#and your mother is obsessed with the rain and ocean

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

Watched Percy Jackson today

I get hes 12 in the first book but how do you not figure out which Greek God is your Father when your full name is Perseus 😭

#and your mother is obsessed with the rain and ocean #a regular 12 year old okay no prob #but his mum told him all about the greek gods so the knowledge was right there once he found out a god was his dad #but hey ho its for the drams #also I did find the scene in the fountain quite funny 🤣 #like cmon fountain daddy heal me #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians

[moon-huny]

Stole the Moon - Chapter Six

CW: My content is not for anyone under 18. Minors DNI. Reader uses she/her pronouns. Character death (mom related)

Word Count: 1.1K

Summary: In sleep, a memory comes back to you, forcing you yet again to remember a painful part of your past. Buggy is smitten but god forbid he ever tells you. You make a plan to visit a friend.

A/N: I still feel – at all times – like I am being hit with a bus. Oh my god that is so dramatic, okay no. I don't actually feel like that, but I am getting some burnout.

I think that is fairly common with fic writers, especially when you know you have a story to tell but getting it out takes a while.

However, writing and posting does help with my mental health as it is a good creative exercise, so, to make a compromise, I decided that this chapter and maybe the next few will be a bit shorter than normal.

Thank you all for reading and commenting and liking and re-bloging. I recently got the update that let's me comment back as moon-huny in the mentions so you best believe Imma be doin that now.

Okay, that's all, enjoy.

masterlist ✧˖°

previous • next

As soon as the air hit your little lungs, you began to cough up sea water onto the rocks beside you. Still not registering much in your state, you heard voices clamoring around you.

“She’s alive”

“Course she is, I saved her”

Waves hit rocks and rain pelted your face. Squinting through the gales, you could make out those most gorgeous creatures you’d come to befriend.

“Please, you have to help! My mother! She’s … where is she?” You were frantic and screaming over the storm.

“Well we didn’t like her as much as you”

“She was already bound to drown no matter which way you look at it”

They weren’t yelling back at you. They were barely moving their mouths. You couldn’t hear a word they were saying and, truth be told you never could, they spoke like the waves, hushed and foreign.

They tread the water with such ease even though the sea was churning all around them. They had placed you on a small rocky island, close enough to see the shore but nowhere near close enough for you to swim to it.

“I can’t … I can’t understand you! Please! My mother! Where is she? Please, save her too!” You could no longer tell whether it was rain all over your face or your tears.

You couldn’t quite tell how many there were, they all swam around you like sharks around prey. They would dip in and out of sight coming up briefly to exchange glances and what you thought were words. 

“We don’t like her”

“She’s already dead girl”

They made eye contact with you, their lips moved but nothing you could understand fell out of them. You began to shout. “Mama! Mama!” but you knew it was futile.

“I want to give her the fruit,” said one to another. Perhaps it was out of pity at your crying form shivering in the storm or maybe it was their love of tricks but it was that moment they decided what they wanted to do with you.

///

You tossed and turned in your sleep as he watched you. Sitting upright in bed, one of his arms perched on his bent knee. He just looked down at you. The ocean was quiet while you slept.

He’d awoken only a little while ago to a knock at the door. If he were honest though it was more of an aggressive pounding at the door. It just so happened that the two goofballs obsessed with one another were looking for you. He’d dismissed them when he opened the door just slightly to reveal your sleeping – presumably naked – body.

After they left, he had the opportunity to wake you, begin a day full of questions and fights to get the upper hand away from you. But that could wait. While he watched you sleep, that could all wait.

You slept on your stomach clutching a pillow the way he wished you would cling to him. You weren't awake, there was nobody here, he could let himself think whatever he wanted, and he wanted to think about you.

The way your eyebrows furrowed in your sleep and your lashes would flutter made him weak. You were so beautiful and full of danger and uncertainty. Any pirate with half a mind would have kept you in a cell far below deck, confined to a tub of seawater, behind multiple padlocks. 

Hostages weren’t new to Buggy or his crew. Sure, he knew he had a few bleeding hearts here and there but nobody disobeyed him. This was his ship, his crew and he wanted you to be a part of it.

You began to stir. Slowly you opened your eyes to find Buggy on the other side of the room pilfering through maps and charters and journals. You could have sworn you’d felt his presence beside you. He was so warm and you’d woken up with the thought of embracing him.

“If you were as good at using your power as you were at sleeping I’d be sailing the Grand Line by now,” he said in no way regarding you. 

The opposite could be said of you. The man stood at his desk, low hanging trousers not concealing anything as it seems this morning he was too hot to put on a shirt. 

“What are you looking at?” you asked, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and looking for something to cover your body with.

Your voice in the morning sounds like heaven, he thought. “Get up and see for yourself, sweetness.” He smirked over at you.

You rolled your eyes which did land on an article of clothing at the end of his bed. Grabbing it and throwing it over your head you realized it was his shirt. You gathered yourself off the bed and walked over to him in nothing but his own clothes.

Leaning against the edge of the desk next to him you pushed yourself up to sit next to all of his important work. His eyes flicked over to you and slowly moved down your body.

“So what are we looking at?” You ask him, sucking your lower lip in between your teeth and giving him a sweet smile.

“I’m looking at an attention seeking whore.” He throws back at you.

That’s okay. You know you’re winning. 

Your eyes travel lower to that oh so desirable part of him. “And I’m looking at a certain pirate that is terrible at hiding how he responds to the attention seeking whore.

You liked this. The banter helped you take your mind off of the intense memory you were having. One you really desperately wanted to wake up from.

Your eyes drifted across the desk to a sketch of a mermaid skeleton. 

“You know anything about those, Clown?” you asked.

“What happened to Captain?” he responded by raising an eyebrow when you looked back at him with frustration. He sighed when he realized you were the toughest crowd he’d ever performed to.

“Not a lot, babe so quit with the questions.”

