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lavender-laney · 6 months

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choking on sea salt, chapter 2 (part one)

chapter 1, chapter 2 one, chapter 2 part two, chapter 3

Her car’s radio cuts out ten miles from the village.

The radio host’s voice is interrupted suddenly by the whining screech of static, before devolving into a wavering shriek, grating at Sadie’s ears as she nearly swerves off the dirt road in an attempt to scrabble at the power button. The silence that fills the car in its absence is overwhelming, and she nearly misses the radio’s piercing tune.

“Jesus,” she huffs, reaching to the passenger seat to drag the map closer, as though it would appear any differently than the last time she’d checked.

Just as before, the road she’d followed through the last town, nearly an hour prior, ended suddenly just a mile out. Pavement turned to cobblestone turned to gravel turned to the unsteady dust and rocks she drives through currently. She can only assume she’s on the correct route, put together based only on Silverlee's age-old accounts of the village’s location. She tamps down on the sudden unease that she will prove Pruitt’s suspicions correct, and this path will lead only to the side of a mountain or cliff, or the long-abandoned fragments of what once was Sappharine Bay.

She imagines the shame of stepping back into Pruitt’s classroom in January, with nothing else to present but Silverlee’s journal again clutched in her hands, nothing but a crumpled roadmap and an unanswered list of mysteries she’d been so confident she could solve. She shudders at the thought, rolling down the window to fill the car’s quiet without the radio’s gentle hum.

The scent of salt on the breeze catches her attention, and suddenly she can begin to make out the silhouette of a gate, the trepidation that settled in her chest hours ago overshadowed by rising giddiness. As she draws closer, she begins to understand Silverlee’s very first entry.

“October 20, 1876 If I didn’t know any better, I would think the gate appeared out of nowhere, simply rising from the morning fog. One moment I was walking along the trail, and the next it was towering before me, imposing and firmly shut. When I pulled on the knocker, it felt both like I was asking entrance to the gates of Hell and to a fountain of knowledge. Knowledge, however, is not oft given without a price.”

Car rumbling to a stop before the gate, Sadie’s hesitance grows. She simply pauses for a moment, studying the scene before her. In the time she’s spent on the road, the skies have darkened to a deep mauve, stars beginning to twinkle and full moon creeping above the horizon and brightening the scenery. Tall grass borders the dirt road, swaying in the gentle breeze. Vines have grown up through the rusted iron gate, hyacinth flowers reaching up beneath them. Sadie pushes her car door open, the creak of the hinges loud in the night’s silence. As she makes her way closer, she studies the design in the gate’s winding metal. At first she believes it to be a fish resting where the two doors meet, then, pushing the ivy aside, realizes it to be a woman with the tail of a fish --- a mermaid. It’s the only part of the metal that remains purely un-rusted, clear as the day it was painstakingly formed under a careful hand and burning heat. Something pulls at her mind, something about the mermaid’s image, but she can recall no mention from Silverlee of anything to do with the creature. Despite its beauty, Sadie is unnerved, and allows the ivy to fall back into place, obscuring the mermaid once more. She steps back, wondering what the protocol is for entering a town that has been isolated from the rest of the world for centuries.

Sadie spoke to the few people she’d met during her stops at nearby towns --- and she uses the term “nearby” loosely, considering the last stop had been three hours prior --- seeking any information on the cloud of unknowns surrounding Sappharine Bay. Most of them hadn’t realized there was a village at the end of the road that drops off abruptly, and others thought Sappharine Bay to be a thing of the past. They certainly hadn’t heard from its inhabitants, and had no desire to initiate contact. One man, silver curls falling over eyes dulled by age, had grown quiet at Sadie’s mention of the town.

“Miss,” he’d started, voice rough and hesitant. “I’m not sure you should be poking your nose in those folks’ business. I’ve never met them myself, but when I was a boy, full of curiosity, like yourself, my Pa always told me to steer clear. I think you should heed his warning, just as I did.”

Sadie had met his gaze, understanding this man, clearly weathered by life’s battles but still with a tenacious glint in his eye, expressing wariness --- not quite fear, but perhaps a reflection of his pa’s fear --- at the mere mention of the town.

“I understand. I’ll be careful,” she’d responded, watching a shadow fall over his expression, frown lines deepening. It was almost an expression of premature mourning, as though she’d promised she would try to step quietly as she entered a lion’s den. “They’re just people,” she’d reassured, but he hadn’t responded.

Just people, she tells herself as she stares at the gate before her. Am I the first person to come knocking at these gates in decades? she wonders. Was Silverlee the last?

“Are you lost, miss?”

She startles. Whips around. Stumbles back against the fence, the metallic rattle muffled by the vines choking it.

A man stands just a few feet from Sadie, and in the back of her mind she wonders how long he has been standing there, how he crept up on her without notice. He is tall and willowy, though his back is hunched and shoulders concave, making him appear shorter than he truly is. Despite his frail stature, his face brings a sting of unease to Sadie. His eyes are sunken and bloodshot, as though it’s been weeks since he’s rested. His thin lips are set in a deep frown, and it’s as though he’s telling her leave, get away from here, you are not welcome with only his body.

“Oh my god---! Excuse me, I hadn’t noticed you,” she says, voice shrill, hands clutching at the bag slung over her shoulder, attempting to chuckle away the tense atmosphere as if there was anything entertaining about a man creeping up on her in the silence of a foggy morning in the remote hills of Maine. The reality of this project begins to swallow any giddiness she’d had left in her. “I, yes, I am lost!

The man’s glare only deepens, and he remains silent. For a moment, the only sound is the whistle of the morning’s cool breeze.

“Well,” Sadie begins, grasping for an explanation. “I’m from New Hampshire. I’m taking a road trip, but my car started to break down a while back, you see.”

He simply stares at her, silent, and it feels like the wrinkles of his face grow deeper and his eyes darker the longer his attention is set on her. The pit in her stomach grows, but she shoulders past it. There’s no way he knows she’s lying. She just hopes Sappharine Bay hasn’t suddenly decided to integrate with the changing times in the past century --- Silverlee’s journal said they lived without any forms of electricity. They lived “traditionally,” is what they told her.

“I just kept driving until I came across a town, and the road just ends here at this gate,” she tries. “Is there someone that could help me with my car?” she attempts, smiling despite the way it seems to pull at her skin, the innate wrongness of a smile directed at this man. She kicks herself, feeling a bit guilty. He’s just a frail, quiet man, what has he done to deserve her distrust?

A twinkle of amusement grows in his eyes. “Alright, miss,” he says quietly, and she leans closer to hear over the sudden rustling of the trees around them. “No one ‘round here will know what to do with your car. Why don’t I show you to the mayor and we’ll see what he thinks?”

Sadie heaves a deep breath. “That sounds just wonderful, sir,” she says through gritted teeth holding out her hand. “I’m afraid we skipped right over introductions. I’m Sadie Hale, and you are?”

“Joseph,” he says, his hand cold and skeletal where it grips her own. “Why don’t you follow me, miss?”

Sadie is sure her responding smile is strained, but she shoulders past it, subtly tucking her hand into her coat pocket in an attempt to stifle the chill that had seemed to migrate from his icy skin directly into her bones. Oddly enough, he doesn’t move to open the gate, but instead steps into the tall grass, pushing his way through the foliage. Sadie glances back at her car, left sitting before the gate, nearly swallowed by the thick fog, then grips her bag tighter and follows the man into the forest.

For a moment, there are only the sounds of the forest, but wrong, somehow. There is the rustle of a salty breeze brushing against the trees, sending goosebumps across Sadie’s skin. There is the crunch of the pair’s footsteps as they make their way deeper into the wood. As Sadie listens closer, though, there are no crickets, nor the chirping of frogs. No birds pass overhead with whispering feathers, no chipmunks or mice skittering through the undergrowth. No moths flutter past, no lightning bugs float by like paper lanterns. As she stares at the back of Joseph’s tangled hair, and the bow of his shoulders, she feels a sureness in her heart that there are no creatures in this wood besides herself and this strange man. Feeling horribly off-kilter, she stumbles on her next step, thorns snagging in her pants. The sudden grip of Joseph’s hand against her forearm, stabilizing her, is like a frigid wave crashing over her, sending a shock of ice up her arm. She jolts back, nearly falling into the thorny plant, if not for Joseph’s unyielding hold.

“Thank you,” she manages, attempting to pull her arm away. He simply watches her for a moment before his grasp loosens and she can clutch her arm close to her chest. “I’m not really used to … trekking through the woods like this,” she attempts to chuckle, but it comes out shrill and loud, and she’s sure she sounds on the verge of hysteria.

“That’s alright,” he says quietly, almost a murmur. “A nice girl like you ain’t meant to be out here in the elements like this, but it’s the only way into town, I’m afraid.”

“What about the gate?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder, though the forest's edge has long since disappeared from sight.

As though he did not hear her, he pushes on, shouldering past a low hanging branch. “We’re getting close,” is all he says.

The sky has continued to darken, reaching a deep plum. The moon looms overhead, providing little of its silver glow to light their path through the dark wood. Coupled with the fog, Sadie realizes she can barely see Joseph where he strides forward just a few paces ahead of her. She suddenly has a vision of stumbling across a stray root or a snagging thorn halting her in her tracks, only to look up and find that Joseph has disappeared and she will be left to navigate this strange forest by herself.

She quickens her pace, eyes set resolutely on the back of Joseph’s shoes, filled with the irrational fear that if she glances away, he will surely disappear. Just as the gate seemed to rise from out of the fog, though, a path between the trees begins to form before Sadie’s eyes. The branches begin to thin, and the moon’s soft light reaches the pair more clearly. They step out of the tree line and onto a worn path overgrown with tall grass that nearly brushes Sadie’s wrists. The fog has lifted, and Sadie feels her breath catch as she gets her first glimpse of Sappharine Bay.

The trail leads out of the forest and into town. An iron fence lines one side of the path, and through the fog Sadie can make out the outlines of a scattering of animals, perhaps cattle or sheep. Across from the fence sits a large farmhouse, painted a chipped and faded white. The roof is in dire need of repair, buckling under puddles of rainwater, and the beams supporting it are in similar disrepair. On the porch sways a bent and creaking rocking chair, filled by a similarly crooked woman. Joseph has continued his lumbering strides, and Sadie pushes herself forward. As they pass by the farmhouse, Sadie can’t keep herself from staring. She can’t make out many details from the road, but she meets the woman’s gaze and nearly recoils at its murky emptiness. It’s like staring into a hazy puddle, watching the vague ripples as it's disrupted by an uncaring footstep. A tangled strand of the woman’s white hair falls over her eyes, and Sadie abruptly pulls her gaze away, focusing again on Joseph rather than the strange prickling crawling up her spine.

“How many folks live here?” she asks, and nearly regrets disrupting the heavy silence.

Joseph is quiet. Sadie expects him to ignore her entirely as they continue their trek, and instead listens to their footsteps as they slosh through the damp soil. A mourning dove coos from somewhere in the distance. It receives no response.

“Not many, anymore. Not for a long while,” he responds finally, voice heavy. She watches the bow of his shoulders seem to grow heavier, his back hunching further. He looks back at her suddenly, eyebrows furrowed, pinning her with a wild gaze. “Why’re you askin’ so many questions?”

She startles, and glances down the path to gauge how close they are to the rest of the town. Not far, more houses and buildings line the path, and Sadie can make out what must be the town square. She looks back at Joseph.

“I’m just curious,” she says simply, quickening her pace. After a moment, he continues to lumber after her, scoffing.

“Curiosity will do you no good,” he says. Sadie expects him to continue, glancing back at him, but his head is turned away from her, looking back at the old woman’s porch, barely visible through the thick fog. She sets her eyes back on the grouping of run-down buildings ahead, determined to end her interaction with this man.

They pass more houses, but these ones show no signs of life within them. As they grow closer to the town square, the roar of waves in the distance strengthens, and Sadie can visualize each crash of the ocean against towering cliff sides, each crest turning to a gentle push against the shoreline. She’s already planning the ways she will slink down to the sea under the moon’s glow, just as Silverlee did so many years ago.

“Joseph!” a voice calls as they step into the town square. Through the hazy darkness, Sadie can make out a tall, spindly man standing before them. He is like Joseph in height, but this man’s posture is stiff, and he holds his shoulders back, chin lifted. It reminds Sadie of Pruitt, and she feels something in her chest recoil. Despite his gangling stature, he is clearly well-fed, a contrast to the angularity of Joseph’s wrists and the harshness of his cheekbones. The man’s eyes are a piercing blue, nearly white, startling against his pale features and heavy eyebrows. His hair, although he clearly attempted to pull himself into an appearance of poise and composure, is thin and tousled, hanging across his forehead.

Joseph’s bent back straightens as best it can, though it’s a sad attempt. “Yes, Shepherd?”

The man, Shepherd, furrows his brow, impassive gaze moving between Sadie and Joseph.

“What do we have here?” he asks simply, voice light and detached. It’s an indifferent tone, friendly at best, but it puts Sadie on edge. Regardless, she steps forward, hand held out.

“Hello, Shepherd,” she begins. “My name is Sadie Hale. You see, I was on my way to ---”

She is cut off abruptly. Shepherd’s eyes flick between Sadie’s extended hand and candid expression. “No,” he says easily, cracked lips spreading into a crooked too-wide smile. “I do believe I asked Joseph. It’s rude to wander into someone else’s home like this and speak so freely, wouldn’t you agree?”

Sadie jerks her hand back, and hears her teeth clack together as she shuts her mouth so suddenly. She stands for a moment in shock, mustering up a response when Joseph steps forward beside her.

“Shepherd,” Joseph begins, and although Sadie is sure it is his name, it feels nearly like a title when Joseph speaks it. He says this man’s name like he’s beginning a prayer to a malevolent god, a sinner preparing to plead for a kind hand. “I found this girl waiting outside the gate. She says she was traveling when her vehicle failed. She requests to----,” he falters for a moment, “she requests our goodwill.”

Shepherd's gaze holds onto Joseph's for a long, unfaltering, deeply uncomfortable moment. His eyes flick over to hers.

Despite living in a coastal state, Sadie can't say she's spent much time by the ocean, or even near other bodies of water, not since swimming lessons as a toddler. She has gone fishing, though, just one time with her uncle when she was a young child. Her uncle had guided her hands in casting the fishing line, then reeling when she felt it tug. The childish excitement, cheering and giggling that she'd caught a fish even before her uncle had, ended abruptly the moment she held fishing line in hand, a weakly flopping bass dripping lake water and watching her with its wide-eyed gaze. Meeting that creature's eyes, looking into its hunted expression, as though it knew her uncle planned to flay it open and unload its guts into the dirt beside their cooler, turned her stomach and gave young Sadie quite a crisis about death. She forced her uncle to unhook the poor creature, and felt rather proud for rescuing the fish from its fate of her own creation.

Despite his looming posture and stern voice, Shepherd reminds Sadie greatly of a struggling fish with a hook through its lip, the whites of his eyes flashing and the lines of his face drawn tight, expression gaunt and shadowed.

“None of my people could help with your technological issue,” he begins, and she breathes a sigh of relief. She’d hoped they wouldn’t want to check if her car was truly broken but was prepared to pull something free from beneath the hood and pray that would believably damage it. “Even if we had experience with such machinery, we’re far too busy preparing for the winter months to waste time on an outsider’s problems. We can offer you one of the uninhabited homes while you try to fix the issue yourself, but you will be expected to offer your labor in exchange.” He pauses, glancing her up and down, from her barely scuffed hiking boots to the frayed knees of her jeans to the cartoonish lynx sprawled above the words UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE on her sweatshirt. “We have no time to humor a little girl hanging onto our coattails. You might be better off hiking to the next town praying they’ll have more patience.”

Sadie listens, heart pounding. She can’t lose this opportunity, she tells herself. Certainly not to a man who has already passed judgement on her before she can even get a word out.

“Yessir,” she says through carefully un-gritted teeth, painfully formal, remembering Pruitt’s lessons on tact during interviews, “I would be happy to do my part around here, and I’m certainly capable of it. I grew up raising beef cattle, I’m not a stranger to a hard day of work. I appreciate your offer of a place to stay and I’ll try to get my vehicle working again on my own time.”

Shepherd holds her gaze for a long moment, the corner of his lips quirking in amusement. Without another word, his eyes flick towards the sky, tracking the moon’s location. “I’d say it’s about time for a nice meal, wouldn’t you agree?”

༝ ˚ ｡⋆ 𓇼 ⋆｡ ˚ ༝

Oh my gosh finally posting this!! I've had it done for a little while, then got scared that it didn't hold up to how happy I was with the first chapter, then decided it's literally a first draft that I'm making up as I go, so! Here it is lol, I'm excited to hear what you guys think! <3

Will have the part two of this chapter posted tomorrow :)

tag list (lmk if anyone would like to be added or removed!)

@megarywrites @at-thezenith @repressed-and-depressed @plasma-studios @wrenofthewords @pb-dot @communist-mariner @phantomnations @thelittlestspider @eurydicefades @inkingfireplace @silverslipstream @atreegrowss @i-rove-rock-n-roll @your-absent-father @borisyvain @ashfordlabs @digital-chance @boundedsea @kaze-writes

#so excited to hear your guys thoughts!!#writing #writeblr #creative writing #writer #original writing #excerpt #fiction #writeblr community #choking on sea salt #coastal gothic #gothic horror #horror #folk horror #sirens

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uvobreakmylegs · 3 years

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Prey

got a request for a monster!Uvo as well as a request for an Uvo fic where he chases the reader. hope it’s cool that I combined the two of them

@ramwrites and I are in agreement that werewolf is the best type of monster for Uvogin

werewolf!Uvogin

Warnings: death, blood, gore, body horror, little bit of smut, graphic depictions of violence, mentions of cannibalism, attempted suicide, implied kidnapping, reader does not have a good time

Thin rays of sun that were able to slip past the branches of the trees hit Uvo's back as he went about his work, placing another upright log on the now considerably worn down tree stump and bringing his axe down upon it, slicing the wood in two and tossing the pieces into the pile to his right before he grabbed another unchopped piece from the pile to the left. Based off of the sun's position in the sky, it was only a bit after midday. Uvogin had been going at this for a while now, his sweat staining the white tank he wore.

Though the sweating wasn't because the work was in any way debilitating. Any other day of the month Uvogin would've been able to chop the same amount and not even break a sweat.

No, today was different because of what was happening tonight: a full moon.

Even though the night was still a long ways off, Uvo could already feel the very beginnings of his transformation shuddering through him. Faint, but still noticable. Unfortunately, with the ever present fact that nightfall wouldn't come for hours yet, there was little he could to other than to keep himself busy and distract himself lest the anticipation kill him. So he continued to chopping the logs, even though the amount he had cut already was bordering on excessive.

In the midst of his distraction, his ears perked up when he heard the faint rumblings of a car engine. His senses of smell and hearing were always pretty good even when it wasn't close to a full moon, but those senses were ten times as sharp now, and he could clearly hear as the car came in closer and closer.

Whoever they were, they wouldn't be the first people to have approached him today. Already he'd been asked two different times for directions to the nearby campgrounds, the first time by an elderly couple who were likely well into retirement, and the second by a group of individuals who had also gotten lost. The woman from that group who went up to him told him more information than he'd needed to know, informing him of how theirs was a company sanctioned team-building retreat. She had a piece of gum in her mouth and smacked it loudly as she talked, and because of his sensitive hearing, the sound of it became distressing to the point that Uvo had to keep himself from clawing his ears off.

Everyone in that group deserved to die because of that woman alone.

Uvogin didn't stop what he was doing even when he heard the car drive past and then suddenly brake, just continuing as he was while he heard the sounds of a car door opening and someone stepping out. Words were being spoken; what was being said exactly he couldn't say, but based off of previous experience it was easy enough to guess.

The car door slammed shut and the engine rumbled again as the car began to drive further down the dirt road. It'd be back in a little bit – over that way was a dead end. But Uvogin quickly switched his focus to the footsteps he heard walking through the unmarked pathway and headed towards him.

“Excuse me?”

He heard your voice call out to him, and Uvo finally turned to face you. Upon making eye contact with him, you smiled and held up a map as you called out again “sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could help out with some directions? We're looking for the Visca lake campgrounds, but I think we've been going around in circles.”

You didn't come any closer when you said that, though it seemed to be more out of a desire to not intrude on his space as opposed to being nervous about the axe he was holding. There was a hopeful look in your eye, though you also seemed ready to apologize for bugging him if he instead told you to fuck off.

Already he knew he liked you much better than the bitch from earlier.

“Sure,” he replied.

Uvo set the axe down and walked towards you, his hand outstretched so you could hand him your map. You smiled and handed him the map without any hesitation, coming up beside him as he unfolded it and scanned the paper so he could give you an idea of what direction you needed to go. The height difference between the two of you meant that he needed to lean down a bit as he pointed out to you the appropriate road that would get you to your destination.

“The road to the campgrounds is here,” he told you.

Despite the way he had tried to accommodate the height difference, you still needed to stand on your toes to see where he was pointing. Your arm came up briefly before you swiftly pulled it back. Like you'd been tempted to place your hand on his forearm to better balance yourself but stopped yourself since the two of you were complete strangers. Though Uvo wouldn't have minded too much if you had done so. Taking advantage of the way you were right next to him, he inhaled, memorizing your scent for later.

Uvo then moved his finger towards the left as he continued “we're around this area, so you'll want to drive back the way you came and take the first right you see. Then you'll want to take another right to get onto the campground road. As long as you don't fuck up turning, you should get to the lake in about ten minutes. Maybe less.”

“Ah, okay!” you responded, taking back your map as you looked over the route he'd pointed out to you. As you were desperate to make sure you got his directions right so you wouldn't need to be in the embarrassing situation of messing up his instructions and needing to go back to him for further clarification, you didn't notice the way he was looking you over or how he inhaled more of your scent.

Your hair smelled of something flowery, some kind of hair product you must have used that morning before you drove out here. Your clothing also had a rather soapy smell, though it wasn't as noticeable as the product in your hair. Beneath all of that, he was able to take in your natural scent that was free of any products or chemicals, as well as... Perfume? An odd choice for a camping trip, he thought. Then another smell hit him, one that surrounded you but you were definitely not the source of.

Oh.

It was the unmistakable scent of another man.

The perfume made more sense now. You'd said 'we' earlier as well, so chances were you'd come here with a boyfriend for a romantic weekend getaway and his smell has just gotten all over you after spending several hours cooped up in a car with him.

Not terribly displeasing. A boyfriend being in the picture might make things a bit more interesting.

“Okay, I think I've got it,” you said, snapping him out of his thoughts, “sorry if I took up too much of your time.”

“No problem,” he answered, “I get a lotta people asking for directions, so I'm used to it.”

“Really? That sounds like it gets annoying. Why don't they put up signs or something?” you asked.

“They do,” Uvo said, “but they usually get taken down by vandals.”

More like self-righteous teenagers who'd found out the truth about him and couldn't stand the fact that the elders of the nearby town allowed Uvogin to do as he pleased and thought they could thwart his killing sprees by taking down the signs leading to the lake, like they could save any innocent vacationers if they weren't able to find the campgrounds. Those kids had yet to learn that if they managed to deprive Uvo of his prey, he'd be forced to go to their own town and hunt there, maybe snatch up one of them or their families. The older folk in charge of the town understood that, and they'd decided that it was better to let the occasional out of town stranger be his prey than risk him coming in and picking off whatever stragglers he could find in their community.

People vacationing in the wilderness died all the time, after all.

“Vandals?” you asked. There was the slightest bit of concern in your voice, and when your eyes went slightly wide as you looked at him, he couldn't help but muse at how cute you looked like that.

“Just dumb kids,” he explained, “there's a small town a little ways back and I reckon they don't have much to do around there.”

“Ah, I see. Do you think we'll need to worry about them bothering us?”

“Nah, they wouldn't do anything,” Uvo said, “besides, they know that I'm out here today, and they know better than to bug me.”

You laughed a bit at that, any deeper meaning to his words going over your head.

“I can't blame them. If I was one of them I'd be too scared to do anything to get on your bad side.”

Uvogin just smiled.

A voice then called at the top of the path, and you both looked to see a dark-haired man around your age standing there. He called out what Uvo assumed was your name, and you waved to him, calling out a short “coming!” before you turned back to Uvogin.

“Thank you again for your help. I really appreciate it,” you told him.

“Once again, not a problem. Hope you two have a good time.”

You smiled and nodded at him, and then began to walk back over to your boyfriend. But before you had the chance to bid him goodbye, Uvogin spoke again.

“You wanna know something that's not in any visitor's guides?” he asked.

“Huh?”

He grinned at your slightly confused expression as he explained “if you go down to the southern side of the lake, there are these really beautiful cliffs in the forest. A lot of clearings that show a pretty good view of the sky, too. And it's a full moon tonight; if you want to make some memories, you should check it out when it gets dark.”

