he’d unearthed, or Kat before him. Jack bought the place for a dollar and suddenly that factoid assumed ominous significance. “What were you guys up to? You, Kat, and Graham attended college together. Did you form a club?” “A witch coven. I kid, I kid. Wasn’t college . . . We met at the Sugar Tree Hill writers’ retreat. Five days of sun, fun, booze, and hand jobs. There were quite a few young authors there who went on to become quasi-prominent. Many a friendship and enmity are formed at Sugar Tree Hill. The three of us really clicked. Me and Kat were wild, man, wild. Nothing on Graham’s scale, though. He took it way farther. As you can see.” “Yeah.” I sipped my drink. “Me and Graham were pretty tight until he schlepped to Alaska and started in with the sled dogs. Communication tapered off and after a while we fell out of touch. I received a few letters. Guy had the world’s shittiest penmanship; would’ve taken a cryptologist to have deciphered them. I thought he suffered from cabin fever.” “Seemed okay to me,” I said. “Gregarious. Popular. Handsome. He was well-regarded.” “Yeah, yeah . . . The rot was on the inside,” Jack said and I almost spilled my glass. He didn’t notice. “As it happens, my hole card is an ace. Lamprey Isle was settled long before the whites landed. Maybe before the Mohawk, Mohican, Seneca. Nobody knows who these people were, but none of the records are flattering. This mystery tribe left megaliths and cairns on islands and along the coast. A few of those megaliths are in the woods around here. Legend has it that the tribe erected them for use in necromantic rituals. Summon, bind, banish. Like Robert Howard hypothesized in his Conan tales—if the demonic manifests on the mortal plane, it becomes subject to the laws of physics, and cold Hyperborean steel. Howard was onto something.” “Fairy rocks, huh?” I said. The whiskey was hitting me. “Got any problem believing in the Grim Reaper with a hunting knife and a pack of werewolves chasing you from one end of the continent to the other?” I tried again. “So. Fairy rocks.” “Fuckin’ A, boy-o. Fairy rocks. And double aught buckshot.” *** We took shifts at watch until dawn. The Hunt didn’t arrive and so passed a peaceful evening. I slept for three hours; the most I’d had in a week. Jack fried bacon and eggs for breakfast and we drank a pot of black coffee. Afterward he gave me a tour of the house and the immediate grounds. Much of the house gathered dust, exuding the vibe particular to dwellings of bachelors and widowers. Since his wife flew the coop, Jack’s remit had contracted to kitchen, bath, living room. Too close to a tomb for my liking. Tromping around the property with our breath streaming slantwise, he showed me a megalith hidden in the underbrush between a pair of sugar maples. Huge and misshapen beneath layers of slime and moss, the stone cast a shadow over us. It radiated the chill of an ice block. One of several in the vicinity, I soon learned. Jack wasn’t eager to hang around it. “There were lots of animal bones piled in the bushes. You’ll never catch any animals living here. Wasn’t the two decks of Camels I smoked every day since junior high that gave me cancer. It’s these damned things. Near as I can figure, they’re siphons. Let’s pray the effect is magnified upon extra-dimensional beings. Otherwise, Graham will just eat our bullets and spit them back at us.” The megalith frightened me. I imagined it as a huge, predatory insect disguised as a stone, its ethereal rostrum stabbing an artery and sucking my life essence. I wondered if the stones were indigenous, or if the ancient tribes had fashioned them somehow. I’d never know. “Graham’s an occultist. Think he’s dumb enough to walk into a trap?” “Graham ain’t Graham anymore. He’s the Huntsman.” Jack scanned the red-gold horizon and muttered dire predictions of another storm front descending from the west. “Trouble headed this way,” he said and hustled me back to the house. We locked and shuttered everything and took positions in the living room; Jack with his shotgun, me with my pistol and dog. Seated on the leather Italian sofa, bolstered by a pitcher of vodka and lemonade, we watched ancient episodes of The Rockford Files and Ironside and waited. Several minutes past two p.m., the air dimmed to velvety purple and the trees behind the house thrashed and rain spattered the windows. The power died. I whistled a few bars of the Twilight Zone theme, shifted the pistol into my shooting hand. Jack grinned and went to the window and stood there, a blue shadow limned in black. The booze in my tumbler quivered and the horn bellowed, right on top of us. Glass exploded and I was bleeding from the head and both hands that I’d raised to protect my face. Wood splintered and doors caved in all over the house and the hounds rolled into the living room; long, sinuous figures of pure malevolence with ruby-bright eyes, low to the floor and moving fast, teeth, tongues, appetite. I squinted and fired twice from the