“You know,” you said, hopping down from the desk and confronting him head on. “I think I might be more willing to explore these so-called powers I have if I knew a bit more about myself.”

“Well, talking about feelings isn’t really daddy’s forte so maybe go find someone else to gab with.” You soured at the mocking use of the nickname he’d pulled last night. The name he clearly didn’t have a problem using for himself but one you were a little embarrassed you liked. 

“Fine, maybe I will,” you responded, turning your back to him to hunt for your clothing and planning your trip to Beau’s.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚

taglist: @tokoyamisstuff @mommymilkerfanclub @chaoticqueen33 @tootoomanycats @cefni @ruledbyproblematique @crayolacat-lilybelle @melissahew @hallow1090 @soulkingbimbo @kurinhimenezu @teh-vampire-bunny

taglist is open. (plz let me know if I left anybody out)

#stole the moon #buggy the clown #buggy x reader #buggy fanfic #buggy x you #buggy opla #buggy smut #buggy x y/n #captain buggy #buggy d clown

[watsittoyah]

Namor x Black Reader SMUT

A/N Just a small description of you, you have white hair and blue eyes that you’ve inherited from your mother.

Warnings: Obsessive behavior, dark Namor, stalking, oral sex, anal licking, face sitting (no aftercare…this time)

Sitting on the throne..

“So what’s it gonna take for you to get on that pole and dance for a few bands, angel?” One of the patrons ask as you pour them another drink. “1) Don’t call me angel that’s not my name. And 2) I’m just a bartender, go bother the other girls Jose.” You walk away to go take your break in the back. “Just one more month and I can finally afford a new place.” You mutter as you inhale the air.

You catch a look of yourself in the reflection of the glass and sigh. Your white locks were pulled back into a ponytail and your eyes seem to give off a hue like a glow stick. “I need more contacts you hiss as you rub your eyes.

You’ve always loved your features, all except your blue haunting eyes. They reminded you of a dead fish. But your hair, went perfectly with your brown skin.

You have fifteen minutes left so you sit down by the docks. “What I would’ve give to just live by the ocean. The sense of calm, the cool air. The view.” You bring your knees up to your chest and sigh.

“I hate my life.” You sniffle out a cry of frustration and when you go to wipe your tears you hear a splash in the water under you. You peer over the dock and all you see is the dark abyss of water. Your alarm goes off telling you your break is over and you have to go back inside.

As you get up you feel as if someone is watching you. You stand up quickly and hear the docks are quiet. “In reina…” You hear a sinister whisper behind you as you walk faster to the doors of the club.

Run!

You listen to the whisper in your head and you take off running feeling someone close to your heels. You slam the door and stand back just as whatever was following you slams into the door. You jump and run back to the bar. Your shift goes by without any other hitches. But you’ve made it up in your mind that instead of taking your break out on the docks, you’ll just go to your car.

As you get in the car, you see a splat of rain and you groan because your window shield wipers haven’t worked in the past week. “The weather report didn’t say anything about rain.” You start up your car and drive out slowly. You pray under your breathe that you’ll make it safely back home.

You’ve been driving for about ten minutes when you see a big black figure emerge from the side of the road, you swerve and hit the breaks as hard as you could to avoid hitting the figure. Your heart was pounding a mile a minute. You look back to see if the figure was still in the road but nothing was there. The rain was starting to get heavier and you didn’t have time to sit and wait to see what goes bump in the night. You had to go to your first job in a few hours and your bed was calling you.

As you start up your car you feel this unease, as if someone or something was watching you. “Get a hold of yourself. You’re just tired and you need some sleep.” You yawn and drive forward only for your car to stall and then stop. “FUCK!” You yell as you slap the wheel. You take out your phone to see if you can call a tow truck but you see they’re no bars.

“What else could go wrong?” You whimper as you lean your head back. From the corner of your eye you see a pair of eyes staring at you right outside of your window.

A scream was about to escape your lips but instead the eyes blink and your car door starts to open. You grab it quickly to shut it, cursing yourself about not locking it in the first place.

The figure however was stronger and yanked the door harder causing you to fly out into the pouring rain. Your head hits the pavement hard and as you try to stay awake, the figure bends down. “Finally, I’ve found you in reina.” The rain and your lack of keeping your eyes open makes the figure blurry as you pass out.

🧜🏽‍♀️🧜🏽‍♀️🧜🏽‍♀️

You wake up gasping as you sit up. You feel disoriented and in pain as you touch the goose egg that’s formed on the back of your head. “Shit.” You moan as you sit up. You freeze as you notice your clothes are no longer on your body and you have someone in the room with you.

You scramble to cover yourself as you see a beautiful brown skinned man. He was bare chested, but he has a beautiful silk piece wrapped around his waist. As you study his face, you see he has piercings in his nose, his ears, you wonder what else he has pierced. You can’t help but let your eyes wonder below his waist.

He clears his throat and your eyes snap up to his face. “Wh…where am I? Who are you?” He smiles at you as he leans on the bed making you move further back. “You are in Talokan, in pequeño. And as far as who I am, I go by many names. But my people call me K’uk’ulkan, my enemies call me Namor, but you can call me-”

“What are you going to do to me?” You interrupt. The smile he had on his face drops and with quickness he grabbed your face. “Such an ungrateful girl, give me a reason why I shouldn’t throw you to the sharks and watch them eat you piece by piece.”

As he looks deep into your eyes he loosens his grip on your face. “I’m sorry.” You say as you try to move your face. He lifts your chin, gently this time. “My little goddess, never apologize. I have so much to teach you.” He tuts his tongue at you.

He looks you up and down and his eyes seems to settle on your breasts. It was your turn to clear your throat. “Why am I here?” You ask him.

“You are here because I want you to be here. You belong to me.” You jerk your chin away from him. “Belong to you? I’m not some trophy or some piece of property. I’m a person.”