Clearly intrigued, you turned back to face him, asking “really? Why isn't that part advertised?”

“The locals want to keep parts of the lake to themselves,” he said, “but I think it's something that you might appreciate.”

“You sure you won't get in trouble for telling me?”

“Not if you don't say anything,” said Uvo, raising an eyebrow as he smirked.

“Ah, gotcha,” you said. Behind you, your boyfriend was starting to look a bit suspicious, and his lips soon formed a frown. You weren't paying him any mind at the moment.

“What's your name?” you asked.

“Uvogin.”

You held out your hand as you introduced yourself, and he humored you by giving you a handshake.

“Thank you so much for everything,” you said, “maybe we'll see you again while we're here.”

“Maybe.”

With that, you finally turned and made your way to your awaiting boyfriend, who gave Uvo one last narrowed glance before he turned his attention to you as you eagerly pulled your map back out and began to tell him the directions that had been given to you. Your boyfriend only gave one more glance towards Uvogin before focusing his full attention on you, looking over the map with you before the two of you made your way back to the car. He seemed rather boring, Uvo thought to himself. Yet before you made it back in, you stepped up and kissed your boyfriend on the cheek. Uvo saw the way your boyfriend stiffened and the blush that reached his ears as he sat down in the driver's seat to escape your random but sweet action. You laughed as you entered through the passenger's side, and Uvo kept an eye on the two of you until he saw your small, light blue car pull away and drive down the road.

When the two of you were gone, Uvo went back to chopping wood, picking the axe back up and slicing the log into two even pieces. He didn't expect that anyone else would come blundering into the forest before evening, but if they did, he wouldn't pay them much mind. If he killed every single person who came in to enjoy the lake he would quickly lose that particular food source and then need to find another area to hunt.

No, the only ones that were on the table tonight were the company group and you and your boyfriend – he wouldn't bother hunting down that elderly couple as it wouldn't be interesting in the slightest to go after them. The larger group had a good number of people in it, so there would be no need to seek out anyone else. Honestly he shouldn't even bother with the two of you, but Uvo thought of you again, thinking over every action you had taken, from the way you had approached him to how you held out your hand when you introduced yourself.

The little bit of affection you had offered to your boyfriend also came to mind but he brushed that thought away. It was unimportant, he told himself.

No, he shouldn't bother with the two of you, but he wanted to see how your naive little expression might change when you saw him next, after the moonlight had transformed him, and hear how you might scream and cry as he hunted you down.

He grinned at the thought, and when his axe came down again, it sliced the log and the stump beneath it clean through.

The true beginnings of his change had started hours ago when the sun sank past the horizon and the moon slowly rose in the night sky. Just little things, like the way his teeth began to shift in his mouth, or how the black tips of his claws were starting to show beneath his fingernails, slowly pushing up beneath the nails and trying to force themselves out so he could have an easier time tearing apart whatever unfortunate victim happened to be closest to him.

His skin was starting to shift a bit in places as well as it began to detach from the muscle beneath, and he was hit with an overwhelming urge to run outside and allow his transformation to complete so he could go wild as he always did on a full moon night.

But he waited, forcing himself to focus on the fire that was burning before him, to wait until it had gone out completely before he stepped foot out of his cabin.

It had turned into something of a ritual for him; when he had started it he could no longer remember. It was purely ceremonial, and at the heart of it he knew that it did nothing to add to his hunt, but after being alone in the woods for so long he supposed he was entitled to a bit of superstition. And at this point, it would have felt wrong to do it any other way. When the fire went out, the moon would be at the highest point in the sky, and when he left the dark cabin and bared himself to the moonlight, his werewolf form would tear through and he would track down the victims he had met earlier in the day, the ones whose scents he had remembered after he'd chosen them for his prey. Didn't matter much in what order he got them, just whatever scent he came across first.

Although maybe tonight it mattered a little bit. If he could manage it, Uvogin wanted you to be the last one to die tonight. After the group from the company retreat and your bland looking boyfriend, he'd hoped he could then have you for last. Something about that made him feel like that would be the only appropriate ending to the night.

But that all depended if he could manage to remember that after he'd transformed.

The light of the fire was growing more dim, and he was having a harder time sitting still, his entire body itching to burst through the cabin door and let the moonlight take him.

Not yet, he told himself.

But soon.

Those black claws were showing a bit more now, and at least two of his fingernails had popped off, blood coating his fingertips as his hands clenched onto the skin of his legs. That same skin shifted once more as he did so, and after a few moments he felt something trickling down his thigh, and when he glanced down he could see in the faint glimmer of firelight the hole in his skin that he'd torn open, and the dark fur beneath the human flesh that was still covered and the blood dripping down his leg.

Not yet not yet not yet

A few more agonizing minutes later that had seemed endless in his mind, and finally the fire he'd begun earlier was reduced to a smoulder, the flames dying out and the wood glowing red as the fire reached the end of its life.

Now

No sooner had he thought that Uvogin had thrown open the cabin door and ran out into the woods that surrounded him, bare as he gazed up at the full moon as he allowed himself the moment that he'd been holding off on.

There were multiple changes simultaneously and Uvogin was barely able to comprehend all of what was happening to him because of it. There was always a pain that accompanied his transformation, and while it was a pain that he was used to at this point, it was pain nonetheless.

At the sight of the moon his green eyes turned yellow and his pupils narrowed into slits, while the bones in his body began to shift and grow. It started with his spine, extending and pushing out through his skin and almost causing a ripple effect through his whole body. His bones were snapping and stretching beneath his skin, growing as his muscles were expanding and making him into even more of a giant than he already was. Claws on his hands and feet tore through the flesh that surrounded them as those parts of him extended, the skin ripping open and allowing more of the fur that was hidden underneath to show through.

When he felt the flesh around his shoulders stretch out in an attempt to accommodate the transformation he sped up the process by reaching up and tearing it away with his own fingers, the black claws easily ripping in and pulling the skin away like a latex glove. Soon the skin that had been on his arms sat around him in pieces on the grass and he began the same process with his chest and legs, tearing away his flesh in messy strips and allowing the fur that had formed on his body to be exposed, matted with blood and looking almost black in the light of the moon.

His skull went through the same process as the rest of his body, and he felt his face crack into several different pieces before the bones began to remold themselves and pushed outward, taking the shape of a wolf's muzzle while his teeth extended and shifted to fit properly in his newly formed mouth. When his ears began twisting and pushing upwards into sharp points was when he tore at the skin on his face, pulling it off as he had done with the rest and throwing it to the forest floor.

When the last of his human flesh had been removed, his transformation was complete. The man who had stepped out of that cabin was gone and replaced with a large, bipedal wolf whose yellow eyes dilated as he looked up once more to the moon. Lifting his head up, he arched his back as he let out a howl loud enough that echoed through the woods and across the surface of the lake. Those that heard it in the nearby town quietly whispered their prayers to whichever gods they worshiped while those who were visiting the lake's campsite merely marveled at the sound.

If Uvo was in a different mindset he might have thought of you in that moment, and what you might be thinking when you heard him. If you had any clue of the danger you were in.

But in this moment, there was no thought of you or even saving you for last as he had tried to so hard to ingrain into himself. There was no thought of doing this in any order or trying to end the night correctly as he had mused about earlier.

The only thing going through Uvogin's mind was the need to kill.

As luck would have it, he'd managed to kill the ones from that company first.

There had been more of them. More that were wandering around their campsite, more that were talking amongst themselves, and in general just making more noise that, combined with their scents from earlier, allowed him to find them first.

There were actually more of them in that group than he'd anticipated, and as he killed off the last woman in the group, gum falling from her mouth as he twisted her head completely around. Uvo then looked around at the carnage he'd left in his wake. It was hard to tell with the way they were all in pieces now, but the number of people group had easily been in the double digits. That would probably cause a bit of trouble, as it would be hard to try and cover this up. This would easily make the news. Annoying, as Uvo would need to make sure to lay low for a bit, and it could possibly lower the amount of potential victims in the area when the next full moon came.

But it had still been worth it.

Uvogin felt more like himself again now that the murderous urges had been sated. Able to think a bit more clearly, more rationally. And he was able to remember you and what he'd hoped for early on. He could imagine it: your scared expression as you watched him kill your boyfriend before he slaughtered you like the rest, your screams cutting short as he bit into the skin of your neck and tore out your throat.

Now that his hunger was taken care of, he left the campsite of the now-dead group. Right now all he wanted was to find you and your boyfriend.

Remembering what he had told you of the southern side of the lake, he took a gamble as he headed off in that direction, making his way through the woods at speeds much faster than a regular human would be capable of. He stopped when he felt the wind blowing again, and lifted his nose in the air, trying to see if he catch anything.

….. There

It was faint. Very faint, but he managed to catch a familiar human scent.

He turned and headed off in your direction. It was too far away to get your exact location, but it was enough that he could get at least an idea of where you were.

Continuing towards the south side of the lake, he stayed close to the shoreline until he found your little blue car from earlier parked close to the lake, a tent set up not too far off from it. Your scent became a bit more clear as he came closer, and yet when stopped to scan the area, his eyes looking for the slightest bit of movement and his ears straining to hear any bit of noise, he couldn't find you.

A bit annoying, but based off of the way the two of you had left things, you should still be in the area. It was just a matter of hunting you down.

Uvo stalked about the campsite, just in case he missed something while also puncturing two of the tires on your car and cutting off that potential escape route. Satisfied that neither of you were on the site or next to the water, he walked back into the woods, following after the little bits of that fragrance he'd latched onto.

As he walked, he thought to himself with some amusement that you'd actually taken up his suggestion. Uvogin had found that most people didn't bother, either because they were too dedicated to the plans they'd made before arriving or because they didn't trust that the landscape was as beautiful as he'd made it out to be. In fairness, it mostly all looked the same to him, but there had just been something about that particular bit of campground that made him enjoy hunting there more. So it was even more perfect that the two of you had ended up there. Most likely you were just doing what you felt like and didn't feel like adhering to any particular schedule.

His ears perked up as he heard a low voice in the distance. Not yours. Probably your boyfriend, then. Focusing himself so he could move silently, Uvogin weaved through the trees, his eyes searching for you while he listened for more noise from either of you.

When he heard your voice next, he had definitely gotten closer. Your voice had sounded odd, though. Almost breathless.

He found the two of you in a larger clearing that stood beneath one of the cliffs he had spoken of. You were laying with your back on the grass, dressed in a swimsuit with only a shirt over it. Your boyfriend was in a similar state with the moonlight falling onto his bare back, and it looked like both of you were a bit wet, some drops of water still on your skin and hair still damp. So the two of you had gone swimming before you wandered over to this area to mess around.

You said something to him before the two of you shared a kiss, and you moaned into it when he slipped his hand under your shirt to grab at your chest.

It certainly wasn't the first time Uvo had come across a pair of lovers in the woods. Such encounters usually ended with one or both betraying the other, as several times in the past one would push the other into Uvo's path in an attempt to save themselves after having a passionate make-out session only moments before.

Uvogin stepped out from the treeline and waited for one of you to notice him. You let out another moan, and to him it sounded like it was slightly exaggerated. Was your boyfriend not that good? Not too surprising, based off of Uvo's impression of him.

If Uvo had been the man on top of you, he was certain he could do much better.

….. Where did that come from?

Uvo didn't get much time to wonder about that as he heard you let out a sharp gasp, and when his eyes refocused on you, he saw that you were looking right at him. Your eyes were wide and your skin paled as you stiffened, your hands grasping at your boyfriend's arms.

“What's wrong?” your boyfriend asked when he noticed your reaction.

Keeping your eyes on Uvogin, you answered him in a small whisper “there's something over there.”

Your boyfriend turned his head to where you were looking, and he went stiff as well when he saw Uvogin's werewolf form.

It was quiet in that clearing, free of any noises from any woodland animals or even the insects, as anything that was in that immediate area sensed the danger and were desperate to keep silent. No, the only sound Uvo could hear was your breathing that became more panicked as you struggled to keep it under control and the way your boyfriend tried to shush you while he broke out into a cold sweat. You two were both under the impression to stay still and not make any sudden movements for fear of provoking him.

Then your boyfriend whispered your name.

“When I move,” he breathed out, “I want you to run back to the car and get out of here. Even if I'm not with you, you have to take the car and leave.”

As he spoke, your boyfriend slowly moved his hand over to a pack beside you that Uvo hadn't noticed at first. Still, Uvo grinned. He thought he could take him on?

You tried to protest but your boyfriend wasn't hearing it, only repeating his instructions to you and trying to make you promise that you would do as he said. You didn't want to; that was clear, but when you looked back over to Uvogin's form outside the treeline, you shuddered once more and agreed to leave with a short nod.

Uvogin waited for the boyfriend to make his move. He looked just as terrified as you were, but he was clearly trying to be brave for your sake, and his resolve seemed to steel when he got a hold of whatever he had been searching for in the pack.

“Now!”

Your boyfriend yelled as he shot up and charged at Uvo. For the first time since seeing him, Uvogin felt mildly impressed with your boyfriend; he'd been genuine about wanting to save you over himself. Not like he wouldn't still die for it as he was still incredibly weak, but there was something to be said about the willingness he had to face down a beast like Uvo for your sake.

You must be something special to make a man go that far for you.

The thing your boyfriend had pulled out turned out to be a can of bear spray as well as a medium-sized hunting knife. Uvo managed to doge the stream that had been aimed at him easily on account of how badly the hand that held it had been shaking. The boyfriend ran back a bit, unwilling to get too close to Uvogin even with the knife. He tried to aim it again, but Uvo used his claws to slice at him, slashing upwards as he aimed for his throat.

Somehow, he missed the boyfriend's throat and only managed to hit the side of his face, opening up his cheek and taking off his ear. The boyfriend cried out at that, one hand going up to his bleeding cheek while still trying to incapacitate Uvo with the bear spray. But with the way he stumbled about, it was almost too easy for Uvogin to grab him by his face and hurl him into the trunk of a nearby tree. He hit headfirst, and there was an audible cracking sound that came from the impact. Uvogin didn't even bother to watch the way his body hit the ground, experience telling him that he was definitely dead.

Uvogin was much more interested in you.

You were still in the clearing. At first you had done as your boyfriend had told you and bolted the second he yelled, running back to your campsite. But you stopped and turned back when you heard him cry out when Uvo had slashed at him. You wanted to help him but you also knew there was nothing you could do, and so you were left standing in the clearing, your whole body shaking as you struggled with the decision to stay or leave your boyfriend behind.

It was cute how loyal you were to him.

And loyalty certainly wasn't a bad quality.

When you saw your boyfriend die you froze, tears streaming down your face as you looked between the now dead man and the thing that had murdered him. You were clearly in a panic, your legs trembling as your brain struggled to figure out what to do, where to go from here. Certainly you had to be aware that you'd lost any chance of getting away like you'd been told to do, right?

Apparently not, as when Uvogin stepped forward you bolted, running back towards the camp. Yet Uvo found a sense of relief with that, that you wouldn't just sit there and let him kill you and end it so early.

For whatever reason, that last thought displeased him.

But he brushed that away as he chased after you only moments later, not bothering to be quiet with his movements and instead being as loud as possible, breaking apart any low-hanging branches in his wake as he howled into the night air once again.

You had only made it a little ways past the car when he emerged from the forest and lunged towards you. It seemed like you were trying to get away on foot given the damage to the car. Already there was a scent of blood in your wake, as the soles of your feet had already been cut up on the sharp debris of the forest floor.

You turned towards him just in time to see him raising his clawed hand over his head before he sliced it downwards. Through what must have been some bit of luck, you stumbled backwards at that moment and all he managed to do was give you a flesh wound.

You hit the surface of the gravel road hard, crying out in pain at the force of your fall as well as the cuts that were on your arm, your hand immediately grasping at your wound as you desperately tried to use your legs to get yourself off of the ground.

Then he was on top of you.

He opened his jaws wide; you saw as he did so, and attempted to crawl out from under him.

He snapped his jaws shut on your throat.

And you went stiff.

It was quiet for a few moments.

And then a small rush of air escaped from your mouth as you let out a breath you had been holding.

Almost.

He had almost killed you in that moment.

The pointed tips of his teeth were pressing lightly into your skin, not quite hard enough to make you bleed, but that would change if you shifted your neck just slightly.

Why had he stopped?

He stayed there, hunched over you, his arms caging you in while his maw was around your throat. He felt the pulse in your neck beating wildly, almost causing vibrations against his teeth. You had stopped struggling, your legs still while you continued to clutch at your wounded arm, the only noises coming from you now being your uneven breathing.

What was he doing?

His yellow eye glanced over to your face, and he found that you weren't even looking at him. You were gazing in the direction of the night sky, where the light of the moon shown down on you like a spotlight, but it didn't even seem like you were even looking at that. Your eyes were wide as you breathed hard, and Uvo had to wonder if you were currently seeing your life flash before your eyes. That perhaps your mind had accepted that this was the end of your life and was remembering as much as you could before Uvogin would sink in his teeth and sever those major arteries in your neck.

Were you satisfied with all that you had accomplished up to this point, or were you disappointed and felt that you should have done more?

Moments passed like that, his hulking form engulfing yours with no movement from either of you. He took in a deep breath, and he once again caught some of the flowery smell of your shampoo, though it had largely faded by now, and you smelled much more like the woods after the hours you had spent there. More like pine and tree leaves, and the fresh water of the lake, and....

Uvogin let out a short grunt that made you whimper and you clenched your eyes shut as you believed this to be the end. You had no clue that Uvo could smell your arousal coming from between your legs. It had come from the way you'd been fooling around with your boyfriend earlier – there was no way you could have been turned on by this.

Uvo thought again of what he had seen when he stumbled upon the two of you, and that odd thought that had interjected at one point. You had been on his mind almost all day, and he thought it was because he wanted to kill you. And now you were beneath him and the moment couldn't have been more right, and yet now that was the last thing he wanted to do.

It hit him then. The different urge he'd had about you since he had seen you earlier in the day, since he had seen the way you treated your boyfriend; the way you had kissed that man had stuck out in his mind. Hardly any different than any other couple he had seen who were too big on PDA, yet combined with the way you had first come up to him, had smiled and thanked him, and introduced yourself so willingly while also asking for his name had made all of the difference in the world.

His days in the woods were lonely. It was something Uvo was well aware of but had thought he could handle, and he had done so for several years now without issue. But now that he knew you, with your actions and your touch and even the sweet scent of your arousal that he wished more and more that he had been the cause of, another second of being alone sounded more like torture.

Still, the biggest reason he had stayed on his own for so long was that he had accepted that there would be few in this world who would be alright with spending the rest of their lives with a man-eating monster. And any that he may have wanted to keep alive despite that probably wouldn't have been worth the trouble. Keeping someone else with him would also mean he would need to put in the effort to keep them alive, and if he had them unwillingly he'd need to make sure they wouldn't be able to get away, either by restraining them or locking them up.

He watched you, watched the way your face stayed scrunched up as you waited for him to finish it. He wanted you, but were you worth the trouble?

When Uvogin pulled off of your neck and sat back up, you meekly opened your eyes in confusion and trying to anticipate what horrible thing he would do to you next. You yelped when he grabbed you by the back of your shirt as he stood, pulling you up to your feet and setting you in front of him. With one hand on your shoulder and one on your hip, he turned you so you were facing away from him, making sure you were steady on your feet.

He leaned down so his maw was right next to your ear, and in a voice that sounded more animal than human, he growled out a single word:

“Run.”

With that he pushed you forward. You stumbled a bit, your brain still processing what he had said as you barely took a few steps away from him. Then, like a lightning bolt had hit you, you finally seemed to understand as you snapped back and made a beeline for the woods. Your bare feet were loud on the cluttered forest floor, and he occasionally heard little gasps and soft whimpers of pain when you cut your foot open further on a rock or a sharp branch.

Uvo waited, wanting to give you a good head start before he began to chase after you. It would be easy to track you, especially with how much you were bleeding now, but he shuddered with barely contained excitement, eager to chase you down but knowing that he needed to give you a decent head start or else it would be over too quickly.

If you proved yourself worthy of keeping alive, then he'd take you back to his cabin.

And he really hoped you wouldn't let him down.

…. But then something felt wrong.

Uvogin's eyes narrowed as he sensed that you were still within the immediate area and not moving away from him as he had expected. The direction you had gone in was the same one the both of you had come from; the patch of woods and the clearing where he'd found you in the pathway. There wasn't anything there that you could have fallen over or gotten stuck on, so why....

A new thought occurred to him, and Uvo growled lowly to himself as he hoped he wouldn't see what he felt he might when he found you next.

You were back in that clearing, sitting next to your boyfriend's fallen body. Your body was facing the direction Uvo had arrived from, both of your hands in front of you as looked down at your now former lover. There were tears rolling down your cheeks as you sat there.

A wave of disgust hit Uvogin as he found he was correct and was thoroughly disappointed with your actions. He'd given you a chance to get away and you'd wasted it by sitting around crying. Clearly he had given you too much credit.

You heard him as he began to walk towards you, and he noted the way your hands slipped beneath your boyfriend's slightly upturned body, your head still downcast.

He stood across from you, letting out a huff that made you flinch. But still, you didn't move from that spot.

As he opened his jaws your head shot up and you lifted your hands from beneath the body.

Just as you did so, something sprayed into his nose, eyes and his open mouth. Something that stung and made him gag. Fuck it burned, and Uvogin let out a howl of pain as he clutched at his face.

The bear spray-!

Something sharp then dug into the flesh beneath his collarbone, and the pain from the bitter spray was accompanied by the sensation of a knife blade stabbing into him.

With another howl as he was now blinded, he swiped a hand in your general direction and heard you yelp as he simultaneously clawed your shoulder and forced you to the ground. With his hearing now being his greatest sense, he managed to pick up the clatter the bear spray can made as the force of his blow made you drop it, and he moved one of his feet to stomp at it, crushing it and making it useless.

Uvo roared again as he swung about wildly, trying to catch you once more, but you managed to avoid his attacks and made your way into the woods again as he heard your labored breathing and footsteps growing fainter and fainter.

He clutched at his face as he tried to make himself calm down, trying to will away the pain and regain his sense of sight and smell.

…. Not bad.

Even with the rage he had felt in the moment, he found himself relieved, almost happy that you had caught him off-guard. You had gone as far as to use your boyfriend's body as a prop, to make him think that you were too broken up about his death so he would lower his guard. Had you been a bit taller, you could have done a decent amount of damage if you'd managed to stab the knife into his throat.

The knife was still in him, he realized, and after regaining a little bit of his sight in his left eye, he easily pulled it out and threw it across the way.

Now you had no weapons, but he was also at a disadvantage as his eyes were still watering and he could no longer smell you as clearly, the harsh chemicals of the spray making him internally wince every time he breathed through his nose. If he wanted to catch you, he would need to rely almost entirely on his hearing to search for you.

The sounds you were making were quite distant now, but he grinned to himself and stayed there a while longer, letting you get further away.

The direction you were going had no civilization, there was only forest for miles, and he was happy to let you get yourself more and more lost if it meant that his hunt would continue.

By the time dawn was nearing, signaled by the sickly pale color the sky had turned to, Uvogin had managed to chase you further into the wilderness, up through the trees and near the edge of a cliff face. Throughout the night there had been times where you had slowed or stopped completely as you tried to regain your strength, taking advantage of your smaller size and slipping into places that he couldn't easily get to. You also had several brief spurts of energy where you had sped up suddenly, more determined than ever to get away from him while you threw various stones and branches back towards him, though you never tried anything else as bold as you had with your trick from earlier as you didn't allow him to get that close again.

But as you stumbled to the edge of the cliff and looked at the steep drop before you, it was clear to him that your fight was gone. He knew it even before you fell to your knees on the sharp rock. The chase had ended, and just in time, as daylight would be here soon, and when that came he would revert back to his human form.

It had been one of the most memorable hunts he'd had in years, and even though your will had been broken in the process, by now he was certain that he wanted to keep you. To have a little partner in his solitary life, someone to keep his bed warm and wait for him to return home in the evenings. The scenario was nice to think about, and he especially liked the idea of you cuddling up to him during the colder months of the year, trying to keep yourself warm with his body heat to fight the chilly air that would sneak inside. Maybe eventually he'd get you to give him sweet tokens of affection like you'd given to your boyfriend, perhaps a kiss on the cheek before he went out to hunt.

And maybe every once in a while, if you were still insistent on putting up a fight, Uvo might let you out during a full moon and make you think you had a chance to escape, just so he could hunt you down and drag you back to his little home in the woods.

The thought of it gave him chills, and he wondered how long he would need to wait before he could let you out.

