#and at first I chalked it up to her eating a bit of the weeds at the park but then she really lost her appetite and has been looking week

[kalsiferdraws]

The Deadlights: Fake Fan

Audrie tapped her foot, watching Bill stare at Stan. She could easily see Stan's eyes were red and puffy. But how is that their problem? She chalked it up to most likely drugs of some sort. She had never seen Stan do anything, he never drank or smoke, but why else would they be red? And why does Bill care?

She knew Bill was "found family oriented." She learned that pretty quickly, actually. When she met his friends, she made a note about Ben. Something along the lines of calling him porky or something. She couldn't remember the specifics. But she does remember Bill covering her mouth and telling her to keep it shut if she doesn't have anything nice to say. He was protective, which is usually a good quality. But it was never towards her, and she couldn't understand why.

Especially now, when Stan is glaring down at her. Even in her heels, which were actively eating away at her feet, he was taller. Nothing like how tall Richie was compared to her, it was only a few small inches. And he was definitely using his height to intimate her at the moment.

She crossed her arms, tilting her head. "Too much weed there?" She teased. Bill glared at her, putting his finger to his lips and shushing her. If she rolled her eyes any harder they'd roll out of her sockets. Stan cleared his throat.

"Can I help you two?" He asked. His voice was raspy. He did just sing intensely at the concert, it was easy to assume that was why. "This is the VIP area." Audrie heard Bill suck a breath in. When she looked over, his glare was gone. His expression was more pitiful, almost like he was begging for forgiveness from a pastor or something.

"S-s-Stan..." He spoke, reaching a hand over, touching Stan's arm. There was a gentleness that Audrie hadn't seen towards her. It was never towards her, it was always towards Stan, like he was fragile. One time Audrie saw him reach for a scar on Stan's hand, fingers lightly touching like he was touching a snowflake. The scar looked old, puffy and slightly pinker than the rest of Stan's body. She wanted to ask about it, but for some reason couldn't bring herself to.

Stan's eyes went from Audrie to Bill. Stan was taller than him, a lot taller. And Audrie could see his expression change. "I wanna t-t-talk," she heard him state. Stan's eyes looked to her, but only for a moment before they went back to Bill. "Please.." Stan took a deep breath, letting out a deep sigh and nodding. He stepped back, going back into the dressing room. When Audrie stepped towards the room, Bill's hand went up, stopping her. "We n-n-need to be alone."

Audrie blinked, obviously confused. But when she opened her mouth, Bill was already closing the door. She let out a scoff, pacing by the door a bit, throwing her hands up. The clipping of her heels was all she could hear, even with her ear being up against the door. She groaned, stepping back. She looked at her watch, before turning on her heel and walking towards the exit.

She was grumbling to herself when she heard more voices, approaching the door. Her eyes saw Richie first, a look of shock on his face. His cheeks were red and the corners of his mouth were curling up. Then she saw Eddie's back. She heard a small chuckle from him. They weren't fighting?

Then Richie's eyes went to irritated, looking dead on at her. As if she was interuppting something. She forced a smile on her face, adding more pep in her step. "Well well," she hummed. "What are you two up to?" She got close to Eddie's back, making him stiffen.

Eddie had dropped his hands, clenching an ice pack to his side. When she sat on the boxes next to Richie, she saw Eddie frown. She tried taking Richie's hand, looking at it before Richie pulled it away. "You really hit him hard huh?"

"Can we help you with something?" Richie's voice was harsh, making her heart flutter a bit. He always had a deeper voice than Bill's, than any of the losers actually. It was chilling, intimidating, at least when he wanted it to be. She smiled, leaning against him, touching his sore hand.

"You played really well tonight," she looked at him. He was practically snarling at her, his lip up, showing teeth. She chuckled. "Were you trying to convey something?" He huffed and got up, standing next to Eddie. The way they looked at each other made Audrie's stomach flip.

They always had this... look. Look of longing, deep caring, a yearning expression. Richies eyes would soften, even when they were bickering at each other. Eddie would some how always have a smile, even if it was just the corner of his mouth. They were always touching, fingertips lingering from each other, hands on shoulders, backs against one another. It was like they liked each other. It was enough to make someone want to hurl. At least if they were Audrie.

"You know if you two keep that up," she crossed her legs puffing her chest out. "People will think you're fags." She could see their shoulders stiffen, especially Richies. His head dropped, looking away from her and Eddie. Eddie however looked at her as though every ounce of rage the world had in it, was in his small body.

"What the fuck is your problem?!" He snapped, clenching his fists. It made Audrie flinch as he got closer to her. "You can't just come to HIS concert and start calling him a fucking slur!" Audrie huffed out air, pushing Eddie back.

"I can when your twink ass is always acting like you want him to kiss you!" She snapped back. Eddie pulled his fist back before Richie grabbed him, holding him back. "What you want to punch me? You two sure use your hands a lot, huh?" She made a jacking fist, smirking. She could see the rage in Eddie's eyes increase, as though he wasn't filled with it enough. He was thrashing against Richie, who was obviously using all his strength just to hold the little gremlin.

"You're the fucking reason Richie even hit Bill you clueless, self entitled, bimbo!" Eddie flipped her off with both hands, trying to at least kick her.

"Eds, stop!" Richie demanded. He looked at Audrie, glaring. "Don't you have, literally anything, better to be doing?" She shrugged.

"Rich, I'm just-"

"Don't you dare fucking call him that!" Eddie snapped loudly. Audrie was almost as caught off guard as Richie was. She could see his face turning red as a tomato. It was just a simple nickname. She rolled her eyes, too annoyed to keep dealing with this.

"Tell Bill I'll be at home," she flipped her hair, taking a step and feeling her feet sting. "When he's done with Stanley Urine, he can come over." Richie covered Eddie's mouth before another spout of venom shot out. Audrie huffed a small chuckle, turning to the door, leaving them. At least for the time being.

#it #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #reddie #richie x eddie #eddie spaghetti #richie trashmouth #eddie is a small angry boy #trigger warning #tw language #cursing #i tried to portray her with more hateful speech #but i literally couldnt #original character #stephen king #short fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction

[nancypullen]

Drip Drip Drip

That’s not a nod to the rainy weather today (I’m actually enjoying that).  It’s how I feel about the process of putting this house together.  I have to remind myself that we’ve only been here for eighteen days.  It took us over twenty years to get the Tennessee house the way we liked it.  Rome wasn’t built in a day, and blah, blah, blah.  The truth is that I just want to decorate and turn this place into a home and I can’t.  Still waiting for floors, appliances are arriving one at a time, first came the frig...

those magnets are a sign that there’s been a princess in the house. The stove arrived yesterday.  Looks weird sitting beside the old dishwasher and microwave.

Nothing fancy - I like a smooth top with plenty of oven space.  There’s an app I can download and I can control this oven from my phone.  The odds of me being struck by lightning are greater than the chance of me using my phone to turn the oven on.  Anyway, I think the dishwasher is due by the end of the week.  Were taking that microwave out and installing a range hood.  As a shrimpy girl I’m not a fan of microwaves over the stovetop.  Give me a small countertop model and I’m happy.  We really only use it for popcorn. Soooo, no floors, no paint, no furniture.  Still eating beans around a fire in a  barrel. Okay, it’s not that bad - but as a professional nester I’m feeling very unsettled.  I’ve made homes for us from the tip of Florida to a village on the Arctic Ocean, and it feels like this time it’s taking forever. Because I couldn’t sit in that camp chair one more night, I found a very ugly and very cheap dining room set on Facebook Marketplace.   For $20 the seller agreed to deliver it and it showed up right after Tyler, Jamie, and the grandgirl arrived on Saturday. Perfect, they helped unload! They spent the day with us and we actually had a place to sit while we ate dinner that evening.  We paid $100 for a table and 6 chairs.  It’s definitely not what I wanted for this space, I may chalk paint it and foof it up a little - but for now it serves a purpose.

I can’t believe I’m posting such ugly photos here.  But now we’ll have some “before” pics when this place is finally pretty.  Speaking of pretty, my sweet grandgirl arrived on Saturday in full Cinderella regalia and delivered a bouquet she’d picked.

When she got out of the car, her ballgown sparkling in the sun, and stretched out her little hands holding those flowers...well, I’ll sit on the floor until I’m 80 for moments like that.  We had the best day. Yesterday, because I can’t do much inside the house, I tackled the flower beds.  I use the term flower beds loosely, there was nothing but monkey grass and weeds.  I left some of the monkey grass as a border on one side, but everything else was ripped out. I popped in a few plants, but it all looks a bit pitiful right now.  I wanted to put some sort of evergreen shrub along the front porch, preferably yew of another soft plant.  BUT, I ran up to Walmart for a couple of items and thought I’d peek at their garden center while I was there.  They had some really healthy Japanese Holly shrubs for $22 each.  I was poking around wondering if I should get three or four when the nice garden guy said, “Those are going on clearance tomorrow, but I can mark them down for you today if you need them.”  I asked what the clearance price would be, he responded “Twelve dollars”, and I said that yes indeed I did need them.  So I picked out three for what I probably would have paid for one at a nursery. Hooray!

They’ll look dinky when I get them in, but I’m building this garden from scratch and it takes time.  Like I said the other day, I can probably relax and enjoy it all after three summers.   Maybe ten.

Another spot that give me heartburn is the back yard.  Jamie spotted poison ivy in the treeline, so I don’t go anywhere near it.  I blow up like a puffer fish if I see a picture of poison ivy, so I’m extra careful.  She brought some stuff that they use to kill poison ivy at work, if it’s good enough for the Smithsonian, it’s good enough for me.  As an organic gardener I’m choosing to look the other way while a nuclear bomb is dropped on the treeline.  The bad stuff has to be eradicated to enjoy the yard. Necessary evil.   The previous homeowners also fancied a campfire. We all love a crackling fire in the fall, right?  But they marked off an area by filling it with rocks.  They never bothered to put anything down to prevent weeds from growing through those rocks, so we’re back to that hobo campfire again.  Now I have to rake up all of these little rocks and we’re hoping we can seed the yard before it gets too hot up here.  It’s mostly weeds right now and it’s just plain ugly.

We wanted less yard to mow and care for, but we’d still like it to be pretty.  See our neighbor’s perfect yard? I’m so jealous.  They’re probably hoping we work a miracle so they don’t have to look at this mess anymore. I told Mickey that I’d like to put a fence or barrier of some sort at the treeline. Then I’ll dig a bed along the front and throw down some mulch, maybe put in a couple of flowering shrubs - roses or azaleas. Add a bird bath or a bird feeder and it’ll look like a different place.  I snapped a photo from the patio and then added what I want.

See?  Same place, totally different feeling. I need that tidiness. It’s a lot less creepy. It’s almost noon here, nearly time to feed the mister.  I’ve wiped down the bathrooms, cleaned all of the mirrors, did a load of laundry, and there’s nothing else for me to do.  I’ll feed Mickey at noon, then I’ll feed him again at six. The grass /weeds need cutting but it’s too wet.  I may turn this afternoon into a mini spa day.  My nails need attention, my hair and skin need some love, and it might feel good to take care of myself today. Maybe I’ll put on a face mask and watch a murder show while I paint my nails.  Everyone deserves a day off now and then, right? Oh! That reminds me that I wanted to share a product that I’m very pleased with - and it’s not expensive!

Pardon the wear and tear on my box, but I keep the bottle in it because I read somewhere a million years ago that you should protect vitamin c serums from light to preserve potency.  If that were true, I’m guessing the maker would have put this in a tinted bottle, so I’m probably being overly cautious.  Go ahead and throw your box away, throw caution to the wind!  Anyyywayyyy, this stuff has been MAGIC for my skin. 

Vitamin C & E in a serum? Yes, please!  I use this every morning after washing my face, one dropper does the trick.  I’ve used it regularly for about two months and I’ve seen a wonderful difference in my skin.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still look like a 58 year old grandma - but there’s definitely a vibrancy and a glow that was lacking two months ago.  If it worked this well on my face while I was stressed, moving, not eating as well as I should, and tired ( my back still hurts!) then imagine what it can do under normal circumstances.  You know that I don’t advocate for any product that A) didn’t work for me and B) isn’t worth the money.  This is not a paid promotion or anything like that, just a serum that I really, really like.  I use this in the morning, and Kiehl’s Micro-Dose Anti-Aging Retinol Serum with Ceramides and Peptide (that’s a mouthful) at night. I love that it soaks right in, no greasy or tacky feeling at all. It won’t stop time from marching across my face, but at least I can glow as I age. Give it a try, get your glow on! Okay, this rambling post needs to stop.  I hear rumbling upstairs that must mean someone is ready for lunch.  Looks like the sun is trying to make an appearance so maybe I’ll get to poke around in the garden a bit.  Or maybe I’ll just stay in and paint my nails. Whatever you’re doing today, I hope it’s making you happy.  Or at least not making you unhappy.  Stay safe, stay well. XOXO - Nancy 

[spideyk00k]

😣

#currently at the emergency vet for my babie bowie and fuck its pretty fucking serious and I just need a big hug and someone to tell me itll #be okay cause I'm seriously freaking the fuck out right now at the thought of the smallest possibility of losing bo #she's hasn't really been herself these past few days and has jst been super lethargic and she's been vomiting every day + not shitting right #and at first I chalked it up to her eating a bit of the weeds at the park but then she really lost her appetite and has been looking week #at first her vomit was foamy and mucusy but then it turned into something kinda acidic and bile-y almost #and this morning she didn't want to touch her food at all and she just wanted to snuggle up next to me #and she just seemed extra weak this morning #and I had to drive to sd this afternoon and she usually sits and peeks her head out the window while I drive but #today she just curled up into a ball on my lap the entire drive which shes never done #but we got home and she seemed to get back to her normal self with the kids but then #when we were getting ready to leave the hoise she just passed this massive fucking blood clot/stool liquid thing and it literally looked #like she shat her bloody stomach out #and so now we're here at the emergency room waiting for tests and blood work but the doctor is saying it may be hemmorhaggic gastroenteritis #and that she may need to be hospitalized for two days cause if left untreated she could go into shock and fucking die #and now im just sittinf here waiting in my own anxiety reading myself down a rabbit hole and I just cant calm down #cause I just keep fucking thinking the fucking worst #she is my entire lifeline and I really don't think I can ever fucking survive losing her #she's literally the reason I'm alive today #for the last two years she has been keeping me fucking going and she's always there for me and even when I feel alone and unloved #I always know I have her #she loves me the most and always wants to be with me and just makes me feel wanted and she's always there to jjst listen and cuddle

[anomalocariscanadensis]

so. Blindsight. bleak as hell. i think the whole “everyone’s being extremely subtly manipulated by intelligences beyond their comprehension with precise results” thing is... well, it’s a compelling premise once, but i’ve already read Echopraxia. it gets kind of tiring the second time around, and i don’t really think brains work like that. but the aliens are very alien, and the whole thing with the first contact protocol was cool.

an interesting thing about siri’s relationship with chelsea is that he tries to not act like a chinese room in it - he tries to actually be himself with her - and it falls apart because himself just completely sucks ass and can’t interact with people. if he’d been a true chinese room he could have done whatever was necessary to get the best outcome, but he doesn’t. some bits were relatable but thankfully not the “explaining through evolutionary psychology why our relationship is doomed” sort of thing, jesus

the rest of this is going to be various nitpicking disagreements i had, because it is indisputably that sort of book.

vampires are obviously rather ridiculous, just too many convienient things all in one place. the crucifix glitch, obviously, but also, how do you evolve multi-generation hibernation that fast? when you must eat one singular species, and failure to hibernate means you completely wipe out your obligate prey and make your territory uninhabitable? and the longer you hibernate, the fewer generations per timespan *to* evolve in? i’d accept this sort of thing in a book that didn’t have a list of scientific citations at the end but it just doesn’t fit as well

the rationale behind Technology Implies Belligerence seems simply wrong. Sure, if you have all your needs perfectly met you don’t need to develop more technology, but the more extreme the competition, the less leeway you have to set up long-term things and the less free time to spend on idly thinking up new ideas rather than directly competing. I’m fairly certain if you tried to track it, you’d find most technological progress throughout history comes from societies with less day-to-day competition due to surpluses, etc.

Rorschach actually kind of proves this - their whole “sit around generating ATP anaerobically for thousands of years” strategy doesn’t work if you get eaten halfway through

Since Rorschach didn’t attack the humans until after they’d hit it with a probe that it actively told them not to do, it might just be wrong in-universe. Who knows?

there’s a lot of questionable evopsych, but I’m not sure how much the book itself puts stock in evopsych, vs. just Siri as a character putting too much stock in evopsych.

he does get called out for thinking he’s objective when he’s just projecting his own opinions onto other people

also one of the main conclusions he draws from evopsych is “every heterosexual relationship is doomed” (nothing to say about gay relationships, naturally) which seems obviously false enough that I’d suspect it’s a personal bias to the character

but it’s the sort of book where i’m not sure if that even counts

EDIT: i misremembered part of it, he was wrong about Bates plotting to mutiny. i remembered thinking she’d mutinied when her drone fucked up Sarastri, but forgot that she later confirmed it wasn’t her. so yeah i think the really dumb evopsych stuff can mostly be chalked up to Siri being biased

the consciousness as parasite thing is obviously an interesting sci-fi premise but i don’t actually buy it, at least not for Earthly life

chimpanzees do actually pass the mirror test, apparently

my personal experience is that, when i focus on it, i have a lot of really quick pseudo-conscious thoughts before they pass up more slowly into full consciousness, but not all of them end up getting into consciousness. i’d be surprised if consciousness didn’t serve the purpose of, at minimum, taking the good bits of unconscious thought and reinforcing them so they get stored better.

Blindsight’s perspective on consciousness does seem to have language being a product of genuine consciousness, because Rorschach can’t do it. but how the fuck else are humans supposed to communicate, besides language? Maybe you can theoretically have intelligence without consciousness, but if it’s necessary for language then I don’t think you get complex human societies without consciousness, even if they’re individually more efficient.

vampires seem to be able to do language which is a bit weird if they’re not really conscious? but also, like, they can’t do complex societies because they’re so individually territorial, so that’s an enormous disadvantage anyway. i suspect they’d have died out even without the crucifix glitch.

“you don’t need consciousness to do math/science/whatever because of a few anecdotes of people waking up having dreamed whole theorems” is completely unconvincing. like, okay, how much of the work did they do consciously beforehand? how big of a leap was the dream, how complete was it, how much did they have to do consciously to make it rigorous? how often do people wake up with incorrect ideas in their heads?

this sort of thing was more plausible with the Bicamerals in Echopraxia because they were basically magic. applying it to actual humans falls rather short.

also I think his evolutionary reasoning in his “dodo” analogy isn’t quite the right line of thought for the point he’s making. Consciousness, as he frames it, is an extra energy cost for no real benefit which persists only because we’re not facing enough selection pressure to weed it out. But the dodo lost flight because it was excessive and useless for its island, which is the exact opposite situation.

A dodo analogy would be appropriate if consciousness was useful when facing unexpected problems but useless on earth due to human dominance, so we evolved out of it

a better comparison might be the Irish Elk, which is often thought to have gone extinct due to its enormous antlers. Its antlers were way too large to be beneficial to survival, but they persisted and grew bigger over time due to sexual selection. then the argument becomes that consciousness makes you more likely to get laid but is actually bad otherwise. still questionable, but at least fits better

[dreamcatcherfication]

Sting Me Once, Shame On You

Finally! Another one-shot! A request! I’ve written something new! And in the span of an hour and a half? I’m on a roll here.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to your daily programming. Today we have a fic based of off this request, and I was very interested in this one. Some people in my family are actually allergic to bees, but the descriptions I used for this story actually come from my brother, who’s allergic to nuts. I’ll probably explain it more in the tags, but it’s not important to the story. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this very specific fic! Sorry for any spelling/grammatical errors, I had literally no time to edit this, and I’m praying it’s the least bit coherent.

Writing Masterpost

If you want to send a request or a prompt, my inbox is always open! I publish a story at 8:00 AM PST everyday, so I’m always in need of new ideas. If you want to be tagged in my works, just let me know and I’ll be sure to tag you!

Prompts | More Prompts | The Trifecta of Prompts | Original Prompts

Trigger Warnings: Anxiety, fear, allergic reactions, bee stings, descriptions of swelling, difficulty breathing, hosptials

Summer days with the queens were spent out in the park, or walking to lunch together as they enjoyed each other's company. It was their main reprieve from the stress of the modern world and its constant moving. These few summer days were their moments to calm down and simply enjoy the company of each other and the beauty of the world. 