He just leans in close to your ear and you can’t help but inhale his scent and swallow a moan. “Your parents promised you to me, in exchange for your life. But they tricked me, and took you away from me. I’ve waited a very long time, and watched you from a far. I’ve watched you as a small child, I’ve watched you grown into a rebellious teenager and now I’ve seen you grown as a woman. One who I might add have made me very angry seeing that you have men lusting after you.” He grabs you by the thighs and yanks you close to him.

“You said that my parent’s promised me to you?” He leans in close ignoring your question. “You know you talk in your sleep. I’m jealous of whoever you dream about because you just kept moaning, which makes me wonder, in reina, will you moan for me?” He massages your inner thighs which makes your body betray you.

You let out a soft moan and he smirks. “Does this feel good?” He moves closer to your pussy and you feel your legs spread a bit more. You nod and his hands move away from you, causing you to be frustrated.

“Tell me, would you ever let a god taste you?” He whispers against your lips. “Y-” He grips your neck and he presses your back against the bed. “Jump'éel mujercita jach Ch'uul.” He whispers as he bites your bottom lip.

You should be trying to get away, screaming, clawing at his face so you can get the upper hand. But you want his forbidden touch. You want his devilish mouth on you.

“I want to know how a god tastes a mortal.” You tell him as he runs his thumb across your throat. He lets go and he rips away whatever you were trying to use to cover yourself.

He moves down between your legs and he opens your thighs hungrily staring at his next meal. You two make eye contact with each other and you start to look away but he tugs at your pubic hair making you wince.

“Don’t look away, I want you to watch. I want to watch the bliss and ecstasy form in your eyes.” He says as he kisses your left inner thighs. He holds your thighs down so you can’t move.

He kisses your right inner thigh and he bites it which makes you jerk and moan. He smiles at you then. “She likes pain I see. Oh there will be plenty of time for that.” He yanks you up so that your legs were on his shoulders. He kisses your swollen lips and with his tongue he parts them and you feel him flick his tongue against your clit.

You keep the eye contact, but just barely. Your eyes want to roll back but instead you rock your hips. “Mmm you taste like a sweet fruit. So wet, and so delicious.” He moans into your pussy.

One of your hands get tangled into his hair and you moan out his name. “K’uk’ulkan, please don’t..don’t stop.” His eyes roll back as he spreads you open wider.

You gasp as you feel his tongue slide down to your ass. You’ve never felt that sensation before. But damn it feels good. You start humping his face but he stops and moves away from you.

He licks his lips as he looks at you and you see he is hard under the silk piece he still had tied around his waist. “You will be my queen, and since you will, I need you to come sit on your throne.” He lays down and as you go to move the silk piece but he tsks and grabs your hips. “Not yet my queen, I want you to sit on my face and I want to taste your cum drip in my mouth.”

The sexual atmosphere starts to weaken and you feel shy. He slaps your ass making you yelp and he lifts you up as your pussy hovers over his face. “Now sit.” He orders. “Are you sure? I don’t want to smother you.”

“Do you want me to slap your ass again?” You shake your head but remember he can’t see. “No… but I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not a small girl.” He scoffs. “I can hold my breathe for a very long time, so you smothering me isn’t a problem. Now sit!” He yells out. You do as yours told and sit down on his face.

He palms your ass and starts to lick you deep. He moans and your eyes roll back as to you arch your back. You start moving your hips as you ride his face. “Oh god…” You moan out as you steady your hands on his chest. You see his cock peeking through the silk piece and you free it.

His cock hits his stomach and you grip it. His tongue slides into your ass as start riding his face faster. “Just like that, please don’t stop. Please don’t…” You lean forward and take the head of his cock in your mouth. As you try to focus on sucking you can’t help but feel his tongue twirling inside of your ass. You’re going to cum in this man’s mouth soon and it’s going to happen faster than you think.

Your breathing picks up and you decide to lean up so don’t cum too fast. “Don’t do that, just cum for me, my queen. Show everyone how a queen sits on their throne. Mmm use my mouth for your pleasure.” He pulls you back down and your hips work on their own.

“I’m yours. I’m your queen. I’m your queen.” You moan out as you work your clit on the tip of his nose. You lean forward and see precum pooling at the tip of his cock. So you suck hard and he lets out a primal grunt. He bucks his hips and you feel him starting to fuck your mouth. You feel the head of his cock throb in your throat and you feel your walls clench around his tongue.

His cock pops out of your mouth as you moan that you’re cumming. He sucks your clit hard one more time and you start seeing stars as you cum in his mouth.

“Oh god, please suck me.” You moan out. He lifts you up and grabs the back of your head bringing his lips to yours. “Now taste.” He kisses you and you taste yourself on his lips. You suck his tongue and stroke him. He starts fucking your hand and moaning against your neck in his native tongue.

“I’m cumming.” He moans out seconds later. You feel warm liquid in your hand and he gives you a sexually satisfied stare. “Now what are you going to do with that, in reina? Because next time, In k'áat in wiix ichil teech, utia'al u a ts'aik sáasil in waal.”

You have no clue what he just said but you knew it was something sexual…

A/N so this all came to be because I really like Tenoch Huerta’s features, especially his nose 😮‍💨 if you know you know, and I used google translate for some of Namor’s dialogue. If I got it wrong please forgive me and blame google. Idk if there will be a part 2 but if you guys want it let me know!

#namor #namor smut #smut fanfiction #tenoch huerta #wakanda forever #namor x black reader #watsittoyah

[dallonwrites]

UNTIL HEAVEN - WIP INTRO

matthew lejune / @dallonwrites / ocean vuong / mary ruefle

He knows that his headache is quietly growing vicious and he should take off his headphones, but now they’re singing about Heaven and Las Vegas – two places he has never been – and he knows that at some point, still unknown to him, his father died, and maybe that means he’s now stuck in Heaven or Las Vegas or somewhere in between. Or maybe that means he’ll just be everywhere, in the rain on Felix’s face and the ache behind his eyelids, and that’s how it’ll stay.