You were lightly swaying in place as you looked to the ground below while Uvo was consumed in the thoughts he had about you. He assumed that you were just waiting for him to finish it – your willpower was dried up, and there was no way you would try to run around him or do anything as stupid as try to climb down the cliff face.

He had no clue where your thoughts had taken you in that moment.

Realization shot through him when he saw your shoulders sag and your body began to fall forward over the edge.

Uvo rushed forward and grabbed you by your shoulder before you fell off and he threw you back, a good distance further and far rougher than he had been intending, as you wailed weakly when you hit the ground.

If you were willing to kill yourself to escape him, he'd need to wait some time before letting you run about the woods again.

By now, you were covered in dirt and blood and whatever else had stuck to you from the forest while you had run from him. Your skin was covered in cuts that he and the forest had given you and it would likely be some time before you would be able to properly walk again based off of the state of your feet. When he approached you once more, you clenched your eyes shut again. By now you were past the point of tears and just waited for him to finish you off.

You jolted at the feeling of his fur brushing against your skin when straddled you once more, but just as before, the killing blow you were expecting never came. You opened one eye, and just as you did so, the first rays of the sun shone over the landscape beyond and hit Uvogin.

You watched in silent horror as the fur that covered him caught on fire and began to burn. He was briefly consumed by the flames before they vanished into puffs of smoke. His bones were snapping again, breaking into pieces and retracting back into their normal size while his muscles and skin rippled and shrunk back down, tightening around his fingers as the claws also retracted and vanished beneath the skin. As his wolf face broke apart and reformed, there was a look of shock in your eyes as you saw the beast on top of you become more and more human. And that shock soon turned into a realization when you found that you recognized the man who was on top of you.

His transformation back to his human form was over in a matter of seconds, and when it was over and his green eyes looked back down at you, you stuttered as you tried to find your voice.

“U-Uvogin?” you asked weakly.

He grinned, pleased that you had remembered his name.

Without another word, Uvo leaned down over you so he could begin the process of properly claiming you as his.

#reader insert #uvo x reader #Uvogin #hxh uvogin #yandere #yandere hxh #yandere x reader #yandere hunter x hunter #yandere uvogin #monster #uvogin x reader

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jjmaybanksbaby · 3 years

Text

Leaving Paradise: Part 4 | JJ x Reader

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

summary - your vacation in the outer banks is quickly coming to an end but that means saying goodbye to jj

word count - 1.1k words

a/n - so "later this week" in june might have turned into april 20201 but here is the fourth (and final) part of leaving paradise! sorry for the wait! enjoy the ending!

check out my masterlist here!

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JJ docked HMS Pogue as the rain continued to pour down around you. He jumped out of the boat, quickly securing it as the waves from the storm rocked it back and forth, threatening to throw you into the water with every movement.

JJ looked up at you, using his hand to shield his eyes from the rain.

"It's just up here," he yelled to you. He held out his hand and you grabbed it, climbing out of the boat and running up the dock toward the house.

The rain coming down was surprisingly cold for summertime but the adrenaline coursing through you kept you warm enough.

A small house came into view at the top of the hill.

"Welcome to the chateau," JJ shouted over the sound of the rain. "The twinkie's not here so John B's probably at the Cameron's."

"The what?" You asked, confused.

"It's this old Volkswagen van John B drives," JJ replied.

He ran up the porch steps, pulling you inside behind him. Heavy breathing and bits of thunder filled the air as the two of you finally took shelter from the storm picking up around you.

"Oh my god," you laughed. "I'm shocking wet."

JJ's blue eyes locked with yours for a moment and then he was closing the distance between of you. His lips landed on yours with a sense of urgency. He forced you backward, pinning you against the wall as he kissed you. Your head was spinning.

You wrapped your arms around JJ's neck leaning into the kiss with a growing need. This was a different version of JJ than the one that had kissed you yesterday at the cliffs or earlier today, lazily on the boat. The tension between the two of you was electric and feverish as if you both knew that this was exactly where the day had been leading.

You could feel the rainwater dripping off the both of you leaving puddles on the floor but you couldn't care less. JJ's hand left little sparks on your skin as they moved across your body. His fingers ghosted over your chest and then the hem of your bikini bottoms. You tell just how badly he wanted you out of them.

You reached to pull his soaked shirt over his head as he moved his mouth down to his kiss your neck.

"JJ," you whispered into his ear. "I want to..." You didn't even have to say the rest. JJ knew exactly what you mean.

His eyes came up to meet yours. "You sure? Cause I fucking really want. But only if you're sure."

"A hundred percent sure." You replied and JJ's laced his finger withs yours pulling you into the bedroom he'd claimed as his long ago.

...

Your ringing tone pulled you out of sleep. You lifted your head off JJ's chest and rubbed your eyes as your phone continued to beep in the back. You picked it up off the bedside table where you had left it last night.

You left out another yawn and JJ shifted next to you, still mostly asleep.

The screen lit up as another text came through. This was from your sister.

8:15 a.m. Where are you?

8:45 a.m. y/n?

8:47 a.m. ???

9:22 a.m. Mom is so mad.

9:22 a.m. Dad's threatening to leave for the airport without you.

Your eyes flew across the screen, reading the messages. There were another three from your mom.

12:21 a.m. Please be home by 2

7:45 a.m. WHERE ARE YOU Y/N

8:15 a.m. You have half an hour to get home.

Shit, shit shit. You thought. Your flight was supposed to leave at 11 and you were naked in a bed with a boy you'd know for three days. You closed your eyes and took in a deep breath to steady yourself. What had you been thinking?

You needed to get back to the vacation house. You had to pack and leave. You couldn't be here.

You jumped out of the bed and JJ groaned at the sudden movements.

"JJ," you hissed pulling on his shirt that was laying on the floor. "JJ, I have to go. I have a flight." You searched the room frantically for your swimsuit but couldn't find your top.

Fuck it, you thought. I'll have to go without it.

JJ hadn't moved from the bed.

"You have to take me back. JJ, please get up." You could feel tears collecting in your eyes but you weren't sure if it was anger or sadness or fear of what consequences your parents might hand out. You turned away from him and whipped them away before he could see.

"I don't think John B's back so we'll have to take my bike." You heard JJ say as he finally dragged himself out of bed.

"Okay, that's fine." You walked out of the bedroom without looking at him.

You grabbed your bag off the floor near the front door and walked outside. JJ appeared next to you moments later.

"Hey," he started. "You're not regretting that we like..."

"Sleep together?" You finished.

"Yeah," he replied. Neither of you dared to make eye contact. JJ ran a hand through his blonde hair nervously.

"No, JJ." You paused. You didn't regret it at all. In fact, you wished the night had never had to end. You wished you could have spent the rest of the summer here with JJ. "I just have a flight to catch." You finished.

"Oh, okay. Let's go then."

You climbed onto the bike, settling comfortably behind him. You rested your head on his back as he drove away from the chateau and every bit of magic the last three days had been.

...

JJ slowed the bike a few houses down from the one you were staying in. You could see your parents loading the car up in the driveway.

You wanted to kiss JJ goodbye and find the words to tell him what the last three days had meant to you. How every time he kissed you, it stirred this feeling inside of you that you couldn't name but you longed to never stop feeling. How you wanted to be a part of his life because being with him felt like living. You wanted JJ to turn the bike around and hide out with him in the chateau until your parents sent the FBI to drag you home.

But you could feel your parents glaring at you, their speeches about responsibility and maturity on the tip of their youngest.

You silently climbed off the bike, giving JJ’s arm a little squeeze

"Thank you." You whispered, afraid that if you said it any louder the tears would start rolling down your cheeks.

“See you around.” He replied.

You couldn't stop a laugh from escaping you. “Probably not.” You said.

“Yeah, probably not.” He smiled as you turned around and began to walk to your driveway.

“We already packed your stuff,” your mom said, not even trying to keep the anger rout of her voice.

“In the car. We're gonna be late.” Your dad added.

Your sister gave you sympathetic smile as you slide into the seat next to her.

Your dad slammed the trunk and settled behind the wheel, keeping his eyes on you in the rear-view mirror the whole time. He started the engine, backed out the driveway, and the four of you drove off.

You knew if you turned around you’d be able to see JJ one more time, see his smile and his face one more time. JJ kept his eyes glued to the car willing you to look back.

But you never did.

...

A few months later, when JJ dropped his lighter under the bed and went searching for it, he would find your missing swimsuit top and realize just much how those three days had meant to him too.

—————————————————————————— a/n - Anddddd that's the end of this series. I hope you're feeling unsatisfyingly satisfied. And who knows maybe y/n ends up going to UNC where Pope also gets a scholarship too and you run into JJ one weekend he's there to see Pope. Who can say?

tag list! @shawnssongs @http-cherries @spilledtee @bxthharmon@tangledinsparkles @jj-maybabe @sagittarianwolf

#outer banks #obx #outer banks netflix #obx netflix #jj #jj maybank #outer banks jj maybank #obx jj maybank #jj maybank angst #jj maybank fanfiction #jj maybank fanfic #outer banks fanfiction #obx fanfic #outer banks series #leaving paradise #jj maybank x y/n #jj maybank x reader

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runrundoyourstuff · 3 years

Text

Seasons

(A Steven Universe Fic, 2632 words)

Written with love for a holiday exchange with the wonderful @mimik-u !

Prompt: Steven teaches one of the Diamonds about something beautifully mundane (a la Peridot learning about rain.)

It’s almost comical how the Dondai pales in size when compared to the Arm Ship—and the magnitude of the difference only grows as Steven descends the ridge. There are some items, both of human and Gem origin, that seemed larger when he was smaller—when he was younger—when everything mysterious in the world, every new thing he learned about himself, filled him with wonder. The Diamond ships, however, are not among these items. They’re as large now as they always seemed to him, if not quite as foreboding. As are the Diamonds themselves, and he is reminded of this, as Yellow disembarks from her spacecraft.

She doesn’t see him right away. Or if she does notice the car, she doesn’t have the frame of reference to recognize it as his, and even after he parks it beside the ship and gets out, it’s several moments before she turns around and acknowledges him standing there.

“Steven!”

“Hey, Yellow.”

“When I called, I hadn’t realized…” She sputters. “Your...your family returned my message to inform me that you were leaving on a conquest—”

“A conquest?”

“Yes, they said that you were going to travel—”

“Yeah, but not on a conquest!”

“Of course, of course, a scouting mission, then—”

“No! Nothing like that! Just a trip! I just...needed to hit the road for a while. Figure out what’s next.”

“I...right, of course. Your—I mean, the Pearl said that you would be taking a hiatus from your Diamond duties…”

At this, Steven chuckles. “Pearl wants me to.” But then he becomes serious. “I shouldn’t laugh. She’s trying to make sure that I take care of myself. She—all of them really, want to make sure I know that I don’t have to be involved in any Gem stuff if I don’t want to. That it’s my choice. And ya know, it’s true that I don’t want it to be my whole life, not like it was when I was a kid. And because there’s no hierarchy anymore, I do want to give other Gems a chance to manage things on Earth if they want to—to show them it doesn’t always have to be a Diamond, and I’m not a Diamond anyway—but I do want to be involved, ya know? Or at least know what’s going on! I put so much work into everything, and not all of it was bad. I was really proud of a lot of what we did, and the Gems are my family…” A pause. “Anyway, that’s all to say that I routed some of the messages from the Base to my phone.”

“I see. I…” She pauses. “I didn’t intend...You did not need to come. I merely called because I didn’t want to catch you off guard. Give your...our...Given my history, I thought if I showed up on your planet unannounced—”

“It’s not my planet.”

“No, of course not. I meant the planet on which you reside. I’ve already...I did not intend to make you feel that…that you needed to come fix—”

Steven raises a hand. “I know. I just happened to be in the area, so I thought I’d stop by. Say hi.”

“Ah. Alright.” The silence resounds. Yellow’s eyes flit away.

“So,” Steven says after a moment—looking for something, anything, to cut through the quiet. “Why Zona?”

“Is that what this place is called?” Yellow glances around. “I needed an area of the Earth where I would cause the least disruptions, where I could dig a sufficiently large hole such that I could access the Cluster. I initially planned on going to one of the Kindergartens, as we’d already irrevocably destroyed all hope of organic life thriving there—I thought I could minimize the destruction. But each already has a fairly extensive subterranean framework that makes it impossible for me to dig deep enough.” She sighs. “I realize this place isn’t perfect. My digging will certainly disrupt some of the plant life. But it appeared at least that there were few humans in the vicinity…”

“Mm.” Steven leads against the hood of his car. “I’m surprised you brought your ship out here and didn’t just Warp. We’re not that far from the Beta Kindergarten, and there’s a Warp there...”

“Those Warps weren’t built for us. We’re much too large.”

“I guess that’s true, but you could always shapeshift.”

“Hmm. I suppose. But there was also the equipment to bring.”

“Equipment?”

“Yes, I...There are...billions of shards in the Cluster. I figured...if I am going to dismantle it and reconstruct each of the Gems whose shards it conatiend, it would likely be easier for me to do it on Earth, rather than bringing all the Shards back to Homeworld. I don’t want to risk losing any of them or damaging any of them even further in transit…And while I may need to ultimately to transport some of them back to Homeworld to locate all the pieces, and though it may be disconcerting for the other Gems to reform on Earth...I…” She leaves the syllable hanging in the air, turns her head away. Steven can just barely make out her tense jaw as though she is gritting her teeth. Sparks radiate from her skin.

“Yellow? Are you...okay?”

“I’m fine!” But then she bows her head, inhales and releases, murmurs: “I apologize, Steven. I am not angry with you. I simply…It has been difficult enough for me to face each of the Gems I have reconstructed on Homeworld. Once they recover from the shock and the terror, they have each looked at me with such disdain. And those Fusion experiments, while they were certainly terrible, pale in comparison to the Cluster. I can only imagine what each of the Gem’s contained within it will feel. And I will deserve it. I hurt so many Gems in the service of the Empire.”

Steven opens his mouth to respond, but before he can, Yellow continues, speaking ever rapidly, ever louder, as though desperate to expel the words. “Do not try to assuage my guilty conscience! That...is not your responsibility. I shouldn’t have just put you in a position to think that it was.”

Another tentative backpedaling, Steven thinks. A walking on eggshells moment, like he’s witnessed with the Gems and Dad over the past several months. And difficult though it is for him to sometimes believe, it’s not as though Yellow is wrong, at least not if he trusts his therapist. But there is a distant look in her eye, a panicked tension in her cheeks, which, when coupled with the fact that this is the first time he’s seen her since his breakdown, makes Steven wonder if she is remembering that day on the beach.

His own memories of it are fuzzy-to-nonexistant; he remembers the pain, and the panic, and the anger he’d held despite knowing that he shouldn't. Then, he has a vague impression of multiple embraces, of Connie kissing his forehead, of crying hot, cathartic tears...And then he’d woken up in the Cluster’s hand, with the eyes of most of the people he loved and almost everyone he’d ever fought all on him.

Despite his own lack of recollection, however, Connie assures him that she’d given everyone—the Diamonds included—something of a blunt talking to that day, a rallying speech, but she won’t elaborate on the specifics of what exactly she’d said. Might that—whatever its contents— be behind Yellow’s hasty assurances now?

“Okay,” Steven responds finally. “I won’t try to make you feel less guilty. But can I show you something?”

Yellow furrows her eyebrows. “Very well.”

“It’s just on the top of the canyon.”

They deliberate for a few moments on the details. Yellow offers to carry him, but even if she’s not White, Steven declines being held in a Diamond’s hand, and while she could shapeshift to fit in the passenger seat of the Dondai, she ultimately elects to simply follow behind the car as Steven slowly drives it up the cliff.

They reach the plateau just as the sun begins to dip in the horizon, casting a golden glow over the grass, over the Autumn leaves, just starting to paint themselves with the vibrant shades that return year after year.

Steven opens the door and steps out. “You never spent much time on Earth, did you?”

Yellow considers. “No.”

“Do you know what I think my mom fell in love with about this planet?”

“Organic life, of course. Humans.” She gestures to Steven. “Obviously.”

“Well, yeah, but not just them. Us. I think it was this stuff too.”

Yellow squints. “These weeds?! These...dying outgrowths?!”

“With things that change. Things that grow. There’s so much of it here.”

“Hm.”

Steven paces over to the grass, then sinks down onto it so that it brushes against his bare calves. It’s mostly soft on his skin but there are dryer patches too, scratchier places on the ground as some of the longer areas start to dry out for the season. The sun dips lower in the sky, and it leaks hues of pink and orange onto the daytime canvas of darkening blue. Yellow looms behind him.

“Feel this.” He pats the ground next to him, and tries not to wince as Yellow’s gargantuan hand settles down on the grass. “You might not be able to tell, but it’s growing. Even right now. By the time the snow—frozen water that falls from the sky—starts to cover it in a few months, it’ll probably be a few inches taller than it is right now. And then it’ll take a break for a while, but when Spring comes next year—when the weather gets warmer again—it’ll start again.

“The trees too. Look out there—they grow taller every year, and every year the leaves change into those beautiful colors you can see. And the shades are similar every year, but never exactly the same. Then the leaves fall off, and then bud again and come back. And the trees keep getting taller. And every time the leaves return, the whole tree is a little bit different too.”

Yellow hesitates. “These are familiar to me. Someone, I believe a Peridot—your Peridot—”

“She’s not my Peridot, but I know who you mean.”

“Yes...Well, she brought some of these...trees...from Earth to Homeworld, and determined how best to make them grow there. I’ve been gazing at them through the windows of the palace ever since, but I hadn’t realized how elaborate, how ever-present, their growth cycles were…”

“I’ve lived on Earth my whole life, and I only just started thinking about it recently. It’s easy to take for granted, but it’s really incredible when you stop to think about it.” He angles his head upward. “And it’s not just the plants. Look at the sky. It changes like this every day.” A pause. “Well, it’s really not the sky that’s changing—Connie told me that it’s an effect of how the planet moves around our sun. But from down here on Earth, it looks like it’s always changing. In a different way every day. I don’t think it’s like that on Homeworld.”

Yellow settles next to him at last, squatting, and then kneeling. “It isn’t. Things are constructed on Homeworld—not grown. We have a sun, but our sky does not transform like this.”

“Exactly. And I think that’s why my mom fell in love with the Earth so much. She was so in awe of how everything naturally grew and changed here.” Steven sighs, clenches him gemstone beneath his hand. “I’m still angry at her a lot of the time, but, like, I get it. She saw herself as this monster.” Here Steven pauses, glances away for a moment before finally letting the words return. “And she didn’t think that she was capable of growth or change. All she thought she could do was pretend to be someone else. And then she found herself on this planet where all anything did was grow for real, and she wanted to be a part of that even in some small way, so she made me.”

“Steven…”

“But the point is, she was wrong. She could have grown as herself. I think she did, even if she couldn’t see it. And she and I aren't the only Gems that grew. All of my friends and family have. None of us is the same as we were when I was a kid. Maybe it just took coming to Earth to see that, ya know? Gems can grow and change, just like the trees can, and the grass, and the sky.

“So yeah,” Steven continues. “White hurt you, and you hurt Mom, and Mom hurt Pearl and Garnet and Amethyst and Spinel and you, and everyone she hurt hurt me, and I hurt Jasper and Dad and a lot of people and could have hurt a lot more, and you hurt all the Gems who were corrupted, and who became the Fusion experiments and the Cluster...and that’s all true, and we all have to deal with that and make the things we did wrong right the best that we can. And it’s hard, and it sucks. But the ways we’ve been hurt and hurt other people aren’t all we are. We can grow and change too. As ourselves. I think the Earth is just one big reminder of that.”

Yellow’s brows are once again furrowed, her jaw agape. “I…”

“So, yeah, it’s going to be hard to face all the Gems in the Cluster as you put them all back together. But it’s the right thing to do. And if it ever becomes too much, you can always come up here, and watch the world change and grow to remind yourself that you’re growing too. You’re better than you were, and if you keep working at it, you’ll keep getting better.”

Then, without waiting for Yellow to respond, Steven stands, walks back over to the Dondai. “Now, I gotta hit the road. I want to get to Vegas by tomorrow. It was nice to see you, Yellow.”

“You as well, Steven.” Yellow rises to her feet.

“Good luck,” he calls out the window as he pulls away, and glancing in the rearview mirror, he sees Yellow’s arm raised in farewell, something like a small, apprehensive smile on her lips.

Six months later, after a sojourn up and down the West Coast, Steven returns to the ridge en route back to Beach City for a visit. He pulls up just as the sun is rising over the canyon, glinting off Yellow’s arm ship, and off of the chest and arms and backs of the little gaggle of Gems gathered next to the ship and the adjacent hole. Yellow is not among them, though. She stands on the crest of the cliff, gazing at the trees, at the little buds beginning to spring into being on each branch.

“Steven.” She turns to him in greeting as he gets out of the car.

“You’ve been busy!”

“Yes, we’re progressing nicely.”

“We?”

Yellow nods. “Some of the Gems I reconstructed from the Cluster decided to remain here to help. Then others in Little Homeworld—and even a few on Homeworld itself—learned about what we were doing, and traveled here to volunteer.” She pauses. “They’re here for the sake of the Gems inside the Cluster, not for me. Still, it is nice not to be alone.”

“Mm.”

Yellow turns from the trees to the canyon, in the direction of the rising sun. The growing orange light catches her Gemstone too, and it glimmers in it. “It’s a beautiful morning.”

“Yeah,” Steven says. “It is.”

[ao3]

#my fic #su #yellow diamond #steven universe #the cluster

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jeongyunhoed · 3 years

Photo

Past-Present-Future Black Dahlia

Two major tragedies bring Lee Mirae closer to the edge as she goes through the stages of grief in a more violent manner that would affect not only her relationships with her boyfriend Jeong Yunho and her half-brother Choi San, but also has her becoming closer with the immortal mutant Kang Yeosang. Fueled by rage, grief, and pain, along with a very rude awakening that has Mirae spiraling out of control and questioning everything she holds dear.

Group: ATEEZ Member: Yunho Pairing: Jeong Yunho / OC Genre: Action, adventure, angst, fantasy

Watch Out! : Violence, blood, death, grief and loss, major character deaths, use of weapons, some jealousy (but no cheating ofc), implied smut (not sure if there is any but i’m putting it out there nonetheless), mental illness (probably?), gambling and alcohol

Anything else? : Mentions of other idols of course as well as other characters. SuperM, Dean, Chanyeol, Zelo, soloist Park Jihoon to name a few.

Author’s Note: SuperM hello. Also, sexc car chase scene with Yeosang driving. This hasn’t been proofread much, so sorry for the errors you might see.

Listen to: Dark - Hans Zimmer

Masterlist

Chapter 4

Yeosang glanced over at Mirae, who was still blankly staring out the window. She had been that way in the first few hours of the drive. He wouldn’t admit it, at least right away, but with the silence coming from her, Yeosang was even more convinced that she was that sad. Dare he say it, he was beginning to feel a little concerned yet knew that sometimes the polite thing to do was not to say anything about it. The music playing on the radio acted as white noise between them, and Yeosang was hardly even listening to the songs.

Mirae looked down at her hands, feeling the deck of playing cards in her jean pocket. She barely had time to think about how expensive the clothes she was wearing were - Yeosang’s excuse was that the Dior boutique was the nearest. Mirae wanted to scoff right then and there, but she was impressed at how he got her clothes that fit her.

Her thoughts were going back to how she left Yunho. How she left him unconscious in Yeosang’s apartment while hoping San got to him, or anyone at least. A feeling of guilt was setting inside even in the midst of the overwhelming feelings of sadness and rage. Was it even possible to feel like this? She wasn’t sure. “How did you meet them?” She suddenly asked.

“Who, my dear?”

“The one you’re taking me to.”

“It’s not just one person. They’re a small group of people, people like us,” Yeosang replied, glancing at her from time to time as they entered a flyover, cars intersecting above and below them. “They felt they were above the place we lived in, so they uh, how should I say it? Created their own little world.”

“So how did you meet them?”

“I met them through another immortal. His name is Mark Lee. I’ve known him for centuries. We were rivals for the affections of Emperor Octavian’s daughter, Julia. Amazing woman in every way possible,” A smirk crept up on Yeosang’s lips as he remembered. “I nearly became an emperor if Mark hadn’t intruded that one night.”

“To this day, I still don’t know how old you actually are.”

Yeosang chuckled. “My dear Mirae, age is not important, especially my age. When I met Mark again, in recent… shall we day, decades? Or at least some few years ago, he introduced me to a group of mutants he was friends with. Some of them are quite powerful, one of them, I think, is an omega-level mutant like you.”

“I guessed as much, if they thought they were so superior,” Mirae looked out the window.

“We’ll see about that. Sometimes, mutants only intimidate others just by mentioning their powers, empty threats even though they could deliver on it, lessens the dirty work but it gets into their heads,” Yeosang said. Glancing at the rearview mirrors, he noticed three black cars in a formation behind them. “My dear, if you could assist me a little bit, I think we are being followed.”