Today, the queens had decided for a relaxing picnic in their small garden. There wasn’t anything special, but the quality time they spent together was enough to make it a wonderful day. It was sunny for once, a blessing for the women who sat sprawled on the grass and blankets. It was more for aesthetic than anything, but a small woven basket sat in the center of the blankets, its top open to show the many foods Jane had managed to pack in there. 

Kat and Anne were off to the side, throwing a frisbee back and forth as they ran around the garden. Jane was unloading the basket, spreading the foods out for everyone to see. Cathy was on a lawn chair, reading a book while Anna stood behind her, in a perfect position to block the Sun from Cathy’s eyes. Aragon was sitting with Jane on the blankets, her eyes on the beheaded cousins, making sure they wouldn’t run into a wall when trying to catch the frisbee.

Anne threw the frisbee high, forcing Kat to jump to get it. Just barely, the girl grabbed the frisbee in her grip, keeping it from getting lodged in the bushes. “Nice catch, Kat!” Anne cheered for her cousin. Without responding, Kat threw the frisbee like a blade, the disk slicing through the air and impaling Anne in the stomach. Anne made an oof sound as she collapsed on the floor. “I’m good!” She wheezed, standing up. “All good.”

Over with Cathy, Anna had a hat on that blocked the sun from her eyes. “How long do you think that disk’ll entertain them?” Anna questioned, turning her head to face Cathy.

Putting a bookmark over her page, Cathy shut the book. “I would say not much longer, but you never know with those two.”

Chuckling, Anna helped Cathy out of the chair and they made their way over to Aragon and Jane. By now, Jane had managed to spread out all the food items on the blankets, plastic containers keeping them safe from ants. “We can start eating whenever the cousins are ready,” Jane told them. “But that might be a while,” she mentioned, raising an eyebrow at Kat and Anne who were still running around the garden, shouting with glee. 

“Anne, Kat -” Aragon called. Again, Anne had thrown the frisbee high, so when Kat turned her attention to Aragon, the disk went flying over her head. At the last moment, Kat attempted to jump and grab it, but this time she missed.

“Come on!” She groaned. The frisbee became lodged in the bushes, thick with thorns.

Anne crossed her arms and walked over to the other queens. “How are we gonna get it now? The bush is filled with thorns, there’s no way any of us can get that.”

Anna and Cathy exchanged looks and shrugged. Jane frowned at the thorns and shook her head. Kat seemed just as hesitant as Anne, already itching her skin subconsciously. “Sorry Anne,” the German queen offered, “You can always try later.”

“Yeah, we’ll probably do that,” Kat plopped down on the blankets next to Anna. Anna nudged her friend’s shoulder playfully as the two got comfortable.

Watching everyone’s nervousness, Aragon didn’t get it. “You can avoid the thorns, the frisbee isn’t that far inside,” Aragon pointed out.

Still, the others weren’t on board. “Maybe it’ll be better to come back with some weed cutters,” Jane said.

Aragon stood up and made her way over to the bush. “It’s my fault it got stuck, I’ll risk getting a scratch.” The others were silent, watching Aragon as she leaned down in front of the bushes. They were thick, and it was hard to see very far into them. But the bright red of the frisbee would’ve been visible for miles, so it wasn’t hard for Aragon to reach her hand in and find it.

Jerking her hand around, Aragon realized the frisbee was stuck on something. She yanked on it, harder and harder, trying to get the thing to come loose. “Ah!” she gasped, falling backwards, frisbee coming free. There was a small stinging in her arm, nothing too bad, but noticeable. Glancing down, Aragon realized it was a bee sting. The stinger was still stuck in her arm, but the little bee had fallen somewhere on the grass.

“Are you alright Catherine?” Jane called from the blankets.

Picking up the frisbee, Aragon made her way back to the others. “I’m fine. See? No problem.” She handed the frisbee back to Kat and nodded at Anne, who shot her a grateful smile. 

Sitting down next to Cathy, Aragon extended her arm. “I got stung by a bee in there. Do you know how to get it out?”

Cathy nodded and pulled out her bookmark, folding it in half so that it was thicker. “Hold still,” she instructed, putting the bookmark next to the stinger. “It’s not too deep, so this shouldn’t hurt.” Before Aragon could protest, Cathy quickly flicked the stinger with her bookmark, causing it to go flying out of Aragon’s arm.

Letting out a small hiss, Aragon shook her arm. It felt a little numb, but she chalked it up to being stung for the first time. “Thanks Cathy,” she rubbed her goddaughter’s shoulder.

For the next minute or so, everyone let their guards drop. There was nothing to be worried about, and the day was going by smoothly. That was until Aragon found that she was having trouble breathing. Her throat seemed a lot tighter than usual, and her eyes felt heavy. Her arm was starting to expand, a great pain enveloping it. She didn’t know what was happening, she didn’t know and because she didn’t know, she just didn’t know and -

Her thoughts ran wild, a panic starting to overtake them. “Aragon?” Kat noticed something was off first. “Is something wrong?”

Heaving a breath, Aragon reached her hand out. The others gasped at the sight of her swelling skin, covered in hives. “Oh my God,” Anna breathed out, leaning away from Aragon.

Right away, Cathy was on top of it. She pulled out her phone and dialled 999, knowing exactly what was going on. She was the only one who had seen the bee sting, and hopefully she would be able to get the right help in time. “Hello?” She said when the line picked up. “Hi yes, my friend is having an allergic reaction and we don’t have any way to help her.”

“What?” Anne had no idea what Cathy was talking about. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Aragon, terrified for the woman. Some innate fear had rooted itself in her chest, the crushing worry that Aragon wouldn’t be alright. That she had been powerless to help her friend. Anne knew fear, she would say she was more accustomed to it than most people she knew. But she had never felt the type of fear she felt now. The fear of not being able to help, and being the reason that someone she loved died. 

Following Cathy’s lead, Anna started to prop Aragon up. “Hey, talk to me.” She shook Aragon lightly. “We have to keep her talking,” Anna told the other three queens, making sure they were informed on what would help.

Jane put Aragon’s head in her lap, keeping it from falling on the hard ground. “Catherine,” she started, “what do you see in the sky?”

“Hmm?” Aragon mumbled. “Clouds. Lots of clouds.”

“Any shapes?” Kat questioned, moving to sit next to the spanish woman.

There was a moment of silence, suspended further with fear, but Aragon responded, “There’s a boat.”

“Good, what else?” Anna pushed.

“A sailor. Two sailors.”

Kat glanced over at Cathy who was still on the phone with emergency help. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be too long. The teenager turned her eyes to Anne, who was still sitting at the edge of the blankets. Her eyes were staring at the ground, unable to check on Aragon. “They’re waving goodbye. Goodbye to France and hello to England.” Anne’s ears perked up, but she didn’t move her head. “And, and, and.” Aragon choked on her words. “And there’s a maiden.” At that, Anne’s head shot up, her eyes wide with surprise. “Beautiful and carefree. But she carries a shadow around her. The other clouds block out the sun before it can reach her. Now there’s a man.”

All the queens, save Cathy and Aragon, shared concerned looks as they realized what story Aragon was telling in her haziness. “This man is big and large. Towering. He blocks out all the sun. The maiden is trying to run, but she can’t. She tries to fly away, but he catches her. And now she prefers the gilded cage to freedom.”

Before the story could continue, Cathy came up to them. “An ambulance is almost here. I need to go out front to let them in, you four stay here and keep her talking.”

Standing up faster than the speed of light, Anne was suddenly at Cathy’s side. “I’ll come with you.” Cathy ignored Anne’s strange behavior and jogged through the house to the front door. Kat watched her go, noticing how Anne refused to look anywhere but straight ahead, her muscles tight and unmoving. 

The three queens left sat in silence, staring at Aragon as she breathed heavily. The queen was muttering different words, her sentences incoherent. At least she was still talking, which was good. It felt like a million years before Anne and Cathy returned, followed by a handful of EMTs. They scooped Aragon up, one of them administering an epipen that would stabilize Aragon. After making sure she was stable enough to transport, she was picked up and carried to an ambulance.

Anne released the tension in her chest ever so slightly and fell to her knees. It wasn’t over yet, and her chest still felt like a million hands were squeezing it as tightly as possible. But Aragon would survive, and that was enough. She wouldn’t be killed by a stupid bee sting. Not today. 

The hospital was as typical as those seen in television shows, the halls white and the doctors in plain scrubs. Aragon was hooked up to an IV, her heart rate steady and her skin back to normal. No more hives, no more swelling, just her. Just Aragon. There was still a small puncture in her arm, a reminder of the original sting that caused all this panic.

A knock at her door alerted Aragon that someone was waiting for her. “Come in!” She called, adjusting in her bed so she could better see everything. 

After a moment, the door creaked open and Anna poked her head in. “Hey Catherine,” she greeted. “Are you okay to see all of us? The doctor said yes, but I wanted to warn you before everyone comes crashing in.”

“Yeah, send them in,” Aragon gave her consent, preparing for the appearance of her fellow queens.

The first person through the door after Anna was Kat. Her eyes twinkled with relief when she saw Aragon’s smile, and she came to stand at the foot of the bed. Next was Cathy, who rushed to her godmother’s side, gasping thankfully when she saw her happy and healthy. Then Jane, who came up beside Cathy and wiped a tear from her eye when she made eye contact with Aragon.

Finally, Anne sulked her way into the room. She came up beside Kat, her head down in shame. “I’m sorry,” she admitted immediately, addressing Aragon.

“What for?”

“I got the frisbee stuck in the bushes,” Anne confessed. “And you were the one who had to get it. I know it was your choice but… it’s my fault this happened.

Frowning, Aragon shook her head. “No, no it’s not. I got that frisbee under my free will, like you said. Therefore it can’t be your fault. It was my choice. Besides, I don’t blame any besides that bee.”

Hopefully, Anne glanced up and watched Aragon’s face for any sign that she was lying. “You mean it?”

“Yes, of course I do Anne.” Aragon opened her arms, and Anne came around the bed to hug her friend. “I’m fine, and I will be fine.”

“It’s probably a good thing Catherine was stung when she was,” Cathy commented.

It was Jane’s turn to be confused. “Why?”

“Because otherwise we never would have known she’s allergic to bees. And if something were to happen when we weren’t all together, things could’ve been a lot worse.”

A collective shiver travelled through the whole room. “I’m glad that didn’t happen,” Kat commented from in front of Aragon.

“Me too,” the older queen chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.

“Of all things to be allergic to, why bees? Why not something cool, like poison ivy?” Anna tried to joke.

Kat laughed. “I don’t think it matters if you’re allergic to poison ivy. It’s poison ivy. It’s gonna suck anyway.”

Anna rolled her eyes and shoved Kat’s shoulder lightly. Cathy watched the interaction and raised an eyebrow at Anna who cheekily smirked back. “Once Aragon’s better, we can resume that frisbee match. Once we buy a beekeeper suit. Gotta be safe, right?”

“Really Anna?” Aragon laughed.

“Really.”

(They all laughed at the joke, but it was only a week later when Anne brought home an actual beekeeper suit that the experience became ingrained in their memories forever.)

-----------------------------------------

@radcowboyalmondtree @boleynhowards @annabanana2401 @babeebobo@dont-lose-your-queerhead @everything-insanity @mindless-pidgeon @i-wanna-dance-and-sing-six @thenicestnonbinary @its-totes-gods-will @thatbolxyngirl @thenameisnoone @sixqueendom @frogs-in-clogs @timetoriseabove

#six the musical fanfiction #six the musical fanfic #six the musical fic #six fanfiction #six fanfic #sixfic #catherine of aragon #the other queens are there too #i based this to a similar experience i had #my brother had an allergic reaction #except he was home alone at the time #i was in elementary school #and my mom was frantically driving me home #while on the phone with my brother #as he tried not to cry because he couldnt breathe #and when we got home #i stayed outside and listened as my mom gave my brother his medicine #and i could hear him scream from outside the house #still one of the most terrifying moments of my life #i based a lot of anne's feelings off of mine in that moment #the helplessness #i hope you all like this fic!!!

[delightfulstarlightparadise]

Imagine Stardew Valley. Reader/Sebastian (?) Part 3

-Before we start, I would like to remind you that English is not my first language, but I am doing my best to write everything correctly.

Previous part here:

Getting rid of the weeds took all morning but you got to clean up a nice amount of land. Tiling the soil was a bit harder, you weren’t used to that much physical exercise, but when you finally got to plant the seeds you were feeling very satisfied. The apple sapling took twice as much effort, but it looked so pretty. You probably wouldn't see it giving fruits soon, though. Those took a whole season to grow and you could not remember which season they bare fruits.  

You sat down on the cabin’s porch and noticed how weak you were feeling. You forgot to eat both breakfast AND lunch and it was probably about six. There was nothing to eat there. You forgot the basics during your purchase at Pierre’s.

You then decide to go to town and check out the tavern. It is a pretty long walk and when you get there you are feeling even more tired and hungry. You are all dirty too, but you just noticed that when you were already on your way. If you went back to tidy up you could maybe miss dinner.

You lean in to open the door but it opens in front of you. A clearly drunk man wearing a Joja Mart’s uniform pushes you out of his way mumbling something not nice and staggers away.  

“Hello! Welcome, may I take your... OH MY! THE NEW FARMER!” a blue haired lady yells and every single person in that place turn to you.  

Actually, what about that town and all those different colored haired people? You think to yourself while trying not to panic with that much attention.

“Y/n, come here!” you hear mayor Lewis calling. He is sitting by a table with a beautiful fat woman. “Mernie, this is y/n, the grandchild!”

“Oh my! You are very different from what I thought you would be.” the woman says, smiling at you. “I live in a ranch very close to your farm. I met your grandfather too.”

“Hello.” you reply noticing that both of them seem to be a little high from beer.

“If you need some tips on how to handle your animals, just call me!” she says.

“I don’t have any animals.” you reply, shyly.

“Hey Emily! Bring y/n a beer! And some of that fish casserole! Gus! Come meet the new farmer!” the mayor yells.

You see yourself sitting with them even though your plans were just to take some food home.

“Oh my, you are all dirty. Spent the day working on that farm, right?” Lewis says.

“Actually, I did.” you reply in a low tone of voice. “It was fun.”

The blue haired woman comes to you with the requested dishes from the mayor, a beer and what seemed to be a cake.

“The dessert is on me! Welcome to pelican town, I am Emily.” she says.

“I... I can’t accept this, I mean...” you stutter.

“Don’t be silly!” she giggles and gives you a friendly slap on your shoulder. “It is so nice to have a new face around.”

You dine and it is one of the best food you have ever eaten, and you feel like crying again, but you can’t let it happen in front of so many people. Everyone still seemed to be paying attention to you.

A beautiful braided hair ginger woman and an equally handsome man were sitting by the table near you. She waves at you and he raises his cup in greet. You wave back trying not to look awkward. You felt like a city germling around those friendly people. The man tossing you away from the door earlier were the most familiar interaction you had there.

“Let me tell you about the time your grandpa and I...” Lewis starts telling you a disjointed story about an adventure your grandfather and him had in the Cindersap Forrest, but nothing seemed to make sense. Mernie keeps paying so much attention to him, she is all red and grinning.

You were trying to pay attention but that one beer turned into another and then another one, and you could barely listen to the words in sequence. It was all confusing.

“Hey Lewis! Let y/n be with other young folks.” you hear a familiar voice coming from behind you.

It is Demetrius, greeting you with a huge smile.

“You are never old if you heart doesn’t age.” Lewis says rising his cup and taking another sip.

“Well said, my dear friend!” you listen to the ginger man cheering on the table beside you.

“Hello y/n, my son and his friends are in the back playing snooker, you should go there too!” Robin shows up, and forces you to stand up from the chair.

She practically pushes you towards the back, although you really try to escape the situation. The last thing you want is to see Sebastian again after the disaster of the day before. But...

There he is, along with the purple haired girl and a blond boy with a stylish haircut.

“Ah, hey you.” Sebastian says, he doesn’t seem very excited to see you.

“Farmer! Nice to see you!” Abigail cheers, waving at you from the couch. “You look... dirty. But fine. Did you find any bats?”

“No bats.” you reply, crossing your arms a little embarrassed. “So... I guess I should be going now.”

“Hey!! I know you!” the blond boy says snapping his finger and pointing at you.

He hits slightly his head with the cue stick, apparently trying to invoke from his memory where he knows you from.

“I don’t think so.” you quickly say, trying to think of a way of going away without seeming as awkward as you were the day before.

“You are that Paradise kid!” he says and a bright smile enlighten his face.

“You remember which specific kid?” Sebastian asks, seeming amused.

“Yeah, the one that almost died because you pushed into the mountain lake!”

You, Abigail and Sebastian choke as Sam claps hands to himself for remembering who you are. And actually, you remember almost drowning in the lake, and you remember being pushed in the water, but you thought it had been one of your cousins.

“I guess I owe you an apology.” Sebastian says in a clumsy way.

“Ow, such a delayed apology.” Abigail giggles and he blushes.

“It’s ok, at least I didn’t die. I guess.” you reply.

“Wanna play snooker?” he asks and you can clearly see that it is out of politeness, and to escape the previous subject.

“No, I am heading home, I am tired.”

“Come on y/n! I am so tired of losing to Sebastian, I could use a partner.” Sam says, extending the cue stick at you.

He is such a cheerful guy you can’t picture how those two are friends.

“What do you think Abby?! Paired game?” Sebastian asks.

“You know I don’t like playing this game.” she says.

“It is ok, I am going no...” you try to excuse yourself.

“But if the farmer stays, I will play.” she completes her thoughts and winks at you.

You blush and this sight makes Sebastian stare at you with a both confused and annoyed face. You are surprised by Sam hugging you by the shoulders and yelling a combination of your names and “go team!”. Actually, how did he KNOW your name? Did he REMEMBER? You barely remember knowing him.

“Us versus team Sabby!” he says.

“Team Abbastian, my name comes first.” Abigail says.

You see yourself forced to play that game.  

Sam sucks.

He is terrible, a complete disaster. He keeps hitting all the wrong balls and making points to the other team, and sometimes he even cheers over that, not knowing that was not his ball. It is kind of funny, but secretly, you are not a very nice loser. But should you really play seriously?

The game is over very quickly and you are beaten good.

“Sorry, I said I was bad.” he smirks at you while scratching the back of his neck.

Sebastian raises his hand to Abigail, and she high fives him.

“Let’s play serious now?” you ask and wonder if you didn’t have one too many beers.

“Excuse me, what?!” Sebastian says rising one of his eyebrows in a resentful way.

“Yeah, I was just warming up.” you reply.

“Sorry, but not even if you were the best player of snooker in the world you could win with Sam as a partner.” he mocks.

“Try me.” you say while putting some chalk on your cue stick.

“OOOOOOOOhhhhh.” Sam says with the hand on top of his lips pointing at Sebastian.

“Ok, how about a one on one?” Sebastian asks.

“Fine.” you reply.

Both Abigail and Sam sit very close to the table to watch you play against Sebastian. The game starts even, each of you scoring in every play, he seems impressed. But your wrist starts aching because of the long hours of labor in the farm, and the shadows of your time at Joja corporation and you start losing some points.

“Are you ok?” Sebastian asks when he notices you pressing your wrist because of the pain.

“I’m fine.” you answer. “Ready to kick your ass.”

You immediately repents on the sentence, but Sebastian smirks at you and gives you space for your next move. Finally, you get back into scoring.  

Game comes to an end, you lose two points short.

“Nice game.” he says and extends the hand to you.

“Yeah...” you grunt and shakes it.

“Sebby! We are going home!” Robin yells from the saloon.

“Right, mom.” he replies, rolling his eyes.

“Wanna come?” she asks gently.

“I will go later.” he says, annoyed.

“Oh right, walking Abby home.” she says and giggles as he facepalms annoyed. “Oh, and Sam too, of course. Make sure to take y/n too! Safely!”

“Good night kids.” Demetrius comes by and waves. “Don’t come home too late, Sebastian.”

Sebastian starts murmuring some curses while Abigail and Sam wave nicely at them. You kind of understand why he is so annoyed, but also don’t think he should stress so much about it.  

Actually, Demetrius and Robin were very opposed to your parents and this made you admire them a lot.

“Let’s play one more?” Sam asks, trying to hand you the cue stick.

“Actually, I should be going.” you say while massaging your aching wrist.

“Ok, I will pay my check and we go.” Sebastian says.

“What?” you ask.

“What?” he replies. “You heard Robin, if I don’t take you home, I am busted.”

Abigail seems a little uncomfortable on the couch.

“No, you stay with your friends, I can take care of myself.” you say.