Genre: Adult Literary Fiction, novella (please god stay a novella)

Setting: San Francisco/New York, December 1990/January 1991

Vibe: shoegaze & dream pop, warm lighting, ginger flavor, a city skyline at night, going to church for the first time in years, feeling too old and also like you were born yesterday, disposable camera photos, the passing of time, stuff rabbit toy from your childhood, the hallway at a family gathering, planetariums, cold air on your face, retro christmas decor, realising you were once a child and that child deserved so much better

Deals With: parental grief when your parent was a piece of shit, Christian trauma, queerness in relationships, adulthood as you progress through your 20s, healing + building your own life after a traumatic childhood and what happens when that is disrupted

Soundtrack Essentials: The Cure - Plainsong / Mazzy Star - Be My Angel / Cocteau Twins - Cherry-Coloured Funk / Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas / Beach House - The Hours / Jeff Buckley - Dream Brother / Tamino - Cinnamon

Synopsis: When Felix's father dies suddenly it's a week before Christmas, he and Beau had just begun experimenting with an open relationship, and he refuses to interrupt his life to mourn a man who doesn't deserve it. But when he can't stop his body from grieving, and his sister is growing obsessive over the morbid details, and at work he's teaching children that remind him of himself, an opportunity to impulsively leave sees Felix spend an insomniatic month in New York: diners at 3am, trips at the club, a birthday spent in a planetarium, one night stands to tell his boyfriend about in the morning, and a dangerously intense relationship with an enigmatic man who wants to know everything about his father.

This is another piece in my personal project/emotional support series and follows Revelations, Revelations and Lover Boy. If you know me you know Dorothy and Felix are my annoying children who I love so dearly and this novella is paired with a future novella that follows Dorothy during the same time. Fun fact! I only returned to writing because I wanted to explore Felix more and now I have an entire world that dominates my brain and it's all his fault! So this novella is kind of like a love letter to him. I also literally only created this so I could have a project that was soundtracked by historic Cocteau Twins' album Heaven or Las Vegas. Currently drafting because it won't leave my mind

The answering machine beeps awake -- and then, Beau's mother, reminding them that they're in charge of dessert tomorrow --and then, Beau's coworker wishing them both a Happy Holidays, a Stacy who Felix has never met -- and then his sister, sarcastic but loving, This is me calling so you know I made it home alive, just like you asked -- and then surprisingly, Goldie, Hi Felix, even though school broke up weeks ago, So I know it's Christmas, but I wanted to let you know that I talked with Joey's father and it sounds like he's doing much better at home already. He's even excited to come back to your class! And his father sounds super proud and optimistic about his progress and by the end of the last message he’s on the floor, back to fridge and elbows on his knees, face in his hands. And he lets out a shaky, snivelled breath that makes him push his palms harder against his eyes, against the wetness because he can’t cry, not over this, not when there’s still Christmas presents to wrap and last minute laundry so stop crying, get up, put on your new Mazzy Star record and get on with it. He straightens his back, holds his head up, takes a few deep breaths that feel more like gasping for air and also like pulling barbed wire out of his throat, gazes at the slants of streetlight on his living room wall. He can’t cry, not over this and not here, not in the home he’s worked so hard to make so warm. So he sits with himself, wipes his own eyes and holds himself in his own arms; when he feels calm enough, or trusts himself to be, he leans forward so he can open the fridge and reach in for the last ginger ale, cold in his hand and warm down his throat. Just him and the hum of an empty apartment.

#felix's transition from guy who does cocaine in the bathroom to kindergarten teacher is still so iconic to me #the tiny hint at the dorothy sibling novella OMG #wip intro #until heaven #something about this wip intro is so scary to me even though i love this story so much #but i need my wip intros so i can make my pinned post....dropping then going to SLEEP

[scholarlycoffee]

Hi, Writeblr! I finished writing my novel Mosswood before I started this account, but I'm currently writing the sequel (and an alternate universe novella), so I figured I should do a project introduction since I'm likely going to continue having severe brainrot about these characters!!!!

In Ponderosa Bay, Oregon, people go missing all the time. Unlike the rest of them, Analía Monroe reappears.

Blurb: Split living between her mother and her father's new family, Monroe is a ghost in her own home: unwanted and misunderstood. She only finds solace in her small circle of misfits—her younger half-sister Rajel and best friend June—and the dangerous but magical world of Mosswood deep in the forest, but their obsession may have deadly consequences.

Setting: Ponderosa Bay, Oregon, a small, rural town along the coast, 2002-2005

Genre: Adult contemporary fantasy

Series: 1 of 3

POV: Multi-POV, third-person present-tense

Characters:

Analía Monroe: INTJ-T, equal parts pretentious and pathetic, tortured prophet who doesn't believe in prophets, oneiromancer, voted God's favorite little lamb most likely to be slaughtered, the most autistic person you've ever met, a 12-year-old adult who will grow up to be a 20-year-old child.

Juniper Bardot: ENFP-T, very sweet and outgoing, Monroe's self-appointed guard dog, responds to most situations by either making tea or committing acts of extreme violence, wears wool sweaters all year round.

Rajel Cohen-Monroe: ESFP, chaotic little sister who wants to be taken seriously, cello player, has a deeply complicated relationship with Monroe, attempts to hide her insecurity behind sarcasm to varying degrees of success, underachiever with an inferiority complex.

Vibes: dark forests, the taste of blood, cracking lightning, crinkly notebook pages, cherry-red neon diner signs peeking through the fog, ink-stained hands, winding mountain roads, milky tea, two-headed lambs, rain-slick streets, your mother's church you haven't been to in years, laundromat arcade games, uncanny convenience store taxidermy, the beach at dusk, rings of toadstools, the feeling of being watched, bicycles on gravel roads, second-hand Converse with the sole peeling off, decade-old missing posters.