Mirae looked over her seat at the three cars that seemed to move closer while Yeosang kept his foot on the gas to drive faster. “I wonder who they could be,” She watched for any signs of movement from the driver’s seats. Mirae saw a set of small rockets come out from the lights on the bumper. “They plan to kill us. Do you know them?”

“No I don’t, I promise you,” Yeosang swerved a few times past several cars only for the three black sedans to be able to keep up.

Mirae shook her head at the sight of the sedans keeping up, one of which was already across from them. There were spikes that extended from the rims of the wheels. The car bumped into them, Mirae clutching the armrest. “They plan on destroying your car while they’re at it,” She said, her eyes glowing red as she stared at the car next to them. The tires exploded, sending the car skidding, the rear hitting their vehicle.

“Damn,” Yeosang kept the car in its lane. “Very good, my dear Mirae. Perhaps you can do something about the other two?” He said, swerving several times so as not to bump into the cars surrounding them to get ahead.

Mirae took out one card from her pocket and threw it as hard as she could at the other sedan that caught up to them. The sedan exploded, the impact of the explosion moving them forward. “If they’re your friend’s bodyguards, then I think they don’t want us coming,” She said, her eyes still glowing. “Not that I care.”

She eyed the remaining black sedan that was following them that launched a rocket. Mirae looked at both the rocket and the car, both exploding in the middle of the road. The remaining cars began to cluster towards them. “Apparently, they were everywhere all along. The way must be heavily guarded, or that they don’t want us going,” Yeosang glanced at the rearview mirrors.

Mirae stayed still, staring at all the cars in front of them. Her eyes were glowing brighter than ever as she kept her gaze on them, the vehicles exploding one by one. She glanced at the rearview mirror on her side, the cars behind them exploding one by one as well, the smoke from the explosions blocking their view of the road.

“Thank you, my dear,” Yeosang drove on through the thick smoke in the air. “All this smoke means we’re getting close.”

The color of the smoke changed from the usual gray and black to white as he moved forward. The glow in Mirae’s eyes faded just as the smoke began to fade, only to see that their surroundings had changed.

Past the wide roads of the highway, they were at the entrance of a dreary lakeside village. “This is where they live?” Mirae glanced at him.

Yeosang chuckled. “No, they live up there,” He pointed to the nearby cliff. There was a white mansion molded in the usual 1930s art deco style that Mirae noticed in the immortal mutant’s apartment.

Mirae noticed that the residents in the village seemed to dress differently, as if wearing different variations of the hanbok. The anger seeped in again, knowing that they were approaching the home of who may have been behind the explosion of the Danger Room, behind the deaths of Chanyeol and Hyuk. Yeosang drove on, down the route of the mansion’s driveway, the sight of the house growing bigger and bigger until they finally approached the gate.

Two guards were standing by and stopped them. “Name?” They asked.

“Kang Yeosang and Lee Mirae. One of them is expecting me by now,” Yeosang replied.

The gates opened on its own and the guards stood by for their vehicle to enter the grounds. As soon as they pulled up, they saw someone standing by the front doors, dressed undoubtedly like he owned the place, but also that he was strikingly handsome. One half of his coiffed hair was blonde, the other side was red. His eye on the blonde side was also blue, the other a dark brown. He was smiling as they pulled up, opening Mirae’s door.

“Hello,” He said as she got out, taking her hand and kissing it.

“Taeyong, quite a greeting you’ve got there,” Yeosang pointed out, tossing the key to the valet.

The male with the name turned to Mirae again. “Forgive my manners, or lack of. I’m Lee Taeyong and I own this house. It’s nice to meet you at last.”

Lee Taeyong was an omega-level mutant like Mirae. Taeyong was an omega-level psychic that could not only read minds, but could also control a person’s mind and manipulate their memories. Taeyong also had the extraordinary gift of turning into organic diamond, making him almost invulnerable to harm and giving him added strength and a psychic shield. However, Taeyong’s limitation was the fact that he could not use his telepathy while he was in his diamond form.

Mirae glanced at Yeosang and before she could speak, he shook his head. “It’s not him you’re going to see,” He advised.

Taeyong smirked. “You must be jumping for joy now that you’re on a drive with the apple of your eye,” He glanced at Yeosang. Turning back to Mirae, he let go of her hand. “That’s what he was thinking. He thinks very loudly.”

“My thoughts are not for you to read, Taeyongie, as I’m sure your brother has taught you that much. Taemin, where is he?” Yeosang asked.

“He’s attending a business meeting. He won’t be here until tonight. But Mark is here, I guess you haven’t seen him in a while,” Taeyong replied. “Come in, come in, I can’t read your thoughts but I can read his and I know who you plan on seeing. Don’t bother taking off your shoes in the main area.”

He turned around to lead them inside. The interiors were decorated in shades of black, gold, and white on marble similar to Yeosang’s home. Mirae and Yeosang followed him further down the hall and they stopped in front of two mahogany doors. “At least one of us couldn’t be read,” She muttered to him.

Taeyong opened the doors, leading into what looked like a parlor, with red velvet couches and chintz chairs, mahogany chests of drawers in the same art deco style, and a crystal chandelier in the ceiling. They saw two people by the fireplace drinking champagne in crystal flutes, watching a drama on a tv that was placed above the mantle. Mirae felt her heart drop as the two figures, whose backs were turned, looked familiar.

“They’re here,” Taeyong announced, making the two people turn around.

Mirae’s eyes widened, looking like a deer caught in the headlights upon seeing their faces. “...Baekhyun? … Jongin?”

The shorter and paler of the two, Baekhyun, smiled. “Mirae, Mirae, Mirae, long time no see,” He said.

Byun Baekhyun was skilled in manipulating and creating light and light energy. Baekhyun was also skilled in hand-to-hand combat, specializing in hapkido. Kim Jongin had the ability to teleport, leaving a wisp of black smoke in his wake.

“It’s been years, hasn’t it?” Jongin spoke this time, approaching her. “You look like you’ve been through a lot.”

Mirae still couldn’t speak. She was too stunned to utter a word. All this time, Baekhyun and Jongin survived the Seoul attack but had never made themselves known. “Hello to you too, Yeosang,” He glanced at the vampiric-looking mutant, who nodded. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” He said to Mirae.

“I couldn’t blame her, we haven’t exactly seen her since that day,” Jongin patted her shoulder. “Do you like our new place? It’s not underground like the Center, but it’s here in this little village, it’s cozy,” He gestured for her to sit down while they did the same. “Mark’s here too, by the way, he’s probably off playing tennis or something.”

“So, what brings both of you here? I doubt it’s because the weather’s nice in this place,” Baekhyun poured her a glass of champagne. Mirae quietly accepted the drink, staring at the bubbles.

“Don’t act clueless, you know why they’re here,” Taeyong chimed in, giving the elder a look.

“Taeyong, it’s rude to read other people’s minds without their permission,” Baekhyun chided. “Even if I already know, it doesn’t hurt to ask to make sure. They might be misleading you, even in that respect.”

“I don’t have the capability to be paranoid when I can read everything like an open book,” Taeyong rolled his eyes. “Dinner is already prepared, by the way, I’ll call Mark-”

He stepped back when out of thin air appeared Mark himself. Unlike Baekhyun, Jongin, and Taeyong, Mark was dressed in a pinstripe suit. Yeosang’s expression stiffened upon seeing him. Mark Lee was, like Yeosang, an immortal mutant whose fortune over the centuries led him to own a business empire that had bases in both South Korea and Canada. Mark had the ability to teleport anywhere and everywhere he chose while also possessing a strong telepathic ability. Mark was also considered a doctor among his peers who studied Languages though he barely put that knowledge of his to the test as he usually tackled his businesses.

“No need,” Mark said, stopping at the sight of Mirae and Yeosang. “Brought her here to meet them, ‘Sang?” He asked.

“As a matter of fact, I did. Ruined anyone’s pursuits lately, Mark?” Yeosang shot at him, watching him take Mirae’s hand and gently kiss the back of it in greeting.

“As long as it’s your pursuits, which I can tell is this lovely woman in front of me,” Mark said.

“I’m taken,” Mirae pointed out.

Mark glanced at Yeosang. “Oh? You have pursued her? This is going to be fun.”

Mirae pulled her hand back, seeing Baekhyun and Jongin’s amused expressions. “I’m guessing you’ve been living your lives here all this time,” She said.

“Well, yeah, since the Seoul attack,” Baekhyun nodded. “Before you two arrived, we were all discussing a business venture we were looking to carry out in the capital. Maybe you could help us out, Yeosang?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, Mark and Taeyong have the capital to build it on, maybe some added manpower would help make the project solid. Let’s talk about this over dinner,” Baekhyun said, gesturing to the doors. Mark disappeared in an instant.

The dining room of the mansion had a view of what was outside. Yeosang and Mirae noticed that it had gotten much darker, realizing how late it was getting. Mirae still couldn’t believe that Baekhyun and Jongin were alive all this time, that they actually survived the explosion from the Seoul attack, the impact caused by her own powers. She was still trying to process this new situation.

Could they have been the ones who tampered with the Danger Room? The question reminded her of why she was there, having dinner with them, with other mutants who were also quite powerful, especially psychics as powerful as them. Mirae could only hope that Yunho would be able to read her mind at the moment, so he would know where they were.

“So, as I was saying earlier, Jongin, Taeyong, Mark, and I are looking into setting up a new business venture and Yeosang may be able to give it the added credibility it needs,” Baekhyun broke the momentary lull when everyone else tucked into the food. Mirae poked around the courses on her plate as she listened.

“Is that what you’ve been up to since the Seoul attack?” Mirae asked, glancing at him from time to time.

“Yeah, killing monsters and aliens wasn’t fun for me anymore, I’m sure you understand that,” Baekhyun smiled. “Knowing that Taeyong, his brother Taemin, and Mark are businessmen, when Jongin and I found each other and in turn found them, the business world seemed a little more interesting.”

“What kind of venture is it?” Yeosang asked. “I’d like to know what it is before I make any deal.”

“It’s called Project Apocalypse,” Baekhyun said with a grin on his face. “Project Apocalypse is going to be the next big thing among mutants and non-mutants.”

“It’s more of a think-tank. People come to us for answers, we give them the answers,” Jongin added.

“What kind of answers would those be?” Yeosang asked in between a sip of wine.

“Political answers, mostly, economic answers, diplomatic answers, you name it,” Mark replied. “You and I both have the experience for that. Didn’t you meet the adviser to Chun Doohwan during the uprising?”

“I have. I killed her,” Yeosang replied, both Baekhyun and Jongin looking surprised at how nonchalant he was about it.

“She could’ve been useful to us, you know,” Mark said. “Oh right, I see. You killed her because she was trying to get to Mirae over here,” He added, having read his thoughts.

Mirae sighed and ate a forkful of her salad instead. “You know, Mark and I can read everyone’s minds here, except for her. Why is that?” Taeyong raised a brow.

“Psychic shield, Taeyongie. I remember Junhong telling us about it when we first started training,” Baekhyun chuckled, glancing at her. “If you can’t read her mind, her psychic shield must be that strong.”

“We can’t read everyone after all, it would be too easy if we could,” Mark chimed in.

“How is Junhong, by the way? Has he been well? He’s alive, isn’t he?” Jongin asked her.

“Very well. Fixed my staff the first time we met again. He’s fixed a lot of other things, sometimes without me knowing,” Mirae replied.

“The three of you go a long while back and yet you’re acting like you don’t know each other,” Taeyong chuckled in his place.

“It has been a while since we last saw each other. We did, however, spend a few years together in the Center for Paranormal Research,” Baekhyun nodded, finishing the food on his plate. “I remember it was me, you, Minseok hyung, and Tao that were put forward because of our fighting skills.”

“Do you have any idea what happened to them?” Mirae asked.

“No idea. I thought I was the only one left, until I saw Jongin from the corner of the street, teleporting out of that place in time,” Baekhyun glanced at her. “I guess the same could be said of you.”

“Yeah, and Hyuk, and Chanyeol. Remember them?”

He smiled. “Why don’t we go take a walk? Just us, you can play catch up with Jongin after,” Baekhyun suggested.

“Yeah, I’ll tell you more about Project Apocalypse after we pitch the idea to Yeosang over here,” Jongin nodded eagerly, exchanging knowing looks with the older male.

Baekhyun and Mirae got up from their seats. Mirae eyed Yeosang, who had a look of concern all over his face at the suggestion. She followed him towards the patio doors and out into the well-manicured backyard of the mansion that had a swimming pool with a diving board and several patio chairs. The question was still nagging at Mirae as a silence came between them while they walked along the cemented areas of the estate. “To answer your question, I do remember them. Vividly, actually,” He said. “The tall dope and the guy I remember you used to like but is also your best friend.”

“Years have gone by since the Seoul attack,” Mirae said.

“I know. It changed everything. It changed everyone. You with that streak in your hair, still playing with the same stick you always used to lug around. It’s almost like a part of you, isn’t it? That staff of yours?” Baekhyun said.

“I never leave without it. Even when I go to work, it’s with me,” She pointed out.

Baekhyun nodded. “I see. No matter how much has changed, you still seem to be the same person. It didn’t help that when Professor Jang died, Ino took charge and started to play favorites.”

“You were one of them, Baek,” She said carefully, remembering the nickname he would often go by.

“That I am, Tao too. Minseok hyung too. We were like, how should I say it? Like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We led the fighting for the rest of them,” Baekhyun grinned as he remembered. “Too bad things went the way it did, otherwise we’d all still be there, cooped up underground with all of those simulations.”

“That’s a memorial now. A lot of things happened since then, at least to me,” Mirae recalled everything, feeling her heart sink further upon remembering Jihoon, then Hyuk and Chanyeol.

They stopped in front of a ceramic bust perched on top of a small pillar. Baekhyun looked up. “What brings you here, then? You didn’t know I was alive, much less Jongin.”

“I came here because Yeosang told me I’d find answers here,” Mirae replied. “Chanyeol and Hyuk are dead now, and I find out that the Danger Room was tampered with leading to them dying. I’m trying to find out who did it and why.”

Baekhyun smiled. “I knew you were going to say that. Actually, Taeyong knew just by reading Yeosang’s thoughts over there. He was thinking of what you were going to find out upon coming here. I can hear him telling me now. Yeosang’s looking out for you, he’s kind of worried about what you will know, and how you’ll react when it’s all revealed.”

“You know who did it, didn’t you?” Mirae stared at him. “All this time, you were alive and you never meant to make contact? Not even with Junhong? You didn’t even bother to look for us in the places you figured we’d be?”

The male chuckled. “For a trained assassin like yourself, you’re getting pretty bad at stealth, aren’t you? I’ve come across you quite a few times since then, but you never saw me, much less took notice of me.”

She raised a brow. “Well I never got any message from you. Not even a hi or a hello.”

Baekhyun shook his head. He leaned closer with a satisfied look on his face. “No, no, no. My way of making contact with you was through the tragedies you have experienced. Jihoon, and now Chanyeol and Hyuk. To be honest, I was surprised at how I managed to hit two birds with one stone with both of them. The tall dope and the music producer.”

“What do you mean?” Mirae had a feeling she knew what he was about to say.

“It was all me, Mirae. Jihoon’s death, Chanyeol’s death, and Hyuk’s death? It was all me,” Baekhyun revealed calmly. “I am the author of all your pain, of all the grieving you were and still are doing.”

Mirae stared at him, feeling a chill down her spine at the revelation. “Jihoon was killed by those Utopian cult thugs.”

He shook his head. “I had a little help. I met Mark around that time, and when I told him what I wanted to do, he gladly possessed the body of the man who pulled the trigger on your dear friend, the friend you thought of as a brother,” He explained.

Mirae was still staring at him, as if prompting him to continue explaining. “Jongin, you know, of course, teleported me there once Taeyong found out the location of the so-called safehouse you put up, saw that Junhong was creating a simulation room like the one we used to have. With his help as well, I was able to make a few adjustments like rerouting some circuits to overload,”

“I was actually thinking of getting Chanyeol first, out of sentimental reasons. I knew him longer than Hyuk, so naturally I thought he should get the first strike. Little did I know,” Baekhyun smirked. “It would get Hyuk too. I doubt Junhong had a clue that the systems were hacked. Taeyong and his brother run a tech empire.”

She could feel her eyes well with tears at the explanations, the tension she was feeling slowly getting replaced by sadness and rage. “It was you all this time. Why? Why are you doing it?” She asked.

“Because I wanted you to know the pain and grief I felt after that attack happened,” Baekhyun replied, looking her in the eye. “My family thought I was dead when that came in. I was thrown into the ocean from the explosion you caused. They had given up on searching for me, in turn, they gave my brother all the money that was meant for me. Knowing you made the final blow to those goblins, all of the trouble I experienced, I knew I had to make you pay.”

Mirae looked away, fighting back the urge to break down the more Baekhyun talked. He sounded so satisfied. “And now you’re all alone, Lee Mirae. And you know the best part?” He tilted his head as he looked at her. “Ino knew all this time. Ino knew it was me. Yet he allowed it to happen anyway.”

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buoyantsaturn · 3 years

Text

I’m Cool to Watch Atlas Burn (1/?)

summary: Bianca's been having a lot of private conversations with Chiron. Nico won't hold anybody's hand but Will's. Will might be 13, but sometimes he still acts like he's 10.

chapter title: Bianca's Rescue Operation Goes Very Wrong

word count: 3,388

read on ao3 | read bring on the monsters

When Nico turned twelve, he decided that he was suddenly too old for hand holding. Sometimes Bianca would reach out for his hand as they climbed the stairs out of the Underworld, or even just on the walk between the dining pavilion and the Big House, but Nico would always snatch his hand away. He had led a quest across the country, he was training with the best warriors in Elysium (and Punishment, when Alecto wasn’t looking), and he was almost a teenager. He didn’t need to hold anybody’s hand.

Except that Will was already thirteen, and he still liked to hold Nico’s hand whenever he had the chance. If it was Will, it was okay. Best friends were different. And it just so happened that Nico’s best friend hadn’t let go of his hand since they left camp.

They were heading north, the three of them packed into the backseat of Jules-Albert’s car. Nico wasn’t entirely sure where they were going - Chiron had given the message to Bianca, because she was older - but he knew they were on a “retrieval mission.” Whatever that meant. For the last hour, Will had practically been bouncing in his seat and tugging on Nico’s hand, babbling some over-excited nonsense. Nico was just surprised that Bianca hadn’t told him to shut up yet, but she’d been abnormally quiet for the last week or so, ever since Chiron had pulled her aside for some important discussion.

“It’s so cool that you have your own driver,” Will was saying for maybe the fifth time. “That’s, like, rich people stuff! Like, my mama doesn’t even have her own driver, and, I mean, she doesn’t say she’s rich, but she kind of is.”

“Well, my dad is the god of riches,” Nico reminded him.

Will elbowed him. “Your dad’s the god of a lot of stuff.”

Nico grinned. “Okay, Apollo spawn.”

“Can you please get him to stop calling me that?” Will asked with a pout.

“Seph calls you that sunshine boy,” Nico told him. “Is that better?”

Will’s nose scrunched up. “I think just sunshine is good enough.”

“Okay, just sunshine.”

“Gods, you’re the worst.” Will dug his elbow into Nico’s side with more force than before. “Anyway, how come you didn’t get this guy to drive you to Texas when I was at school last year? Maybe then you wouldn’t have spent the whole visit asleep.”

“Dad said I had to get better at shadow traveling before he would give me a better mode of transportation,” Nico explained. “Jules is good for long distances when I need to keep my energy up, and he’s fast, but he’s not always fast enough, you know? So I had to know how to get somewhere quick without draining all my energy in case of an emergency.”

Jules turned off the main road, and Bianca sat up straighter. She spoke up for the first time since leaving camp. “I think we’re here.”

“Okay,” Will said. “And where’s here?”

Nico leaned over Will to look out the window. It was difficult to see so late at night, but he’d trained his eyes to see better in the dark after spending so long in the Underworld. “Military school?” He turned back to his sister and grinned. “Bia, we’ve talked about this, you’re not getting rid of Will that easily.”

Bianca huffed and folded her arms. “That’s not what we’re here for.”

“Are you going to tell us?” Nico demanded.

“There’s a demigod here,” Bianca said. “Chiron got a message from one of the satyr scouts. She’s powerful, but undetermined, so Chiron thinks she might be a target for Beckendorf.”

At the sound of his old friend’s name, Will’s gaze dropped to his feet. Nico squeezed his hand.

“We’re here to pick her up and take her to camp,” Bianca continued. “It should be quick and easy. Grover should be waiting for us inside, and he’ll take us to the demigod. We’ll sneak her back out, and we’re done.”

“That’s it?” Nico asked with a frown. “Then what are we here for? That seems easy enough for just one person.”

“I invited you for the company.”

Will leaned around Nico to ask, “Then why am I here?”

Bianca rolled her eyes. “Because you two are attached at the hip.”

The car stopped. Jules stepped outside, moving around the car - faster than one might usually expect for a zombie - to open Bianca’s door. Before climbing out, she turned to the two boys and said, “Stay behind me, stay quiet, and don’t touch anything.”

Jules waited outside while the demigods walked in through the front door.

It didn’t take them long to find Grover - really, he found them. “Bianca?” he asked as he approached, and his eyes flickered toward Nico and Will. “I thought you were coming alone.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I brought backup. My brother, Nico, and his friend, Will.”

Grover’s eyes widened. “Two Big Three kids? Oh, that’s no good. Um. Maybe you should go back outside and I’ll just find a way to bring Lou Ellen to you.”

Bianca frowned. “We’re already here. What’s the problem?”

Grover leaned forward and hissed, “Monsters.”

“I think we can deal with a couple of--”

“Mr. Underwood,” a voice boomed from across the hall, and the four of them turned to face the man walking toward them. “You were not supposed to leave the gymnasium. And who are these others? Outsiders?”

Bianca raised one hand and snapped her fingers. Nico felt like the very atmosphere rippled away from her fingers, and he had to blink a few times to shake that feeling away. She told the man, “We go to school here.” Really, he should’ve easily been able to tell that she was lying, considering how much snow they’d tracked inside.

The man blinked, then said, “Yes, of course. Why have you all left the gymnasium?”

“Bathroom,” Grover blurted, causing the man to raise a suspicious eyebrow. “We were all looking for the bathroom, and went through the wrong door. We’re going back right now.”

The man hummed and nodded. “Yes, I’ll walk you back. Lead the way.”

Grover started forward, so the demigods followed. They weren’t able to speak again until they had entered a crowded gymnasium, complete with gently flashing lights and too-loud music. Will made a noise of disgust, and Nico glanced at him in confusion. “School dances are the worst,” Will explained.

Nico would have to take his word for it.

The teacher that marched them into the gymnasium vanished as soon as they were inside, so Grover pulled them toward the corner to continue talking.

“That was the monster!” he whispered - as much as he could over the music.

Will frowned. “But he’s just a guy.”

“You didn’t see that lady with the chimera,” Nico commented. “I thought she was just some lady, too.”

“What is he?” Bianca asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Grover replied, shaking his head, “but the smell...that’s undeniable. And there’s no doubt that he can smell you guys, too. Which is why we need to get out of here, and fast.”

“Right,” Bianca said with a single nod. “So, where’s our girl?”

Grover pointed across the gym toward a set of bleachers. There was a group of boys playing cards, and a girl with dip-dyed purple hair amongst them. She seemed to be winning, if the noisy complaints from the boys were anything to go by. “Lou Ellen Blackstone. She has a crazy kind of control over the Mist, but nothing that tells me who her parent might be.”

“A minor god?” Bianca suggested.

Grover shrugged. “Maybe, but she’s the most powerful child of a minor god I’ve ever seen.”

“We can figure that out later,” Nico told them. “How do we get her out of here without Mr. Monster catching us?”

“Dr. Thorn,” Grover corrected.

Will replied, “Nah, I like Mr. Monster better.”

“Ignore them,” Bianca said to Grover. “Nico and I can shadow travel. I think I should just grab her and make a jump. The Mist should cover up our disappearance.”

“You’ve never jumped with another person before,” Nico reminded her.

“I’ve jumped with you.”

“No, I’ve jumped with you.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said--”

Will waved an arm between them. “Okay, nobody’s shadow traveling with anybody. We’ll go out the old fashioned way. Grover, what’s the best escape route?”

“Back out the way we came,” he answered. “Through the front door.”

“That’s the best route?” Nico asked.

“It’s the fastest.”

“But we’ll be out in the open!”

“Hey, shut up,” Bianca said suddenly, her eyes darting through the crowd. “She’s gone.”