“I am sure you can, we all can. But when Robin says something, you better abide by it.” Sebastian says while getting his wallet and heading to the balcony.

“No, wait!” you stop in front of him and he bumps into you, almost falling back.

“Damn, you’re strong.” he whispers rubbing his ribs.

“I will stay for a while more, than. I don’t wanna bother.”

“If you want to go, we will go.” he says, very clearly annoyed.

“No, I will stay!”

“Ok!”

Sam and Abigail glance at each other, confused by the awkward dynamic between the two of you.  

You sit next to Abigail on the couch while Sam and Sebastian play. You can’t bring yourself to playing anymore, your wrists are aching too much now.

“So, why did you come to the valley?” Abigail asks you.

“I... kind of... needed a fresh start.” you reply feeling unease about it.

“Funny, people from here go to the city for a fresh start, you came to the countryside.” she says. “Don’t expect much though. It is very boring here.”

“I hope so...” you say and sigh.

She was very wrong.

Next part here:

#stardew valley #stardew valley imagine #stardew valley sebastian #stardew valley sam #stardew valley abigail #stardew valley fanfic #stardew valley fanart

[hoodoo12]

Chapter 9/15 SFW

Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

@turtlepated @anyamercury​ @beetlewise-and-pennyjuice​ 

Next morning, bright and early with the sunrise, she was back with a new book under her arm. She was eating a piece of toast, and shoved the last of the crust into her mouth as she entered. She wiped her lips with her thumb, and he was oddly ashamed that he watched that gesture with much interest.

"Oh! Do you want something to eat?" she asked by way of greeting, like she was a thoughtless hostess and this was a perfectly normal situation. "Do you need to eat?"

Beetlejuice, who had spent the rest of the night alone trying to understand why his thoughts had gone to different sexual scenarios he could engage in with her instead of a rage that should have been more appropriate, shook his head. 

He'd sort through the thorny mess of his libido some other time, he had decided. Lisette was trying to figure him out; he would do the same to her. Time would tell who would win this stalemate.

"I can, but I don't," he replied. "It's been years since I had a cigarette, though. You got any?"

She looked surprised he answered her as if it were a real conversation, like they were buddies. Beetlejuice waited for a moment, then made a circling motion with one hand to indicate he was waiting for an expecting a response. 

"Uh . . no. I don’t."

"Of fucking course you don’t. Nobody smokes anymore," he muttered, disappointed.

She tapped her forefinger on her chin for a moment, then left the room, leaving the door open. 

He’d been left in isolation again so quickly? Beetlejuice once again heard her rummaging through the kitchen, then there was silence. After minutes passed, she came back up the stairs. The treads and the floorboards in the hallway creaked with each footstep, and then she was back in the bedroom with him. She was holding something, and in the crook of her arm was one of the stainless steel canisters from under the cabinets in the kitchen.

“I don’t have any cigarettes,” she told him again, sounding apologetic. “Can you roll your own?”

Beetlejuice cocked his head in confusion. She held out her hands; in one was a box of stick matches, in the other, a cardboard box of rolling papers. She opened the small canister to show him dried, shredded leaves inside. The faint scent of tobacco wafted to him.

“You don’t have cigarettes but you have the stuff to make cigarettes?” he asked drily. Lisette shrugged. “The tobacco can be used in different rituals. The matches are just matches. The rolling paper . . . well, I didn’t buy it for tobacco, specifically.”

Despite himself, Beetlejuice laughed. “You’ve got a stolen forbidden book, you’ve captured me, and you’re embarrassed to say out loud you smoke weed?”

A blush crept over her cheeks and she laughed too. “Yeah. I guess. Marijuana is legal in Connecticut for medical purposes, but not just for fun. Would you prefer that instead of tobacco?”

The thought of a joint instead of a cigarette was tempting; it’d been even longer since he’d taken a hit than simply had a smoke. It would be simple and innocent enough to light one up, and offer her a toke, like people do, and maybe she’d accidently break the barrier . . .

“You wanna join me?” Beetlejuice asked.

Lisette shook her head. “No thanks. Too early in the day for me.”

He hid his disappointment and filed that information away for later. “Cigarette it is, then.”

With no further hesitation, Lisette tossed him the supplies one at a time, the canister, then the small box of rolling papers. As for the matches, she removed all but one from the box before passing it along. Each of them passed over the chalk inscriptions with no problem, which was interesting tidbit of information: things could enter the circle, he just couldn’t leave. Beetlejuice caught them all, and occupied himself with the task of making his own cigarette.

It had been a while since he had, so it took a little time for the proper technique to come back to him. As he struggled a bit getting the paper tight enough around the tobacco, he groused, “If you’re used to rolling joints, why didn’t you just make a cigarette for me and throw that into this prison?”

Lisette looked a little surprised, as if that hadn't occurred to her, but answered, “You didn’t ask!”

He gave her a look that conveyed his exact thoughts on that amount of pettiness, then licked the free edge of the paper standing upright between his fingers and pressed it down. It was slightly looser than he would have liked and it had a shitty crutch he made out of the thin cardboard he found in the box of rolling papers instead of a real filter, but a smoke after who knows how many years was a treat anyway. Beetlejuice lit the match by flicking it against his thumbnail, and once the end of the cigarette was going, stuck it in his mouth. His first inhale of a corporeal cigarette in ages was bitter and hot. 

It was great.

Beetlejuice let himself be lost in the physical act of smoking for a moment. It suddenly hit him that not only had this breather said his name twice, drawing him three-quarters into the living world, but whatever arcane techinque she used to keep him in this circle made that three-quarters last longer than it ever had before. This situation wasn’t perfect, but that was a nice little bonus. 

Lisette sat quietly with her skirt hiked up passed her knees. Idly he wondered if she was wearing any panties. Beetlejuice kept a lungful of smoke in longer than would be comfortable, then let it out in a stream that twisted a little like a Sandworm. That trick usually made a breather nervous, since it looked a little alive, but the woman near the wall didn’t react to it. 

Instead, she went back to her books, flipping through pages, leaving them open on the floor, writing notes in her journal, and cross-referencing things. Beetlejuice watched her research and wondered to himself what exactly she was thinking. 

After his cigarette was gone and she was still absorbed in her books, he asked, 

“Figured anything out yet?”

She glanced up at him with an annoyed expression pinching her face. “No.”

He scooted along the floor to be closer to her. The chalk circle she’d drawn was four inches wide, so with her leaning against the wall by the door, her knees were less than a foot away from him. He could reach out and grab her, if this barrier was down.

Beetlejuice craned his head to try and read the books upside down. 

“Is that a Bible?” “Yes,” she replied, distracted, as she continued to scribble.

“Would I be able to touch it?”

She finally looked up, genuinely confused. “What the hell does that mean?”

He nodded towards the other books. “I couldn’t quite touch those two. Earlier. When I, uh, wrecked your room.”

Lisette stared at him blankly for a moment before she understood. “Oh. Right! They have wards on them to prevent non-human or non-living beings from interacting with them. Safety precautions, you know. Of course, that doesn’t really help me narrow down ghost versus demon in your case . . .”

She let her voice trail off, then went back to the Bible she’d been perusing. Beetlejuice let her have a few more moments, then just as she was settling back into her work, he interrupted. 

“Which version of the Bible do you have? Is it both Old and New Testament? Do you have a Qur’an? The Torah? The Codex Seraphinianus? The Voynich Manuscript?” 

Lisette returned the look he’d given her earlier: irked. “Why are you asking?”

He shrugged. “Just wondering exactly what you’re using to try and decipher the riddle wrapped in an enigma that is me.”

“With a head that big I’m surprised you made it through the doorframe into this room,” she replied drily. “Of course, you were going full steam. All because I said your name. Interesting.”

Beetlejuice scowled a little, hating to be reminded how desperate he’d been. He let silence fill the room for a few beats. She broke the quiet before he did this time.

“You mentioned Al Azif. Not many other texts have information about shoggoths in them. Have you read it? Did you just randomly pick a name from the book? What’s the connection between it, them, and you?”

“Maybe Alhazred named shoggoths after me,” Beetlejuice suggested. 

That made her furrow her brow for a moment, but eventually she shook her head. “No, I only know one account of a shoggoth taking human form.” Even though his lie was dismissed, he saw by the expression on her face some new thought had come to her. Her eyes found his, and excited, she asked, “Were you there when Alhazred wrote it?”

“Maybe,” Beetlejuice hedged. He couldn’t decide if letting her know his age would be a problem.

“Interesting . . .” Lisette repeated, and dropped her eyes back to her journal to write a note. Her mouth moved a little as she did, and it was vaguely similar to the times he saw her praying.

“So you’re pretty devoted, huh?”

Confusion and harder thinking looked the same on her face. “What?”

“You pray a lot. Devoted Catholic, right?” he guessed. Two could play at taking stabs at the other’s truths.

“My grandmother was Catholic, but I wasn’t raised anything,” Lisette admitted.

“Then what are you praying?”

“What? I’m not praying, I’m just talking to myself!”

For some reason, that admission made Beetlejuice laugh out loud. “Jesus. I’ve been alone for forever it seems, and even I don’t do that!” 

Lisette looked slightly offended, which made him laugh harder. 

“Whatever,” she told him, but it was good to see something needled her.

tbc

#beetlejuice #betelguese #writing #fanfiction #movie beetlejuice #musical beetlejuice

[theyearoftheking]

Book Eight: Cujo

“The world was full of monsters, and they were all allowed to bite the innocent and the unwary...”

Guys... I’m going to be perfectly honest here. Cujo was just one big trigger for me. I love dogs. I love children. I don’t want to read about dogs attacking and (SPOILER) killing children. 

If nothing else, let this blog serve as a PSA: please take good care of your dogs. Keep them up to date on their shots. If you notice something might be off with them, take them into the vet. If you’re going to leave for a weekend, make plans to have someone feed your dog for you. Just, please take care of your dogs. If you won’t do it for me, do it for the sweet baby angels in my life. Please and thank you. 

If you couldn’t tell, I didn’t love re-reading Cujo. I didn’t particularly love it the first time, but in the spirit of this challenge, I agreed to leave no page unturned. I will say, there were a few Easter eggs I picked up this time I hadn’t before. For example, the book is set in Castle Rock, Steve’s fictional town in Maine. Castle Rock was still reeling from serial killer Frank Dodd (remember him from Firestarter?); and Dodd’s former partner is convinced Cujo’s evil is the direct result of Frank Dodd’s spirit transferring into him. Or, it could be rabies. Either way. But it was interesting to see the Castle Rock universe start to build on itself a little bit. 

The story could best be described as, “cellphones have made this whole story line completely irrelevant today”. 

The Camber family lives out in the sticks, where husband Joe runs an auto repair shop, son Brett owns lovable Cujo the Saint Bernard, and wife Charity just won the lottery and is planning her escape to see her sister. Also, the family only has one telephone... in the kitchen of their house... nowhere near Joe’s shop. In this day and age, he’d have a cellphone out in the shop with him. Just sayin’. 

The Trenton family lives in Castle Rock. Husband Vic works in advertising, wife Donna is having a regrettable affair with tennis pro, Steve Kemp, and son Tad is convinced the evil spirit of Frank Dodd is residing in his closet (he’s not wrong). The Trenton family also owns a Pinto that has been having some engine problems as of late. 

After finding out about Donna’s affair (Steve Kemp mailed a Dear John letter to his office. Steve Kemp is classy motherfucker), Vic has to leave to handle an ad emergency for Sharp Cereal. If you were to eat their newest cereal, Red Raspberry Zingers, you’d projectile vomit red dye. Sooo he had to get out in front of that. He and Donna are on rocky terms when he leaves, what with her screwing the tennis pro and all. But, Vic knows her Pinto is having some issues, and tells her to take it out to the Camber farm to get it fixed. Donna dithers about it. 

Meanwhile over on the Camber farm, Charity tells Joe about her lottery winnings, and gets him to agree to let her and Brett leave to go see her sister in the city. Joe, a functioning alcoholic, convinces his equally drunk neighbor buddy, Gary Pervier, to take a trip into Boston with him. They’ll get some hookers, drink some beer, maybe watch a baseball game. Good times. So, Charity and Brett get on the Grayhound bus, and set off for their vacation. Meanwhile, Cujo is super rabid from sticking his head in a hole, and getting chomped on by some rabid bats. Before Joe and Gary get to leave for the city, Cujo mauls them both to death in a rabid fury. It’s gross. 

Donna decides to drive out to the Camber farm to get her Pinto looked at. She’s called several times, but no answer. She chalks it up to the fact the phone is in the house, not in the shop, and Joe will be around to help her with the Pinto. Again... text messaging would have solved this issue. Just sayin. Tad begs to come along, so she agrees. The Pinto dies as soon as they hit the Camber driveway, and as soon as Donna opens her car door, a rabid Cujo comes after her. Luckily she makes it back into her car in time, but she and Tad are basically trapped in the car for two days, with a small thermos of milk, and very little food. Oh, and it’s basically the hottest summer on record, so the car has turned into a greenhouse. Horrible. If Donna had a cellphone, she could have called for help. She could have posted on social media. She could have made an SOS call. She could have sent a text. But none of these things happen. Instead, she’s stuck inside the Pinto with a dehydrated kid, while Cujo growls and pounces on their car from outside. Fun times. 

Meanwhile, Vic is starting to panic since he can’t get ahold of Donna. He calls the Castle Rock police who go to the house and find it completely trashed. And semen all over the bed. Because, again, Steve Kemp is a classy motherfucker. He had casually stopped by, looking to see what kind of impact his letter had on Vic. Finding no one home, he destroyed the entire house. As you do. 

The police tell Vic to come home ASAP, and he tells them all about Steve Kemp. They issue a BOLO for his sex van, but they are also super curious where Donna’s car is. Vic remembers the Camber farm, and they dispatch an officer to go check it out. The officer heads over, and finds Donna and Tad mostly dead inside the Pinto, but before he has a chance to call for help, Cujo guts him. 

So close to rescue! So close! 

The police find Steve Kemp, but there’s no sign of Tad or Donna in the sex wagon. They bring him into the police station for questioning, but he’s not talking. Because classy motherfuckers don’t kiss and tell. They just send letters to their mistresses husbands. 

Vic decides to take a trip out to the farm to look for the Pinto, and arrives to find Donna bloody, bitten, and beating the shit out of Cujo with a baseball bat. But, he also finds Tad dead in the Pinto. That’s the biggest gut punch of this entire novel; Donna fights so hard for her and Tad’s survival, only to have him die a few hours before help arrives. It’s also a big “I Told You So” on Tad’s part. He had told his parents monsters were real, and coming for him. They didn’t believe him. Welp, this is awkward... 

That’s Cujo. No Wisconsin references, no Dark Tower references, nada. But I will give the book credit for two things. First, the format of the book is kinda cool. It starts with this... 

And the rest of the book reads like a cautionary fairy tale. No chapters, no parts, just one long narrative story. I liked it. I also liked the fact Steve gave Cujo a voice. I didn’t feel too bad when he died, though. So I feel conflicted about that. 

The other thing I appreciated was the author photo on the back. After last week’s Firestarter brooding Glamour Shot, I was happy to see this gem. 

Looks like Steve plays tambourine in a folk band. Or sells hand-tooled belts at the local swap meet. Or can give you a bag of some really dank weed. The possibilities are endless. 

Total Wisconsin Mentions: 9

Dark Tower References: 6

Book Grade: C-

Rebecca’s Definitive Ranking of Stephen King Books

The Shining

The Stand

The Dead Zone

‘Salem’s Lot

Carrie

Firestarter

Cujo

Nightshift

Next up is Danse Macabre. I’m stupid excited to read this, because I love Stephen King non-fiction. I find his humor and insights really shine through when he’s using his most authentic voice. I’ve read the updated introduction so far, and have already laughed a few times. I mean, he talks Bride of Chucky. How can you not appreciate that?

Until next time readers, Long Days and Pleasant Nights!

Rebecca

[crowkingwrites]

Battle of the Bands (Ch.7)

fPairing: Robb Stark x Reader, Jon Snow x Reader, Viserys Targaryen x Reader, Ramsay Bolton X Reader

Summary: You just moved into the city for the first tie all by yourself. After you get your dream summer job working for a small magazine, you find yourself in the middle of the city’s rock festival: Battle of the Bands. Local rock bands throughout the city compete to win a record deal that could change their lives. Your job? Get close to them and write about them online.A single girl in the city surrounded by rocker boys during the summertime. What could possibly go wrong?

Words: 2394 // AO3 Link

Chapter One // Chapter Two // Chapter Three // Chapter Four // Chapter Five // Chapter Six

The next day you didn’t go to work. You didn’t even bother with the fest. You woke up at a crisp 7am sun peeking through your room. A hot cup of coffee warmed your hand, but you greeted the day with some sobriety. You turned your phone off on purpose. You wouldn’t spend today flirting with boys and getting news stories.

Before you left Margaery, she instructed you to not visit her.

She remembered a time where she was hospitalized before, and all you did was check up on her every five minutes. Sure, this was still during your internet friendship, but it still annoyed Margie. If anything, Margaery has a great excuse to relax and enjoy her injury. Well, as much as anyone can enjoy themselves while they are in the hospital.

Margie’s pet bird sang when you went to go greet her. She sang sweet songs to you. Every sip of hot coffee tasted just as wonderful as the last.

You decided to do your own writing on your computer. Your toes curled up and relaxed as you opened a new word document. Words flowed out of you as unusual as it was. You wrote about Viserys and how his hips moved. How good it felt when he kissed you. Then you wrote about Ramsay. How much of an asshole he truly was, but he loved to flirt.

Then you wrote about Robb. Angry words broke away from the soft thoughts. He treated you like you were his. You belonged to no one. You didn’t have to answer to him or for him. Nastier thoughts started to unfold. What if he did hire you just because you were cute? What if he just hired you so you would date him? All of it left a bad taste in your mouth.

But, Robb wouldn’t do that. No, he proved how good of a person he was. Right? Sure, he was adorable to look at, and he worked hard for the music store and magazine he ran. Still, the darker thoughts clouded your mind. You wanted to hit him. You wanted to call him. You weren’t sure exactly what to do.

You texted Loras. Surely, your gay-pseudo-brother knew what to do.

You to Loras: [ Hey, I still can’t wrap my head around last night. ]

Loras to You: [Oh thank God! I was waiting for you to say SOMETHING. Margie couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Sorry sis.]

You: [I fucking knew it. She told you everything?]

Loras: [Everything. Did you quit or what?]

You: [No, but it hurts. Do you think he hired me so I would date him?]

Loras: [Hunny no. You are a talented and a hardworking writer. Anyone can see that.] You pushed away the computer and sat on the sectional couch. Gray clouds started to block the sun. Your fingers made busy work to Loras.

You: [Why does this all feel so weird then? Why do I wanna talk to him? I’m so mad at him! What if I lose my job?]

A panic started to rumble its way into your head. The questions came soaring afterwards. What if you did lose your job? What if you never got a chance to write again? This was your only chance, and you fucked it up and—

You had to stop. You hated panic attacks. As sociable and popular as you were, panic attacks left you defenseless. Your heart pounded against your chest. Things around you started to be louder and brasher. Margie’s bird singing became a screech in your head. The air you breathed tasted like sharp chalk. It hurt so bad.

You called Loras.

“Loras!” you shouted.

“Hey, hey now. You’re alright,” Loras reassured you. You felt a tear go down your face. Another one fell after it.

“I’m gonna get fired! I can’t get fired!” you told him.

“No, no, no. You are not going to get fired,” Loras told you in a calm, but firm voice. “And even if you did, no one will hate you for it.”

“I’m a failure!” your voice let out. Insecurities bubbled up to the surface. “Robb gave me my one chance at writing for a career! And I fucked it up, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t—

“I’m so stupid! Oh my god, I’m so stupid!”

“Y/N, you’re alright. It’s okay! Just—

You heard other noises and a shaking before you heard Loras’ voice again.

“Y/N, it’s gonna be okay. I can’t help you right now, but there’s someone who is on their way who can. I’m sorry. I can’t leave work. But someone’s on their way, ok? Hang in there for sis.” As Loras hung up the phone, you felt yourself collapse onto the ground. Your cries expelled out of your body as if you were having a fit. You felt your shoulders shake and your teeth chatter.

As the wood in your apartment creaked, you could’ve sworn you felt the room grow smaller. You heard your silly sobs and you wanted to punish yourself further. How stupid were you to think that you could do this? You wanted to find something. You had to punish yourself. This was your fault. It was your fault. It was you—

You heard someone knocking on the door frantically. A voice matched it.