hip, and a bounding figure jerked short. Minerva pounced, snarling and tearing in frenzy, doggy mind reverting to the swamps and jungles and caves of her ancestors. Jack’s shotgun blazed a stroke of yellow flame and sheared the arm of a fiend who’d scuttled in close. Partially deafened and blinded, I couldn’t keep track of much after that. Squeezed the trigger four more times, popped the speed loader with six fresh slugs, kept firing at shadows that leaped and sprang. The Riders of the Apocalypse and Friends galloped through the house—our own private Armageddon. More glass whirled, and bits of wood and shreds of drapery; a section of ceiling collapsed in a cascade of sparks and rapidly blooming white carnations of drywall dust. Now the gods could watch. Thunder of gunshots, Minerva growling, the damned, yodeling cries of the hounds, and crackling bones, wound around my brain in a knotted spool. I got knocked down in the melee and watched Minerva swing past, lazily flying, paws limp, guts raveling behind her. I’d owned many dogs, but Minerva was my first and only pet, my dearest friend. She was a mewling puppy once more, then inert bone and slack hide, and gone, gone, the last pinprick of my life snuffed. Something was on fire. Oily black smoke seethed through a vertical impact crater where the far wall had stood. Moon, clouds, and smoke boiled there. A couple of fingers were missing from my left hand. Blood pulsed forth: a shiny, crimson bouquet thickening into a lump at the end of my wrist, a wax sculpture from the house of horrors, an object example of Medieval torture. It didn’t hurt. Didn’t feel like anything. My jacket had been sliced, and the flesh beneath it, so that my innards glistened in the cold air. That didn’t hurt either. Instead, I was buoyed by a feral joy. This wouldn’t take much longer by the looks of it. I pulled the jacket closed as best I could and began the laborious process of standing. Almost done, almost home. Jack cursed through a mouthful of dirt. The Huntsman had entered the fray and caught his skull in one splayed hand. He sawed through Jack’s throat with that jagged flint dagger hewn from Stone Age crystal. The Huntsman sawed with so much vigor that Jack’s limbs flopped crazily, a crash test dummy at the moment of impact. Graham let Jack’s carcass thump to the sodden carpet among the savaged bodies of the pack. He pointed at me, him playing the lead man of a rock band shouting out to his audience. Yeah, the gods were with us, and no doubt. “So, we meet again.” He chuckled and licked his lips and wiped the Satan knife against his gory mackinaw. He approached, shuffling like a seal through the smoldering gloom, lighted by an inner radiance that bathed him in a weird, pale glow as cold and alien as the Aurora Borealis. The death-light of Hades, presumably. His eyes were hidden by the brim of his hat, but his smile curved, joyless and cruel. I made it to my feet and scrambled backward over the flaming wreckage of coffee tables and easy chairs, the upended couch, and into the hall. Blood came from me in ropes, in sheets. Graham followed, smiling, smiling. Doorframes buckled as his shoulders brushed them. He swiped the knife in a loose and easy diamond pattern. The knife hissed as it rehearsed my evisceration. I wasn’t worried about that. I was long past worry. Thoughts of vengeance dominated. “You killed my dog.” Blood bubbles plopped from my lips, and that’s never good. Another dose of ferocious, joyful melancholy spurred me onward. I pitched the empty revolver at his head, watched the gun glance aside and spin away. My tears froze to salt on my cheeks. Arctic ice groaned beneath my boots as the sea swelled, yearned toward the moon. The sea drained the warmth from me, taking back what it had given. “You killed your dog, mon frère. You did for our buddy Jack, too. Bringing me and my boys here like this. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s a volunteer army, right?” I turned away, sliding, overbalancing. My legs folded and I slumped before a fallen timber, its charred length licked by small flames. The blood from my ruined hand sizzled and spat. I rubbed my face against the floor, painting myself a war mask of gore and charcoal. By the time he’d crossed the gap between us and seized my hair to flip me onto my back, at the precise moment he sank the blade into my chest, the fuse on the glycerin-wet stick of dynamite was a nub disappearing into its burrow. Graham’s exultant expression changed. “Well, I forgot Jack was a fisherman,” he said. That fucking knife kept traveling, the irresistible force, and I embraced it, and him. The Eternal Footman clapped, once. *** After an eon of vectoring through infinite night, the door to the tilt-a-whirl opened and I plummeted and hit the earth hard enough to raise dust. Mud instead. An angelic choir serenaded me from stage left, beyond a screen of tall trees and fog. Wagner as interpreted by Homer’s sirens. The voices rose and fell, sweetly