The three boys spun around to see what Bianca was looking at. The bleachers were still full of boys playing cards, though Lou Ellen was no longer with them.

“What do we do?” Will asked. “Split up and look for her?”

Nico squeezed his hand with a, “No, no splitting up. We don’t know what Mr. Monster is, and I don’t want him to try to pick us off one by one.”

Will’s grip on Nico’s hand tightened. “Uh, yeah, no. I don’t want that, either.”

Without saying a word, Bianca pushed past them, leaving them no choice but to follow after her. She marched up to the boys on the bleachers and demanded to know where Lou Ellen had gone.

“She went somewhere with Dr. Thorn,” one of the boys answered.

“Which way did she go?” Bianca asked.

The boy pointed across the gymnasium. One of the doors was still swinging shut.

They took off at a run. Grover definitely wasn’t the fastest of the group - Nico thought it was pretty unlikely that he’d ever meet anybody faster than Will - but he was clearly pushing himself to lead the group outside onto a snowy cliff.

They found Dr. Thorn about a hundred yards away from the school, far enough away that the lights didn’t reach him, so they could really only see shadows in the glow of the moon. Bianca already had her bow drawn with an arrow nocked by the time they heard a shout of, “Stop! Not one step closer!”

They paused. Nico focused on the shadows, forcing himself to see more clearly after being among such blinding lights - he felt much more comfortable out here in the cold, the quiet, the dark, about to fight a monster instead of socializing with people his own age. He could make out the difference between Lou Ellen and Dr. Thorn. He had a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. His other hand had a small box that Nico couldn’t identify.

That was as far as he got before a projectile launched toward them. Nico tackled Will into the snow to get him out of its way.

“Where did that come from?” Bianca called out.

“Somewhere behind him,” Nico replied, jumping back to his feet and pulling Will up with him.

Dr. Thorn yelled to them, “Keep your distance, and I won’t have to kill you yet.”

“Let Lou Ellen go, and we won’t have to kill you,” Bianca shot back as she pulled out her knife. “Yet.”

“Bia,” Nico said softly. “Jump.”

His sister nodded, and in the next second, she had disappeared. Then, Thorn was howling in pain, and Will ran forward. He managed to get a hold of Lou Ellen, and Nico could hear him reassuring her that everything would be alright. Nico was about to jump in and help his sister finish off the monster when Bianca was suddenly thrown aside. Nico didn’t even have the opportunity to move before Thorn dove toward Will and Lou Ellen, grabbing them both.

Nico had his sword in his hand in a second.

The next few things that happened were so quick that even Nico couldn’t see it all through the dark. There was the deafening noise of giant fan blades and wind that almost knocked him off his feet - something mechanical was flying near the edge of the cliff, though it wasn’t an airplane, so Nico didn’t know what it was. He did know that they started firing guns in their direction. He hit the ground to avoid any stray bullets.

Something caught Thorn’s shoulder, causing him to release Lou Ellen, but it wasn’t a bullet. Whatever it was came from the opposite direction, somewhere behind Nico. He was able to see Lou Ellen stagger toward Grover, who pulled her off to the side, away from the fight. Then Thorn started dragging Will toward the edge of the cliff, and that’s when Nico got back to his feet. He could risk a few bullet wounds in order to save his best friend from monstrous kidnapping.

He ran about halfway, and when it became clear that he wasn’t going to catch up, he jumped into the darkness and emerged with an arm outstretched, inches away from grabbing onto Will’s coat. Something silver flashed by the side of Nico’s head, lodging into Thorn’s body and knocking him off balance, over the edge of the cliff.

Will went with him, screaming Nico’s name.

“Will!” Nico shouted back, scrambling to the cliff’s edge, but he couldn’t see anything down below. All he knew was that the giant flying fan blades were getting farther and farther away, and his best friend had been lost to the darkness.

Nico was still screaming for his friend by the time Bianca pulled him back from the edge. “There’s nothing you can do for him right now, Nico,” she told him. “He’s not dead, so let’s just hope it stays that way. We’ll find him, after we get Lou Ellen to camp.”

Nico let his sister pull him to his feet, then he brushed her off. “No, I’m not going back to camp. I’m going to find him.”

Bianca grabbed his arm in a death grip. “No, you’re coming back to camp. You’re no use after a single jump, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. You’re lucky that Jules is still waiting for us, because you’d probably pass out just from summoning him.”

Nico yanked his arm out of her grip, crossing his arms across his chest, though he continued to walk alongside her. They found Grover and Lou Ellen heading toward the light of the school.

“Where’s Will?” Grover asked as soon as he could see them. Nico’s eyes narrowed into a glare, which he pointed at the ground. “Oh. Oh, no. Not another one…”

“Another one?” Lou Ellen asked, eyes widening in fear.

“Don’t listen to him,” Bianca told her, drawing Lou’s full attention in her direction. “Lou Ellen Blackstone, right? My name is Bianca, and this is my brother, Nico. We’re going to take you someplace safe, alright?”

“What was that thing?” she asked. “And what kept hitting him?”

“We don’t know,” Bianca replied, “but I don’t want to stick around to find out. C’mon, we have a car--”

“Hang on a second,” a new voice said, and four heads whipped toward the woods. A girl, maybe a year or so older than Bianca, stepped toward them, and as she entered the light, Nico saw at least ten other girls following behind her. They all wore the same silver jackets, though the girl up front had an extra ring of silver in her hair. “Nobody’s going anywhere before we get some answers.” She grinned straight at Nico. “Hiya. Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, lieutenant of Artemis. I hear I have a couple new cousins.”

Thalia explained the situation while the Hunters of Artemis - a group of girls all around Bianca’s age - set up camp, complete with silver tents and a few campfires. Lou Ellen was set up with Grover near one of the fires, with one of those silver jackets wrapped around her. Grover seemed to be explaining everything to her to the best of his ability.

Nico just wanted to get out there and find Will.

He couldn’t even be excited about meeting the goddess of the hunt herself, only requesting that she let him hunt with her. She had refused, claiming that she didn’t hunt with the company of men, and then she ran off into the woods.

Now, Nico sat with the name manticore burned into his brain, ready to raise hell in a literal sense if that’s what it took to get his best friend back.

He sat inside one of the tents with Bianca and Thalia, drumming his fingers impatiently against his crossed arms. Thalia seemed ready for a nice, long chat, and if Nico didn’t feel quite so dizzy, he would’ve been out of there already.

“Why don’t you two tell me what happened out there,” Thalia said after a short while, “before we showed up, at least.”

“Chiron sent us here to pick up an unclaimed demigod,” Bianca explained, “but once we got outside, it was too dark for me to see much of anything. Nico has much better night vision than I do.”

Thalia turned to him, and Nico heaved a heavy sigh. “That thing - the manticore - almost pulled Lou Ellen off the edge of the cliff. Then this...flying thing showed up and started shooting at us. Will pulled Lou Ellen away from the manticore, but it grabbed him and took him over the cliff.” He paused. “I almost had him… Just an inch more, and I would have had him…”

“Flying thing,” Thalia cut in. “What do you mean by that?”

Nico shrugged. “The loud, flying...thing! I don’t know, I’ve never seen one before.”

“Oh,” she replied with a grin. “The helicopter.”

Nico raised an eyebrow, and nodded his head slowly. “Sure, the...helicopter.” For the tenth time in as many minutes, Nico wished Will was there. He always managed to fill in the blanks in Nico’s sentences perfectly without making him feel like an idiot for not knowing about different things from the modern world. And he was much better at explaining that Nico and Bianca were - what was his phrasing? - misplaced in time.

Thalia stretched her arms over her head. “Well, since Lady Artemis is hunting down the manticore, we really just need to wait around for a while. It shouldn’t take her that long, at least not to track him, but we’ve got plenty of time to relax. We can all rest here tonight, and then in the morning, we’ll head to Camp Half-Blood to wait out Artemis’s return.”

“No,” Nico snapped. “We’re not waiting around. That thing took my best friend!”

Bianca set her hand on Nico’s arm, and he leaned away from the touch. “Nico, there’s nothing we can do right now.”

“We can try!” he shouted, his voice cracking near the end. Nico looked away and pulled his knees up to his chest. He was not about to start crying in front of a couple of girls.

Bianca turned back to Thalia. “We’re going back to camp tonight. You can come with us, or you can meet us there later, but I won’t make Nico wait that long.”

Thalia didn’t respond right away. It wasn’t until Nico looked up at her and saw her nodding that she said, “Okay. Give us a few minutes to pack up, and we’ll go with you. Bianca, would you mind helping out?” She stood, so the siblings got to their feet as well. “Sorry, Nico, but the other girls… They don’t work well with boys.”

Nico crossed his arms with a huff. “I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of girls anyway.”

Thalia grinned. She ruffled Nico’s hair as she passed him, telling him, “You’re even cuter than Percy, sometimes.”

Before Nico could ask what that meant, Thalia stepped outside.

Bianca took Nico by the shoulders, forcing him to face her, though he kept his gaze to the ground. “We’ll find him, Nico,” Bianca told him, and Nico’s eyes flickered upward. “First thing in the morning, we’ll talk to Chiron.” She waited until Nico nodded before continuing. “Go find Jules-Albert. We’re going to need a bigger car if we’re getting everybody back to camp.”

Nico nodded again, and Bianca’s hands fell away from his shoulders. She started to leave, but Nico caught her with one hand wrapping around her own.

He held his sister’s hand as they left the tent together.

thanks for reading!!

buy me a coffee | more nico birthday event stuff

#solangelo #will solace #nico di angelo #mine #my writing #bring on the monsters #nico birthday event 2k21

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s-creations · 3 years

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Return the Flames - Chapter 6

All at Dead Bird Studios knew of Amos' (The Conductor's) ability. How the owl could suddenly erupt into flames if angered enough. When the studio first opened, Dominic (DJ Grooves) was told that Amos had his ability under control. Nothing to worry about. No possible loss of anything from an open flame.

A few years later however, and that control seems to have lessened to a dangerous degree.

It should have just been a simple, week long drive to fix the problem. It really should have been.

Dominic should have asked a lot more questions and should have been prepared for a twist ending.

_________________

Fandom: A Hat in Time Rating: General Audience Relationships/Pairings: The ConductorXDJ Grooves Warnings: Eventual depictions of violence, slow burn relationship, named characters, attempt of an accent, being hunted down, a race against time (sort of).

Another dinner, this one with a more pastel color scheme. For some reason. Dominic and Amos claimed a booth tucked away in the back, away from everyone, in hopes they could talk without being overheard.

Amos was absolutely exhausted. Wanting nothing more than to lay his head down and pass out. It was a bit ironic that for being dangerously hot for so long, he was now freezing. And it was painful. Like pins and needles sticking him in different areas. Probably feeling like this while his body attempted to recover from their crash. He really wished the flame would return. That he could just curl into the closest corner and escape this nightmare for just a little while.

“Amos...we need a plan.”

Except Dominic kept pulling him back to the problem at hand. Which was needed. Amos just didn’t want to. “We need ta figure out how those peck necks knew about…”

The penguin sighed softly. “I think all we need to worry about for that is knowing that they know. And they’re hunting us down now because of this. Do you think they knew where we’re going?”

“If they knew about the Phoenix flame, I wouldn’t put it past them. They found us really fast after that first dinner.”

“So, our original, direct path is no longer an option. We’ll probably have to make a new, longer path to get to the mountains. Anything to keep them away from us. We’ll just need to make sure you’re alright to stay away for that much longer. Ah, there’s also the issue of provisions and transportations. Thank goodness our wallets survived with us. I would say bus for traveling. But that would take way too long and we’d be trapped if they find us again. So, a rental car would be our best bet. We’ll also need to contact the studio. Let them know we’re going to be gone for a lot longer than originally expected…”

Amos just stared as Dominic kept pulling up the major points they had to worry about. As the list kept growing, the owl felt his resolve break down further. As if he was suddenly realizing how much danger they were in. At the moment they weren’t being chased, they were patched up and food was on the way. Now, with the adrenaline not pumping as much as it was before, Amos’ mind was free to panic over their current situation.

Someone was hunting him down. Because of what he was. And he put Dominic directly in the line of danger because of this. All because of him. He alerted the authorities because he wasn’t able to control himself. Because he was a danger to everyone he gets near.

“Amos?”

The owl jumped, attention going from Dominic’s worried face down to his clenched hands lying on the table. “What.”

“You’re shaking.”

Was he?

“Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong- are ya really gonna ask me that after our plunge off the side of a cliff?”

“I don’t think we were up that high.”

“We almost died Dominic! Because I’ve been marked as enemy-number-one of some peck necks. With you as the unwilling accomplice.”

“Unwilling?”

“Ya didn’t know it would lead ta this when you agreed ta take me. Ya shouldn’t be involved.”

“You didn’t know this would happen either. I became involved when I plowed those crows over with my car. We’re in this together.”

“But ya shouldn’t be! I should have found a way around this that didn’t involve anyone else. This is my problem. I should be fixin’ this on my own.”

Just with everything else in his life. It was how he’s always operated. He learned how to fight, dealt with his ex leaving, his mother passing away, maintained his train, paid for his film equipment, raised Amelia, put her through college, started saving up for the grandchildren to get them through college as well.

Everything. Everything he did alone.

So why did he suddenly feel as if he needed help with this? He should have been able to figure out a solution on his own.

Amos stilled when Dominic reached over and gently grabbed the owl’s balled up hands. So stunned, he allowed the penguin’s hands to properly slip into his.

“I’m happy I’m here to help you.”

“How...can ya possibly say that?”

“Because I would be tearing my hair out with worry if I wasn’t with you. Over what could have been happening to you.”

“People are tryin’ ta kill us.”

“Then I’m even further relieved to be here and helping.”

Amos wasn’t sure what to say to that. Attention returning to their clasped hands, the owl felt his heart starting to pick up its pace. The familiar warmth returning to become a comforting presence. Dominic didn’t seem to be letting go soon, did Amos want him to? He realized he didn’t. Dominic’s feathers were smooth to the touch, like silk. And seemed to be a cooler temperature than Amos’ unnatural heat.

“Um, sirs? Your meals?”

Amos quickly pulled away as the server made their presence known. His feather fluffed up in embarrassment while Dominic gave an easy smile. “Thank you, Darling.”

“O-Oh, of course. No problem.” The server was now flustered. Giving their own smile back as they placed the plates down, departing shortly after.

“Should we make our new plan.” Amos grumbled as they were left alone again.

“Right, well, transportation first. We need to rent a car.”

“You mentioned something about a bus?”

“Yes, but I don’t think that would be best. We need to control our speed and our direction at will. A bus leaves too many variables that we can’t control. Which worries me. So, I think the car is, again, our best option.”

“Alright… You also made mention of changin’ our route?”

“To try and throw them off. It took them two days to find us. And that was when they had a guess as to how far we were into our journey. That tells me they’re aware of where we’re going. If we change our path, hopefully we can throw them off and sneak by them when we finally reach the mountains.”

“If we can sneak in.”

“We’ll figure it out. If we’re moving our route, we need to inform everyone that we’re going to be gone longer than expected.”

“We also need provisions. We kind of...lost all our stuff.”

“We have enough paper money to pay for what we need at the moment. Lucky us.” Dominic laughed softly.

“Yeah...lucky…”

“Is everything alright gentlemen?” The server returned, their attention on the untouched plates. Amos didn’t verbally respond, instead picking up his fork and digging in.

“Sorry, we’ve just been so engrossed in our conversation. Would you actually be able to help us out with something Darling?”

“Oh, sure!” Amos rolled his eyes at how eager the server sounded.

“We’re in need of a rental car and a possible clothing store.”

“There are more, larger stores and a rental place further into town. You should be able to get what you need there.”

“Thank you, you’ve been extremely helpful.”

Amos grumbled as he put his full focus on the food in front of him. Attempting to block out the sickening ‘flirting’ before him. It made his stomach roll uncomfortably.

He couldn’t tell if it was because he hated seeing such a blatant display in public. Of it he was upset because Dominic wasn’t looking at him anymore.

____________________________

“How much longer are you going to be gone?”

Amos really didn’t like how uneasy Amelia sounded. “Just a few extra days, nothin’ more.”

“Are you sure that’s a smart idea? Do you...will you have enough time?”

“I’ll be fine, don’t you worry. This was Dominic’s idea actually. Says I need ta ‘relax’ or somethin’ crazy like that.”

“Well, if it’s coming from Grooves, it sounds reasonable.”

“Watch yerself young lady.”

Amelia laughed softly. “Please just take it easy dad.”

“I will. I am. How’s it goin’ on your end?”

“Oh, good…”

“...Did...Did ya have another episode?”

“Yeah. But it wasn’t that bad. I’m fine, really. Just tired.”

Amos gripped the phone receiver a little harder. “Are ya goin’ ta see Dr. Fula?”

“Dad-”

“If ya had an episode, she needs ta be aware.”

“And she was, we called her.”

“Does she want ta see ya?”

“No, in fact, she said I was improving!”

“How? Yer still havin’ them!”

“But this was not as serve as my previous ones. And I recovered faster, and on my own.”

“But ya still had one.”

“Dad, you need to unclench your jaw and release whatever's in your other hand.”

With a huff with some smoke unfurling from his mouth, Amos pulled his hand away from the side of the phone booth. Wincing from the newly created dent in the metal. “Amelia…”

“No, listen to me. I am fine. I’m home, safe and happy with the kids. Grace is staying with me. And a legion of medical professionals are on speed dial. Now I need you to just focus on getting yourself better, okay?”

“...Okay.”

“I know you’ll hate me for saying this, but listen to Grooves. He’s there to help you.”

“But-”

“Swallow your pride and let him help. Please.”

“...Alright.”

“Get better and I’ll see you soon dad. The kids miss you! Can’t wait to see pawpaw again.”

“Tell them I miss them too.”

“Be safe dad. I love you.”

“Love ya too, Amelia.” Amos hung up, letting out a sigh as he leaned against the pay phone. He looked over to Dominic, who was using the furthest phone in the line.

The penguin was calling the secretary to let him know they were going to be gone longer. Which Dominic was really leaning into the fact the message needed to be pasted along to all the workers. How they both would be coming back.

Bu̱t͙ tha̦ṱ’̨s͙ no̱t tr̥ue͙,̝ i͜s̙ it̼?͕ Yo̳uͅ’̨re n̺ot ex̖p̱e̻cting̖ t͉o c̝ome̖ back͍ fṛo̭m t̻h̘i̬s̟.

Amos swallowed weakly. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he moved away from the phones and turned towards the street.

A̟lwa̻ys̨ t̺h͔e̞ sa̞m̤e̠ fo͈r͉ y̦ou. Eͅx̱p̼e̞ct̝ th̺e͓ worͅsṱ. Be͜c̘ause th̤aṱ’̮s͚ a͍ḽl͎ t͢ha̝t͢ is to b̢e̖ e̦xp̗ect͔ed of̹ y̳ou. Th͟e͇ a̗bs͜olu̱te̹ w͓o͢r̖st̝.

Sitting on the curb, Amos crossed his arms over his knees, chin resting on top of them. His ears were pressed against the top of his head, remaining focused on the pavement of the road.

J͈us̬t a̯d̻mi̡t̤ it̯:̺ you’r̢e d̩yiͅn̢g. Yo̯u’ve k͈nown t͇his fo͜r̗ a w̤h̨i͉ḷe. Y̙et̳ yo̟u̼ ke̥ep̙ g̗i͙vi̯n͇g th̰i͕s se̘ns͇e̘ o̖f͟ hop͖e͇ to yo͈u̱r daug͙h̳ter th͜a͜t̡ y̢ou’ll͖ c̦o͜m͟e̩ b̖a̢ck.̟ How͢ seͅl͔fis̩h of̢ ỵo̮ṷ. N̗ot̫ eve̝n g͎i̞vi̲n͍g͔ ḫe͚r͔ a cha̢nc̘e to̭ h̩a̩ve͢ p̩ro̭p͍e͙r c͚l͕os̝ur̠e̥.

“Amos.” Dominic’s voice broke through, a hand resting gently on the owl’s shoulder.

“Finally pass the message?”

The penguin nodded as he sat down. “I’m hoping it’s actually passes along.”

“We really need ta replace him.”

“We do…”

“...But we aren’t.”

“Probably not.”

Amos huffed, a smile being pulled onto his face. “As long as we have that cleared up.”

“Mmm… Were you able to talk to Amelia?”

“Aye…”

“Does...Does she know what this could lead to?”

“No. She doesn’t need to know.”

“Amos-”

“She has enough on her plate ta deal with. This is my problem.”

“But if your-”

“We need to go. If we want ta keep ahead o’ those government peck necks, we’ll need that car” Amos stood, heading towards where their server had pointed them. Dominic gave a look of disapproval to the retreating back. But couldn’t really disagree as he knew time was not on their side.

So, even though the penguin wanted to reprimand Amos for leaving his daughter in the dark, Dominic remained quiet. One problem at a time. And they had agents to avoid.

#A Hat In Time #discotrain #the conductor #dj grooves #s-creations #fanfiction #ahit conductor #ahit dj grooves #Multi-Chapter

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thehikingviking · 3 years

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Chaparrastique (San Miguel Volcano) from Conacastal

We had been in El Salvador for more than two weeks, and so far the trip had gone better than any of us could have hoped for. I surprised Asaka with a trio on the morning of her birthday. She stood outside the window while they sang her loves songs which she couldn’t understand. We celebrated by having a big pool party with Erick and his family. We bought a piñata and ate a special cake that my mom used to eat in her childhood.

There was so much that I still wanted to do, so on our last Friday we went to Cascadas Tamanique. It was a steep hike down the canyon from town, but we were eventually rewarded with a beautiful set of waterfalls.

We swam in the pools and jumped off some cliffs. Leif made several motions to jump off the same cliff as well, but we told him that he would have to wait until he was older.

The next day was my last full day in El Salvador, and I wanted to go out with a bang. Chaparrastique, also known as Volcán de San Miguel, is the southernmost ultra prominent peak in the country, and until very recently, had been too active to climb, with large eruptions as recent as 2015. When I initially planned my trip, I didn’t even think climbing this volcano a possibility, but I learned through Nahuat Tours that the minister of geology had determined the mountain safe enough to climb. Zach was flying out that day, which meant I would be on my own. This would require the longest drive, as we had to go all the way from El Zonte to the “Wild East”. Apparently the people on this side of the country look and sound different, and perhaps the most glaring distinction is how they eat pupusas. I was mostly concerned with the heat. Erick joked that when people from San Miguel go to hell, they complain that it’s too chilly. I could find no trip reports online, aside from a YouTube video which didn’t delve into the details surrounding mileage and elevation gain. Nahuat Tours didn’t have much information either, again leaving such details to the local guides. To prepare, I brought a lot of water and expected the worst. What I experienced in the end was a moderate hike with agreeable temperatures.

Erick and the gang were outside of Villa Letty at 4am. I snuck out of the room trying my best not to wake the baby, grabbed my lunch from the fridge and threw my stuff in the back of the car. Chico and Young Erick were crammed in the back seat, while Gerardo had other tours to lead that day. The drive was long, but not terrible as El Salvador is a small country. We reached the town of Conacastal where we met our local guide Fernando. From there we hopped in the back of a 2WD pickup truck, then drove south along RN16S until reaching La Placita. We turned off the paved road here and continued up dirt and cobblestone roads further up the northwestern side of the volcano.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck was so fun, but just another day for the average Salvadoran. We drove to 3,800 feet where the road simply became too steep. Our driver gave it a couple shots, but there was no point in pushing it since we already saved about a thousand feet by driving up to this point.

We continued hiking up the road through a cedar forest. The road ended soon after but we picked up a trail. We passed a big family group who had started from Conacastal earlier in the morning. While this peak is somewhat reclusive to the “intrepid traveler”, it seems reasonably popular with the locals. We left Erick to hang back with them, while Fernando, Chico and Young Erick continued with me at a faster pace.

Fernando asked if I wanted to go up the rocky way or the sandy way. To me the answer was easy, so I requested rocky. An overgrown but well defined use trail ensued, but the dirt was solid and travel was generally easy.

Soon we emerged from the thick jungle, and the western expanse captured my attention. Volcán de Usulután, Cerro Taburete, Cerro El Tigre, Volcán de Tecapa and Volcán de Chinameca flooded the expanse before me.

More inland ran the Sierra Madre.

There was a nice breeze keeping us cool. We would need it because the next thousand feet would comprise of the worst volcanic scree to climb up that I have experienced to date.

It was the classic two steps up, one step down. I had a trekking pole with me that made the section bearable, but I eventually lent this to one of my young guides as he was having more difficulty than I was.

There wasn’t really a trail, but more of a path of erosion. One thing was clear, and that was to continue upwards.

Things started to get easier as we neared the top. A big block of solid rock caught my eye, so I decided to find a scramble route up.