“Y/N! Are you in there?” Jon said. “It’s me! Jon! Loras and Renly sent me here. Are you okay?” You picked yourself off from the floor and walked towards your door with a bewildered expression. After opening two of the three locks, your door creaked open to a worried Jon Snow.

His dark curls were the same, but you swore you’ve never seen his eyes this close. The sky was darkening and so were his eyes. No sunlight touched the brown color in them. Instead, a darkness colored them darker as if he had his own demons too. They were there in his eyes, just lurking in the background.

“Jon?” your voice creaked out.

“Oh, Y/N. Let me in, okay?” Jon nodded to the door. You stepped back and let him in. You quickly noted his backpack and a few grocery bags he had with him. Confusion replaced most of the tension, but you could still feel the tears come down your face.

“Jon, what are you—

“I heard you over the phone. Loras asked me to come, so here I am,” Jon explained. He set his things down and walked over to you. “What happened?”

You opened your mouth to tell him, but then conveniently remembered who Jon’s brother was. Your mouth closed so fast that you almost hurt yourself.

“I don’t know if I can tell you,” you quietly said.

“You can,” Jon nodded. You shook your head violently.

“I can’t,” your voice broke. Tears streamed down your face again. Without any prompting, Jon pulled you to him. His arms wrapped around you firmly. You felt him breathe calmly. Your nose caught his scent of cologne. He smelled much sweeter than you expected, but it calmed you. You found yourself breathing with him as your sobs were laid to rest. Jon let you out of his warming and reassuring hug while both of you sat on the sofa.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Jon said. He grabbed his bag. “But, I did bring something that could really help the problem.” You watched Jon pull out a small leather bag, a lighter, and a glass bong.

“You smoke?” you said, surprised.

“Yeah,” Jon nodded. “Nearly everyone in the family does.”

“Including Cat? Your mom?”

“She advocates for it, but she’s quiet about it, yeah,” Jon smiled. You watched him pack the weed gently and firmly into the bowl. Then, you watched Jon hit it. The smoke swirled up into his chest. He held it for a moment, and released it. Smoke left his mouth in a singular, long stream. As if he was one of those 1940’s mobsters who cut a good deal with the police.

Jon passed it to you. “It will calm you down. It helps.” You took the bong from him and hit it harder than you wanted. The burn in the back of your throat betrayed you. You ended up coughing much more than you expected.

“Sorry, it’s been a while,” you said. Jon shook his head and smiled, unpacking the grocery bags filled with all kinds of snacks. Cookies, salty chips and dip, and you spied a king-sized chocolate bar. Your eyes went wide.

“Oh, yeah, this one’s for you,” Jon offered it to you. You held the king-sized bar to your face, comparing the size. A genuine, hearty laugh left Jon as his eyes squinted. “Feeling better already?”

You took a big bite of the chocolate. “Well, you know what they say, eat this, you’ll feel better.”

Jon relaxed on the sofa and dug into the chips. He squinted at the window. “Oh, well I guess it’s going to rain after all.” The gray clouds outside had blocked out the sun completely. A bit of rain started to drip onto the city streets. Luckily, you decided to not go into the fest today.

“You said Loras sent you here?” you said taking another hit from the bong.

“He did,” Jon nodded.

“Why aren’t you at the pub? You could be playing for another crowd of people who want to get away from the rain,” you pointed out.

Jon shrugged. “Didn’t want to. I didn’t have the energy. Besides, it was never about the crowds for me. I’m happy playing music for just one person.” You smiled to yourself knowing that you were in good company.

“Did you want to watch something?” you gestured with the remote in your hand.

“Yeah, anything you want. I’m here to hang with you,” Jon’s smile gave you a sigh of relief. You never knew what to think when someone helped you through a panic attack. Sometimes, your mind went to the absolute worst thoughts. Jon didn’t seem to mind. You clicked on another nature documentary and took another hit from the bong.

“So,” you began another conversation. The rain started to hit the window as thunder rolled. “How long have you been smoking?”

“High school,” Jon said. “On my sixteenth birthday, Uncle Benjen pulled me aside and introduced me to it. You seem really surprised?”

“I don’t know. You don’t seem like the type to—

“Straight edge. Like Robb, right?” Jon chuckled, and you almost did. You bit your lip and became very quiet. Jon moved closer to you. His fingers reached out to you. “You alright?”

Your continued silence gave Jon the hint.

“What happened with Robb?” Jon’s tone became very dark all of a sudden.

“Last night, I was with someone and Robb was really upset with me.”

“Is this about Margaery going to the hospital?” Jon asked. You nodded and continued.

“He called me over and over and over again. When he found me with someone, he got really angry with me and said some mean things to me and—

Jon held his hand up to stop you. “He told me his side this morning. I know what he said. I know who you were with and everything.”

You felt the tears come back to your eyes, but before you could cry too hard Jon hugged you again.

“I don’t like what Robb said to you. I especially don’t like what he was going to do about it.”

“He was gonna do something?”

“He was going to fire you,” Jon said. “Until I convinced him how horrible of an idea that was.” Jon sighed and rolled his eyes. He took a long hit for himself. The smoke still came out in a single stream. You weren’t going to lie. You were starting to like this Stark brother much more than the other.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because you’re my friend. And you’re a great writer,” Jon sat back. You joined him. “Robb wants to work with people he likes. That’s why he hires his friends, his family, and sometimes his girlfriends. When he’s mad with people, he holds their job over their head to get them to do what he wants. Robb’s my brother. I love him, but he’s fucked in that regard.”

“Ramsay told me about a girl named Robyn.”

Jon groaned. His hands slid down his face as more frustrated noises came out of him. “

“Robyn. Robyn was a mess. You’re different than her. Very different. Is that why you had a panic attack? You think you’re going to lose your job?” When you nodded, Jon hugged you even more. “That’s not going to happen. I promise you that won’t happen.”

“Do you think I’m a whore?”

“No,” Jon laughed, letting you go. “I think you are a very pretty single girl who just wants to make friends in a new city she just moved to. Anyone who tells you different can fuck off.” You hugged Jon. Letting your arms wrap around his middle and taking in every scent of him. Jon was so nice to you. From the moment you met him till now, he was always so sweet to you.

Which was why you kissed him on the cheek and then backed away very quickly.

Jon sat there, almost stunned. His smile didn’t disappear.

“So, you’re a little high, huh?” he laughed it off. You felt the relaxing notion of the THC take over a few minute ago, but it didn’t hit you until now.

“I guess,” you giggled. Your laugh faded into a big smile. “Thanks for coming over. It means a lot to me.”

“Believe me, I understand more than you think,” Jon gave you a half-smile. You jumped up and grabbed one of your homemade blankets from your room and brought it out to the living room. You tossed it over Jon and smiled. Jon fixated the blanket to give you both room under the quilt warmth.

“Do you wanna stay here all day and get high with me while we watch funny stuff?” you asked, hoping for a yes.

“I would absolutely love that,” Jon patted the seat next to him where you sat. Both cuddled up in a happy bundle while the storm went on.

Note to Self: Panic attacks are not ok. Getting help from good friends makes it all okay.

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#battle of the bands #Robb Stark #robb stark imagine #robb stark x reader #jon snow #jon snow imagine #jon snow x reader #viserys targaryen imagine #viserys targaryen x reader #viserys targaryen #ramsay bolton #ramsay bolton imagine #ramsay bolton x reader #got #game of thrones #got imagine #game of thrones imagine

[mirroredtranslations]

Karen Ogre - Chapter 13

Wazamonogatari – Nisioisin p. 179-186

[Previous Chapter]

Even if any of widely-known, prominent plant foods were growing deep in the mountains, they probably wouldn't taste very good.

After all, the vegetables sold in supermarkets and stuff are raised with people's assistance in order to make them easy for people to eat.

The more I think about it, the more profound my dietary problem seems.

But that was a rather shallow concern—I was in no position to worry about taste or ease of eating; I was in a state of extreme hunger, and I just wanted to put something in my belly.

Having said that, I had eaten yesterday, so even if I missed breakfast, I thought I'd be able to make it to midday at least, but there was no way.

I wasn’t gonna last that long.

Couldn’t I just eat some of these weeds around here... I'd heard that a lot of grasses are edible, after all.

And they say there's no such thing as a weed.

If I boiled them using the mess kit, which no longer had a purpose due to the loss of the rice, maybe they wouldn't turn out all that bad...

Or so I thought... well, I'm not sure whether I was thinking or not, but anyway, I staggered toward a nearby thicket and reached out my hand—

“...Why are ye deliberately reaching for a poisonous plant?”

Something firmly grabbed my wrist.

Deja vu.

My wrist was grabbed this same way yesterday, when I was about to fall off the rock face—oh, is it that little girl again? I looked to my side; right next to me was a blond-haired mountain climber, and she was not a little girl.

She looked like a high school girl, and was wearing twintails—well, the definition and age of a high school girl aren’t the same overseas as they are in Japan, so I can't say for certain, but in any case, the blond girl looked to be of my generation.

“I cannot lick a rash. That would be awful for my tongue.”

It sounded like Blond Twintail-chan knew that Blond Bob Cut-chan had licked my shoulder—I wonder, do they have family telepathy or something?

Tsukihi-chan and I definitely don't have anything like that.

Well, I was in no condition to be thinking logically, so I'm not sure I'd heard Blond Twintail-chan correctly; maybe, as a mountaineer and lover of mountains, she was just telling me to take the mountain seriously.

For sure, brashly going around picking up wild plants is way too desperate—if I'd really gotten a rash as result, it would be no laughing matter.

“So... um...”

“I'm a cousin.”

...Well, I suppose she would be.

Just how big is this mountain-climbing family?

They're really scattered around too, considering that.

And did they not have a single lecturer to teach them modern Standard Japanese?

“Did my cousin not tell ye to not put anything and everything in your mouth?” Blond Twintail-chan said, yanking my lethargic wrist away from the thicket (the poisonous thicket).

She looked frustrated, as if it were her own warning that I'd ignored. I guess she has a high level of empathy for her cousin.

But, did someone tell me that?

I didn’t remember at all.

“That's probably just an issue with your memory, but I'll chalk it up to ye hitting the wall; how about ye remember something else, then. Did a noble and kind mountaineer not provide ye with a ration?”

Oh.

I remembered.

I mean, how could I have forgotten about that until now? It was just two days ago, but it felt like it happened two years ago.

That's right; at the foot of Oniai Mountain, the first of the Three Ouga Mountains, I received a bar of chocolate from Blond Ponytail-chan.

Chocolate! Calories!

Uhh, where is that thing, again?

Oh, right, I'd put it in the pocket of my jersey and left it there, hadn't I?

Pondering what I'd do if I'd lost that too, I groped around in my pocket—the pocket didn't have a zipper, but luckily, the chocolate was still there.

Its shape was warped, as if after two days of scorching heat it had melted and rehardened, but that hadn't changed the taste very much.

“Chomp. Crunch, crunch... Oh, I can feel it! I can feel the polyphenol!”

“Ye have quite the sensitive tongue if ye can feel the presence of polyphenol.”

After exasperatedly telling me to wait, Blond Twintail-chan went back to the thicket.

She didn't go very far away, keeping about as far from me as my shadow went; I wondered if she'd dropped something.

As I stood there absent-mindedly (one bar of chocolate just isn't enough to make my head start working again), Bond Twintail-chan returned to me with her hands full of herbs—an herb bouquet.

“Here. I've picked ye some herbs that are alright to eat.”

“You're so kind!”

I hugged Blond Twintail-chan.

I demonstrated my gratitude in an un-Japanese-like way toward a tourist from overseas who was overly close to me.

“I've decided, you'll be my partner for prom!”

“There's no such thing as prom in Japan.”

“You're an angel! No, a goddess!”

“Ah, stop, stop. If you call me an angel or a goddess, something really bad might show up.”

She’d dropped her antique manner of speaking.

Something really bad?

What's that?

“I'll cook these right away! You eat some too!”

Even if I said “cook”, I'd just be boiling them using my mess kit, but I'd gotten all hyped up from getting some of the food I was so desperate for, so I invited Blond Twintail-chan to lunch.

“My apologies; I must reject your invitation. I cannot eat things that sprout up from the ground.”

I was curtly rejected.

My feelings of gratitude started to dwindle.

And what a harsh rejection it was.

If that's the case, I wonder why she knows so much about which wild plants are edible and which are poisonous.

“Well, due to personal circumstances, I'm finicky about food. Or perhaps 'twould be better to say there's a guy close to me who's finicky about food—ka ka.”

After that enigmatic declaration, Blond Twintail-chan let out a loud, yet somehow self-deprecating laugh.

“As such, I cannot partake of the meal, but I suppose I can at least sit with ye.”

She plomped down next to the gas burner I was getting ready—she was sitting with one knee raised, and I could hardly call it good manners; even so, she somehow engendered a sense of nobility.

Maybe more like divinity than nobility.

Oh, sorry, I'm not supposed to call her a goddess, right? Why is that?

“Eh? What?”

“Oh, um... Right. I was just thinking, they say there's a god in the mountains, don't they.”

Questioned, I replied vaguely.

That was too vague.

But I had certainly heard something like that before—it's definitely not that I'd mistaken a tourist from overseas I'd happened to come across in the mountains for a god.

But it's the truth that I'd received considerable help from this Blond Twintail-chan, as well as from her whole blond family.

At this point, even a careless girl like me will start feeling like it's passed beyond chance and coincidence and into the realm of divine intervention.

“Hmph. A mountain is just a mountain. There's no god in it.”

Blond Twintail-chan was resolute.

It appeared her sense of piety was not very strong.

“Though, 'tis indeed a mystical place. That may be the crux of the matter—but for me, 'twas the exact opposite.”

“? The exact opposite?”

“For me, 'twas a lake—well, that's an old tale. There seems to be a tendency in this country to regard natural phenomena as gods, and a tendency to regard them as monstrous apparitions as well—to revere nature, to fear nature. And thus, oddities are born; though perhaps, in truth, oddities can only exist within the hearts of people.”

“? ? ?”

I'd completely lost track of what she was talking about—it's pretty embarrassing to be taught Japanese culture by someone from overseas, but since she's a mountain fanatic who's sightseeing this deep in the mountains, maybe it'd be weirder if she didn't have any personal opinions about mountains.

Oddities, huh.

But, thinking it'd be rude to listen in silence to the person who saved my life, I interjected.

“Is that like the expression, 'suspicion begets monsters'? Like, demons are born inside a suspicious heart.”

As I was talking, I felt like my interjection had completely missed the point, but whether out of self-importance or generosity, Blond Twintail-chan agreed.

“Well, something like that. Demons are born in one's heart, and live in one's shadow—though, I expect the demons I'm talking about are different from the demons of this country. But ye might say 'tis that difference which makes humans so interesting. So, how about it?”

“? How about what?”

“Enough of gods and demons—have ye met yourself yet? Your journey is nearly in sight of its goal.”

“Ah...”

Huh?

Did I mention that my goal was to have a dialogue with myself? Well, if she knows, then I must have mentioned it. That's no good; looks like my brain's still in “hit the wall” mode.

“Can't say I've met myself yet. I'm doing my best just to stay alive—I guess I won't be able to tell until I actually bathe in the waterfall.”

“Doing your best just to stay alive, eh. That can be an enviable state of affairs; there are people vexed by not being able to die, ye know.”

“Really? There are people like that?”

“Ye could say there are, and ye could say there aren't. Could say the same about them being alive or dead, too. Look, 'twould seem the herbs are cooked. Time to eat.”

��Oh, right. Thank you for the meal.”

Thus prompted, I scooped the wild plants directly from the mess kit into my mouth.

Hhmm, I suppose you could call it a vegetable soup---but to be frank, you definitely could not call it tasty.

Either it was tasteless, or bitter; maybe I boiled it for too long, but it had absolutely no consistency—it even felt a bit like I was eating poison.

I very much doubted the idea that hunger is the best seasoning, contrary to what you might expect—but I mustn’t act spoiled. This was what Blond Twintail-chan gathered for my sake (although, she'd refused to ingest it).

Nourishment, nourishment, nourishment.

Life, life, life.

Repeating those words in my mind like an incantation, I stuffed the wild plants down my throat. I needed to eat sufficiently in order to reach my goal, which, according to Blond Twintail-chan, was already in sight.

“Try to remember the look of these plants. From here on, pick them up whenever ye see them; they ought to be growing on the first mountain as well, so ye can use them as food on the return journey.”

“Thank you for everything.”

“No need to thank me. Now then, 'tis time to take my leave.”

Blond Twintail-chan abruptly stood up.

Somehow or other, after eating the bar of chocolate and the wild plants, my head had started working again to some extent. I became intrigued, and asked, “Hey, just how many of you are there?”

I'd already seen one, two, three, and including Blond Twintail-chan, four members of her family on my journey so far.

The third, Blond Bob Cut-chan, had warned me that I might meet more of them on my way---one had already rescued me---but they always appear so suddenly, so it startles me every time.

It's bad for my heart.

So it was more than simple curiosity that made me want to know, a bit more specifically, where and who they might be, if I'm going to meet another member of her family; I wonder.

Are there still a bunch of blond, golden-eyed cousins making their way down the mountain, or is this Blond Twintail-chan bringing up the rear?

Her answer to my question was, “Let's set aside how many people I've come with—how many have ye come with?”

She asked me the same question.

Isn't it obvious how many people I'm with? As I struggled to respond, Blond Twintail-chan flashed a smile that was far from angelic—it was demonic.

“Surely ye don't think you've come alone, do ye?”

[Next Chapter]

#karen ogre #wazamonogatari #monogatari #translation

[trustafarian-theserialfiction]

“trustafarian” part 16: girls from 8-11 stay up all night (and I can get a discount) April 4, 2016 10:22pm

The day of the big hoopla, Dan was already exhausted before they left Maison Rokkoku.  Bruce had been in a panic through the end of March after hearing through the show-vine that Wrongbar of all places (even Dan was surprised) was gone-but-not-forgotten.  After finding out it wasn’t a forever thing, and it’d be back sometimes, kind of, but not really, Bruce had gone on some kind of manic bender and dragged Dan and whoever else he could, to every event he got invited to, which was sometimes two or three venues within five blocks within one night.  Or two or three places that were extremely far apart.  Dan couldn’t remember much about any one place, let alone all of them.  They had all had that characteristic humidity, the seasonings varying a bit place to place, depending: sweat and hair product, weed haze, beer and cigarettes, cat piss and patchouli and other weird smells including spilled moonshine.   One night after several hours of watching Bruce throw himself around a tiny lightless room in the market, Dan had gone out for air and in the little alley he’d smelled hash-blunt smoke for the first time in his life, which made him feel profoundly underdeveloped in the opposite of the way his weedless life usually made him feel. Andreah had been there as well, with friends she didn’t seem to need to bring around for introductions.  They all liked Bruce, though, and he seemed to know their names but spent the night in what Dan read as a chemically maxed-out fury.  He seemed to think he’d done Dan a disservice by not bringing him to any of the parties he’d gone to that winter; it was an issue of how fast everything changed. And, specifically, he was upset about the fact that Dan had blinked and missed Wrongbar—what was next, Bassmentality?  So this was them knocking-on-wood.  Refusing to take T.O. for granted.  Not letting good things pass them by. Jean-Paul seemed to gravitate toward Higher Grounds for respite oftentimes when their excursions put them nearby, but he came out with them every night and Dan was thankful.  The club crawl had taken them through the great outdoors, even; they’d gone back to the ravine one night and had a youtube rave somewhere away from where people were sleeping.  It had been green, terrifically green, everywhere new grass and leaves were coming in and the lighthazed-sky oculus over the oasis had dipcoated everything else that bluey-dusk palette.  For a few minutes the green had been so bright against the dusky backgrounding he’d thought he’d somehow stupidly tried some of Bruce’s bottle of fluorescent-purple “rave juice” earlier and gotten so high he’d forgotten.  When the green dimmed down with the nightfall he’d quickly realized that he’d have been much, much higher suddenly, if he was coming up on Bruce-portion-number-two, and he wasn’t.  He’d then rightly chalked it up to being slightly high from all the laughs and the shawarma Jean-Paul had gotten him earlier; after he’d preemptively asked Bruce about an ipod dock/speaker set-up for the yearly flashmob bake-in at High Park, Bruce had done him two better and reemerged from his room with a nice compact vintage boombox with an aux cord as well as a two port usb lithium battery with an led party-light clipped in.  And he’d insisted on bringing it and them with him, and VJing southward through the ravine (before streetcar hopping south to some hardcore shindig Mouse and Pete were excited about, some multiday fest). They’d stopped in to the Mediterranean-and-shawarma place at the Runnymeade intersection to eat, on their way out that night from the Maison. From there they’d walked up, over to Keele, and caught the St. Clair streetcar coreward from there with new transfer slips that had been left in a ziplock bag folded around a magnet stuck to the underside of the TTC shelter bench. Bruce said the magnetbags were all over the city and people even coordinated live in some codeword-heavy facebook group, to find good slips nearby when their stop didn’t have any or a bag had been removed. Apparently everyone in the city who rode transit knew to get transfers they didn’t need so they could cache them for people like Easter eggs, if not in the bags then just around the stop somewhere.  Bruce had said some places on the east side had “set in stone” laundry-line spots and every day there’d be rows of papers like socks drying, folded over a nearby gate top or trash bin.  Dan still hadn’t noticed any such spots but didn’t rule out simply having overlooked them for what they were, before.  Like the weird door to the roof from Bruce’s room.  He’d wished someone had thought to tell him before, so he hadn’t risked the sign-foretold fine at the station more times than necessary.  That evening the giant spire downtown had blinked up at them, all the way up where they were.