demanding my blood, the heat of my bones. That sounded fine; I imagined the soft, red lips parted, imagined that they glowed as the Huntsman glowed, but as an expression of erotic passion rather than malice, and I longed to open a vein for them. I came to, paralyzed. Pieces of me lay scattered across the backyard. Probably for the best that I couldn’t turn my neck to properly survey the damage. Graham sprawled across from me, face-down in the wet leaves. Wisps of smoke curled from him. He shuddered violently and lifted his head. Bones and joints snapped into place again. The left eye shimmered with reflections of fire. The right eye was black. Neither were human. He said, “Are you dead? Are you dead? Or are you playing possum? I think you’re mostly dead. It doesn’t matter. Hell is come as you are.” He shook himself and began to crawl in my direction, slithering with a horrible serpent-like elasticity. Mostly dead must’ve meant 99.9 percent dead, because I couldn’t even blink, much less raise a hand to forestall his taking my skull for the mantle, my soul to the bad place. A red haze obscured my vision and the world receded. The sirens in the forest called again, louder yet. Graham hesitated, his glance drawn to the voices that came from many directions now and sang in many languages. Jack staggered from the smoking ruins of the house. He appeared to have been dunked in a vat of blood. He held his shotgun in a death grip. “The bell tolls for you, Stevie,” he said and blew off Graham’s left leg. He racked the slide and blasted Graham’s right leg to smithereens below the kneecap. Graham screamed and whipped around and tried to hamstring his tormentor. Not quite fast enough. Jack proved agile for an old guy with a slit throat. The siren choir screamed in pleasure. Blam! Blam! Graham’s hands went bye-bye. The next slug severed his spine, judging by the ragdoll effect. His body went limp and he screamed, and I’m sure he would’ve happily leaped on Jack and eaten him alive if Jack hadn’t already dismembered him with some fancy shotgun work. Jack said something I didn’t catch. Might’ve uttered a curse in a foreign tongue . . . then stuck the barrel under Graham’s chin and took his head off with the last round. I cheered telepathically. Then I finished dying. The score as the curtains closed was lovely, lovely. *** This time I emerged from eternal night to Minerva kissing my face. I was lying on my back in the kitchen. There was a hole in the ceiling and gray daylight poured through along with steady trickles of water from busted pipes. Jack slouched at the table, which was stacked with various odds and ends. His shoulders were wide and round as boulders and he’d gained back all the weight cancer had stolen. He clutched a bottle of Old Crow and watched me intently. He said, “Stay away from the light, kid. It’s fire and lava.” I spat clotted blood. Finally, I said, “He’s dead?” “Again.” “Singing . . .” I managed. “Oh, yeah. Don’t listen. That’s just the vampire stones. They’re fat on Graham’s energy.” “How’d I get in here?” “I dragged you by your hair.” The world kept solidifying around me, and my senses along with it. Me, Minerva, and Jack being alive didn’t compute. Except, as the cobwebs cleared from my mind, it made a sinister kind of sense. I laid my hand on Minerva’s fur and noticed the red sparks in her eyes, how goddamned long and white her teeth were. “Oh, shit,” I said. “Yeah,” Jack said. He set aside the bottle and shrugged into the Huntsman’s impeccable snow white mackinaw. Perfect fit. Next came the Huntsman’s hat. Different on Jack; broader and of a style I didn’t recognize. The red and black crest was gone. Real antlers in its stead. A shadow crossed his expression and the light in the room gathered in his eyes. “Get up,” he said. And I did. Not a mark on me. I felt quite alive for a dead man. Hideous strength coursed through my limbs. I thought of my philandering ex-wife, her music teacher beau, and hideous thoughts coursed through my mind. I must’ve retained a tiny fragment of humanity because I managed to look away from that vista of terrible and splendorous vengeance. For the moment, at least. I said, “Where now?” Jack leaned on a broad, barbed spear that had replaced his emptied shotgun. “There’s this guy in Mexico I’d like to visit,” he said. He handed me the flint knife and the herald’s horn. “Do the honors, kid.” “Oh, Stanley. It’ll be good to see you again.” I pressed the horn to my lips and winded it, once. The kitchen wall disintegrated and the shockwave traveled swiftly, rippling grass and causing birds to lift in panic from the trees. I imagined Stanley Jones, somewhere far to the south, seated on his veranda, tequila at hand, American newspaper balanced on his rickety knee, ear cocked, straining to divine the origin of dim bellow carried by the wind. Minerva bayed. She gathered her sleek, killing bulk and hurtled across the yard and into the woods. I patted the hilt of the knife and followed her.