I picked a class 4 route straight up the rock to add some juice to an otherwise non technical hiking trip. This can of course be completely avoided, and I think my guides looked at me quizzically for taking such an unnecessarily dangerous route in the first place.

Shortly after we reached the crater rim.

We dropped down to the flat sandy section beneath us and walked to the edge.

Inside, the fumaroles were seeping out of the yellow rock. There was no visible lava, but the volcano was clearly very active. Our local guide Fernando claimed that he scrambled halfway down the crater, and it was probably for the best that he didn’t go any further.

After the very cool detour, it was time to continue to the peak. We headed east and scrambled back up the crater rim.

The rim was easy to follow and there was a use trail most of the way.

After a few more minutes of hiking we made it to the top.

To the northeast was the city of San Miguel.

To the southeast were Laguna de Olomega, Volcán de Conchagua and La Union.

To the south was the summit crater.

To the west was the flat area from where we examined the depths of the crater. In the distance was Volcán de Usulután.

To the northwest was Volcán de Chinameca.

A point on the opposite side of the crater looked like it could potentially be higher, so I requested that we traverse the entire crater rim, even though Fernando confirmed that we were standing on the highest point. For these types of things you can’t be too sure.

To circumvent the rim, we had to drop into a small notch. Climbing out of this was a loose mess, but we eventually made it back atop the high rim. The travel was very easy and breathtaking, with everchanging views in all directions.

Once we reached the summit contender, it was clear that the opposite point was higher, however I am glad we chose to go this way.

-Volcán de Conchagua

-Laguna de Jocotal & Punta Mango

-Endless Beaches

As we continued circling, we got more views into the depths of Chaparrastique.

We got back to our original starting point of the rim traverse where we ran into the kids from the family we saw earlier. The parents were still below making their way up the loose scree. Among them was older Erick, chatting away about different business opportunities. I would not be patient enough to wait for him to reach the top. He turned around without me asking, but he would end up taking a long time to descend. We took the sandy (sandier) route down this time, which I was really looking forward to. This was some of the best scree skiing I have ever done, however this bliss was interrupted since I had to wait for Erick many times. I finally decided to enjoy the sandy portion of the descent uninterrupted, and wait for Erick down below. It was a very nice descent while it lasted, and afterwards we found a spot in some shade back in the forest. Fernando claimed that he made it from crater rim to dirt road in under 20 minutes. We ended up waiting for over an hour, and needless to say I was pretty annoyed. Once he finally showed up, I grumpily walked the remaining distance down to the road, and later to the car.

As we approached the car, I started to sense big animals moving in the nearby brush. Several heads of cattle were grazing the mountain slopes.

Our driver was waiting for us right where he left us. The hike was 6.3 miles round trip with 3,400 ft of total gain (including the crater rim traverse). Please keep in mind that this does not include the section we were able to drive. We dropped off Fernando in Conacastal, then began our long drive back to El Zonte. Traffic was pretty bad towards the end of the drive, but I was able to make it back in time for dinner. This will for sure be a trip that I will never forget.

youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9ENCjN5o7M&t=5s

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withabackpackandcamera · 3 years

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July 3rd, 2021

Day 8: Horses, Waterfalls, and Highlands On Our Last Full Day of Nature

Over the last two days of driving, an idea came to me of how I could finally give Cynthia her overdue birthday gift while here in Iceland. With so much commuting time to ponder it, I slowly thought about the possibilities and finally came up with the idea of an impromptu Icelandic horseback riding experience! Cynthia loves horses and riding on an Icelandic horse would be both a unique and fun experience to have while here in Iceland! So after I threw that idea out, Cynthia called some places to figure out what last minute options we had for booking. Eventually, we settled on Vik Horse Adventures, a horse-riding tour company in Vik, that had open time slots that were most convenient for our already-packed itinerary.

This morning, we woke up early (despite really wanting to sleep in) and ate a quick breakfast Cynthia made for us while enjoying our tall-windowed morning views of the plains leading down to the black sand beach and ocean water. Once we finished breakfast, Minh drove us out to Vik and dropped us off at Vik Horse Adventures. After an orientation to riding techniques and our horses, we quickly climbed on top of our designated horses and made our way out of the barn and toward the black sand beach located a little ways behind the barn.

My horse’s name was Atgeir, one of the younger horses I believe. He was a funny horse. From what the company folks had to say about him, he was puppy-like in nature, curious, loved to snack along the way, and enjoyed getting into people’s businesses! Also, he was always a little itchy and needed a scratch. I feel ya, Atgeir. As for Cynthia, she got old, reliable, “been through this a few times” Hektor. Anyhow, we rode our horses in a line down to the black sand beach, with me and Atgeir walking somewhere in the middle of the line. We trotted slowly down to the beach, where we rode over the black sand before stopping for some photos. After our photos, we rode back toward the barn along a different path, where we got to do some fast-paced trotting/galloping as well as ride through a stream of water. Eventually, after some more fast-paced jogging, we arrived back at the barn and bid farewell to our horses and the workers. The last minute birthday gift experience was fun, and Cynthia definitely enjoyed her time with Hektor!

While waiting for Minh to pick us up, we spent some extra time with the horses as they were cooling down behind the barn before walking over to a grocery store and a cafe to buy some snacks and croissant sandwiches for the last long drive of the trip. Once we finally got picked up, we made a brief stop to see Vik Church, the iconic church located on the hilltop overlooking the town of Vik. Unfortunately, given how heavy the clouds and fog were blanketing the area by the time we got to the church, the photo opportunity was poor so we didn’t spend too much time there before driving off to pick up our parents from Black Beach Suites.

Back at the suite, we packed the rest of our stuff. Before long, we had the car packed and were ready to hit the road once more. Because of the impromptu horse riding experience this morning, we were a little behind schedule. With a ton left to still see and do, it was time to play some catch up.

Our first stop after getting gas this morning was Seljalandsfoss, the beautiful waterfall in south Iceland that you can walk right behind as it flows down from the cliff above. This was my third time visiting Seljalandsfoss, and luckily for me, it was definitely not as busy as I thought it’d be given its popularity amongst international tourists. We did a brief walkthrough of the waterfall, took some photos with midges flying all around, and then jumped back in the car to continue on. Oh, and we were nice and gave our parking ticket to some other random family driving in to save them some money before driving off (later than expected) to see one of the expected highlights of the trip: The Icelandic Highlands.

The Icelandic Highlands are some of the coolest and most scenic places in Iceland. Before this trip, I had never had the opportunity to see them because of how difficult they are to get to. But I made it a goal to see the highlands with my whole family this trip. And with Cynthia working most weekdays, today was the only day that we could put aside to see them together. And because we didn’t have nearly enough time to see all the cool, accessible places in the highlands, I only chose a couple of places that were close to one another and easily accessible from where we were, hoping that those sites would at least give us a small taste of the amazingness of the highlands.

Our first stop in the highlands was Haifoss, a beautiful waterfall that flowed over a beautifully colored canyon. When I planned our trip through the highlands, I was worried that whatever car we got wouldn’t be able to handle the gravely-and-rocky F roads. Luckily, for this first part of the trip to Haifoss, the drive wasn’t actually too bad. For a large chunk of the trip, the drive was primarily on paved roads before it transitioned to gravel roads that weren’t nearly as rough as I thought they’d be but rough enough that I was glad that we rented a 4x4.

Once we arrived at Haifoss, there were only 4-5 cars in the parking lot, a relatively small crowd for how easily accessible this beautiful area was (though it did get much busier shortly after). And it was quite spectacular! The deep canyon over which the waterfall flowed was beautifully striped with vivid earthly colors. And the two huge waterfalls flowing there were gorgeous as well, though both waterfalls were beautiful in their own different ways. By this point in the day, the afternoon sunlight was hitting the waterfalls straight on, providing even lighting for some attempts at decent landscape photography… So I took out my camera and tripod to take some photos. At the end of it all, the photos were OK because the sky was subpar. And canyons and waterfalls are never that easy to capture on camera. They’re much prettier when seen in person with your own eyes. Anyhow, my family and I stayed at Haifoss and cycled through multiple viewpoints until we were satisfied with the views and left for our next location: Sigöldugljúfur.

Sigöldugljúfur, also known as the Valley of Tears, is a well-Instagrammed canyon with tons of small waterfalls flowing into the canyon and filling up its floor with very turquoise blue water. A magnificent and tranquil scene. To get there, we had to endure a much longer and rougher drive than the drive we had just taken to Haifoss. But again, we were lucky that there were some paved parts to drive on to escape the rocky, unpaved parts. Once we finally got to the parking lot for Sigöldugljúfur, my dad and Minh walked out ahead of me and Cynthia to check out the scenery and scout the location. But before long, they waved to us and turned back, saying that they didn’t see anything worth visiting and that we should turn around and start heading back toward Reykjavik to get home early.

After all of that driving, there was no way I was going to turn back and not see what I was looking forward to seeing. And so I decided that, with Minh and Cynthia, I would go back out there and look for Sigöldugljúfur despite my parents’ protests that we should head back. I was a bit upset at the situation but whatever. I looked online and confirmed we were in the right spot to see the canyon. And I spoke with a drone-flyer and confirmed with him that we were in the right location as well. So, I left my parents in the car and left Cynthia and Minh behind as I started my search for the canyon. I hiked all the way past the point where my dad and brother had previously turned back, determined to find the canyon and determined to take decent photos of it before returning to the car within a reasonable amount of time (because sometimes I spend too much time taking photos at different locations, thus delaying the trip and making everyone wait, and I didn’t want to do that again if I could avoid it).

Eventually, I found what I was looking for: Sigöldugljúfur. Though I found it located much further out from the parking lot than I expected. The canyon of waterfalls was gorgeous to finally see in person after seeing it on Instagram over the years. As Cynthia and Minh trailed behind me, I started to take my photos so that we could head back sooner rather than later. After taking some shots from one vantage point, I tried another until Cynthia and Minh made it over. We took a couple of group photos and then headed back to the car after around 30-45 minutes at the canyon so that we could continue on with the trip.

By this time, it was starting to get late into the afternoon and the sun wasn’t so high in the sky anymore. And we were running out of time to see everything we wanted to see AND get back in time to eat dinner and possibly go out to the volcano site again. So, because we were still far from Reykjavik and because the drive out to Landmannalaugar, a gem in the area, was way too far and way too difficult to race to on gravel roads, we decided to scrap that plan (and unfortunately miss out on seeing it… again) and instead, started our drive back toward Reykjavik with a pit stop at Geysir and Strokkur, the geysers located in the Golden Circle.

It took a longer-than-expected drive to get to Geysir and Strokkur. But given the beautiful evening weather, it wasn’t such a bad drive. Once we were at the geysers, we looked around the geothermal area and braved the annoying midges to watch Strokkur erupt a few times before starting our trip back to the capital. At this point, because we were essentially in the middle of the Golden Circle, we had to drive through half of the Golden Circle route to get back to Reykjavik. And fortunately for everyone, they got to sort of see, from the outside of the park and while driving by, the landscape of Þingvellir and its rift valley, where two tectonic plates are slowly drifting apart. After the brief stops near Þingvellir, we finally started our long drive back to Reykjavik.

As we approached downtown Reykjavik, nostalgia hit me. All these familiar sights and scenes that I have seen over and over again during my last couple of trips. Man, it was nice to see Reykjavik again. Though, this time, there was a lot more construction throughout downtown than what I remembered seeing in 2017. We had to navigate through all of the construction to grab our dinner for the evening from good ol’ Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, the Icelandic hotdog stand located in downtown Reykjavik, because most other places were closed by the time we arrived in Reykjavik. I dropped my family off so they could walk around and order the hotdogs while I drove up and down some streets to look for parking. Eventually, after 10-15 minutes of driving, I found a spot right next to the hotdog stand where I could park. I then joined up with my family at the hotdog stand, where I enjoyed two delicious hotdogs before climbing back into the car to drive to our nearby AirBnB.

Once at the AirBnB, which was located right on the outskirts of downtown and close to Landspitali, the hospital I briefly worked at in 2017, we met our hosts, a very nice and welcoming couple who live just below the AirBnB they were renting out to us. We were briefly shown around the unit and then left to ourselves, during which time we got settled and comfortable in our home for the next two nights.

But us kiddos didn’t stay settled for very long. With the evening skies looking clear and weather conditions looking promising, I decided pretty late that it would be a waste not to attempt another hike to check out the Geldingadalir/Fagradalsfjall volcano. Even though it was late and even though I was extremely exhausted from the day’s and trip’s cumulative activities. But I thought to myself… “When will I get another good chance like this to see an active volcano in person?” and “I can just rest when I get back home to the States.” So, I committed myself to a very tiring and late night and roped both Minh AND Cynthia into coming along for the late night-early morning adventure as well. We all quickly packed our belongings for the hike and bundled up before finally leaving the house for the volcano around 11:15pm. Because I was so tired, I asked Minh to drive, which provided me with a brief opportunity to rest my eyes and recharge in the back seat before we arrived at the parking lot for the volcano around midnight or so. What happens next… will not happen today! So stay tuned for Part 2 of the volcano adventure!

5 Things I Learned/Observed Today:

1. Typically, all horse breeds have three natural gaits: the walk, the trot, and the gallop. However, due to the unique body structures of Icelandic horses, not only do they have the three typical gaits mentioned above, they also have two unique gaits called the tölt and the flying pace that other horse breeds do not have. Don’t ask me what that actually entails because I wouldn’t really understand… but it’s pretty cool and super unique!

2. According to our horse tour guides, there are approximately 19,000 horses (give or take) in Iceland and most of them are used for tourism, shows and competitions, farming, and for private use. And tradition here is that all horses in Iceland are Icelandic purebreds. With these purebred horses, there are very strict rules by which they and their owners must abide. One is that they must be purebred in Iceland. And two is that if any Icelandic horse leaves the country, it can never come back into the country. Additionally, no horses that are from outside of Iceland can be introduced into Iceland, resulting in the purebred horse population in Iceland being very isolated and exclusive to Iceland, something that has been going on for about a thousand years. These rules make Icelandic horses one of the most purely bred horses in the world. And one benefit from this isolation: they are pretty healthy and don’t die of horse influenza even though they are not vaccinated against it. .

3. There have been a ton of movies and shows that have been filmed all over Iceland throughout the years. Interestingly enough, there have been a ton filmed near Vik, like Star Wars: Rogue One, Game of Thrones, and the new Netflix original series Katla. Supposedly, Iceland was a very popular location to film movies and shows last year during the pandemic because there were so little restrictions that the movie industry had to abide by, making it easy for movie folks to come over and work on their projects.

4. Not all F roads are super rocky, gravel-y roads. Some parts are paved like regular roads. Others are less rocky and easily passable by simple sedans and passenger cars (though not recommended). But I’m sure there are a TON of roads that are almost impassable in a smaller 4x4 due to how rough they are.

5. Strokkur, the geyser that is still alive in the Golden Circle, seems to erupt, on average, every 2-6 minutes plus or minus a few minutes, based on my 30 minute observation and timing of its eruptions. Geysir, on the other hand, is dead and no longer erupting.

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mamaskillerqueen · 5 years

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Simple Man || Billy Hargrove

A/N: So, I posted this once upon a time on another blog that I have since lost the login info to. I decided to share it here because it’s near and very dear to my heart and because this is exactly what we are not going to get in the new season of Stranger Things. But, this is probably my favourite thing I have ever written. It came to me at work one day, not long after my mother passed away. I hope that you all enjoy it!

Warnings: Parental death, brief mentions (more like hints) to Neil’s abusive behaviour, anxiety attacks in reference to my own.

Disclaimer: I do not condone or excuse Billy’s behaviour, I just enjoy writing damaged characters. I relate to them the most, as I’m quite damaged too.

My mama told me, when I was young

The crooning voice of Ronnie Van Zant crackled through the too loud speakers of the Camaro unexpectedly. Just prior was the newest single by Metallica, hence the volume. It was Billy Hargrove’s job to make sure the entirety of Hawkins could hear the greatness that was For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Come sit beside me, my only son

It hadn’t even crossed the teenagers mind to leave his step-sister to skate home since the incident at the Byers’ house. Today was different. The inability to change the music station had him shifting the car into reverse and speeding out of the parking lot. A weight settled in his chest that he couldn’t shake. All he could think was that maybe open road would help with the claustrophobia.

And listen closely to what I say

Ronnie’s crooning voice soon gave way to the soothing, melodious voice in his head. A voice he thought he’d lost forever. It wasn’t long after that when the road in front of him disappeared, instead replaced with visions he wished he could forget.

And if you do this, it will help you some sunny day\

It must have been a cruel trick the universe decided to lay on him. He had been doing so well that it was time to throw a wrench in the plans. Summer was just beginning to sink it’s claws into Hawkins. The grey, dingy sky had broken to a bright, beautiful blue that had long been forgotten over the winter and spring.

The second verse hadn’t even started yet when his car came to a crawling stop. His body had gotten him here entirely on autopilot. The drive had become so regular he often found himself starting the way here when he was intending on somewhere completely different.

The overlook of the quarry was a place that teenagers used to go to hang out and cause trouble. At least up until Will Byers went missing and a body was dragged out of the water. Now, Billy was pretty sure he was the only one to ever come here. Anytime things got too tense at home he would come here to think, to try and plan a future for himself that didn’t end with him being a carbon copy of Neil Hargrove.

Oh take your time, don’t live too fast

Wrenching the door open the boy dragged himself from his car, his limbs carrying him to the edge of the cliff. The heavy clink of the door was drowned out by the music filling the otherwise silent cliff top. He had taken a seat on the hood of his car as the first tear started to fall down his face. The hollow hole in his chest ached a little more than usual as he remember her once beautiful smile and brilliant blue eyes.

Troubles will come, and they will pass

Looking back, he understood now why she chose to make this song the last one she would have ever sang to him. She had never wanted him to turn out the way he had. Like any caring mother, she had always wanted the best for her only son. He would never understand why such a vibrant, bubbly soul like her would have chosen such a dismal man as Neil to love. Billy would never understand why she had chosen to stay, even when her husband stopped showing up at the hospital to see her. Mostly, he would never understand why she would leave him with such a monster of a man if she had only wanted the best for him.

You’ll find a woman, and you’ll find love

And don’t forget, son, there is someone up above

Instinctively, his hand reached for the necklace that hung securely around his neck at all times. He had promised to keep it safe, and he had no intentions of ever breaking that promise. The tears tracked steadily down his face as he stared sightlessly out over the water below. No amount of words could ever convey the emptiness that settled into his chest when she died. It was almost like he had lost part of himself.

And be a simple kind of man

Oh, be something you love and understand

A slow and steady change had been in the works since that night at the Byers’. The next time Billy saw Steve, his face beat to hell, was a wake up call. Billy was on a path that lead straight down Neil Hargrove Lane, a road he never wanted to end up on. In fact, it was a road he promised his mother a very long time ago he would never visit.

Change is never easy. Nothing worth while ever is, but especially when it’s something that has to be done entirely alone. And, Billy was entirely on his own. He had gone down a dark slope, that much he knew. When he found himself at the bottom with no flashlight, he realized there was no one around to help him climb back into the light. All he had was a few memories of the most beautiful lady he’d ever known, inside and out, to help guide him.

Baby be a simple kind of man

Oh, won’t you do this for me, son, if you can

With fresh tears welling up in his eyes he quickly swiped the old ones away, rose from the hood of his car, and sucked in a deep breath. The memories of his mother were still playing in the forefront of his mind, her voice still the only one he could hear in his head but there was something else there too. Something he couldn’t name, or put a finger on but it was something important.

By the time he made it back to the school parking lot Max was already skating home. It took him no time at all to find her usual route. He didn’t have to say anything for her to hop off her board and fling herself into the car. She shot him a glare, expecting him to speed off without a word but what she got was unexpected, even for Billy.

“I’m sorry, Max.”

They both knew he wasn’t just apologizing for leaving her to find her own way home.

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brynandchristopher · 4 years

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Rain rain go away

Well it’s been a while! Our plans got switched around quite a bit in the last 2 weeks, so we are a little off schedule in getting a blog post out. The last time we checked in we had just finished the Abel Tasman Coastal Track on the northern coast of the South Island and were stopped in Westport for a few nights post-hike.

After leaving Westport, we embarked on the scenic drive south on Route 6 along the wild and rugged western coast of the South Island. The west coast is where the mountains meet the sea, and Route 6 skirts the fine line between the cascading forested peaks and the dark rocky beaches. We drove a few hours down the winding, rugged road, making a few stops along the way to take it all in. One of the most noteworthy places we stopped was in Punakaiki on the western edge of Paparoa National Park, where we took a short walk to view the pancake rocks and blowholes. The pancake rocks are odd, stacked rock formations that are still somewhat of a geological mystery, and the blowholes release surges of sea spray through hollowed out rock caverns. It was a beautiful walk and a nice way to stretch our legs after a few hours of driving. We made it to a free campsite at Whataroa Gorge that afternoon, where we cooked a delicious dinner, went for a quick dip in the river, and tucked in for the night. The next morning we woke up to rain and cold, and decided we would use the overcast weather to put a dent in our drive south to another free campsite in the parking lot of a cafe a few hours away. After holing up in the cafe for a while, and without much else to do in the pouring rain, we figured we might as well put in a few more hours of driving. We stopped at the roaring Fantail Falls in Mount Aspiring National Park before making our way to Wanaka, a beautiful lakeside town flanked by hills and mountains. At this point, we were both a bit cranky after being in the car for 5 or 6 hours, but we found a campsite, whipped up a quick dinner of instant noodles and hunkered down for the night.

The next day, we were pleasantly surprised to find another service hub in Wanaka that offered free hot showers, wifi, water, etc. to van/camper-dwelling travelers, so we stopped in to get all cleaned up and refreshed. Fortunately the sun had come out again, and we took advantage of the good weather by seeking out a cliff jumping spot that had been recommended to us by a friend of Chris’ who had spent a semester abroad in New Zealand. We drove down a long gravel road to a trail that lead down to a gorge on the Motatapu River. The gorge was beautiful, with clear teal water carving through rocky cliffs and we were lucky enough to have it all to ourselves. There were a few different spots to jump (I went for the shorter, less scary ones, and Chris went for the higher ones) and the water was shockingly cold, but we had an awesome time and were happy we got the recommendation. As we were drying off and preparing to leave, a few people had just arrived to the gorge and told us about another jumping spot a few miles up the road. After a few wrong turns, we made it to the trailhead and hiked to a small riverside beach. We were told to walk upriver for a few minutes to another gorge with a few different jumping spots, so we walked and swam our way to a beautiful opening in the river channel. We jumped in a few times and then floated our way back down to the beach. It was super fun and we were grateful to get a local tip :)

We spent another night in Wanaka before driving south to Queenstown, where we restocked on some groceries, stopped in for a shower at another service hub, and departed towards a campsite in the small town of Lumsden. The weather had begun to turn again, and the next day we were greeted by what would be the start of an extremely rainy week. We were getting a bit nervous - our next Great Walk, the Kepler Track in Fiordlands National Park, was coming up in a few days and the forecast was very foreboding. In the next couple of days we drove farther south, stopping in at a few towns for farmers markets and refuge from the rain. We camped along the beautiful southern coast in Pahia, and then looped up towards Te Anau where we would begin the Kepler Track. The morning we were supposed to leave for the trek, we checked the weather only to see a 100% chance of heavy rain every day for the next 4-5 days, with forecasts of flooding and landslides possible. The main draw of the Kepler Track are the spectacular views, so we decided to postpone our hike by about a week in hopes that the weather would clear. Our next Great Walk after the Kepler was supposed to be the Routeburn Track (also in Fiordland National Park), so we decided to stop in at the visitor center in Te Anau to ask about the status of the trails.

When we arrived, we were informed that there had been a major landslide on the road leading out to the Routeburn Track, as well as multiple landslides along the trail itself, and that it would likely be closed for the rest of the season. We were pretty bummed that we wouldn’t be able to do the Routeburn anymore, but felt grateful that we weren’t out on the trail when the landslides happened - one of the slides hit a hut on the trail and everyone had to be evacuated out by helicopter! The ranger at the visitor center also informed us that all of the major highways going north were flooded due to the heavy rains, as well as some of the highways leading east, so we had few options for where to go in our time before Kepler. We were able to drive to Lumsden again, avoiding multiple flooding detours along the way, and camped there for the night. The town of Lumsden was generous enough opened their community center for the night as a place for stranded freedom campers to come and escape the rain and wind. They offered warm drinks, cookies, and a space to hang out for everyone - Chris and I ended up guiding an impromptu yoga lesson to a group of German girls who were also stuck there. We were extremely grateful to the people of Lumsden for their hospitality and kindness. :)

The next few days were a little bit of a drag - one of the downfalls of van life is the lack of options in poor weather, and we found ourselves feeling a bit trapped and restless. We drove between a few different towns and spent most of our time between the van, libraries, and cafes while the rain continued to come down in sheets. One of our nights was spent in the parking lot of a rugby club in the small town of Edendale. Only an hour so after we arrived, a helicopter landed in the field adjacent to us and dropped off mattresses and blankets for evacuees in the area. Two of the neighboring towns had been evacuated due to flooding, one of which was at risk of a toxic Ammonia gas leak as a result of waste left in an old paper mill along the river that wasn’t supposed to get wet. The south island is used to a lot of precipitation, but apparently this rain event was a one in every 100 years type of occurrence.