Standing in the same spot as he had a few nights back (three or five, just after it had rained and while it was still really warm, before the weather had rewinterized sharply, obviously anticipating his ex’s arrival as warmly as he was), the looming antenna weirded him out today, as it had the time they’d been headed to the ravine.  The last time he—they; the squad, such as it was tonight, with himself, Jean-Paul, and Bruce—had been out of the junction.  It had snowed again overnight, since then. “It’s like something from Blade Runner,” he spoke without thinking, somehow hearing the thousands upon thousands of other times that charge had been made of the thing.  He rolled his eyes at himself, expecting his comment to go over silently.  He was leaning against the streetcar shelter wall absently circling the streetcar loop with his eyes.  They were at the start of the line, and the sky was turning from lilac to coppery black.  It was a cold, clear night.   His breaths were back in front of him, a recurrent spectral inverted-shadow.

“I know,” Jean-Paul agreed. “That thing should only be in a movie-city, its really so ominous and alien, there’s nothing in Montreal like it.”  He paused before correcting, “although they do have that giant electric cross.”

“Like at the funeral in Romeo Plus Juliet!” Bruce was high off his ass and smoking his first road joint in an attempt to summon the streetcar.

Jean-Paul continued like he hadn’t heard. “But that’s not aliens that’s Catholics, different beast.”

“OH MY GOD,” Bruce bellowed, and a couple of the few other people around on the corner in front of them looked over, unfazed but mildly interested.  “That’s exactly what it is, it’s like war of the worlds!  Do you guys know that war of the worlds prog record, Jeff Wayne is the guy?”  Dan didn’t, and Jean-Paul shrugged so he figured not saying anything covered him too.  “Oh snapple-cranapple, we should listen to that sometime this month.” Dan knew what war of the worlds was, he’d seen the Tom Cruise movie on TV.  The comparison kind of fit, that was true; one, the tower was clearly made to let you know that the vista you were seeing was of-the-future but, two, maybe the future was kind of hinky in a hard to place, insectoid-seeming way.  He didn’t know anywhere in Vic that wasn’t at sea level and the fourth floor condo he’d lived in, stood in the shadow of the only actual high-rise in Victoria (which had seen a lot of the last century before making it in to this one).

They got off the streetcar earlier than they had before, at an intersection with a pizzapizza at one corner.  Here Jean-Paul made them wait inside while he went to a side door on the same building and let himself in somehow.  He was back what seemed like a long time later, maybe ten minutes after Dan had started reading a free paper he’d fond on a table. Bruce had wandered off to smoke a joint across the street in the field before that and hadn’t come back. With his friend Elinor at his elbow Jean-Paul finally waved at him through the window and he came back outside, ready to complain.

“Where’s Bruce,” she beat him to the punch, seeming legitimately alarmed for some reason.  It looked like she was gently wringing her hands, even.  She had a sweet, shy kind of voice. Soft and high, like his ex’s singing voice (which was eerily different from her regular voice).  Elinor sounded like Grimes when she talked, and kind of looked like her.  She was dressed like some kind of post-apocalyptic punk doing a Blossom cosplay.  A fair number of girls he saw around town seemed to, it was close to how Andre dressed but there were several key differences that placed them in distinct girl-genres in Dan’s mind.  Andre was very granola but these girls looked like they were more granola.  They looked like they farted granola.  And then yelled at it for being there.  This girl probably only looked like she could yell.

He shrugged and said “somewhere getting high.  Higher.”  He could tell already that she was one of those overly-invested, mother-hen mom-friend types his ex always thought were so perfect for a couple of months.  He still didn’t know what it was about these mom-friend girls that had made his ex try to befriend a string of them, and he wasn’t sure what signalled time-up, each time, either.  He got the sense that neither did the girls, or his ex.  They usually both seemed upset at one another and walked away feeling equally mislead, but he wasn’t clear on what it was all about so he had no idea who had been right.

“Gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up,” Jean-Paul sort of mumbled musically to the air, and Dan could hear the 90’s dance even though he didn’t specifically know whatever song it was.  It was that characteristic progression the notes had taken.  Jean-Paul didn’t seem overly concerned about where Bruce could be.  He was smoking a cigarette happily and had been pre-drinking weird medicinal-tasting craft cocktails in his apartment all evening, with Dan going one-for-two.  The cocktails showed on his face by making it pink and pliant-looking.

“I’m gonna text,” she pulled out her phone, looking upset, and pounded some message to Bruce into it.  Almost as soon as she put the phone away there was a shout from across the street, Bruce waving the lit square of his phone screen back and forth at them, deadcentre in the dim field.

Bruce boinged his way back to them hastily as they crossed the street to meet him, and got picked up by the deceptively strong hugging-arms of Elinor, who told him never to worry her like that.  When she put him down again it was just as someone was leaving a box of crusts inside the pizzapizza, and Bruce hooted, scampering in to heist his next batch of munchies.

“Gross, crusts” was all Dan had to say about it.

“Gross, pizzapizza,” Jean-Paul and Elinor corrected in unison.  They laughed together, and Dan could see that they were friends in way that Jean-Paul and Andre, for example, were not.  It didn’t really make him like Elinor more, or maybe it did, he wasn’t sure.

They walked over to the ravine instead of streetcar hopping and again, Dan was admittedly impressed-upon by the sprawling view of the spire, the inland-sea of green around them, and by the ambivalent extremes of the oddly-knowing-and-poetic weather.  On the trail Bruce told them something was afoot at the Circle K, which turned out to mean they were supposed to follow him to the gas station at the foot of the path they were on.  This was where they’d been met by Andre and several of her friends who were also Bruce’s friends but didn’t seem to know Jean-Paul at all and didn’t know Elinor well but were very happy to see her.  They seemed kind of creepy in some way to Dan, like they were too happy and too super-nice.  He couldn’t tell what they were high on but assumed that whatever it was, it was their favourite.  Or it was really agreeing with them, at least.  They seemed very agreed-with.  He didn’t know anyone who acted like that while high.  They were seeming to him like hippies in a movie, but not exactly, more like evangelical baptists or something.  He tried to better recall what he was thinking of, maybe that George Clooney movie O-Brother-Whateverthehell. It had been a while since he’d seen whateverthehell.

They all trooped from the Circle K onto the subway at Dupont (a station Dan had been through but not out in, which Bruce said was his personal favourite), and went down to Higher Grounds to put their heads together. And caffeinate over a pre-bake.  Once they were ensconsed in the vape lounge and everyone Dan didn’t know was inhaling their own personal balloonbag of stabilizer, Dan realized he was feeling queasy.  

“Like about-to-cross-the-graduation-stage queasy.  Is there a--” there was a pharmacy nearby, he knew.  But he had no idea what he could take that was non-drowsy but good for nausea so his next question died on the way.

“DUDE,” Bruce was all agog.  Dan knew that face.  He raised his eyebrows at it, asking it what the fuss was.  Last time the fuss had been that the orange juice wasn’t orange juice.  “Look around you!”

Dan scoffed.  “I don’t want to fall asleep on my feet, I’m not captain weed-face,” he deflected onto his low tolerance, arguing with a stoner about whether weed was the solution to everything was pointless.  One of the Andre-friends laughed like “captain weed-face” had been a really, really funny joke.  Apparently in that universe, it was.  Dan didn’t plan on visiting, regardless.

“You don’t need to be, that’s not what I’m packing!” Holding aloft a snapcase half full of pre-rolls and half full of baggied loose shake, he proceeded to convince Dan that this weed was exactly what he needed.  It worked because he felt like hell.  Falling asleep and missing everything wouldn’t be such a bad call.  But supposedly this was high-cbd pure sativa, which Dan sort of approximately understood when he was told.  He got that the near-absence of thc was supposed to help avoid the couchlock issue. And he got that Bruce had gotten it from a fan who worked at the ultra-fancy quasi-legal dispensary that had opened up a few blocks down Dundas from the Maison.  He just didn’t expect any given drug someone was giving him to be all it was built up to be; years of “really great coke” had never seemed to amount to what he would have called really great highs.

It tasted different in an unexpected way, from the vape bag.  Like honeyed woodpulp or something instead of pine sap.  He felt something lift off his brain, like a layer of crud peeling off it and blowing away.  This was followed in short order by a similar sensation accompanying his queasy feeling’s departure from his midsection. It was a pleasant relief, and he was surprised to be thanking Bruce, and Roscoe for having the lounge.  Roscoe was supine on a lounger with his feet up, black unmarked cowboy boots crossed on an ottoman.  He rocked the chair occasionally on its pillar base, his arms up behind him.  He seemed to be trying to stretch something in his back out.  He knew Bruce and Andre’s friends, and seemed to like them.  Their names were Raven and Shay, but Dan still wasn’t sure which was which, they seemed to be a paired set.  Neither of them looked like a raven.  They were both dressed more or less Elinor, who was also trying to layer on a good high before going back out.

Finally Jean-Paul got a text that said the opener was on.  The showcase was starting two hours late; they’d gotten down to the market expecting one hour later than the posted time plus fifteen minutes for the first act to warm up.  It seemed best to show up after it had started, anyway.  No pre-show showdown that way.  They coated back up and trooped out the back, heading to the venue with the copyright infringement logo, which Dan saw was up on their exterior, glowing like it wasn’t a legal complaint waiting to happen.  Maybe it wasn’t, maybe this was a licensed brand expansion, it was right in the middle of downtown Toronto.  An ambiguous beacon, and Dan hoped it wasn’t an omen.  Raven and Shay were making some kind of fuss about how the Banksy that had been nearby was gone finally, but it was unclear whether they did or didn’t like Banksy.  It was pretty clear they didn’t like 8-11 and didn’t really want to go in.  Neither did Elinor, she was doing the hands again, hanging back. The window of the place was full of a weird art installation of melting horned masks, lit with panic-inducing marshmallow peeps pink and yellow.  There were little cards with text, but he didn’t saunter up to read.  There were people there, smoking outside and talking loudly, and music could be heard from somewhere deep inside the building.  The bass vibrated through the ground and everything else, but nothing of the music itself was coherent from where they were.

Jean-Paul was texting someone who came outside after a few minutes, complaining with feeling about the awol soundtech—this was the person who knew the person who was involved in hosting the event somehow.  They were ushered inside through a maze of small rooms that were and were full of, the kind of hipster sculptural-conceptual art stuff his ex loved. Dan realized she was probably in heaven, as he followed Jean-Paul following his friend through the pitchblack entrance cave lit only by a tv playing a Warholian “weird footage” film, through several psychedelic rooms leading back to a staircase down to a basement from a grindhouse movie, which was full to the low, grizzled pipe-and-wiring rafters, with happy shiny people.  Everyone looked very stylish, sort of like Andre and her friends, but glossier.  He saw a lot of logos and brands, not so many stained or ripped or patched things.   Glad to have found out about and used Jean-Paul's small washer and dryer, Dan realized they were the least fancy people there, in terms of the things his ex generally evaluated as fancy, but he really didn’t care.  It felt like an accomplishment anyway, to be here, holding himself together.  Holding down his new turf, it was supposed to be.  Trying to get her to go away, so this wouldn’t keep happening—so she wouldn’t get attached to some appalling idea like moving to Toronto.  Like making all new friends for him to run into and later be unfriended by.  

Their posse squoze its way in to the periphery of the thick crowd, shoulder-to-shoulder with one another.  Dan heard Bruce ask Raven-and-or-Shay if they were going to be okay and whichever it was yelled back that it was actually a great place to be on acid.  The yell barely made it to him from three feet away, but he was focusing on hearing what they said.  Acid, duh. So that was that mystery solved.  He’d never done acid but didn’t really think this place or this crowd would have been in his top ten places to be on acid.  It was enough like a visualization of a freaky trip as it was, which really seemed too intentional to have not been. The walls bristled with a thick, uninviting layer of some kind of calcification that was everywhere, and full of cobwebs.  

The first set had ended as they were on the stairs, and despite people overflowing from the dancefloor into the linked circuit of downstairs house-of-frightenstein style alcoves, very little space had opened up while the mc queued up some canned music to time-fill.  Dan was again glad he’d taken Bruce up on the weed, and scanned the crowd. People were sweating and looking restless but resolute about holding the floor.

He sighed, kind of glad of the press of people in the harsh yellow light of the maybe-go-outside-for-a-minute between-set lights.  He didn’t see anyone he knew aside from who he was with, which meant his ex hadn’t brought anyone.  He wasn’t sure who she would have brought, when he considered it. At his elbow Jean-Paul prodded him and when he tilted his head to show his attention was drawn, said “that guy at the mixer is Elinor’s friend.”  The mc.  Dan hadn’t clocked him as someone who would be in Elinor’s circle, but had looked at his outfit and decided he’d never feel like he, personally, looked like too much of a hipster, again.  It was reassuring in a way.  He was dressed like the opening sequence of rugrats had been left out overnight to form a puddingskin which had then been skimmed off and made into Hawaiian shirts, which he had decided to make into everything he was wearing.  He had on one pair of Urkel glasses as a headband and one on his face, and Dan wasn’t sure either had real lenses.  They might not have had lenses.  He was wearing one dangling earring, which seemed to be a string of shorter dangly earrings stuck together.  It looked like there was even a tiny figurine in the little flare cascade.

“He’s very...” hip, colourful, dressed-up, silly, visible, elaborate, contrived, “very 8-11.”  Jean-Paul barked a HA and Dan was gratified that they seemed to agree.

“He’s sweet.  Day job is teaching people tennis.  The rent here is astronomical, and they got a C&D for the sign they’ve been sitting on.  But it’s really something, what their collective is doing here.”  Dan wondered how many tennis instructors it took to mismanage a venue.  But he was impressed; these people were his age, presumably, like the little mc who had flittered away with people, leaving the floor-fillers to their own devices in the eye of the oubliette.  Dan couldn’t have even started to consider an undertaking like leasing an event space and floating it for however long.  It sounded like a nightmare.  But the place was packed, at least.  Then he wondered how many people were there gratis, like the seven person group he was in.  

The floor had emptied a tiny bit, and Raven and Shay were now—by some agreement between them he’d missed—flowing out from around the squad into a gap at the centre of the floor.  The two of them began to do a quarter-time interpretive dance to the fillermusic, clearing a wider and wider sphere of avoidance around them as tighter-wound attendees side-eyed them and decided it was time for air after all. About half as many as left, stood around with their space-price beers in hand, watching in amusement.  If Dan hadn’t known the two of them were on acid, he’d probably have guessed quickly.  They looked like melting puppets doing a two-sides-of-the-mirror pantomime intermittently.  It didn’t look bad, but it was extremely uncomfortable in a vague way.  Eventually Andre and Bruce joined them, picking up their flow.  They weren’t bad either, and there were a couple hoots from onlookers.  Jean-Paul tapped his elbow again, and gestured toward the entrance with his head.  Dan nodded and the two were sort of conveyed via a sort of peristalsis through the twisting warren of parlors, out to the front where it was cold and dark in sharp contrast to the interior.  Jean-Paul was smoking by the time they were on the sidewalk.  Weirdly Dan could feel himself wanting to be back inside, instantly.  He thought it was the cold until he spied a familiar shape with a sinking sensation of dread.  It was his ex, standing with people, talking and people-watching casually.  She looked a little stiff, like she was exercising a lot of self-control to seem like she was totally at-ease.  He knew that was because she was.  Suddenly he didn’t find running into her very intimidating, because he had, and she just looked like...the same uptight insecure weirdo he had known forever. When he tried to turn around more fully so that she couldn’t see him, it had the opposite effect and from over his shoulder he heard a noise, like she had noticed him.

“Oh, it’s you two,” she announced herself, breaking away from her people.  Dan turned their way and saw them behind her, watching from where they were standing.  They weren’t glaring or anything, no one was throwing bottles.  “Long time no see,” she shrugged at them both, forming a triangle with them by the display window.

“Big night tonight,” Jean-Paul mentioned, acknowledging that she was there and why.  He sounded very bored, but didn’t blow his cigarette smoke in her face, which Dan appreciated.  He really didn’t want a scene.  He hadn’t planned on talking to her at all, the thought hadn’t occurred to him.  

“Ugh don’t make me think about it, I’m supposed to be in there right now.”

“You were supposed to be on hours ago,” Dan spoke up, but just carrying on the conversation like it wasn’t weird to be talking to her seemed really spineless, so he added, “long time, yeah.”  He grimaced, feeling stupid.  That was barely words.

“Oh, Dan, don’t be so—listen, I’m sorry,” she sounded troubled, and he believed her when she said she was sorry, but he was also annoyed suddenly by how she’d said it.  He hadn’t even considered that she would apologize to him, it had seemed a lot like everyone wanted him to apologize to her for wasting her time and money and emotional energy and bla bla bla. “Look things ended, and it could have, it didn’t need to be.  I shouldn’t have listened to that asshole, and I’m sorry I let him publish that, I was just—we were high and I was shit-talking, I forgot—I didn’t really think it was all on-record or whatever, after we started doing lines, and yeah.  I guess that’s journalism. I’m sor—it’s my bad.  Please don’t stay mad at me,” she concluded in a kind of wheedling tone. He heard Jean-Paul scoff out a puff of air from his nose, next to him.  Suddenly suspicious, he looked at Wishelle closely; her skin looked washed out and too dry, wherever she hadn’t put makeup, and he could see that she’d had trouble because she’d decided to glue in extra long eyelashes and it had run into her liquid eyeliner-corrections time.  No one else would ever have noticed, unless they’d seen her screaming at her reflection’s eyeliner for hours, a trillion times.

“Maybe I wont,” he finally shrugged.  “Listen, good luck.”  He kind of wanted to remind her that she was about to do something really stressful.  She groaned theatrically and shifted where she stood, expelling some tension.  Her outfit looked cute, dark matte tights sticking out from under her big coat, and it annoyed Dan to be wearing the shoes she liked.  And the coat she’d picked.  They still looked like a salt and pepper shaker set.

“See you inside?” she sounded fretful, but he wasn’t sure whether she wanted them to watch or not.

“We’ll be there,” Jean-Paul cut in decisively.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The two-track set Wishelle had put together went find, if sort of underwhelming.  She’d done a sort of spooky-surfy musicbox-sounding plink-plink-plink kind of riff on some sort old doowop sounding base-track Dan didn’t recognize. There were distorted loops of a few samples of vocal sections, the one that was most decipherable was “we loved each other we just couldn’t get along.”  It was about their breakup, hit like an epiphany.  He wasn’t the only one who kept thinking about when they’d made music together when he did new work.  Her own on-mic contributions were repetitions of the phrases sung in a way that sounded like she only knew English phonetically. It was fine, overall, but it was hardly thrilling or innovative.  Not as many people came back in for the second opener, but it was crowded and she had a new logo printed the laptop plugged in to her big keyboard.  Her music sounded really sad to Dan, melancholic even.  It was pretty but he felt it draining him while he listened to it.  It was a lot like the feeling he’d been trying to avoid when he’d said he didn’t want to get kushblasted before getting here.

They stuck around for the appearance of the headliner, who was another thing all together; candles on plinths were being lit around the spot in the centre of the audio equipment.  Some dark synth longplay was on to keep people happy in the downtime.  Seemed like a fire hazard to be setting up candles, from Dan’s point of view.  Elinor and Jean-Paul were conferring about something under the general din; she at least had stopped looking worried about things.  The others were still holding a circle of floor with their ritualistic looking modern ballet, but had been relegated to the absolute front of the crowd. They seemed happy to have started a mosh, such as it was.