From Horror photos & videos July 10, 2018 at 08:00PM

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180brg · 6 years

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Philippians 2

He Took on the Status of a Slave

1-4 If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

9-11 Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.

Rejoicing Together

12-13 What I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you’ve done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’senergy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.

14-16 Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.

17-18 Even if I am executed here and now, I’ll rejoice in being an element in the offering of your faith that you make on Christ’s altar, a part of your rejoicing. But turnabout’s fair play—you must join me in myrejoicing. Whatever you do, don’t feel sorry for me.

19-24 I plan (according to Jesus’ plan) to send Timothy to you very soon so he can bring back all the news of you he can gather. Oh, how that will do my heart good! I have no one quite like Timothy. He is loyal, and genuinely concerned for you. Most people around here are looking out for themselves, with little concern for the things of Jesus. But you know yourselves that Timothy’s the real thing. He’s been a devoted son to me as together we’ve delivered the Message. As soon as I see how things are going to fall out for me here, I plan to send him off. And then I’m hoping and praying to be right on his heels.

25-27 But for right now, I’m dispatching Epaphroditus, my good friend and companion in my work. You sent him to help me out; now I’m sending him to help you out. He has been wanting in the worst way to get back with you. Especially since recovering from the illness you heard about, he’s been wanting to get back and reassure you that he is just fine. He nearly died, as you know, but God had mercy on him. And not only on him—he had mercy on me, too. His death would have been one huge grief piled on top of all the others.

28-30 So you can see why I’m so delighted to send him on to you. When you see him again, hale and hearty, how you’ll rejoice and how relieved I’ll be. Give him a grand welcome, a joyful embrace! People like him deserve the best you can give. Remember the ministry to me that you started but weren’t able to complete? Well, in the process of finishing up that work, he put his life on the line and nearly died doing it.

#Philippians #bible #new testament #He Took on the Status of a Slave #Rejoicing Together

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rosalinesrevolt · 6 years

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When her mother had died, it had felt like the sort of event she’d been preparing for her entire life. The thirteen years she’d had with Helene had been marked with the elder woman’s weakness and bouts of sickness, with Rosaline able to count on her hands just how many times she had seen her mother about the court, looking hale and hearty. The bulk of their relationship was made in her mother’s bed, where Rosaline would curl up beside her and be enchanted by the whispered stories of a much younger queen who’d dreamed of a magical life -- one not marred by six lost children and a body surrendered to inner turmoil. When the weather grew colder each year and Helene inevitably caught ill, it seemed as though the whole of the land waited with their breath caught in their throat -- only to release that breath when she narrowly survived. It was a dark, cruel, unfair game -- and one which was only resolved when Helene did not recover. Rosaline mourned, but she breathed.

Her father’s illness had been another beast entirely.

For her entire life, her father had stood in stark contrast to her mother: he was tall and imposing, powerful and healthy, strong-willed and capable. It was why he and Helene had complimented each other well and loved one another deeply; they were strong where the other was weak. Perhaps Rose had not been foolish enough to think that he would live forever, but she imagined the King living a long time yet -- she imagined that when the time came for her to ascend to the throne, she would do so with a family of her own in tact and prepared for a dynasty. She would do so with the discipline and knowledge that she surely lacked at present. She would not do so when she still felt every bit a girl, or when her mind was riddled with doubts about her capability -- doubts which had been for echoed loudly among certain courtiers in recent years. How could she pull together those who prematurely placed so much doubt in her?

Even as he’d been settled into his death bed, the man had remained steadfast in his opinion that a recovery would come swiftly. His assurances were so confident that Rosaline had been inclined to believe him on certain days. After all, his illness had seemed to come from nowhere at all. One day he’d risen with a small cough -- an easily dismissible issue, despite its persistence -- and in the week that followed, he was suddenly collapsing at court, and in need of assistance to make it to his rooms. And even despite that, he’d offer her a cheeky smile and say he’d be up again in the morning.

When each morning came and things only became worse, Alexander’s positivity waned. Replacing his promises of regaining his health were promises of Rosaline’s capability -- gentle encouragements that she could lead, and that she could do it well. It did little to aid her concerns.

The last time Rose saw her father -- though she did not know it would be the last -- she’d arrived outside his rooms to find them already occupied by his wife. With the knowledge that Cecily preferred to take her time with Alexander alone, Rosaline had waited outside.

They do not want her, she’d heard the elder woman crooning to her husband, they want Alex. Think of the country. Think of your lineage. He should carry it on. Not that girl.

Though not unexpected -- Cecily’s disdain at having her boy named heir presumptive was well-documented, as was her desire to reverse the decision -- the words stung, and Rosaline had waited not a moment more before walking into the room with her chin held high. She took the seat beside Cecily -- pointedly ignoring the elder woman as she did so -- and took her father’s hands in her own. Alexander offered her an apologetic smile, and without a word Cecily departed.

“Mothers have to fight for their children,” he explained in his now-quiet voice, “they have little choice in the matter.”

“I wish it could be done without her hating me,” Rose had responded, “ -- without all of them hating me with her.”

“Change is frightening,” Alexander answered, “but sometimes, it is what is best.” With a gentle hand, he squeezed Rosaline’s hands. “You are what is best. Alex is just a boy. Let him be that for a while longer. Keep him safe.”

Dropping her head, Rosaline had pressed a kiss to their entwined hands. “I promise.”

#self

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