Soundtrack: I Know the End, Phoebe Bridgers / Big Sky, Kate Bush / Dear Arkansas Daughter, Lady Lamb / In Dreams, Ben Howard / Dreams, The Cranberries / I'm Your Man, Mitski

Word Count: 96k

“And then there’s Mosswood,” she adds just in case.  “Mosswood,” June repeats curiously, gazing once again out past the rising lights in the water. “Don’t you remember what I told you when we first met? I don’t think this place will let us go.” There is something a bit tired and gray in her eyes, but then, it is nearing 3AM.  Just to make herself feel better, Monroe laughs a little. “God, that’s creepy.” “Well,” June laughs in return, “it isn’t like we want it to.” With a flicker of curiosity, Monroe holds the jade-green Eye Stone to her eye and peers out into the writhing ocean below. Through it, the Something is a breathing, expanding monolith with kaleidoscopic tendrils crawling toward the shore. Toward the light.  “No,” agrees Monroe. “It isn’t like we want it to.” And it’s a good thing we don’t.

#mosswood #writer community #writeblr #project intro #monroe #june #rajel #writers on tumblr

[chrispy-chimkin]

Pleassse I am in desperate need of some hc’s abt your Lu wing au. I’m obsessed.

Hoooo boy okay then you asked for it.

Time

Silent flight and heightened senses; he spooks the others cause they can never hear them coming.

Grip strength of ~300 psi.

His feathers are often ragged and dirty because they drag his wings on the ground.

Broods over everyone, but mostly Twilight.

His laugh sounds like an owl. "Hoo hoo hoo!"

Has a terrible sleep schedule, it's a debate whether they sleep at all.

Twilight

Didn't learn to fly till he was 18.

Broods over Wild more than anyone.

The mother hen of the group.

Vocal stims!

Has trading sessions with the other corvid of the group, Legend.

Loves to collect insects; the only item he really hoards, the rest he makes into tools or something else useful.

Master of mimicry and has animal calls down to a science.

His voice is not his own.

Warriors

The fastest flier of the group.

Hates dawdling and is constantly moving.

Prefers high places, he would rather sleep in a tree than anywhere near the ground.

Totally okay with the little guys riding on him.

He can appear brash and harsh due to falcons having a solitary nature; acting as a captain, you sometimes have to put business over personal matters.

Very protective over Time and Wind specifically.

Sky

The slowest flier of the group, but the strongest.

Sky always bows to the others before he asks a question or starts a conversation, even if it is just a long nod, and he tends to expect the same because of his culture.

Happy to snuggle and comfort anyone.

However, he is VERY easy to piss off and you don't want him mad.

Absolutely brutal in battle.

Asthma and breathing issues in lower altitudes.

Can sleep while in flight.

Wild

Can withstand temperatures of up to 3000°F. He is always radiating heat.

Wings can ignite with blue fire.

Heals faster than normal.

Glad to join Warriors in acrobatics and stunts; but he is far more reckless.

The worst preener in the group.

Will sometimes participate in Twi and Leg’s trading sessions, mostly if it seems like there is something he might like and he had endless inventory so his options are vast

Likes to chew on bones and will even consume bones; he eats everything really.

Commonly sleeps with his eyes open; he mostly does this in a manner that will piss someone off like when Twilight scolds him.

Hyrule

Rarely bathes and mostly rolls in sand.

Tries to eat bees even though he is allergic.

Feathers are fragile from malnutrition and it is easy for him to get sick.

You cannot find him unless he wants to be found.

Hides under other peoples' wings and snuggles a lot; one could almost call him clingy.

Does become on edge about the raptors of the group often.

Legend

Shamelessly steals food, mostly from Warriors.

Broods over Hyrule.

Hoarder.

Screeches or screams in your face if you spook him.

He will mostly apologize or show affection in the form of "gifts"; if he got in a bad fight with Warriors for example he might give him a coin or a river stone as a way of apologizing because his items are valuable to him.

Afraid of Sky after bad first introductions.

Only lets Twilight and Hyrule preen him.

Never goes outside let alone attempts to fly when it rains.

Wind

Webbed hands and feet.

Can drink seawater.

Prankster.

Very impressionable, he will watch and impersonate others but will not admit to it.

He likes to ride on Time's back the most; the second is Twilight because he likes his mimicry and Warriors the third only because he likes to ride Warriors for stunts rather than travel convenience.

Not the best flier over land because he grew up on the ocean.

Dives a lot in the way he watched Tetra do it, he will collect shells and other trinkets if he can get deep enough.

Four

Always eating or chewing on something; has at least two pouches dedicated to just food.

Fidgets a lot.

Likes to absentmindedly preen others to keep their hands busy.

Usually quiet; They can speak at a frequency the others cannot hear if they want to; mostly to talk to Minish if they see any.

Feathers have horrible insulation, they tend to huddle under the wings of others for warmth. They especially do this with Sky and Time, and sometimes Wild but they don’t usually trust him.

Can be very sensitive to the environment around them; their sense will pick up on things way before the others may realize what's wrong.

VERY territorial and aggressive about food; they don't mean it, but they are always hungry to some extent.

#lu wing au #feathers of courage #linked universe #the legend of zelda #my art #a wise old owl #quoth the country raven #a dramatic fucking parrot #the crimson angel #rise of the phoenix #bee eating bee bad for bee eater boy #magpies and mischief #baby beach chicken #a feral hummer #do with this info what you will ;) #hope that satisfies the cravings for a while

[fetteredhope]

—— ( emilio sakraya. demi man, he/they. ) recently seen skateboarding at the boardwalk: enter ZAKARIA QADIR. twenty-seven years old & a sagittarius, usually observed in oversized t-shirts, baggy ripped jeans - far more jewelry than is safe for a skater; zak is a devotion local known within their circle as SPRIGHTLY + TENACIOUS, a perpetual hum of have you ever seen the rain by credence clearwater revival on salted mouth. something of the AUDACIOUS + OBTUSE follows, regardless … something to do with losing yourself to nothing but the wind thanks to the board beneath your feet - it feels eerily like home now, perhaps ? strange, what a GHOST can get up to. they’ve been heard waxing lyrical about a dream they had recently, a strange tale of a family that’s finally accepted you after years of hopping home to home. this one doesn’t stand long - there’s heat and smoke and breathing is impossible, but they always wake up before it can end the way they think it does. pay no mind to fanciful star - gazing, though: rather, mind the tangible. focus on knees that have been skinned so many times they’re perma-scarred now, choosing to laugh instead of cry whenever he’s upset - crying never did any good for him anyway, becoming attached to friends easily; they’re his found family after all. / committed to legend by bri, twenty6, they/she, est.