Wishelle appeared again after ten or fifteen minutes, and seemed intent on watching the closing performance, but after standing in the throng for a minute, looked around impatiently, her gaze quickly locking with his, laserlike.  We crossed the beams, he joked to himself, feeling sort of pathetic.  She drifted his way and asked if he wanted to come upstairs and do a line of some really good coke she’d been linked up with, and for a second he missed her so much that he said sure.  Or he missed coke, or having his life make sense to his mom, or something.  Whatever he missed, missing it hit him like an icepick in that moment, and he chased her upstairs to try to get away from it.  He wasn’t sure the others had seen him leave, but he had his phone and if necessary he could get on wifi somewhere and coordinate, or just go back to the Maison himself.

Upstairs in the staff bathroom (which seemed to be as much in use as the other toilet closet), they did the rest of her coke, which turned out to once again be coke Dan wouldn’t have called good.  He felt worse immediately and said “I can’t believe you told that guy I had a trust fund, what the hell was that about?”

She seemed taken aback like she hadn’t been expecting bickering when she’d invited him to do coke with her in the bathroom, but she laughed. “That’s me. You’re not the trustfund kid, you’re the scammer.”

“What?”

She sighed, rolling her eyes cokeily, fishing around in the baggy for anything that might form a line of granules.  “He was making fun of us both, he’s an asshole.  Trustafarian scammer.  As in, a scammer who targets trustafarians.”  Oh. Dan his misread it.  But then, so had Jean-Paul.  This way was actually kind of better—at least it was only half a character assassination.  He had never been scamming her.  Probably that had been the Slackjaw guy projecting because he was scamming her, for a story at least, and assumed Dan was like him.  Dan decided they probably had been fucking but that it really didn’t matter now anyway.  “He introduced me to his friend who’s a producer but apparently I wasn’t supposed to do coke with his friend, so bla bla bla, you know?” They had definitely been fucking.

“What a fucking loser,” Dan smirked, meaning the guy and her as well, a little.  To cover that part better he added “you already ditched him, right?” She loved ditching people.

“Obviously, with that man-bun hair?  He was the worst.  So pretentious and fake-woke.”

He laughed and said “NEXT,” as in bring-in-a-new-one, and she laughed because it was a thing they said to make eachother laugh, and then kissed him.  It was unexpected and awkward, but most of their kisses had been awkward somehow.

“I need to go find—my friends,” he broke it off and stepped toward the door.

“He’s not going to—come on, stay a minute,” she was wheedling again, and it was patently unattractive.  It took Dan a second to fixate on what she’d started to say, but the word “he” was like a hook, pulling his attention back to it.

“You’re just trying to make me stay in here.”

She lost her patience, he saw it happen. It was simultaneously when she stomped her little booted foot on the mangled linoleum and balled her fists.  She’d never actually punched him but when she was mad she went into what he thought of as her cannonball form. “YEAH, NO SHIT.”

“Okay, I’m sorry, look—this is a surprise and I’m not really into it. I’m still--” recovering from when you dumped me because some asshole with stupid hair convinced you it was a good career move.  Dan felt himself get angrier, the feeling propelled by the stimulant wave like mario doing a spring jump. “Hey, y’know what, fuck you,” and he started to open the door.

She reached past him and shut it with a bang, and the jarring noise clapped the edge off his frustration with her for a second, but he knew what this mood was, and he knew he’d be back to full frustration in a second.  This was her fighting mood.  “Please don’t run off,” she sounded annoyed but like she was trying to be calm.  “You know I’m just—it’s the coke.  You’re being mean, too.  We’re both being assholes.”  You’re being an asshole, he wanted to say.  I’m just here. “I’m sorry I made things weird, I really want us to be friends.” Couldn’t’ve wanted that when we were a couple? he wanted to ask. What had changed, he asked himself.  Everything, came the answer.  He lived in Toronto now, and she didn’t.  He was friends with the kind of people who were friends with the people she tried so hard to network with for work.

“I’m sure you do,” he said, wanting it to be mean.  She looked hurt and angry and stepped away and he could tell he’d been mean successfully.  He told her “this isn’t high-school anymore, grow up,” and left her in the bathroom.  It felt like the most epic, savage burn on an ex anyone had ever gotten off. He walked away feeling amazing for about half the time it took to get back through the eddies of people in all the little antechambers.  By the time he was in the main performance space, he felt kind of shitty.  It was utterly black inside except for the candles and a few cell phones, and the maestro was at work.  It was quite the production, in fact.  Basically a one-man melodic metal band on a synth, with backing layering filled in by a loopstation.  The music successfully engulfed him and took him out of himself, and when the house lights were starkly flipped back on afterward, he blinked, wondering who he had come in here looking for.

Jean-Paul was there, his hair a halo, unmistakable as always.  Bruce and that contingent were all excitedly talking to the synth lord.  It occurred to Dan that they had prior knowledge of the biggest name on the flyer, although he didn’t—it was probably why they’d shown up. He couldn’t image why else Andre would’ve agreed to, when he thought about it.  He went to join Jean-Paul and Elinor along the wall, watching people leave.  The whole last set had taken only as long as he’d been in the bathroom.  He wasn’t sure how long that had been, now.  It felt like it had been two minutes.  He chewed the inside of his cheek gently, trying to keep his teeth busy.

“What was all that?  You missed this Fragonard guy here,” Jean-Paul gestured with his chin toward the front.  Bruce was bouncing around, they all looked like groupies. “It was very... heavy metal and reflective.”

“Yeah, uh.  I.  Saw the candles.  Atmosphere.”

Elinor looked at him closely for what seemed like the first time, peering into his face. “You look like you want to leave,” she said, and he liked her.

“I do.  I’m, I want to go.  Back.  Home,” he caught himself add on to the tumble of words.  He felt like he’d done something sneaky or wrong—he realized he was feeling guilty, maybe for “relapsing” and not thinking about the others or wanting to tell them.  They’d be worried if he did and were worried already because now he was acting different and looked weird.  He tried not to make it worse by getting paranoid about it.  Maybe it was because they were all there to back him up and he’d ditched them to go do drugs and ...relapse on his relationship.  For as long as it took them to get on eachother’s nerves he had half been hoping she’d ask him to move back with her.  His thoughts were choppy and it felt like he was getting wires crossed.  “I think this place is getting to me.”

Jean-Paul looked like he was going to say something, his mouth opening for a second before he shut it again.  He looked at Bruce and Andre and their friends instead, and told Elinor “you take Dan out, I’ll find out what they’re doing now,” before moving decisively to do so.

Elinor slid into the space Jean-Paul had left, looking at Dan still, in that careful, mom-friend way.  “I wanted to go upstairs to find my friend and say goodnight,” her tone suggested he might like to go too, which he had just said was the case.  He rolled his eyes and then felt like an ass.  She was just being nice.  Nodding with what felt like an insincere expression of some sort, he lead the way out because she hadn’t.  Upstairs he broke off when she spotted Maximum Urkeldrive and went to the frontmost foyer before the main door, hovering in the dark next to the TV with the black and white footage, hoping his ex hadn’t stuck around after he’d gone downstairs. The others found him as a group, with the solo guy, Fragonard in tow. He and Bruce were yaking each other’s ears off about some dude named Shulgin. It didn’t sound like music talk.

They let the place as a tangle of walkers of talkers, and when Dan spotted his ex talking to the same people she’d been with earlier, he was thankful all over again for the camaraderie that had been tapped for him.  He was so elated that for the rest of the walk north through Chinatown up to the a transfer-laden stop to hop from, he understood that cliche about walking on air. Even on the streetcar he felt like he wasn’t really touching anything around him, like he was being propelled through space because there was no resistance, not because he was sitting in something with powered motion.  At the subway the group split up, and Elinor opted to go along with Bruce and the others.  Dan assumed it was because they were more likely to need a nanny with them and so she was magnetically drawn to that side of the split.  They all went off to some other party the music man wanted to go to in Scarborough. Bruce said Pete was there, and tried to beg Dan and Jean-Paul into coming along, but looked at their faces and seemed to catch some clue from whatever they looked like.

On the walk up from high park station, after a long, serious silence, Jean-Paul asked “so, how’d that go?”

Dan felt like it was a question he’d only have asked if he knew something about it from how Dan was acting, but it wasn’t like there was any way to confirm it if he just dodged around addressing it. “What, how’d what go?  Tonight?  I guess I got,” revenge? “closure,” he awkwardly jammed in, because it sounded mature. More mature than whatever they’d really gone down there for.  His injured pride?  It all seemed to corny in retrospect, and he wondered if he had, at last, managed to have one good coke high in his life after all.  When he reflected in belated confusion on his cloud-9 stint, his elevated mood really only made sense in that context.  Or maybe he was just in the valley now, and that was why he couldn’t figure out why a win had felt like a win.

“I found it all underwhelming, if I’m being honest,” Jean-Paul had a tone of arch sniffiness, and Dan laughed.

“Not the next Kate Bush, monsieur critic?”

“Hardly!” His loud scoff echoed off the dark, well-treed suburban enclave they were traversing.  In the distance the city was quiet except for the occasional siren of the red-light running variety.

Dan started to laugh, but it caught, and instead he threw up into a hedge, some runny bile that seemed to be all he had left from the stew he’d made himself for lunch and eaten again for dinner. Suddenly feeling very miserable, he thought for a horrible few moments that he might start bawling there in the street, bent over a hedge, with his friend as an audience.  He felt like he wanted to be done talking about his ex forever, but he didn’t know how to say that without sounding overly dramatic or caught up in the moment or some other stupid thing.  It felt like she was there, like she’d piggybacked along with them because she wanted them to talk about her. Dan heard himself make an anguished sort of moan, the kind anyone might if they were suddenly violently ill.

“Okay there?” Jean-Paul’s hand on his back, the hand of a friend who has been right beside countless other early-morning street-puking fools, and been one many times besides.  It made Dan feel a lot better about life in general, somehow.  Not just that someone was there but the way Jean-Paul was there.  He felt himself sag almost all to pieces, and let Jean-Paul walk them back to the groundfloor unit where it was warm and bright, and sit him down on the couch and make him tea.  Jean-Paul made himself a hot toddy and the two of them talked about nothing for a while, until Dan fell asleep under the heavy silk afghan draped over the back of the sofa.

[pokemon-au]

[Meds, Lin, Kin and Lorn belong to @filthy-alien-meat]

Aoi introducing Kin to Cery: "Kin, meet my girlfriend/big sis Cery. You may address her as Ceryneian. 'Cery' is mine. So you cannot use it."

“....ceryninium..cermunin..” CANT SAY IT....it’s difficult..

"Hmm... Then you can call her Lady Bisharp. Isn't that right, Cery?"

“Eat your ice cream” *gives him a smol head pat.*

“>:o your girlfriend is a warrior...I’ve seen her ribbons of valor..” 

Lorn is a very impressive "little weed" from Sprout Tower. He hopped ship and done a bit of traveling. He likes to fight and he's adamant. Lin, his mentor tugs him back from ridiculous opponents he thinks he can handle like "no no little weed..."

"You wanna go!! YOU WANNA GO!!" And starts pinwheeling his little leaves. LET HIM FIGHT

Meds cannot understand why she is BOTHERING...since clearly he's going to evolve into something with even less limbs. If he grows up he can just swallow Meds whole and whip like his sensei. I imagine he becomes heavy like a roly-poly toy that can't be knocked down.

Lin calls him "little weed". Unlike Kin and Aoi who like to poke fun about their mentors he would not stand for it.... That's when the Riolu tie this nerd to a tree.

Lorn can best Kin in most situations just cause he's a freaking noodle and uses others weight and moves against them so idk what he'd do against someone like Naga. Lmao Naga not sure how to feel about beating a piece of grass in battle....

Aoi thinks Lorn is cheating cuz he can't land a hit. In the end he'll dig and pull Lorn's root feet down and trap him in the dirt so he can kick him with fire. Aoi please. (!!!!!! CLEVER kin would be most impressed)

Lorn's sneaky too, has the powder moves. He's stubborn about using them though; he wants to hit stuff, not throw fairy dust at things in order to win.

He knows Leech Seed (gets Aoi all tangled up and gives a tiny evil cackle)

Lorn is probably a smart little bugger but a major snipe, he will rat you out, brag and cause unnecessary discourse but in Lin's eyes he's a perfect little weed.  If he saw that fence art, he would be all ">:O Ohhhh....i'm tellin'"

If they drew one of Lorn, he would cry. AND KIN WOULD HAVE A PANIC LIKE..."ahhh that was a bad idea, why did we do that, it was MEAN....no no no...." FRANTIC WIPING OF CHALK. Aoi's like "Aw it's just a joke, Lorn. Don't be a baby." This is when Don would usually smack him with his leaf hand if he was around.

If Don and Kirby ever cross paths and have to battle, I think Don is infinitely more experienced but Kirby could put up a tough fight. He's outmatched though, since Don has not missed a single day of training in his life (well, except for the rare occasions when he's sick)

Zion and Don are the kind who will insist to work even tho they are sick. Aoi will fake illness to sleep in. Naga will help him sometimes with enough pleading.

Meds: "Or you could just...NEVER GET SICK????" (Has never experienced a virus ever) Kin probably gets the sniffles but nothing more than that, not with that brutal diet he's on.

If Kin does get to the point of immobility due to training and his limbs are all bruised and torn up, Meds does take care of him and shows an uncharacteristic tender side, so if Kin became very ill he would handle that as well, if it got serious he'd address his trainer. You can only do so much on the mountain and while it is possible to make cures from whats there he just isn't that inclined...

There's a time Zion was ill and Aoi was looking after him. As Zion is laying in his futon, he beckons to Aoi and gives him a pat on the head, telling him that he's a good boy; and I imagine Aoi looks very touched at first, looking tearful and all...but then he grabs Zion's hand and goes "Are you going to die?! QAQ" and he recieves a withering glare.

He IS A GOOD BOY. If Cery catches wind of Aoi being sick at some point, she just kicks in doors...WHERE IS HE?! She can't be stopped, it is futile. Her precious darling baby is SICK. The evil would just be radiating off her for the entire household, how could you let this happen. She likes pampering him, they aren't together all the time so it's A-OK.

Aoi likes to hold Cery's hand. He loves her!! So much!

Aoi quite enjoys the treatment and attention when he's sick so you can be sure he plays it out more dramatically and longer than nessecary even after he's recovered. But Don always figures it out and puts him back to work. He has a lot of training to catch up.

Meds lets Kin make a full recovery, probably has to make him STAY PUT until he's healed although he can appreciate the determination.

If Don met Kin he's gonna shake his head and wonder why Aoi isn’t more like Kin. Now that's a pupil!

To be fair, Aoi does try to take as many shortcuts and slack off as much as he can. He does his best if you tell him there's a prize in it for him. MOTIVATION!

I don't think Meds would ever ...get sick but if Kin ever saw him lose and get hurt, his whole world would be ruined. He holds him in such high regard anything that tainted that might break his spirit. It's a very fragile dependency I guess, it's terrible.

Meds is legendary as far as Kin is concerned. I bet the boys like to compare and boast that each of their mentors can defeat the other no problem.

Kin would brag that his master has attacked humans :I SEEN HIM DO IT....THEY WON'T BE COMING BACK EITHER!

Aoi's kind of uncomfortable about that bit of information. He thinks Kin is playing it up to sound dangerous and cool.

Kin would have that very unsettling truth to his words, he's too genuine to lie or even try to make something up. "He attacked them,wouldn't tell me why.....I don't think I was supposed to see."

"I think thats why the humans put up signs on the trees....i can't read them all that well but I think it's a warning" He'd trail off, not thinking much of it, he sees them every day...sometimes a new one would be posted.

Aoi is uncomff but doesn't want to be one upped so he's like "Yeah...well...Don can beat up bad guys too...! Burglars are too scared to come by." (changes the subject)

"Don is cool :3..."

"We have signs back home too...!" (thinks about the signs he drew and put up in the garden in hopes to keep pokemon out) "It says KEEP OUT. PRIVATE PROPERTY" ("get your own goddamned veggies")

!!!!! Kin would be impressed that Aoi can read.

Aoi is suddenly very smug. (proudly) "Heh, I can also write" "I wrote the signs actually" (does not mention that his were rejected and replaced)

He makes a grandiose show of "COME! LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO WRITE YOUR NAME (in kanji or something)" and waxes poetic on education that he's heard a thousand times but never cared for until this very moment.

All of Aoi's haikus would go right over his head, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??? ...who is this Cery that you love so much...? He is not very artsy or creative to say the least if he can't say it with his fist then .....well.

Lin can probably read and write, she will insist that Lorn know how to as well.

Kin has no experience with people, the ones that have seen him give him weird looks because he's BRIGHT ASS YELLOW but it's never anything he would call positive.

Aoi believes if you hurt a trainer that looks after you, you're a bad Pokemon.

#aoi info #don info #meds info #kin info #cery info #lin info #lorn info #filthy ocs

[gobbochune]

Dream Journal: The Train

I had a dream I was playing an open world RPG and there as an achievement for completing this ‘train tour’ that was famous in the lore for being the best and greatest tour in the world. So I grinded until an enemy dropped a ‘ticket’ and I went to the nearest station to start the tour. 

So I boarded the train, and noticed there were these weird little ledges up over the seats that everyone seemed to be fighting over. For whatever reason, they were considered more luxurious then normal seats, but unlike the seats, were first come first serve. Over the intercom the conductor told us that they had better seats up there in honor of African Americans who had to give up those seats on the bus, and were originally installed so anyone who faced prejudice would still be allowed to ride the train. However, since these extra seats were such a famous part of this renowned tour, everyone was fighting with each other to sit in the special seats. Including myself. Idk why I cared so much, but I did. 

So the train gets rolling and I spend the entire time squabbling with others until suddenly the train lifts off the ground and begins to fly. I smile to myself and admire the beautiful landscape, and soon we arrive at a station in the clouds. The conductor announces that this is one of the many spots in the tour, but warns us that if we spend too much time at the stop the train will leave without us. 

While everyone else floods out to see the shops and stuff, I just poke my head out to grab some candy and a snack and then try to go right back to the train, because I want to get a spot on the special seats. However, I dont know how to get back. A new quest pops above my head. 

The Conductor’s Sneaky Brother

The quest states that the renowned conductor has a sneaky little brother who tries to prank his older sister by getting people lost at the stations so they cannot reboard the train. I see other player characters below desperately trying to do the mini quests that he forces us to do within the time limit, so they can get back to the train. 

One of the main quests is that we have to transport bits of brittle colorful chalk to these little wooden bins, while the little brother explains:

“These are for my sister! And the chalk are like a promise! you wouldn't break a promise to my sister, would you?”

Timed challenges stress me out. I consider reseting the quest but this time just staying on the train, but I look online on a tutorial that says if I had stayed on the train the car would have been attacked by hornets and stung by their queen, and I would have had to pay 200 gold for an antidote. So while everyone else is hurriedly trying to transport the chalk without breaking it, I just walk to the very end where there is a pull elevator. I try to pull the elevator down and step onto it, but the brother jumps down with me to weigh down the elevator so I cant pull myself up. 

Instead of trying to push him off, I teach the little brother how to climb the elevator ropes, and manage to BS my way past his quest. 

The conductor’s mother comes across and asks what we’re doing, and the brother says that because I got past his prank so easily he wants to give up being a little shit and just ride his sister’s train. The mother looks to me and asks what I’m doing, and since I dont wanna have to replay the dumb mini game I insist that I just want to look after the little brother. 

Immediately following, the station has transformed into a fire-and-brimstone level design, the train looking like some lovecraftian hell beast thing. Think Primordus. And I’m trying to run to get back on the train, but then the conductor speaks over the intercom. 

“My little brother just tripped and fell and died. I can’t imagine someone so selfish who promises to watch him so they can get back on the train, then just abandons him. They deserve to be torn to bits!” 

I see that three other player characters made the same mistake I did, and the train drives straight into a blender where we all die and have to reload. 

I’m back at the brother cutscene, but this time I hold onto him and look after him the entire way back. 

This time the station is made out of plants and flowers, and the train itself has transformed into a river of lilypads. A new quest pops up and the conductor says:

“You seem so invested in my family, what is your favorite thing about my mother, father, and little brother? It’d be a shame if you’re only pretending, and you dont really know them at all.”

And I’m like. “fuck” and look down at the options. There’s a prickly lilypad that I immediately chose for the brother. “I like how sharp he is” and then there’s a flower and a stem lily pad. I put the dad on the stem one and say “I like how sturdy he is” and the mom on the flower, “I like her petals.” and then hop on the remaining lilypad and wait for her to kill me. I’m sure I got it wrong, but it was a timed event so I couldn’t open up a walkthrough. 