Finally the rain began to clear and we drove back along the southern coast to make our way towards Fiordland National Park for the second time. We stopped in the beautiful Colac Bay to camp for a night and explored the rocky beach, relieved to be outside after so many days stuck in the van. While we were walking, we spotted a sign about harvesting mussels at low tide, and figured we should scout out the area in case we came across any. Once low tide came around, we walked down to the rocks and Chris found hundreds of New Zealand’s green-lipped mussels clinging to a boulder just below the tideline. He harvested 44 of them and we cooked them up for a dinner of raviolis, mussels, and broccoli in a white cheese sauce. It was delicious and fun to know that we had harvested part of the meal ourselves. :)

After Colac Bay, we drove to the southern region of Fiordland National Park to the deepest lake in New Zealand, Lake Hauroko. We hiked an hour up a steep, rugged trail to a lookout point over the lake, stopped for a break to take it all in, and made our way back down to go for a swim. After our swim we were attacked by swarms of sandflies, New Zealand’s resident biting fly, and made a quick escape into the van before driving to our campsite by the Clifden Suspension Bridge. The following day we took a walk among the towering Totara trees, an enormous tree species endemic to New Zealand, and then prepped for the Kepler Track which we would be starting the next day. The weather forecast predicted the next three days to be in the 60s, clear and sunny, and we were thanking ourselves for deciding to change our plans. On our first day, the Kepler Track took us through lush, fern-laiden forests and over rushing streams and rivers. The trail was relatively flat with minor undulations, but it was a long day for both of us at about 13.7 miles. After 6 hours of hiking we arrived at the Iris Burn campsite, feeling sore but accomplished, and excited for a rest. We had a typical backpacking dinner of instant rice, quinoa, and lentils, with a dessert of peppermint tea and gummy fruit jubes. We ended up talking with a lot of the other campers, and were shocked by how many other Americans were on the trail at the same time as us. We’ve hardly met any other Americans in our travels so far, and there were about 8 of us at this one campsite - two were from Maine and one had graduated from UMass in 2019 as well! It was a nice and unexpected taste of home, and it felt good to recount pieces of home with them. When we got into our tent for the night, we noticed that someone had set their tent up about three feet away from ours, but we shrugged it off at the time assuming they were just trying to find a flat spot. About an hour or two later, loud, jagged snores began coming from the adjacent tent. We tried to ignore it and fall asleep to no avail, and ended up carrying our tent through the woods in the middle of night to escape the noise.

We woke up the next morning a bit tired from the snoring fiasco, but ready for the long day ahead. The second day was going to be the hardest day by far - nearly 15 miles up and over Mount Luxmore standing at just over 4800 feet. We spent the first 3 hours on the trail winding up a series of unforgiving switchbacks before arriving at the Hanging Valley emergency shelter. We were already feeling exhausted, but the views were absolutely spectacular - soaring, snow-peaked mountains towered over Lake Te Anau and glacier carved valleys surrounded us on all sides. We stopped for some trail mix which we had to keep away from the local Keas - the world’s only alpine parrot which are notoriously clever at stealing from people. After a quick rest carried on across the ridgeline and up the remainder of Mount Luxmore. Three hours later we arrived at Luxmore Hut, a hut on the far side of Mount Luxmore overlooking Lake Te Anau. We still had about 5 miles to go to our campsite, but we took a quick snack break and rested our feet while looking out at the stunning view. Fortunately, the last 5 miles were downhill and our bodies were grateful for a break from the relentless uphill climb. After a long, 8.5 hour day of hiking, we arrived at Brod Bay Campsite, feeling weary and relieved to be done. We set up camp, went for a swim in the lake, and made a fire on the beach while we cooked dinner. It was a lovely way to end the day and we relaxed by the flames before settling into our tent for the night. We had seen mice around the campsite so we brought our food bags into the tent with us in hopes that they wouldn’t eat any. At around 4 am, I awoke to the sound of rustling in our tent, and looked towards our food bags to see a mouse nibbling at our trail mix. Startled, I yelped and woke Chris up, and continued to panic a bit as the mouse ran and jumped around our tent. Eventually after a few failed attempts to catch the mouse, we emptied the tent out and shook it out. Now wide awake, and with little hope of falling back asleep, we decided to hike out at 5 in the morning. The majority of the 9.5 miles out to the parking lot was in the dark, and we were definitely the only ones on the trail. While we were a little bit delirious, it was cool to hike at night, and we think we heard the bird calls of the endangered, nocturnal Kiwis!

We were off the trail by 9 am, and drove to Queenstown for a much needed shower and celebratory pizza. Since then, we’ve spent 2 nights camped by Lake Dunstan outside Cromwell, a town about 45 minutes north of Queenstown. In the next few days we will be heading east to Alexandra to meet up with Chris’ friend from Northeastern, Camille, who is also living in New Zealand right now. After that, Chris’ sister, Madeline, is coming to visit for about a week, and then we will try to sell the van in the Christchurch area! It’s crazy that our time in New Zealand is starting to come to an end, we’ll be leaving for Australia in just under a month from now! We will be sad to part with this incredible country, and are cherishing every day we have left here. We still have a few more exciting adventures to come before we head out, and are looking forward to having Madeline around to share them with. :)

Loving and missing you all from afar,

Bryn and Christopher

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scriptstructure · 6 years

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sorry if you already answered something like this, if you did i coudn't find it so: i have a fantasy story with 3 pov characters. All 3 have an important arc, one of them(say X) has a more stressful one. Problem: if i arrange the chapters so the X chapters are followed by less stressful but impactful chapters the transition is a bit off, but if i match the more stressful points of X's arc with the stressful points of the other two it feels a bit too intense to read. Any advice? Thanks in advance

My ‘multiple plots’ tag is [HERE]

I think in this case it’s going to be helpful for you to take a step back and look at the ‘shape’ of your narrative. Each of these three character arcs are progressing throughout the novel, with their own ups and downs, but you’ll want to keep in mind the flow of rising action in the story as a whole.

A Very simple illustration that you will probably have seen in school is something like this:

Generally, in conceptualising the ‘shape’ of a narrative, it will be something like this, most of the story is building up to a moment of confrontation or action, and then there is a short denouement in which the narrative issues are resolved, and the story ends.

If we were to imagine the three act structure as discussed in [THIS] post, it would look a bit like:

Overall, that same upside down checkmark shape is still there, but we can see the rudimentary ‘ups and downs’ of a narrative taking place.

If you think about your story, and your three narrative threads, you’ll probably find it helpful to map out the shape of your own story, so that you have an idea of what each part of your story would ideally be working towards.

As to your issue with the ‘stressful’ parts of the story aligning, sometimes we need high tension in the story, sometimes it is important that the different strands of the narrative all reach crisis at the same point, if it is handled well it can make for a memorable, nail-biting story.

If it isn’t handled well, it can seem over the top, or it can begin to incur ‘reader fatigue’.

I think that in large part, the difference between tension on multiple fronts being handled well or handled poorly comes down to the stakes vs payoff of these situations, combined with the transition between narrative threads, and having these tensions resolved in a way that is satisfying.

Stakes vs payoff is about how the balance of what is being risked by the characters/ world, vs what stands to be gained, and then how the issue actually resolves. Is the risk being taken something that is worth the reward, or conversely, is the cost of failure bad enough to justify whatever situation the character has gotten into?

An example: When I was ten and reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I found the early scenes where Harry and Ron take Mr Weasley’s car after missing the Hogwarts Express almost unbearable to read. I found the idea appalling: Mr and Mrs Weasley were still at the station, and undoubtedly as soon as an adult discovered that the two boys had missed the train they would have sent them on to the school some other way (via floo, for example).

In my mind, at the time, taking the car was a wildly unjustified leap of logic, and the act of stealing a car was vastly overreacting to the situation of having missed a train while adults are very close by and would be able to help.

In this case, for me, what was at stake for the characters in no way measured up to the risks they took to deal with the problem. When I read it now, I can see that it is meant to have a sense of adventure, and is also a course of action dictated by Harry’s lack of trust in adults in general, but at the time it seemed nonsensical and needlessly risky.

The takeaway is to consider whether any bold move that your characters make might be dealt with in a less risky way, and incorporate into the story reasons or justifications for why the characters choose the route that they do. It could be because your character is a habitual risk taker, or because they are literally blocked from taking other courses of action, as long as it fits the story you’re telling and makes sense, then it’s fine.

Transitioning between the narratives at moments of high tension is something I’ve mentioned in previous posts about multiple plot stories. It is important to build the conflict in the scene, but also to resolve some issues. In moments of high tension, however, a resolution often simply causes more conflict to spiral out of the situation.

A big situation where reader fatigue can occur is when it seems like the narrative threads are forever ratcheting up and no resolution is occurring, the reader is hanging off of three consecutive cliffs and their arms are tired, there’s no sense of progress, only of more and more chaos spinning out of control. This is where minor notes of resolution can help, if one small issue is pinned down, even while bigger problems balloon, it gives the reader some kind of foothold to help them get through the rough patches.

Keep in mind, each narrative thread will have major and minor conflicts occurring, and while many can come to a head at once, some must be resolved. Occasionally, these minor resolutions can be moments of humour, or levity in an otherwise bleak passage -- the presence of a small light makes the darkness seem all the darker, right? Well sure the villain is rampaging at full strength and the hero is struggling to work out how to do anything helpful, but at least she’s found the car keys she lost two chapters ago!

And finally, ‘satisfying resolutions’ doesn’t necessarily mean that things turn out the way the heroes hope they will -- it means that the narrative thread is resolved in a way that makes sense in terms of the logic of the world and characters, and that suits the theme and tone of the story.

The ending of Hamlet is satisfying, as the tragic narrative leads us through struggle and failure, to the death of the noble prince. The ending of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is satisfying as the comic narrative has led us through the trials of a group of young people and to their happy ending.

The protagonists will win some battles, lose some others, the antagonist will have some effect on the world, and to some extent that will linger even after their defeat (assuming they are defeated). The way that these outcomes are weighted should be influenced by the previous narrative, and the drive of the story. You don’t want your lighthearted comedy ending in a massacre, and you don’t want your dark and broody rumination on the nature of human folly to end with having a bunch of weddings and everyone will get along now!

Back to your original question:

It’s good to have parts of the story (the first climax, the crisis, and the climax, especially) where things are very tense and high stakes, these are the big moments of the book, and you don’t want to undercut the story by backing off at those moments, it’s fine for the readers to be white-knuckling at those points, as long as you give them the build up to prepare for it, and the denouement to catch their breath, that’s what those parts of the story are for!

I hope that helps!

#multiple plots #writing #narrative shape #three act structure #tension and traction #madcrafter1

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bike42 · 3 years

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Friday, July 9 - Sunday, July 11, 2021

Happy to be back out on the Ice Age Trail!! We’re hiking without Gary as he had to fly back to New Jersey for a funeral today, but with luck will see him tomorrow. Our rendezvous point was only 70 minutes from our house so it was nice to be able to leave just after 6 AM and get to the meeting point before 7:30 AM. Even though we’d just seen everyone, we were excited to be together again. Jeff had to gently shepherd us into the cars, reminding us that we had all day to talk and swap stories and we should get going.

We left two cars at our meeting point and got into Dan and Tam‘s SUV and drove to the start of the Deerwood Segment, where we left off on that rainy Sunday just a few weeks ago. We were delighted to find it looking much different today - it’s a perfect Wisconsin summer day. It was about 60° when we started out, with plenty of sunshine.

We hiked 10 miles before a lunch break - wonderful segments (Deerfield, Bohn Lake and Greenwood) through pine trees, around beautiful lakes, with short road walks mixed in. This combination allows us to cover pretty good ground because we can really book it on the road walk and stop and enjoy when we’re in the woods a little bit more. We took two different snack breaks this morning which was really helpful because I was used to having a long drive to drink my coffee and gradually eat my breakfast. I brought along my small thermos of coffee and that was really great to wash down a cliff bar with hot coffee. Another unusual factor is that we encountered several couples – still so strange to see others on these amazing trails. One couple was out with their 11-year-old dog, and said they walk this 4-mile loop every day. The other couple had three grandchildren along and they had buckets and were just going blackberry picking. We chatted with them for a while and Tam told the kids to pick enough berries so grandma could make a blackberry cobbler. Grandma said “shut up,” which gave us all a great laugh and reminded us of Jen at the bar a couple weeks ago who told a customer “Shut up and give me all your money.” In addition to a couple snack breaks I ate a lot of ripe blackberries along the trail (yum) and found myself hoping that the café at lunchtime will have blackberry cobbler.

The summer wildflowers are really starting to come in to full bloom which attracts a myriad of different kind of butterflies, including many monarchs. As we were walking through the pine forest, it was very quiet due to the sand and pine needles underfoot and we heard buzzing in the trees. While we couldn’t see a beehive, we’re pretty sure that’s what we heard. We walked probably another hundred feet and had the same thing. It was really cool and it made me think made me think of Winnie the Pooh and the way he would sing to the honeybees and try to float along with a balloon to get the honey from the hive in the tree!

After 10 miles we came out through the woods right where our cars were – always, thankful for that! We climbed into the two cars and drove about 7 miles to Coloma where we stopped at the Red Hill café for lunch (except we all had omelets). This is an Amish area and the café served an Amish wheat bread with our omelets, the best bread I’ve had in a long time! One of their specials of the day was a ‘double caramel chocolate roll muffin’ which sounded a bit too decadent, even for me. Like all establishments these days the café was probably short-staffed so it took a long time for us to order and for our food to come, so it was about 2:30p before we shuttled the cars and were back on the trail. With full bellies, it was off to a slow start as we started again down the connecting road.

This afternoon we finished the Greenwood segment had a short road walk and started the Mecan River segment. The area was designated Mecan Springs State Natural Area, and the trail was gorgeous but we didn’t see much of the river, which is always disappointing to me.

We all had several wood-ticks today, but we’re getting used to them and no one seems as freaked out as last year. Other than a few flies, and some intermittent buzz-bys from deer flies, no other bugs – no mosquitoes, which is a bit unbelievable!

At one point the trail today came out into a farm field and there was a fabulous prairie easement between two cornfields and that we were allowed to walk through. We rousted up some sand hill cranes, always majestic to watch them take off and fly away. The prairie flowers were just starting to come into bloom and the view was breathtaking to me. There were spots in the cornfield where the probably original oak trees still stood and rocks were piled up and you could just imagine the settlers clearing the fields and piling up the rocks. And we think we’re working hard out here just slogging along the trail, silly us!

With our dallying, it was nearly 6 o’clock before we got back to the car – 17.5 miles for the day. We had a quick shuttle to pick up the other two cars and soon we were back in Coloma for a bathroom stop at the gas station. Jeff and I picked up root beer floats at the A&W that was attached to the gas station. The other two couples stopped at a restaurant in Coloma for dinner, but Jeff and I decided to head home and tend to our cat. We arrived home about 7:30 PM completely exhausted. I had all I could do to eat a little leftover salad, re-supply my pack for tomorrow run a hot bubble bath and then crawl into bed shortly after nine.

A late-night text from Gary said he was stranded in Charlotte, North Carolina which is pretty far from New Jersey, and further from Wisconsin. On our drive north today, we learned he was now in Detroit, which is closer, but he still wasn’t going to make the hike today. That made us all sad because we’re a little lost without him, but we pressed on anyway. We were all at the rendezvous spot at 8 AM, and we took two cars back to Highway GG in the middle of the Mecan river segment and we were hiking by 8:30 AM, an easy early start.

This part of the Mecon river segment actually paralleled the river, winding around through oak and pine forest, on another absolutely gorgeous Wisconsin summer day. The ladies lagged behind a bit, using my “Picture This” app to identify some of the flowers. We were hiking through an area that had been logged several years before, which was now growing a bunch of pretty flowers and berries most of which are poisonous to humans of course.

Over the past two days, much of the trail had vole or moles that had burrowed trails than intersected under our trails! We were a bit perplexed by the volume, but actually, it made for softer trails. Jeff figured there must be a lot of grubs in the area for them to be eating!

We had a great morning enjoying the hike along the river, stopping once at a bench to take a coffee break and enjoy the scenery. We ended the Mecan River segment and had 2.3-mile road walk. It was warm but we had a nice breeze. We walked through a little village, Richford, which seemed to be primarily an Amish settlement. We walked through the edge of a cemetery with really old tombstones -many of them that you couldn’t even make out the writing anymore. I heard a “clap clap clap” on the pavement behind us, and there was an Amish farmer in a horse and buggy – that was a first for our connecting route walking! Soon we heard another, but that one was a horse pulling a farmer in a really uncomfortable looking cart!

We arrived at the start of Wedde Creek segment, and took another sit-down break – most of us taking off our boots to cool our feet after walking on the hot road. It was a shorter segment, through another gorgeous pine forest and a meadow with lots of wildflowers and butterflies. I lagged behind the group taking photos and just embracing the joy of the day.

After that we had 0.7-mile CR to the Chaffee Creek Segment which will be our last segment for about 40 miles. On this segment we crossed underneath Highway 51 again (we crossed from west to east just south the Tomahawk sometime last winter). For the next couple days will cross underneath Highway 51 back-and-forth a few times until we get to Portage and then will finally turn west and get into familiar territory for us.

We backtracked about a half mile to visit the Rest Stop on I-39/51 – kind of crazy, but always great to have a flush toilet! We hiked through the last of the Chaffee Creek segment, crossing the creek again. We went through another pretty meadow with lots of butterfly activity. We ended up at an official trail parking at a cul de sac, and chatted with a guy there that appeared he was going to do trail maintenance, but actually was doing some work on a friend’s adjacent property. There was trash there that indicated the cul de sac may be a party site. I had a trash bag in my pack, so I pulled it out and started cleaning up the space. Down the road just a bit, there was a branch of a tree nearly blocking the road – the guys got out Jeff’s saw and cleared the road – probably the first time in nearly 600 miles that they cleared a tree on a connecting route!

We had about 1.5 miles CR to get back to Kent’s SUV. We picked up enough trash to fill up TWO bags on our way, always feels good to leave it a little better than we found it. Just don’t get what’s in people’s minds that they just throw trash out the window.

Felt great to be down early. We shuttled back to the Mecan River segment to pick up the other two SUVs, and then to the gas station / A&W in Coloma again. We were home just about 4pm, which was awesome.

For reasons that I don’t understand the Ice Age Trail has a bifurcation, and at the end of our day today we reached that spot of the northern bifurcation. We have opted to take the eastern route which will lead us to Portage, where we’ll walk Levee Road on the south side of the Wisconsin River, south over the Baraboo Bluffs, and we’ll pick up a trail again just around Parfrey’s Glen and that will take us to Devils Lake. The western bifurcation like the eastern in that its mostly CR with very few trail segments. It goes through Baraboo and rejoins the trail at the north side of Devils Lake.

Throughout the hike, we’ve had a lot of Kilimanjaro logistics chatter – its both exciting and anxiety provoking, but I’m so looking forward to that trek – just 9 weeks out now.

Sunday morning, we met at 8AM in Westfield. Shocking to arrive 20 minutes early and find the Knickmeier’s’ already there!! And no Gary, but soon after we arrived, Kent and Lynn pulled in, and Gary soon behind him. Definitely a first! We were all glad to have him back with us today. We left 3 cars in the parking lot of the “Bent Rail” brewpub, where we planned to have lunch. We shuttled north to where we’d left off yesterday, another gorgeous day. I figured we had about 10 miles to lunch, and we were hiking by 8:15am. Even though it was all CR, I managed to pick up a wood-tick during my “quick trip” stop in the woods before we started!

We walked through a lake/resort area, which was odd after days of farms. There were people out running and road cyclists out enjoying the morning – felt kind of normal to us, but different from what we’ve been seeing.

Time passed quickly; seems we never really run out of things to talk about since we’re such a companiable group! It’s also ok for someone to be out front alone when they want to move, or lag behind when they want space. We took a few snack breaks, but mainly just moved. True to form, I was a bit off in the math using the Guthook app to estimate the distance, and it was actually 12 miles. It was warm, but generally with a nice breeze and we arrived at the brew pub about 12:30pm. Like everywhere, they were short staffed – in fact, had a note on their menu asking for patience and offering rewards of free beer for employee referrals. We had a delightful waitress named Tanya, and had some great beer and good food. Patience was required though, and it was after 2P before we were back on the road. Gary and I shuttled his SUV just 3 more miles down the road, and we set off hiking about 2:30PM, and knocked it out in about an hour. Half of it was on a busy County Highway J, so it was great to turn off onto a smaller road, past a few farms and to Gary’s car.

We volunteered to bring Tam and Dan back to their car, which gave us an opportunity to detour back to Coloma and get another A&W float for the drive home. Made for a perfect day! We got a text from Lynn that I-94 had a backup, so we diverted to Portage and took a slower more leisurely

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jamesv-t · 4 years

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Crowdsourcing my runs

Over the last few weeks, I've hit a bit of a creative slump with regards to my running. In the absence of parkrun and the social aspect therein, I've been doing the same routes and getting bored of it. I decided to shake things up a bit and ask my friends on social media to choose for me. A soft launch on Twitter using a carefully selected series of polls (to prevent people telling me to run a marathon in 20 minutes) kicked things off.

Manipulating polls to get the results I wanted

The week after, I tried Instagram, giving followers who cared enough to interact with my stories the choice of a fast and flat run, or hills (hills hills). Unsurprisingly they picked the hills, with a follow-up question seeing 2/3rds choose hill repeats over one big hill in a poorly worded question. Due to wanting a beer on a Saturday night, I elected to do these the morning after watching the film/war-crime Cats, but on the bright side after three 2km reps up a steep hill my hangover was gone! With a nice 2k to get there warming me up (and down afterwards), and the hill being a kilometre high, it was a great route to discover for the future.

So, with a bit of success from these, I opened things up to user submissions. Knowing that they'd probably send me on a route that includes Land's End, John O'Groats, Mordor, Atlantis and Venus, I kept things simple and asked for music submissions. The rules included one track per person, and outlawed any repeats. I also pledged to listen in the order of submission to avoid any suggestions I was adjusting the playlist to make it easier on me. I also privately promised to run for the entire length of the playlist - had I admitted this, I could pinpoint exactly who would submit the longest song they could find just for a laugh (and one of them couched their suggestion with "the longest version of this song you can find", proving me right).

I was nervous about it, especially knowing what the second song was, and only familiar with about a quarter of the songs submitted. How would they fare as running songs? How would they hold up as songs at all? How far would I have to run? Where is the love? Do they know it's Christmas? D'ya know what I mean?

1. MØL - Bruma

Straight in with something new, a shoegazey metal band from Denmark! If the two coffees to start the day hadn't woken me up already, this definitely would have done. I really liked it, it reminded me of Arch Enemy and I'm going to check out more of their work later this week.

Song: 8/10

Suitability as a running soundtrack: 10/10

2. Crazy Frog - Axel F

And the first of the troll submissions. (To be fair, with the amount of shots I've taken at Swindon Town on Twitter, I deserved it.) This started as a "grit your teeth and pray for it to end" song but the steady beat and 80s synths really helped me click into my pace - it's just a shame about the ringtone championing amphibian singing all over it!

Song: 3/10

Running: 8/10 (I'll add the original to my regular running playlists)

3. Bastille - Joy

Any song after the preceding one would be a blessing, but this just clicked with me. Maybe it was seeing the sun breaking through the clouds above the piers, maybe it was just the general pleasantness of the song, but it definitely uplifted my spirits ahead of what could turn out to be a gruelling run.

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

4. Bill Withers - Lovely Day

And another nice song. A steady beat, a song that moves along at a fair clip, it was a surprise that I found it so easy to run to but I'm pleased it was added. I don't know that it would've clicked quite as much if it had been chucking it down but it really was a lovely day for running!

Song: 10/10

Running: 7/10

5. Vidiots - Dog Rap

I was nervous about this song to start with. I had absolutely no idea what to expect and was slightly scared of what I would have to listen to. Luckily, within about 10 seconds I realised it was exactly the sort of rap parody you'd see on SNL or an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and I had a great time with it! I did have trouble keeping my cadence to it, unfortunately.