below are mentions of abuse, death, fire, & violence!

stats.

name: zakaria qadir.

nickname: zak.

age: twenty seven.

gender identity: demi man.

pronouns: he/they.

sexuality: bisexual.

birthday: december 22, 1995.

star sign: sagittarius.

myer-briggs: esfp.

occupation: n/a.

place of birth: devotion, south of tene.

last played on spotify: slide feat. frank ocean & migos by calvin harris.

general disposition: breezy and bullheaded.

background.

when zak was born, he spent all of 5 minutes with his mother before she was up and running off from the hospital, leaving him behind with nothing but his name

life after that was more or less the same theme - people took him in for weeks, months at a time if he was lucky, before he was eventually either kicked to the curb or a ‘better family’ was ready for him

none of the foster homes ever wanted to take him in; witches and nymphs thought him too lackluster, humans never understood his obsession with the creatures of devotion - he just never seemed to be able to fit in

of course he had friends growing up, foster siblings he kept close to his heart and still does to this day, but he’d always been obsessed with the idea of found family, of someone picking him because they actually wanted him, not because there was government money involved

there were bouts of abuse, neglect, days where zak would run away and spend freezing nights on the streets, but it didn’t change his personality; deep down to his core, zak had always been loving and selfless, albeit a bit too reckless and temperamental for his own good

around the time he was 17 and just about to age out of the foster system, a family took him in, and zak immediately knew something was different with this home - it didn’t take them a week before they were asking him to allow them to adopt him into their lives forever

it’d been a good 10 years after that; zak found his family, and he had a good set of friends, maybe he could use some work with the head on his shoulders, he still found himself in constant trouble but he was loved and taken care of, so it didn’t matter

visiting home for his birthday and the christmas holidays last year was a tradition - but when zak went to bed that night, it would be the last time he ever fell asleep, waking up weeks later confused and disoriented, and a ghost after the only family he’d known had died tragically alongside him in a house fire

ever since, zak’s known something was off, wrong about him - it was easy to just assume his family was like all the others in the end, never reaching out to him anymore, leaving him behind

it was even easier to stick with this theory when he found himself incapable of going near where their home used to stand; every time zak gets close, there’s a reason to turn around, an excuse to abandon his search and just leave them behind, make everything easier

zak’s never expressed to any of his friends he still has that he’s a ghost, mostly due to being unaware himself - he still knows there’s something off, but there’s also something keeping him from getting the answers he wants and needs, and after years of fighting, zak’s just found it far easier to pretend everything’s fine. even if he can’t go home, his chest feels hollow, and sleep escapes him no matter how exhausted he feels.

details.

literally just. a loving goofball, super protective, has gotten into several dangerous fights for his friends before he just loves too fiercely when he accepts people into his life

an adrenaline junkie through and through

still loves skateboarding, can be found stuck in a loop for hours sometimes of him just coasting down the boardwalk and laughing without realizing he’s been caught in the same moment - once for almost a whole day straight

becomes very attached very easily!!!!! its honestly destroyed some friendships and has definitely ruined relationships; becomes clingy, untrusting, scared of people leaving him etc.

it’s also made hookups a mess tho he does in fact. Participate in those Quite Frequently

there are of course details in his past life that he’s forgotten, and struggles to discuss if they’re ever brought up, accepting his death is just. Not Going To Be An Easy Task.

connections.

zak is definitely still close w a lot of foster siblings he’s had in the past so any of them!!

maybe. someone that was a part of the foster family that passed and wasn’t there the day of the house fire…….

just friends in general :D from childhood, high school, more recent etc.

ppl he’s fought in honour of friends/partners he’s had in the past

enemies fr other reasons mayhaps???

exes….. he’d have lots on both good and bad terms</3

current and past hookups!!

thats all i have so far but tbh hes an open book lets get wild.

#devotion.intro #abuse tw #death tw #fire tw #violence tw

[arrow90-art]

in the moment tag game

Tagged by @turbulentpumpkin43​, it’s a surprise! Thank you!

last song: AURORA – The Architect (unreleased) (is that okay to post an unreleased song?)

I found this one and it's so Lark... I am obsessed and looped this one while I draw them last night. some lyrics:

I am the soul and not your dirt I am alive and I am hurt I'm all dried up I'm thirsty I'm all you need Step over me I know your dreams I've seen your fears I let them breathe inside of me I am the one Trust me I'm all you need Step over me I'm the father I'm the voice inside your head I'm the one you miss So you can comprehend

I am the architect I am the architect I'm the atoms and the squares The matrix in our head The architects We are all architects On trial with fire On trial with fire

I am the mother I'm not your slave And whilst I give You always take I am the ocean I am the rain I'm nature's fall The tidal wave I'm the child who's fallen off the comfort zone I'm the one who's gonna carry myself on

currently watching: ah, my 3D character modeling online classes lmao. I realized I lack of skills, and since I am freelancing at home I booked these classes. I need to update my portfolio :3

currently reading: mutuals' creations :3 If one of you got an anon kudo that's probably me, I read without logging in on my phone. Also, my gift from Embers!! I'm so obsessed I read it again and again thank you so much!!

currently obsessed with: my oc ship Larksharius/Rimerock. I feel sorry for my kc Blackstar who needs my attention but I can't stop thinking abt them omg my brain go brrrrrrr

No pressure tagging @outeremissary, @dujour13, @dmagedgoods, @hauntedolly, @molochka-koshka, and everyone who'd like to do it. siren I'm sorry abt your situation, hope things can be fixed soon for ya

I worry that I am annoying every time I tag yall ;3 if I am let me know tho ;;;3 I am always happy if I am tagged.