But weirdly enough, I didnt die, and was immediately placed in a private car on the train with the conductor’s family, me still having a protective arm curled around the little brother. The mother talks to me like I’m a new addition to the family, and I resolve to protect them as best I can from now on. I keep held tight to him throughout the bumpy ride, always terrified that either me or him will lose our grip and fall off. 

Eventually we come to a brick tunnel, and the conductor explains over the comm:

“This was built for the homeless and starving, its a never ending feast!”

And we see all this food on a table, with people eating it. I speculate that taking food will just make the conductor angry for stealing it out of the mouths of the hungry, and just continue holding on to the little brother. We pass through this tunnel six times, until finally the train stops and we’re in this weird industrial yard. 

I finally see the conductor, and she’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. She marches up to me and demands what I’m doing. The mother speaks up for me and says that I’m a part of her family now, but the conductor doesn’t buy it. She reveals, (which I had began to speculate by now) that the train tour was really just a way to weed out the most selfish, people who used and abused other’s to stay on the train would be killed horribly. Thats why she had her little brother try and keep people from getting back on, thats why she had all those moral tests, so she asked what kind of sick person I was to be so devoted to lying and pretending to be a good person that I’d join a new family just for a stupid train tour. 

I said that I legitimately care about the family, and she asked if I cared about her little brother. I look down and see that he’s transformed into this weird plantlike snake that’s coiled around my arm, because apparently feelings of love spark their race into transforming into the next stage of their evolution. I freak out and set him down, thinking that if I just leave that he’ll go back to normal. The conductor mocks me for trying to abandon them, and says that I did hurt my brother, for pretending I cared about him just so I could pass some morality test, and then immediately trying to abandon him. 

The mother stands up for me though, and tries to get us back aboard the train. I pick up the flower snake child and apologize to him, stroking his head and telling him I’ll always be there for him. I know that the last reveal about the train is going to be that the conductor is a lich or something, or that I’m the one turning into the conductor as I take her place, but I promised that I’d be there for the brother so I keep going. 

We walked through the halls of this eerily quiet station, all the while the mother tells me that I’m a good person while the conductor tells me I’m a fraud. 

I woke up before we got to reboard the train, because dreams dont have to have conclusive endings. 

#pume's magical life #dream

[jewelofwakanda]

French Inhale

Okay. Disclaimer: This is my first ever Black Panther Fan fiction. I was inspired by all the amazing fics I’ve come across the past couple of weeks. I hope you guys like it and please please please give me some feedback. It would be really appreciated. This is probably a one shot, but I have a few ideas brewing on how to expand. Either way, I hope you guys enjoy.

Words: 4,032...yeah I know, kind of long. Erik’s dialogue is in bold and our reader is in bold italics. I hope that helps to differentiate between the two.

Black, Plus-size Reader X Erik Stevens have a smoke session turned smut session. A little bit of choking, a lot of smuttiness (IMO). Sort of inspired by the song, “French Inhale” by Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, & Mike Posner

You almost didn’t reply to him. You were still pissed. And, he hadn’t bothered to reach out to you in weeks when he’s the one that got caught. But, you also never turn down free weed, especially any of the high grade you knew he was offering. So, when Erik texted you, ‘Hotbox?’, you accepted and waited outside for him to come scoop you. You didn’t dare wait for him to come to the door, if he came inside, you two would never leave. You sat on your porch swing and tried to sort through your feelings before he arrived. 

You couldn’t decide if you hated or missed him. He was a violent, selfish, arrogant liar who liked to tell you he cared and then do the exact opposite. But, he was also cute. Damn that. Erik was the finest man to ever show interest in you. He was everything you had ever wanted at least in the looks department. Erik oozed confidence with his gold fangs and immaculate locs. His fashion sense was unparalleled—effortlessly couture with hip hop sensibility.  The dimples and the glasses and the way he licked his lips was everything to you. He always made fun of how shy you were when the two of you first met, but you couldn’t help yourself. 

As far as you were concerned, he was out of your league. It’s not like you were ugly, far from it. Curves in all the best places, natural curls, full lips and gorgeous brown skin, you knew you were attractive. But, a little Instagram stalking clued you in on his usual type. Models, video vixens, he even had a fling with Bria Myles. How could you compete? You didn’t ask, but you were sure you were the heaviest girl he had ever been with. Perhaps, that assumption bothered you more than it bothered him?

It didn’t help that you caught him with that high yellow heifer, her skinny chicken legs a dead giveaway that her ass had been paid for. He was leaning against the bar, drink in hand with that devilish grin as Big Bird stood with her back to you and whispered something sinful in his ear, holding onto his waist from underneath his leather jacket. He seemed really into whatever she was selling, basking in the attention, until your eyes met his. You knew he could feel your disgust from across the room, as he pushed her away and started to walk towards you, the look of defeat on her face giving you a small swell of pride but it didn’t change the fact that he was walking around acting like you weren’t in the same club as him, as if he didn’t drag you out of the house. You didn’t leave the comfort of your home to watch him flirt with other bitches like you didn’t even exist. You didn’t give him a chance to explain himself, you were already headed to the exit before he could reach you. 

He called a few times that night, sent a few apologetic text messages. Even offered to eat you out. Didn’t help. He knew you had some trust issues and promised to act accordingly, couldn’t even handle that. So, you put him on the back burner. You were cool and indifferent, responding with one-word text messages if you bothered to reply at all. That lasted for about a week before Erik stopped trying altogether. You chalked it up to the game and tried to act like you didn’t miss his company. And, even though you did, you were so used to hot relationships like this one fizzling out way before you were ready. You knew how to cope and threw yourself back into your art. You churned out piece after piece, commission after commission choosing to make that money instead of wallowing in self-pity. You were sketching with those brand-new charcoal pencils you’d splurged on when he texted you for the first time in almost three weeks. You thought about getting dressed up, reminding him what he had been missing, but decided against it. Fuck him. He didn’t deserve the time and effort it would take. He was about to get sweat pants, hair tied and no make-up and was going to like it. It wasn’t until you finally saw him pull up that you thought maybe you should’ve done more. Why did he always have to look so damn good? This wasn’t a fashion show, this was a smoke session. 

“You got A$AP Rocky dressing you or something now, nigga?”, You hollered at him as he stepped out of his Aston Martin

“We can’t all be as bummy as you are, chump.”, he shot back, holding his arms open for an embrace. 

You wanted to slap that shit eating grin off his face, but you appreciated a good roast. You had to admit that no one could keep up with you like Erik could. He kept it fun and you tried to keep it cute, but you weren’t above hitting below the belt if need be. Most guys were more sensitive than they liked to let on, getting offended at just the slightest joke at their expense, but not Erik. You guessed they weren’t used to girls like you. You rolled your eyes as he pulled you onto your feet and into his arms. He held you there for a lingering moment, your face buried in his chest, his arms planted firmly around your waist. You closed your eyes and took a long whiff of his sexy cologne. He always smelled so damn good and you loved that he was tall enough to rest his chin on top of your head. He made you feel small. He made you feel safe. And, then you remembered Big Bird. 

“I’m still mad at your thot ass.” You pushed him away from you and headed to the car. 

“I ain no thot, girl.”, He laughed, trying to look innocent.

“Could’ve fooled me, you ho.” 

“You not mad enough to not smoke this tree though, right?” 

“Nana ain raise no fool.” He chuckled hard at your comeback. 

You two bonded early on over your similar childhoods. You both lost your parents at a young age, he grew up in foster care while you were raised by your Grandmother. It was her house that you still lived in now, bought and paid for, left to you in her will after she died a few years ago. You missed her every day but felt lucky to still have her house, that way you could keep a part-time job and have plenty of time to devote to your art. 

Erik wasted no time pulling out of your driveway with a screech of the tires and heading to the 405. He wordlessly reached across you to the glove compartment and pulled out a small Louis Vuitton pouch. He tossed it in your direction and you knew exactly what to do. You unzipped the bag and found almost everything you needed to get this session started. This wasn’t the first time you and Erik smoked together. In fact, this was sort of how he courted you. You two would drive up and down L.A., smoking and laughing and connecting. At first, he tried to clown your rolling skills, but you showed him exactly who he was dealing with after that first session. 

“The fuck am I supposed to roll on, nigga?”

“Man chill out with all that.”, he replied, reaching underneath his seat for what looked like a vinyl record cover. 

“Really? You just had to get ‘Damn.’ on vinyl? You too good for Spotify, my nigga?”, you asked, incredulously. He kissed his teeth instead of answering your question. You laughed and got to work. 

“Oh, okay, E! I see some purp, and some OG Kush, and is that what I think it is?”, you could barely contain your excitement. 

“Yep. Demo called me today. Said he just got some of that LA Confidential. Just like our f—” 

“Our first session! Aww, Erik! You remembered.”, you finished his sentence, pinching his cheek from the passenger seat. He just side-eyed you from his side of the car as you laughed out loud. 

“You better quit, before I pull over.” 

“You ain gon do shhiiiittt.”, you replied, obnoxiously sticking your tongue out. 

He took one hand off the wheel to pinch an exposed thigh, hard. You could barely hold the record cover still as you dumped the weed out of the grinder and tried to squirm out of his grasp. 

“EERRIKK! QUIT! Focus on the damn road, you demon.” 

“I’m focused, trust me.”, he replied, veering around a tight corner. 

You didn’t mean to squeal, but he hit that turn with one hand on the wheel and one hand on your thigh. You thought for sure you two were going to run right into the guard rail, but he had it under control. 

“Do you have to drive like you don’t care about my life?” 

“I’m not gon keep telling you to chill out. You act like this your first time in my car.”

“I would like to hit the blunt before you kill me, if you don’t mind, thank you.”, you said scooping the weed into the pineapple cigar as you watched Erik’s speedometer. He was doing a cool 95 mph, banking around turn after turn. Thank God you had a seat belt on and a steady hand. He finally came to a screeching halt, jolting you forward as you closed the blunt, glaring in his direction. 

“Now, if I had dropped any of this LA Confidential, you woulda been mad.”

 “Nah. There’s always more where that came from.”, he answered, nonchalantly. 

You rolled your eyes at him for what had to be the 100th time since he picked you up instead of making another smart remark. He parked at your usual spot. One of those lookout points along the highway, you could see almost all of L.A. from as the sun slowly started to set. You let your seat back so that you could sit crossed legged in your seat, facing Erik with your back to the window. 

You lit the blunt and took a deep drag, letting the smoke slowly leave your mouth and inhaling it back through your nose. You did this a few times, eyes closed, head laying against the car window, letting yourself sink into your high. Your eyes snapped open when you felt Erik staring at you. 

“Umm, you supposed to be rolling, not staring.”, you reacted, a little more nervously than you intended. His eyes were locked onto you with so much lustful intent and a raised eyebrow. 

“That was sexy as fuck. You be doing that shit on purpose.”

 “What are you talking about?”, you asked, taking another drag, genuinely confused by his statement. 

“The way you French inhale. I noticed it the first time we smoked together. It’s sexy.” 

You kissed your teeth at him. “Anything and everything make you think of sex doesn’t it? I think you got a problem.” 

“Damn, a nigga can’t give you a compliment?” 

“Nope, not when you got a job to do.” He smirked at your statement. “Get your mind out the gutter, you addict.” 

“Puff, puff, pass, Frenchie.” You took one more, long toke before handing it over. You watched him inhale deeply, filling his lungs with smoke. It was amazing to watch him take in so much without ever coughing up an organ. He was a pro like that, in more ways than one. He handed the blunt back to you and continued to roll up the Granddaddy Purp. You watched him expertly handle the cigar, he was the fastest roller you had ever smoked with. He didn’t leave you any time to enjoy the one you already had in your hand before yelling “Christmas!” You took the newly rolled blunt and smoked it along with the one you had rolled earlier. 

“That’s right, you ain no amateur, huh?” 

“You know I do this, E.” , you replied. He always seemed impressed with your aptitude for Mary Jane. You told him to stop wasting his time with them lightweights, then he wouldn’t have to be so captivated. You two went back and forth like this until the LA Confidential was gone and he started to roll the OG Kush. You were basking in the foggy smoke that had filled his car, thanking God for his dark tinted windows. You were so busy zoning out that you barely noticed the mood had changed. 

“Is that ‘So Anxious’?”, you asked, instantly peeping game. 

“Yeah, what’s wrong with a little Ginuwine?”, he asked trying to appear naïve. You knew exactly where this was going. 

“Nope. You better call that low budget Cardi B cause I’m not with the shits, not today, Erik.” You were not gonna give in that easily. That nigga couldn’t really think that a couple blunts was a sufficient apology. He had some explaining to do before you were gonna let him get a piece of this again. His laughing pissed you off even more. Why couldn’t he ever take you seriously? 

“Not Cardi B. C’mon baby, I can do better than that.” Was this nigga serious?

“Apparently not. That bird was trash, but you fell right for it like all these other thirsty ass niggas.” 

“So, you mad?” 

“Nigga! IsweartagodImafuckyouup!” You didn’t mean to lose it, but he was acting so casual about this. Like it was funny, but you were genuinely irritated. Nothing bothered him and that infuriated you. He continued to snicker at you, closing the 3rd blunt and lighting it. 

You kissed your teeth, yet again, and turned your back to him, pouting out the window. “I swear, you get on my fuckin nerves.” 

“You get on mine too, but I’m still nice to you.”, he said, tapping you on the shoulder to take the newly rolled blunt. 

“I don’t need you to be nice to me, Erik.” 

“Fine, then gimme my blunt back.” 

“NAH!”, you said, hitting him with the Heisman. You didn’t mean to mush him in the face, but you did mean to laugh out loud when it happened.  He practically pounced on you, attempting to get the blunt out of your grasp. Everywhere his hands went, you managed to weasel your way out of his reach. You couldn’t tell if he was still trying to take the blunt from you or just play grab ass. He would poke and pinch and tickle you, throwing you into a fit of laughter. You wanted to be annoyed, but you were having fun. He always knew how to make you forget you were mad at him, even if it was just for a second. Before you knew it, the play fighting had stopped, and he had wrapped his arms around your waist. He had his head in the crook of your neck and was trying to pull you over to him, onto his lap. 

“Erik, what the hell are you doing?” 

“Shhh. Just come here real quick.” You already knew where this was going.

 “Do I have to put the blunt out?” 

“Nah. The blunt is a part of my apology.” You didn’t notice when he’d pushed his seat all the way back, but now there was enough room for you to sit on his lap and not be scrunched up against the steering wheel. 

“Get comfortable. You might be over here awhile.” You weren’t sure what he had in mind, but you tried to do as you were told. 

“MmmMmm, nope. Open them legs up. I know you wore them shorts for a reason.” Your heart started to beat a little faster as he took the blunt out of your hand and re-positioned you on his lap, giving him easy access to every forbidden area of your body. 

“You’ll get this back once you’re in position.”, he assured you. Your right foot landed in the middle console almost resting on the gear shift. He had your left leg draped over his knee and your head rested on his shoulder. Again, you thanked God for tinted windows, not that there was anyone else out her to see you, but Erik had your legs wide open in the front seat of his car. 

“Lemme get this off you.” he said grabbing at your Raiders hoodie from behind. You let Erik strip you, grateful for the A/C blowing, it was starting to get hot in here. 

“Can I have my blunt back please?” 

“Your blunt?”, he laughed again. “Here you little brat.” You wanted to say something smart but was caught off guard when you felt him pull your shorts and panties to the side. 

“Mmmhmm, so wet for me already.” 

“Erik—” 

“Shut up and smoke, girl. I’m busy.” And, with that Erik began to slowly stroke your exposed pussy, drenching his long fingers with your juices. You took a sharp breath in, willing yourself not to react. But, it was too late. Staring directly into your eyes, he could see you were into it. You started to rock your hips up and down, reveling in the sweet sensation of your mounting orgasm. He hadn’t even entered you yet. 

“You gon smoke that shit, or just let it burn?”, he asked. You’d almost forgotten there was a bout a gram and a half of purp burning away, but you couldn’t focus on anything more than Erik’s thick fingers rubbing at your clit. You whimpered as you tried to take a drag of the blunt and nearly choked when he decided to sink his gold fangs into the visible skin that your bra wasn’t covering. 

“Nigga?! You tryna kill me?”, you asked, trying not to gag. He only released the flesh to laugh at your reaction before placing soft kisses to the inflamed area. He might’ve broken the skin. 

“Shut up and stop complainin. You know you like that rough shit.” You didn’t want to admit it, but you did. Not too many men understood the fine line between pain and pleasure like Erik. He brought you right to the edge, dangled you over it, and dropped you at the last minute, every time. Whenever he choked, spanked, or bit you a little harder than the last, pushing you further than you knew you could go. It always hurt so good, and this time was no different.

He moved from your breast, up your neck, licking and sucking at the tender skin over your jugular vein. You knew he was leaving hickies, but you didn’t care. His tongue was starting a fire in the pit of your stomach, his hands igniting that flame as he slipped two fingers inside your dripping wet pussy. 

“Ohmygod, Erik— “, you arched your back, pushing against his long, thick fingers. He used his ring and middle finger to tell you ‘come hither’, non-verbally, the pressure reaching your g-spot faster than you expected. 

“Oooh, gahdamn baby girl. You hear that? You hear your pussy splashing on my damn fingers? You love that shit huh?” You couldn’t even reply. The pace Erik was moving at, in and out, was so intense. It was almost cruel the way he was slamming into you, bringing you close to your climax with just his hands.

His right arm was wrapped around your waist so that he could reach your clit. He began by placing his right index finger on your lips, still fingering your wet pussy with his other hand. 

“Open up.” You barely waited for his command, yearning for something of his to fill your mouth. You wrapped your hungry tongue around his finger, pretending it was his dick. You licked up and down, grazed it lightly with your teeth, let him touch the back of your throat, all while looking directly in his eyes. That index finger was a strawberry Popsicle and it was the dead of summer as far as you were concerned. And, if he wouldn’t fill your mouth with that long dick, this finger would just have to do. You both felt your pussy get wetter and wetter at your immoral display. 

“Oh yeah? that’s how you feel, baby? Well go head then.”, Erik said eyebrows raised, taking his two drenched fingers out of your pussy and placing them in your mouth. 

“You taste that? That sweet ass pussy?” You couldn’t believe how turned on you were from the taste of your own essence and were thankful that Erik had taken that right index finger and began massaging your clit softly. You weren’t prepared for how sad you were when those fingers left your mouth, finding their way under your bra, Erik grasping at your ample breast. He squeezed and pinched and tugged at your nipple, causing you to moan out his name. 

“You let the blunt go out again.” How could he think of smoking at a time like this? You were ready to drop it in the ash tray, so you could focus on the matters at hand, but Erik commanded that you light it back up. 

“If you not gon hit it, then let me. Light that shit up.” He could be so bossy, but you didn’t dare disobey fearing he would stop this lovely assault on your body. He was still vigorously rubbing your clit in a delicious circular motion when you placed the blunt at his lips and lit it. He took his left hand from under your bra and went back to attacking your pussy with both his hands, working your clit incessantly and reintroducing those two devilish fingers back into your ocean.

“Mmmhhmmm”, he signaled that he was ready to exhale, having sucked in more smoke than he needed. You snapped out of your euphoric trance to help him out just for him to sink his teeth back into your neck. 

“FUUCk. What’re you—, Erik, I-I’m—” You were so close to creaming all over his fingers when he decided to add a third. You were practically laying down on his lap now, twisting and writhing from the intensity of it all. 

“You gonna cum for me, baby girl?” he whispered to you, breathing against your ear, occasionally licking and biting at the lobe. 

“I..I..can’t”, was all you could manage. 

“Nah, I’m not even tryna hear that. I need an answer. You cummin or not?”, he demanded, picking up his pace. You couldn’t help but fuck his fingers right back, meeting him halfway. You were dripping wet, the dampness seeping through the thin cotton shorts you cursed yourself for wearing. You couldn’t help yourself anymore. 

“YES! OH MY GOD! YES! ERIK PLEASE!” 

“Please, what?” 

“Please, make me cum. I want to…to cum, now. PLEA—” He barely let you finish before he filled your mouth with his tongue and placed the hand that had been vigorously massaging your clit around your throat, firmly yet gently cutting off your air supply. He kept pumping into you with his three thick ass fingers, hitting your g-spot, again and again, making you arch your back and squeeze your walls around his fingers. You used what little energy you had left to groan into his mouth as you felt that familiar eruption coursing through your body, curling your toes and forcing your eyes to the back of your head. You thanked God one more time that you two were alone.  