Song: 7/10

Running: 6/10

6. Turbowolf - Domino

I won't lie, I was half hoping that this would be a metal cover of a Jessie J song. It wasn't, but that wasn't much of a detriment - just three minutes of full on rock 'n' roll, and another band I'll check out more of later!

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

7. Rammstein - Deutschland

Finally, a familiar song! I've run to this track before, and it's not the only one of theirs that I've run to, so I could relax into the run a bit easier. I really should remember that my mask blocks infection but not my voice, as I think I scared other runners by singing along.

Song: 10/10

Running: 9/10

8. Das Sound Machine - World Championship Finale

And from a German band to a faux-German group, performing a mash-up of Fall Out Boy and DJ Khaled. While I didn't enjoy the Pitch Perfect movies as much as people expected, this was a clever combination of two songs I was vaguely familiar with, didn't overstay its welcome, and even raised a smile!

Song: 7/10

Running: 5/10

9. Brothers Osborne - It Ain't My Fault

Again, more expectations of pop song covers dashed, but even though this isn't a countrified Zara Larsson song it still rocked! A good steady beat, it reminded me of a train but that may have been because I was running next to a railway line! Another pleasant discovery. I realised at this point that this was also probably the most different male vocalists I'd listened to in succession in years.

Song: 9/10

Running: 7/10

10. HUNGER - Light It Up

Knowing the musical overlap I have with Elise, I was surprised to hear a(nother) male vocalist on this track. It was great despite that, the song reminded me of a third act heroic run in a teen movie, which really boosted my serotonin.

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

11. Prince - When Doves Cry

The first of three submissions from the same person, and reluctantly the only one I could keep. It's to my shame that I forget how good a musician Prince was, and this was a welcome reprise. It soundtracked the portion of my run along the western arm of Brighton Marina, and reminded me of that beautiful moment when two people called Milhouse finally meet.

Song: 10/10

Running: 9/10

12. BLACKPINK - BOOMBAYAH

I'm glad I stuck to my guns regarding not using shuffle, as it lead to this colourful trend - mix black and pink and you get purple, the previous artist's signature colour! Another familiar song, another relaxing segment of the run, by this point along the foot of the cliffs towards Saltdean. By now I was confident of being able to run to pretty much any song - alternating between music and podcasts over the last few years had broken me out of old habits of needing fast paced songs to keep me going. I could just settle in and enjoy the mix of English and Korean!

Song: 9/10

Running: 9/10

13. P!nk - Raise Your Glass

It is a fault of my own that I associate too many songs with the TV show Glee. I noticed it working my way through Van Halen's discography the other week; I noticed it here as well. I mostly put that out of my mind after the first verse, focusing on P!nk's snarky asides that didn't make it into the sanitised, TV friendly version. It also made me realise that I really should listen to her more!

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

14. Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto - The Girl From Ipanema

This was the first song that genuinely threw me off my pace. I stumbled and said (probably too loudly, I'm sure that people overheard) "what the fuck is this?!" when the French jazz came on. Over five minutes long, I felt myself slowing, and willing it to end. My colleague's attempt to throw me off worked - I'm just glad she didn't choose Ed Sheeran!

Song: 2/10

Running: 0/10

15. A Flock Of Seagulls - I Ran (So Far Away)

(This worked really well, but the plan for using the gif came to me within seconds of the intro and I couldn't not do it)

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

16. The Walkmen - The Rat

By this point I had hit the turn around point and was heading back towards town, along the undulating clifftop. It was also the penultimate song that I had no idea about, and another surprise! Chock full of driving drums, it reminded me (to no detriment) of The Bravery's An Honest Mistake, and I was pleased to find out later that the two songs were released within six months of each other! Another song that'll find its way onto my regular running playlists in the future.

Song: 8/10

Running: 10/10

17. Chemical Brothers - Galvanize

I could've sworn when I was listening to this song that it had been used on an advert, or TV show, perhaps as part of an exercise montage - but Wikipedia is remaining mute on the subject. Regardless, it made me feel like I was in one, so this is going on the playlist from now on. You might say it...galvanised...me into running faster!

Song: 8/10

Running: 10/10

18. Russ Abbot - Atmosphere

The final song on this list that I knew nothing about - and within seconds I was convinced it was a hastily written song to cash in on the popularity of Agadoo. According to Google this was written by Joy Division, but I'm certain that's incorrect. Spotify credits the singer, and it's really not good. I'm just glad it had some semblance of pace to it so it didn't drag!

Song: 1/10

Running: 1/10

19. Britney Spears - Toxic

About ten years ago the branch of German budget supermarket Aldi in Canterbury closed down, and the cramped site was taken over by upmarket supermarket Waitrose. The sudden increase in quality is a perfect metaphor for the vast uptick in quality between the last song and this. The Grammy award winning track is the musical equivalent of doping - listening to it makes you run faster, lighter, easier and happier.

Song: 10/10

Running: 11/10

20. Faithless - Insomnia

This was a song I was convinced I knew, but two-thirds of the way into the song it still wasn't ringing any bells...until the bells kicked in and I recognised the bit played on Invicta FM on the car rides to school all those years ago. Another great song to run to, soundtracking my run along Marine Parade back to the pier.

Song: 9/10

Running: 8/10

21. Garbage - Temptation Waits

The opening track on the first proper album I ever owned, and the third track on the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" original soundtrack album...this is very possibly one of my most listened to songs, ever. A slow burner, it explodes on the listener partway through - and I guess knowing I only had ten minutes left of my run helped boost my motivation too!

Song: 8/10

Running: 8/10

22. Focus - Hocus Pocus (live at the Rainbow)

This was submitted with the caveat of "hopefully a 15 minute live version". The longest one I could find was "only" eight and a half minutes, but the yodelling and guitars sped me to a fast finish on Hove Lawns. I really need to give the studio version another listen!

Song: 8/10

Running: 9/10

Had I just been listening to podcasts, I probably would've called it a day at 10 or 12k. I tucked another 6k under my belt (two more pints in my beer total), covered a more interesting route, and good lord are my legs feeling it now!

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thebestintoronto · 4 years

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15 Best Road Trips From Toronto

Situated in the heart of the Great Lakes, Toronto is a best for road trips checking out the nature as well as beautiful drives.

There are unlimited parks and also sights to visit in Ontario and also Quebec along with scenic drives throughout the border right into the USA.

If you're hiring an automobile as well as you're thinking about taking place one of the trips that consists of crossing right into the United States, talk to the car rental business that you're enabled to do that as well as for any type of added paperwork they could require to supply to you.

All the distances and timings are offered for one-way journeys consisting of all the suggested quits except the long big salami so keep the return trip in mind when making your plans.

Currently let's get to it - below are the 15 best journey from Toronto beginning with brief journey near the city and also rising to lengthy trips for the more daring!

Brief journey from Toronto

1. Niagara Falls and also Niagara-On-The-Lake

The Niagara Falls are by far the most preferred journey location from Toronto at simply under 2 hours with incredible scenery and also an absolutely distinct experience.

Set on the border in between the United States as well as Canada, the Niagara Falls are most likely one of the most famous falls on the planet.

There are really three different falls that form the Niagara Falls - the Horseshoe Falls, the American Falls as well as the Bridal Shroud Falls. The Horseshoe Falls rests right on the border in between the two nations with the other 2 being on the US side.

As the water flows from Lake Eerie right into Lake Ontario, over 6 million cubic feet of water goes down 50m every minute developing an absolutely outstanding view as well as a lot of noise.

In spite of the cold winters months of Ontario, the Niagara Falls never ever completely ice up. Some years they can get surface ice forming with the falls remaining to operate beneath.

The two countries separated by the drops have actually utilized the volume of water that comes through the falls with 50% of all water throughout the day and 75% in the evening (when there are no visitors) drawn away through substantial tunnels to hydroelectric power plants. These produce over a quarter of all power made use of in New york city State and also Ontario.

You can see Niagara Falls from both, the Canadian as well as the US side with excellent viewing chances in both places.

Make sure you go through the community Niagara-On-The-Lake sitting downstream on Lake Ontario - the Heritage District is enchanting as well as is fantastic for a walk and the drive to and also from will take you previous attractive wineries making for a great detour.

For those that like a little walking, visit at Dundas height which is directly en route - this impressive hunt provides spectacular views from the top of a sheer high cliff along with visiting a couple of much smaller sized waterfalls - Tews Falls and also Webster Falls.

2. Road trip from Toronto to Muskoka

You will certainly observe that lakes form a big part of this list of journey from Toronto - in addition to the Great Lakes bordering Ontario, a large part of the province is covered by a network of ponds, rivers, streams and also islands and also Muskoka is the closest of these to Toronto

The towns as well as communities of Muskoka are recognized for a relaxed atmosphere and big homes which are incredibly popular with Toronto homeowners in the summer season - creating perfect weekend vacations.

The peacefulness of the area implies the population of the District of Muskoka virtually triples in the summer season with retreats along lakes Muskoka, Rosseau and also Joseph popular.

A few of Hollywood's biggest celebrities have summer homes right here including Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg as well as Kurt Russell.

Much what there is to do in Muskoka focuses on nature - there are treking tracks as well as national parks that use tasks like hill biking, cycling and also horseback riding.

The lakes likewise provide every watersport activity you may be interested in. Alternatively, you can rent out a boat as well as check out the many coves, islands and rivers at your recreation.

Weekend journey from Toronto.

3. Algonquin Provincial Park

If Muskoka is not quite remote enough or you intend to see more nature and also much less development, the Algonquin Provincial Park is where you require to head from Toronto.

This big park rests to the north-east of Muskoka as well as is a big nature book with thousands of lakes (yes - there are over 2,400 of them right here), islands, mountains as well as thick woodlands.

Route 60 is the most convenient way into the park from Toronto although roads leading even more right into the park originated from the Trans-Canada Freeway running to the north or the south-east edge better to Ottawa.

There are a few hiking tracks to check out that are closer to Toronto ranging from 4 to over 50 miles long (6 to 90 kilometres). These go along rivers, lakes and through forests as well as you can see a great deal of falls and also nature in the process.

Make sure - the wildlife here includes moose and also births in addition to numerous varieties of birds.

One of the most popular means to check out the park is by canoe - this way you can get to a great deal of sights just not obtainable by roadway so you can park up at Canoe Lake or Lake Opeongo and also invest the weekend in one of the camping sites located throughout the river and also lake network. Keep in mind to schedule your spot on the park's site!

4. Prince Edward Area, Kingston as well as Gananoque

Heading eastern along Lake Ontario's north coast will certainly take you towards Royal prince Edward County, Kingston as well as Gananoque as you get to St Lawrence River.

This is a trip for those that like the finer points in life and also it starts off on the appropriate note as the route takes you via vineyards, picturesque towns and afterwards much more vineyards.

Prince Edward Region gets on an island with 4 bridges and also one tiny ferryboat supplying accessibility. There are a lot of great dining establishments and chances to example local white wines, so make it a long weekend or even much longer if you have the time!

The ferryboat can be a good alternative as you continue and also make your means to Kingston although it just holds 21 cars so if you wish to prevent a delay, head north and also cross over the Quinte Skyway.

Both Kingston and also Gananoque are established along the river and also have a specific beauty with a solid European influence on the architecture and also a lovely setup. Do not miss Ft Henry in Kingston - an exceptional view that is a UNESCO Globe Heritage Site.

Gananoque has a number of tasks associating with the Thousand Islands which is entitled to a trip of its very own - see listed below (unless you wish to make it into a week to bear in mind!).

If you like wine, plan a few quits at wineries along the way - you can taste the white wines as well as take home a case of your favorite to make your trip that much more memorable!

5. Journey to the Thousand Islands.

You can pick to go a little further along the St Lawrence River and also hang around checking out the Thousand Islands - a big group of islands along the river sitting on the boundary between Canada and the USA.

Stunning scenery, wacky museums, relaxing fishing and also some wonderful dining establishments are a few of the factors to check out the location. There are also a couple of actually attractive communities and castles to visit.

The very best way to explore the area is to see both the Canadian and the US side of the boundary - the Thousand Islands crossing runs between two of the most significant islands - Hillside Island on the Canadian side as well as Wellesley Island on the US side.

The biggest of the islands, Wolfe Island is completely in Ontario and some of the smaller sized islands can not be seen and are independently owned consisting of Deer Island which is owned by the Skull and also Bones secret culture.

Boldt Castle is a need to see if you are in the area. Originally appointed by the millionaire George Boldt, the castle was never ever finished with building and construction abandoned in 1904 when Boldt's wife passed away. Since the 70s, the castle is taken care of by the Thousand Island Bridge Authority as well as work is continuous to complete the castle from site visitors' ticket earnings. Make note that Boldt Castle is just open from mid-May to mid-October.

The less known Vocalist Castle on Dark Island is likewise worth checking out - this is an independently had castle located downstream towards completion of the island group. There are concealed wine rack and a lot of various other peculiarities to explore.

A few of the islands have beautiful superficial sand coastlines which can be best for spending a day relaxing and also swimming in the summer and also others are popular with fishermen with pike the most searched for fish in the regional waters.

6. Bruce Peninsula National Park.

The Bruce Peninsula National Forest is a best place to check out nature on a rough outcrop separating Lake Huron from the Georgian Bay.

The big park is residence to a lot of wild animals varying from black bears, coyotes as well as chipmunks to porcupines, deer, hares as well as turtles. You may stumble upon several of these on the different treking trails that run through the park that vary from brief walks to substantial expert-level walks.

The most renowned route is the Bruce Trail which runs completely from the Niagara river to Tobermory at the north idea of the Bruce Peninsula. You can reach the Overhanging Factor through the Bruce Route by crossing Stone Beach - it is a rock that sticks out from a high cliff offering sensational sights as well as jaw going down photo ops. Take great treatment as there is no safeguard and also it is a long way down.

A vital sight is the Grotto formation along the peninsula's coast. Popular as a social media background, it is a huge archway causing a cave.

Take note that vehicle parking can be tough throughout peak period, especially at weekends. Booking online is strongly advised as you will be turned away from the Underground chamber if you do not have a reservation. A day-to-day car park reservation in the summertime costs $17.70 for the Grotto if you publication online.

If you're camping, you can schedule your camping site area beforehand also to make certain you have an area. If you want to invest an evening in the wild, obtain an authorization from the Cyprus Lake Workplace and you can pitch up in some parts of the park along the trails.

Park entrance costs: Family or Team - $19.60, Grownups - $7.80, Seniors - $6.80, young people go free, winter gos to obtain a 25% price cut.

7. Drive to Manitoulin Island and also Greater Sudbury.

Manitoulin Island is the biggest freshwater island worldwide at over 1,000 square miles and sits between Lake Huron as well as the Georgian Bay to the north of the Bruce Peninsula.

The island is so big that it has 4 rivers and also over 100 lakes within it with several of those lakes having islands of their own!

You can reach the island through a ferryboat from Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula, but in spite of the longer path, it will take about as lengthy to drive around the lake using Sudbury so it could be a good idea to take different routes on the way to and from Manitoulin to see more places on your trip.

Path 6 from the north passes through the Little Existing Swing Bridge - an unique bridge that can turn laterally to allow boats pass through the Little Existing waterway.

The island has a big Anishinaabe populace with dedicated books in addition to a couple of towns as well as villages dotted about.

Greater Sudbury is the biggest community in North Ontario although it still has a small town feeling. There are a number of galleries including one regarding the history of nickel mining and two art galleries. As you're driving past, it's worth a see as well as benefits breaking up the lengthy drive.

8. Cross the boundary right into Detroit, Heidelberg job and Ann Arbor.

With Toronto being so near to the United States in nearly every instructions, this is one more journey where you'll require to bring your passport with you.

Detroit is just a few hrs away and is a remarkable area to check out with a rich, vivid as well as extremely touching background.

Electric motor City, as it is known, came to be an industrial powerhouse as well as the second largest city in the Midwest after Chicago on the back of a quick growing auto manufacturing sector.

Companies such as Ford, Dodge, Chrysler and also General Motors with brand names like Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac called Detroit their house with the majority of their production happening in the city's manufacturing facilities.

Adhering to a high decline in the 70s, the city hit upon much more difficult times and you can witness these as you drive through empty neighborhoods as well as crumbling old factory buildings.

While a significant enhancement program is underway and also the city is working with changing itself, tourist is growing and we would extremely suggest seeing for an abundant social experience.

Part of the regeneration initiative is the Heidelberg task - it is an outdoor art setup in east Detroit that portrays objection and also brings attention to the demise of the city as well as the decades of neglect. The various items are used brilliantly colored salvage materials highlighting the level of poverty.

Ann Arbor is close to Detroit and is a plain contrast to its larger neighbor. The community has lots of beauty with classic structures, several of which comprise the Michigan College, numerous art galleries, little stores as well as coffee shops and various other interesting locations to discover.

If you're seeing Detroit, it is most definitely worth making the extra trip.

Week long and also much longer trip from Toronto.

9. Full circle of Lake Ontario.

Possibly among the very best ways to spend a week doing a trip from Toronto is a drive around the Lake of Ontario coming cycle back to Toronto.

This drive will certainly consist of a lot of the trips we advise for shorter trips - you can employ at Royal prince Edwart County, Kingston, Gananogue and also check out the Niagara Falls on your back right into Canada.

The UNITED STATE side has more points to see in upstate New York. You can take a detour to the Ausable Chasm - a river with rapids flowing via a stunning gorge near Lake Placid or Ithaca Falls.

Remaining close to the lake is also wonderful though - the communities of Sackets Harbor (precisely the lake) and Skaneateles even more south are quite as well as kicked back. Oswego is an additional community worth going to - it's definitely a good concept to stick to Route 104 as opposed to the faster roadways better from the lake for the trip.

You will certainly need to cross the boundary right into the United States at the Thousand Islands crossing as well as back at Lewiston-Queenston Bridge near the Niagara Falls.

10. Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and also past.

This is a fantastic trip that takes you from Toronto to the Gulf of St Lawrence on the Atlantic Sea driving the length of the St Lawrence river from Lake Ontario.

The landscapes along the route adjustment from wineries and lakeside towns to lengthy roads via combined forests and at some point the harsh eastern coastline.

The major cities of eastern Canada are all en route. Starting from Toronto, the route takes you to Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec city before finishing in Tadoussac.

Ottawa is Canada's capital and also has an abundant history producing a fascinating stay. See the Rideau Canal, Parliament Buildings on Parliament Hill or among a variety of fantastic galleries around the city.

Montreal is the second largest french-speaking city worldwide after Paris and also two thirds of the populace are totally multilingual which develops a distinct cultural mix.

Quebec City is renowned for its Vintage charm with the Old Quebec town, the Château Frontenac over it and the Citadel all including in a really European vibe.

Tadoussac is a prominent destination for visitors - it was the initial French swarm in The United States and Canada founded in 1600 and you can see history throughout the community that served as a trading and also angling center for centuries. The bordering coves and arms are stunning and this is just one of the best areas on the planet for whale enjoying so make certain you go on an excursion to stand up close and also individual.

If you want to learn much more, read the full information of our longer Quebec journey.

11. Journey around Lake Michigan.

Lake Michigan is the second largest of the Excellent Lakes and the only one situated totally within the USA of America.

You can begin your journey by driving in the direction of Detroit and also going across Michigan or taking the beautiful path along Georgian Bay and also crossing right into the U.S. along the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge.

Driving via Michigan is far more straight so if you're heading by doing this, you can fulfill Lake Michigan at St Joseph before heading around the southerly suggestion and also right into Chicago.

Chicago is the 3rd most booming city in the USA and has a great deal to see and also experience. High monitoring decks might not be rather so impressive given Toronto's CN Tower has the highest possible one in North America yet the music scene, theaters as well as amazing restaurants are all great reasons to spend a minimum of a number of days.

For the foodies, besides the evident deep dish pizza, attempt the dipped Italian beef sandwich - thank us later!

From Chicago, the route goes north stopping in Milwaukee as well as Eco-friendly Bay prior to crossing back from Wisconsin right into Michigan and going through the less inhabited areas on the north side of the lake as well as the Hiawatha National Forest.

After you pass through the Sault Ste. Marie State Forest Location and also over the Mackinac Bridge, the path down the Michigan coast undergoes a number of enchanting pretty towns consisting of Traverse City.

12. Driving from Toronto to Upstate New York City.

Ok - the local parts of upstate New York may only be a couple of hours away, yet we're speaking about a much deeper expedition of the Realm State.

As soon as you've crossed over the boundary and previous Niagara Falls, the route heads in the direction of the Finger Lakes - you can explore some fantastic wine country at the Cayuga A glass of wine Route as well as discover the stunning communities of Skaneateles and also Ithaca.

After heading south in the direction of the border with Pennsylvania the Delaware River valley supplies one spectacular driving roadway - in Course 97 that goes through Callicoon.

After snaking along the river driving the roadway of choice for too many cheesy adverts, you can draw away into the Catskills as well as check out the trails as well as nature of New Yorkers' favourite escape area.

After crossing over to the Hudson, you can follow the river north back in the direction of Canada and also check out the capital of New York State - Albany as well as quit at the State Capitol building there.

More quits at The Sagamore (stunning lakeside village) as well as Lake Placid prior to you get to the river valley at Ausable Gorge on Lake Champlain that creates the border with Vermont.

Ideal means to return is to follow the U.S. - Canada border back in the direction of the Thousand Islands and after that drive along the north shore of Lake Ontario to get here back in Toronto.

13. Head west to Rumbling Bay and Quetico Provincial Park.

This is a massive journey, although many absolutely worth it for the sights when you eventually get there!

There are two options for reaching Rumbling Bay - the a little quicker one takes you along the north coasts of Georgian Bay as well as Lake Superior with the trip being roughly 900 miles one means.

If you do not elegant returning the exact same course, after that going across down into the USA along the International Bridge at Ft Frances means you can along the south of Lake Superior as well as Lake Huron at the price of 3 hours.

You'll want to add plenty of quits along the road - the path will take 2 days of solid driving by itself!

The fact is - this is just one of those journey where the process of arriving is much better than the real destination. The routes around the two Excellent Lakes travel through outstanding parks as well as offer choices to draw away into places like the French River Provincial Park or take a look at the coastlines of Pukaskwa National Park.

On the way back, there are a number of big national parks in the UNITED STATE along with the picture-perfect communities in north Michigan making for a really superior drive.

Some of the various other trips above as well as listed below cover parts of this mega route so if you're short in a timely manner and do not wish to spend 2 days in a vehicle, there are other choices. If you do, though, you'll be rewarded with a total experience of the rivers, falls, woodlands as well as sights of the Fantastic Lakes.

14. A road trip scenic tour of Quebec.

If the drive from Toronto as much as Tadoussac really did not rather feel like you would certainly see sufficient of Quebec as well as light on miles, this is the journey that need to get you delighted.

Except the weak, the mammoth excursion of Quebec goes a little off the beaten track to explore the fantastic nature and also towns further north.

First stop is to head to Ottawa and also going across the Ottawa River into Gatineau to begin your Quebec adventure.

You will drive previous thousands of lakes (we're not exaggerating) and also via sensational national parks along the path. To begin with, the trip goes in the direction of Aiguebelle Park in Abitibi. To separate the driving, you can visit at La Verendrye Wildlife Reserve.

If that doesn't appear wild enough, the journey then proceeds along Courses 113 and 167 via conifer woodlands en route to Oujé-Bougoumou for some angling as well as relaxing away from world.

Next stop is Lac St Jean and also the Saguenay Fjord. Magnificent views are assured and also you will considerably feel like you are getting back in the direction of real communities.

After a stop off at Tadoussac for a spot of whale viewing, you're after that simply making your way back to Toronto via Quebec City, Montreal and back along the north shore of Lake Ontario.

15. Drive the Michigan coast.

A curve ball of a journey option for those who such as to mix society with a little lakeside driving.

The idea is to head down to Michigan and drive the length of its coast along Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

Michigan has some exceptionally great looking communities and towns the whole time the shoreline - if you make your means to the southern park of Lake Michigan, as well as drive north, you will pass places like South Place, Grand Place, Traverse City as well as Charlevoix on your way up.

There are other sights also - the Silver Lakes Desert is a huge desert-like sand dune that has all the look of getting on Mars. The Sleeping Bear Dunes even more north are long white sand coastlines which are perfect for a day of leisure and also a picnic.

As you continue onto Lake Huron, there is a lengthy stretch of the coast that creates part of the Cheboygan State Park and also wonderful fish restaurants in tow.

The east side of Michigan is usually less touristy and consequently more affordable as well as much less expensive which is an intriguing contrast provided nearly similarly bird's-eye views as well as natural landscapes.

As you relocate even more southern, the community of Frankenmuth, a little inland from the lake, is a need to quit on your itinerary.

The post “ 15 Best Road Trips From Toronto “ was seen first on Lazy Trips by Sasha Yanshin

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