#tag game #SoundCloud

[thenightisland]

tagged by the lovely @mellowthorn for a rote Q&A thingy under the cut bc it's long

Favourite RotE Book: assassin's quest and fool's fate are constantly vying for the number one slot and the answer changes day by day

Why: on aq days it's bc that's the book that took this series from "wow i really like this" to "oh i'm going to be obsessed with these for the rest of my life huh." it has, i think, the best ending. it has my favorite chapter (ch 20 jhaampe my beloved). parts of it hit very close to home. on ff days it's bc well ff is insane. no book has ever gotten the reaction out of me that that one did. i do not cry at books; it made me cry seven times. it has such excellent payoff for stuff that was set up in the earliest books (rh queen of playing the long game). most heartwrenchingly beautiful moments on earth just chapter after chapter of them.

Top Three Favourite Characters: i think i am one of the few people whose favorite character genuinely is fitz lol. beloved obv number two. after that the answer also changes every day but i'm very partial to web and kettricken.

Top Three Least Favourite Characters: this may be biased due to me being neck deep in ship of destiny at the moment, but 98% of the men in lst need to be set on fire

Favourite Ship (of the floating kind): paragon

Top Three Favourite Ships (of the people kind): (keeping our venn diagram overlap answers) Fitzloved, Burrich/Chivalry, Patience/Lacey

Would you rather be Witted or Skilled: skilled. it seems so handy with the healing and prolonging your life. and i get traumatized enough by animal death as it is without introducing the wit to that equation.

If you were Witted, what animal would you bond with?: some kind of bird

Would you rather live in the Outislands, the Mountain Kingdom, the Six Duchies, Bingtown, the Rain Wilds, Kelsingra, Jamaillia, the Pirate Isles, or Fool’s Homeland?: practicality says bingtown bc i like being relatively warm and by the ocean and not get fantasy radiation poisoning from where i live but...but kelsingra is so fucking neat

How were you introduced to the books? a friend of mine on here always posted about them and our tastes overlapped so much that despite the fact that at the time i said i didn't like fantasy and wouldn't read it, i figured if this friend of mine liked these books there must be a reason. i read the left hand of darkness bc she posted about it too and when i mentioned reading it to her she was like "lol yeah it's hard for me to separate it from fool's fate" so i thought "maybe it's time to read those books then"

Share a quote you love: somewhat abridged for length's sake, from RA, and was one of those bits i count as early warning sign of my impending obsession lol:

“ ‘Not all men are destined for greatness,’ I reminded him

‘Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?’

‘This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.’

‘No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart’s beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?…You create possibilities….I have seen the end of the world, Fitz. Seen it woven as plainly as I’ve seen my birth. Oh, not in your lifetime, nor even mine. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?’ ”

also and underrated one from FA:

“Oh, the things we discover and the things we learn, much too late. Worse are the secrets that are not secrets, the sorrows we live with but do not admit to one another.”

i have also thought about "every nuance of his grace as familiar to me as the drawing of breath" literally every day but that's a given if there's a sappy line you can be sure i am thinking about it nonstop without a moment's peace

#questions #mellowthorn

[baladric]

What first got you into writing? How did you develop your style? And have you got any tips for other budding writers out there? Also who are your favourite authors and poets?

this got LONG but i'm going to tell myself you were ASKING FOR THAT and take a breath a;ldfkjwo;dfjsf

i can't remember if my inuyasha self-insert fic days predated my gaiaonline roleplaying days, but it was one of the two! definitely entirely a form of escape from a very painful and lonely life, but i think it was actually several years after i started definitionally Writing™ before i got into it, you know? i don't remember what kickstarted it, but somewhere along the way, i realized that i could really do whatever i wanted to, and i discovered figurative language and non-linear storytelling really went hogwild on some super niche death note fics ;alkfjwd and from there i started writing prose-poetry and really just. splashing around in there. i've been a musician my whole life, and it was like i'd realized that i could put music into the written word, like i wrote entirely for the way things tripped off my internal ear—like this one line from a poem i wrote when i was 14 still sticks with me, Leaves stain, leaves stains (rough obviously, but it was my first foray into writing about visual imagery that stuck in my sad little head)

my style started as its own nascent messy little thing, and like. man, people on here don't talk about Lolita because. you know. it's literally the apotheosis of the stuff that gets people wound-up in fandom spaces? literally a novel about SA and pedophilia and grooming—but the thing is, there's a reason it's considered a central part of the western literary canon, and that book revolutionized me as a writer. nabokov's entire thing really is just. ear-worms as text, like i cannot even express how often i still think "I am just winking happy thoughts into a little tiddle cup", or how many times i'll echolalia my way through this one line from the intro bit of the book: "Lo-Le-Ta: The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth." take or leave the content of the book, nabokov does it like none other—or he did until ocean vuong published On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, which is just. idk if you haven't read it, please please please, do yourself a favor and make space for it. it's the most effecting book i've ever read, as well as the most gorgeous and the most lovingly, grievingly composed.