“Fuck, look at my spoiled little brat. Such a good girl, cumming on my fingers like that.” He teased, sadly retreating from your pussy. “Shit, girl. Look at the mess you made.” You were dazed and out of breath but opened your eyes just in time to watch him taste you on his fingers, one by one. “You forgive me yet?”, he asked, that knowing smirk on his face. You almost said yes, but the demon inside felt otherwise. 

“Hmm...I don’t know Erik. That was some pretty disrespectful shit you pulled. My feeling’s might still be a little hurt.”, you replied, batting your long eyelashes. You would’ve begged for more if he asked, but this was definitely more fun. 

“Say less.”

so, dassit, for now. any comments/criticisms/suggestions are welcome.

#erik killmonger #erik stevens #bp fanfic #bp fandom #erikkillmongerxreader #french inhale #black panther #black panther fanfiction #black panther fandom #erik stevens fanfiction #erik killmonger fanfiction #erik x reader #erik stevens x reader #erik killmonger x reader

[noplanwithavan]

THE STUFF OF LEGENDS

Our voyage through the ancient world continues. Leaving behind the Romans, sailing East,  and journeying deeper into the Hellenic world. We’ve come ashore in Greece, and life is sweet here. I mean seriously sweet. Must be all the halva, honey and Easter eggs.

To get here, from Sicily we crossed the toe of Italy, arched around its instep, and arrived somewhere near the top of the high heel for a pressing assignation. We’d committed ourselves to the labours of HelpEx, having been accepted on a family small-holding in Mola di Bari. Yearning for a bit more interaction and social life, this seemed the perfect way to get under the skin - and into the kitchens - of Italian life. The girls bristled with excitement, keen to meet the family’s 8 year-old daughter named Fara. “Will it be like the olive farm we worked on in Spain?” they ask. Probably not, we say. It’s more domestic we think, not so much back-breaking work. “It’s kind of like the Roman times,” we explain “We offer to be slaves, and they feed us. Hopefully without the harsh punishment or threat of being thrown to the lions if we disobey.”

From the moment we arrived, there was a sense of familiarity, and it was clear we’d feel comfortable with Andrea, Angela and Fara. They welcomed us in to a large, round courtyard, an ancient gnarled olive tree at its centre, and a volley of yelping Italian children circling it by bike at the speed of charioteers racing the Circo Massimo. It soon became apparent the family had friends over, and Elsie and Lulu were immediately drawn into the melé, guided by the irresistible rules of play. As the sun went down the evening was warm enough to stay outside and enjoy focaccia, cheese and salad from their garden. It reminded Marcus of his family home in Pembrokeshire, Middlelands, in many ways. The same informality and open-house welcome. Throughout our week, as we worked in the garden this sense continued, people often dropping by, calling over. Meal times were sociable affairs, super-healthy and all vegetarian. There were no unhealthy snacks nor processed food of any kind in the house. So much so, they didn’t even possess a can opener. The girls responded well. They hero-worship Fara, following her lead in all things, even developing a taste for fennel, much to our surprise. During the mornings we’re left to get on with things by ourselves as the family worked and Fara went to school. Sometimes the girls would help us, other times they’d roam free, making up their own games, desperate for Fara to return home and lead the charge. At first it felt a bit strange, wandering around trying to find tools, or stopping for a snack and rummaging about in someone else’s kitchen. One morning I discovered a quote from Socrates pinned above a chalk-board. “Education is the kindling of a flame. Not the filling of a vessel,” it read. I had the simultaneous experience of agreeing profoundly, whilst at the same time wondering what to do if you suspected your kids needed a bloody blowtorch to get things lit. Nonetheless, it inspired me this quote, and I decided that incidental learning might be much less stressful. So they helped plant their own bed of wildflowers, and spent a morning in the vegetable patch studying and drawing the different shape leaves to identify which vegetables they would become. After a few days, we adjusted, found our pace, and fitted in with the family’s way of life. The work wasn’t hard - clearing plant beds, weeding paths, digging up trees which had self-seeded to replant elsewhere - but its the first physical work we’ve done for some time. Having thought this would be a breeze compared to olive harvesting, Marcus confesses he’s glad we’re only staying a week as he’s not sure his back can take much more. Trying to steer him on to lighter duties I volunteer his services in the cooking department, suggesting he make the family a curry. The idea gains traction, indeed becomes somewhat of “an event”. Despite the legendary devotion the Italians have for eating only their own, exceptionally local food, by the end of the week Marcus is consulting his brother’s “We Love Curry” pages. For come the weekend he’s headlining an Indian banquet for a gathering of our hosts’ close relatives and friends. Well, we all know he does love a dinner party, and we said we wanted to meet more people! The only complications being  a complete lack of Italian on his part, and little to no idea of how many close relatives and friends might turn up. Saturday arrives, and our hosts Andrea and Angela drift off, busily engaged in their own respective tasks. Marcus is left alone to make the final preparations. Guests begin arriving and filter through the kitchen, their curiosity piqued by such un-Mediterranean, unfamiliar smells. One by one they try and strike up a dialogue, but necessity dictates small talk is limited. Sensing familiarity as they watch him stretching out dough on the kitchen worktop, the dinner guests try a different tack: “Pizza?” they opine. “No pizza,” he demurs. “Focaccia?” “No focaccia” he emphasises, this time batted away with a definitive hand-swipe. “Panzarotte?”…and on it goes, with a list of about 20 Italian forms of bread, none of which are what he is making. “Chapatis,” he ventures. “Curry, with chapatis.” But this is an enigma, and the growing swell of puzzled faces signals they have arrived at a conversational cul-de-sac.

Thankfully, the delicious food does all the talking, and even the most hardened regional food purist has to admit it. One man takes Marcus aside, “Thank you for your curry,” he confides.  “Maybe I won’t eat again, but doesn’t mean I don’t like.” Then, continuing by way of clarification, “You see I only eat dishes from Bari. My wife is from Parma, but I don’t even let her cook food from her home town….unless we go there to visit her family.” Message received. In summary, partial success, but curry colonisation in Puglia remains far from complete.

Our time spent in the warmth of Fara’s family appears to have regenerated our social lives, and from Italy onwards we are constantly finding ourselves in good company. There is Ruth and Frank, the first campervanners we have met from Wales. The sight of the red dragon sicker on the back of their vehicle is such a surprise that we have to restrain ourselves from rushing out to greet them with open arms. We instantly take a liking to them, and within minutes of discussing where we’re from discover we have friends in common. A retired clown from Cardiff, Frank tells us he knows Tenby well, most fondly because of his pal there James Osbourn. From here, the conversation flows and I can’t remember quite how exactly but at some point it navigates around to toilets. (Probably something to do with it being Elsie’s specialist subject). Ruth offers to show the girls their loo.

“It’s a composting toilet, would you like to see it?” she beams. We all trail inside, fascinated to find out more. Is this even possible I think, and how does it not stink the place out in such a small space? Pulling out two large food recycling bins, courtesy of Cardiff City Council, from under the bed,  Ruth begins to explain. The couple are clearly very proud of their ingenuity and challenge us to a poo test. This involves opening up each container in turn, inviting us to have a sniff, and then guess which one contains the poo. It’s actually surprisingly difficult, and we have to admit defeat. Thrilled, Ruth goes on to explain that one box contains just sawdust and ash, and the other human excrement which has been covered with said sawdust and ash. “It takes away the smell entirely,” she says. “You wouldn’t even know. Amazing isn’t it?” And it is, and I love her obvious delight at the mastery of such an unpleasant problem. Strange too how you can find yourself examining a another’s most taboo bodily function within half an hour of meeting them.

Some days later, we are in Polignano de Mare, a seaside town set atop rocks, narrow balconies overlooking the caves eroding beneath. It’s dramatic and precarious position has led to it being picked as one of the Red Bull Cliff Diving locations, like Abereiddy back at home. While we wait to catch the ferry to Greece, we spend a wonderful few sunny days here. It’s a chance to dust off the canoe and explore the pretty inlets and coastline. It’s also our last opportunity to scoff pizza, try interesting gelato combinations like fig and ricotta, and drink good wine. And while we won’t miss the driving in Italy, we will miss the country itself. It’s fresh vegetables packed with flavour, the approach they have towards children - letting them run free, with trust and respect. And the people who seem to live life the way they coach their little ones to tackle obstacles - “piano, piano” (slowly, slowly). We park right by the sea, and the girls go scrambling over the rocks, in search of the blowholes they can hear snoring like dragons. They bring back a little blonde-haired girl called Poppy. And by sunset the girls are tucked up in her distinctive pink old-style VW campervan watching a movie, while we invite her parents Jane and Steve over for a drink. I guess its not that much of a surprise that a family who are doing a year out just like us, and having travelled much of the same route, would have met some of the same people. But it’s still heartening somehow to discover that they have. It fosters our sense of a community on the road when we learn that they too spent time with the wonderful Hilary, Richard, Jess, Chippie and Bonnie, whom we enjoyed Christmas with in Tarifa.

From Bari, we sail to Petrás in Greece. From the ferry we sight the islands, craggy and wild, whetting our appetite for what this next country will have to offer. The almond trees have now been replaced by the bright pink blossom of Judas trees, yellow explosions of Broom, and the purple profusion of low-hanging wisteria draped by the roadside. Our first supermarket stop, near to the ancient sanctuary of Olympia, doesn’t disappoint. There is olive paste spread, an explosion of sesame goods in the forms of tahini and halva, a whole aisle dedicated to yoghurt. “What do they call Greek yoghurt here?” Marcus muses. “Just yoghurt?” And then there’s the filo pastry, a world of new cooking opportunities lay open before us! On reaching the meat counter we are momentarily overcome by the language barrier, indeed the whole different alphabet, rendering us clueless. Luckily, some improvisation prevails, and by saying, “Baaaaa!!!” to the man a few times, he soon catches on that I would like lamb. There are no small portions in Greece, and he hacks off such a large chunk, it keeps us going for 3 days.

But the best thing so far has to be embracing the whole incidental learning idea full tilt. This month its purely Classics. The girls are in their element - it’s all about stories after all, which they love, and everywhere you look there’s another reference to a legend, another piece of the historical puzzle which still resonates through our culture today. Our maths lesson before visiting Olympia was measuring distances. The girls had to mark out intervals of 1m until we reached the crucial 200m mark, the distance ancient athletes would sprint. Appreciation of the site itself taxes the imagination more than the ruins of Rome or Pompei. But from the layout and the thickness of some of the columns its possible to guess at how impressive it would once have been. As always the devil is in the detail, and we try and point out as much as we came to bring it all to life. The wide open space of the Palaestra where hey have a mock wrestle, the plinths lining the approach to the stadium which would have held bronze statues of Zeus, paid for by the fines of athletes who had cheated. The inscriptions still visible beneath bearing their names and city of birth. The cheap seats up high on Mount Kronos, filled by woman and slaves, which overlooks the track where the girls race. But it is one detail in particular that really tickles them - the fact that the ancient competitors would have all been naked. This steers Elsie’s mind back onto another of her favourite topics. In many ways an ancillary to toilets - that of winkles. And she enjoys a saunter around the museum gaping at all the parts of male anatomy on statuesque display. I can’t get over the impression of soft, see-through chiton material etched out of stone on the statue of Nike, or the perfect proportions in the face of Athena and Hermes. There is a whole room dedicated to the many small figurines, votive offerings, left at the temples of Zeus and Hera. Displayed, they look like an installation of battle, exquisite in their painstaking detail.

We have a book of “Greek Myths” for children (or Greek Miffs, as they pronounce it), which is our all important educational go-to-guide for this part of the trip. And it’s mind boggling how many places and sites we have seen which are referenced in those stories. In Italy the sirens in the story of Odysseus just off the coast of Naples, the cyclops in Sicily he defeats on Mount Etna. And here in Greece, the 12 labours of Heracles depicted on the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, the temples to the oracles on the wild Peloponnese, the beautiful town of Kardamyli (one of seven gifted by Agamemnon to Achilles in return for rejoining the battle of Troy), and finally the caves of Diros. Once we discover these caves are behind the tales about the River Styx, and the journey to the Underworld, we just have to go and take a look. Brushing up beforehand on the chapters about Pluto and Cerberus his 3-headed dog. Located on the Mani peninsula near the town of Aereopoli, they are an other-world experience, and its not hard to imagine why the Greeks thought they led to a different realm. Entering the caves from a stone beach, you climb down to an underground lake where a “ferryman” awaits to transport you through a network of waterways, a labyrinth of caverns and tunnels adorned with stalactites and stalagmites. Floating along on a narrow gondola, amid the humidity and drips from above, I’m sure it would have been quite a spiritual experience, if it wasn’t for the kids hassling us to change seats and let them have a go at taking pictures.

For the last week or so we have been winding our way down the central finger of the Peloponnese, from Pylos, Kardamyli, Stoupa, Agios Nikolaus, Aereopoli, and right to the tip at Porto Kagio. Free camping is no problem here, and we can pitch up right by a pebbled beach, string out the hammock and spend our days swimming, and eating outside. Our favourite dish is experimenting with home-made pastries. Using the filo Marcus has been trying out different filled parcels - savoury spinach and feta, and sweet combinations of apple and raisin, sesame, honey and pistachio. Over the last week we’ve met a few friendly German families at some of our camping spots, sharing breakfasts on the beach and relaxed mornings with time to teach the girls card tricks, and giving them responsibilities like the chance to be head chef and make lunch for us, or earn extra pocket money by washing up.

The further south we travel, the wilder and more remote the landscape becomes. The road curving inwards along the steep terraced ancient hillsides, carpeted with wildflowers and punctuated by clusters of soft grey Mani tower houses. A few weeks ago we were inside the van discussing our concerns that the girls reading wasn’t improving greatly. They were both outside lobbing up sticks and any objects they could find into a large palm tree. At that moment Elsie burst in to ask if she could have a bowl because they were harvesting dates. As we stepped out to have a look, I had to smile. Remember Socrates, I thought. They weren’t actual dates, but they looked very similar. The girls might not be great readers just yet, but they can spend hours studying the many different shapes and varieties of plants we find here, and they can identify wild asparagus and fennel much better than I.

Easter is an important festival here in Greece, and we spent it in Kardamyli, smashing the bright red boiled eggs that symbolise the blood of Christ, and following the processions to the sound of church bells tolling out the call to worship. On Good Friday Marcus received a phonecall from his mum to say his beloved Grandmother, Gassie, had died at the age of 101. It was news he had been expecting for some time, yet forewarned and prepared as he was, it is never easy to be away from family at such a time. But thinking back on her legacy, and childhood memories of this unchanging constant in his life, it reaffirms why we are doing this trip. The more the months slide by, the more aware we are how precious this experience is. Each photo, each place has a poignancy that wasn’t there at the start. To spend this time with each other, to experience ourselves close-up it almost seems, is our gift and legacy to our children. One we hope will endure.

[danasukontarak]

Dana’s Travel Diary: Views (130 Kilometers) From The 6

I have a bad habit of browsing Google Flights by map and by price calendar, months in advance, for cheap trips I can take, particularly those I can take on 3-day holiday weekends. Visiting Niagara Falls on Memorial Day weekend was the most recent product of that anxious, wander-lustful habit. When I started to plan, I didn’t realize Niagara Falls had a Canadian side and a U.S. side. I just knew I wanted to make an international trip, as an International Woman of Mystery. I’d been to New York, but I’d never been to Canada. So, my friends Kiara and Traci and I flew into Toronto, which was actually an almost 2-hour drive from the Falls.

Arriving in Toronto Pearson International Airport, the first thing I noticed was the surge of West Indian, Majid Jordan looking men with slick, swooping mohawks. The second thing I noticed was the signage. Everything was in both English and French - so classy. Not only that, but there was inadequate signage to direct us to the rental car counter. When we finally got there, we were told that Payless Car Rental was not located in the airport, and that we’d have to take a shuttle. We waited for the shuttle for about 15 minutes, as people were picked up by various unmarked cars and vans, before someone asked us if we’d called Payless to have them send the shuttle. We said no, and he led me to a small corded phone in the corner of the lobby area, tucked to the side of the escalator we descended from. I called, and ten minutes later, a shuttle with “Payless” scrawled in chalk on the side window arrived.

When we got our car, it was around 10 AM and we immediately headed towards Niagara. Before we got there, we stopped for poutine, a Canadian staple. It’s basically fries with gravy and cheese curds, plus whatever toppings you’d like to fatly add. It was not all that. 

Our Airbnb was beautifully vintage and carefully decorated, and just down the road from the Falls. There was no (working) television, so we mostly listened to the radio when we were home. The guy who was renting this place had a billion records and no record player. He also had some pretty cool books, one I started reading called ‘What Your Aura Tells Me.'

The actual Niagara Falls seem to pop out of nowhere, but you know where they are before actually seeing them because of the crowds of people snapping photos. A majestic mist circles the area above the Falls. The people in ponchos are down below, on boats. There is a horribly colorful and tacky strip leading to the Falls, perpendicular to the road our Airbnb was on, with arcades and cheap motels and Ripley’s Believe It or Not museums - an Atlantic City meets Coney Island vibe. It started to rain as we got onto the Niagara Falls Skywheel, a big enclosed Ferris wheel that gave great views of the water.

The next day, we visited Bird Kingdom, which is allegedly the world’s largest free-flying aviary. My count for number of birds that have sat on my arms went from 0 to 10 that day. I held a big (and probably sad) parrot on my arm, and then I fed nectar to eight or nine disgusting little lorikeets. I held the small cup of nectar between my hands with arms outstretched, and watched them flock to me. Only two or three actually ate from the nectar cup, but they all French kissed down the line to share the sweetness. It was actually equally amazing and ugly, on top of the fact that some of them had balding and diseased-looking little necks. In the main aviary of the Bird Kingdom, the diversity and proximity of the birds was awesome. I saw so many crazy colors and patterns.

We also visited the Botanical Gardens of Niagara Falls, which is home to the Butterfly Conservatory. This was a magical place to walk through. There is a place you can witness butterflies emerging from the chrysalis and into the main room. I’m usually somewhat scared of butterflies. This time, I was fascinated and pleased to be near them. It was hard as fuck to get a good picture with any, though.

That night, we went to a local pub with live music and had some of the worst food I’ve ever eaten on vacation, or at home. I had a burger that crumbled apart like drywall on a brioche bun. Traci had fish and chips seasoned with nothing but good intentions. Kiara had ribs, which for some reason came with a soupy, sweet-and-sour-sauce-soaked rice. The lead singer of the band came over to our table to check for song requests. Kiara requested “Baby Boy” by Beyonce. We didn’t wait around to see if he did it. 

The following day, we stopped by a head shop to look for Backwoods. (Note: Backwoods are not sold in Canada.) The employee asked if we were from Canada or U.S., and when we replied the latter, he offered to sell us edibles. We bought some, under the condition that we didn’t tell any Canadians where we got them from (so, I hope no Canadians are reading this). He also directed us five blocks up the road to the parking lot of a Tim Hortons (which seem to be EVERYWHERE in Canada) to find weed. We made a very light, unsuccessful attempt before heading home. 

That night, with shitty burgers and bland fish and chips in our recent memory, we vowed to eat dinner as far away from Niagara as we could manage. That ended up being about 90 minutes away in Toronto. We went to The Real Jerk, which is the spot where Rihanna filmed her “Work” video with Drake. Collectively, we ordered oxtail, jerk chicken, jerk pork, curry goat, red snapper, plantains, curry potato, and rice and peas. There were no leftovers. Traci left a day early, so Kiara and I had lunch there again before heading to the airport. It was very much worth it. 

Overall, this was one of the less eventful, “regular” trips I’ve had, which isn’t to say I didn’t have a great time. Here are a few tips that may be useful to someone visiting the Toronto or Niagara areas from the U.S. 

1: Things are cheaper - For example, if you buy a shirt at H&M for $17.99, after conversion the price you pay would actually be about $13.50. Most places also looked like they accepted both USD and CAD, so there’s less of an urgency to convert your American dollars. 

2: Make Niagara a day trip - Everything that can be seen (and that you would want to see) in Niagara can be done in a day. I wish I’d spent more time in Toronto other than the few meals we had. Niagara is beautiful, but doesn’t even register on the nightlife/social scale. Of course, staying in and adventuring through Toronto likely requires a bit more research prior to traveling. 

3: Bring clothes (and shoes) for both sunshine and rain - The weather was pleasant, but it pretty much rained or threatened to rain the entire time we were there. Showers didn’t last long, but large puddles seemed to be permanent fixtures.

4: Ask them to stamp your passport at the airport - I didn’t realize they don’t usually stamp your passport for coming to Canada. I missed my opportunity, but if that matters to you like it does to me, be sure to ask.