You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hugry, as empty. Opening the front door to the first snowfall of my life, you whispered, "Look."

if i can ever write a single sentence that pins the wide universe and the complex sorrow and joy of the human experience in place the way ocean vuong does, i will die happy. honestly.

favorite authors/poets is in vein with that last bit, but the short list anyway:

ocean vuong, esp On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (novel) and Time is a Mother (poetry)

maggie stiefvater, specifically The Raven Cycle—i could (and have) gone on for hours about the way she puts her readers into a tactile, vivid world, and her singular skill for spinning characters so contradictory and multifaceted that, to my mind, they're whole entire people, instead of the archetypes or loving stereotypes of most other fiction

richard siken, for Crush, which. i mean, i'm a gay man obsessed with words, this one really goes without saying lmao, if you read nothing else from it, read Snow and Dirty Rain. it is my gospel and my lifeblood, i have it memorized and still i reread it every week.

katherine addison taught me so much about storytelling, unreliable narrators, and the complexities of healing/trauma recovery while contending with rigid society (tragically pertinent to our present lives)—her Chronicles of Osreth (comprised of The Goblin Emperor, Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones)

maggie nelson, both for Bluets and The Argonauts

becky chambers—Psalm for the Wild-Built altered me as a person, it is gorgeous and soaring and humble and such a necessary book

donna tartt, obviously

anne carson, also obviously

freya marske—will read anything she ever writes, her language is lush, her worldbuilding is unique and spectacular, and her smut is HOT

alexandra rowland, for the same reasons as freya marske, but also their characters are so stunningly sympathetic, as well as really loving examples of neurodivergence in fiction (evemer hoşkadem, my deeply autistic beloved)

robin hobb really writes a toxic, complicated relationship saga like none other, i am stunningly enraged by Realm of the Edlerlings and also am physically incapable of not thinking about it constantly

and then there's the authors who taught me about magic: Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom Series), Holly Black (Modern Faerie Tales), Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small), and Francesca Lia Block (Weetzie Bat)

writer tips!!!!!! this is hokey, but honestly my main advice is READ and also HAVE FUN. storytelling is the oldest human act, and language is the show where everything's made-up and the points don't matter. language is a sandbox, and it's there for you to literally just fuck around in. it can be whatever you want—it can be your raison d'être as a writer, but also it can be incidental. it can be a means to an end, economical, and some of the best stories are taken with that approach. but also you can paint with language, if you want to. you can compose music with it. you can do whatever suits your fancy.

my second tip is WORD COUNT DOESN'T MATTER. stop counting. stop stop stop holding yourself to the weird, quantity-obsessed writer culture. 2,000 words a day? nobody has time for that except full-time writers or those really rare writers who blink and 5k words fall onto the page. personally, if i'm sitting down to write and i'm really determined to actually get something onto the page, whether or not it's necessarily good, i'll force out 200 words. 200! i can't remember where i got this tip, but the point of that number is that 200 words is attainable even on the most blocked day, and by the time you hit your 200th word, you're gonna be in the middle of a sentence or a thought that you'll have to finish, and you end up with 300. or you hit 200 and you've broken through the fog and warmed up to it, and you leave with 700 or 1,500 (or a couple wild times for me, 5k).

my third tip: if you're a writer, EVERYTHING IS WRITING. this goes for art, music, literally any creative pursuit. walking out your door in the morning is writing, because you're learning things about the world, you're processing stimuli, your wheels are never not spinning. every video game you play, every show you watch, every fic you read is inherently a generative act, because that story is entering your store of knowledge to be processed and synthesized and lend you inspiration for the kinds of stories you want to tell, or the characters you want to make, or even the kinds of things you want to avoid as a creator. i can't tell you how much i've learned from games (Outer Wilds, i'm lookin at you!!) or tv (Station Eleven....) or music (Joanna Newsom really should be on my list of authors) or fanfiction (if you're a goblin emperor beastie and you haven't read celebros's Blackbird series, RUN, don't walk. i learned literally everything about creating character conflict within a framework of love that really motivates characters to work at it and not just get angry and walk away, and i remain uhhHHH fuckin Gobsmacked and reeling that she wants to write with ME a;lkdjfalw;dfs also literally one of my most formative collaborative and creative experiences came from reading kingdom hearts fanfiction in 2010, so) so!!!! just live your life!!! think about what makes you tick, what makes stories tick, think about the stars or birds or the history of glassblowing, whatever lights you up, and that energy will find its way into the things you make.

oh and also NEVER FEEL BAD FOR TAKING BREAKS. and i don't mean a 5-minute break, or a few days. i mean weeks. i mean months or years or what-have-you. sometimes it's just not there, and that's not a failing. your creations aren't content, they're little critters you make with love, and you can't love a thing you're banging your head against day and night. take breaks. allow yourself ebbs and flows in your creativity. everything hibernates, and i promise it'll wake up again and it'll be better than you left it.

end point: i Love You, and if you're writing or hoping to write or planning to write, i love your writing, too, nascent or tangible.

#aj answers #anonymous ask #ask

[projectorpheus]

NAIAD ⋅𖥔⋅ 28, W ⋅𖥔⋅ PERSUASION

trigger warning: cults

Perhaps in another world; in one where the Earth isn't dying and no one goes to bed hungry, you would have been a poet; a philosopher; an artist. But in this world — YOU'LL SETTLE FOR BEING WORSHIPPED. You were born with a music note stuck in your throat, stained by a melody the world had thought forgotten. There is no need for the art in this barren land other than the sound of gunshots at night, keeping rhythm for clocks that have long run out of battery; no use for fairytales when we all know how the story is destined to end, don't we? Death. Always death.

Yet you stayed true to yourself. You pulled out their doubts like baby teeth and let the blood stain your fangs pink. Soft. Romantic. The color of the sun before it sets — rare and wondrous, like a dream wherein the sky isn't fogged with pollution and you can stand under the warmth of the stars; feel the rain settle upon your lashes like the flutter of butterfly wings. Here, the droplets don't eat away at your skin like hungry fish nipping at fresh bait. Here, there is no hunger; no pain — the birds sing their bright tunes and you aren't reminded of rumbling within your stomach; you dangle your feet at the edge of the blue ocean, and it doesn't stretch open its jaw to swallow you whole.

They follow you now, ants lulled by the promise of honey. Lining up to hear your stories — to escape from a life that has left them battered and bruised. Food is dry, bitter. But your stories are just the right amount of sweet to chase reality away. They offer you their meals; they protect you like sunken treasure they've waited their entire lives to find. And you? Perhaps it should fill you with guilt to watch them wither away, bones aching for the very sustenance they present to you for just one more story. But you're not the god they make you to be. You're an artist, a creator — AND DEATH IS THE MOTHER OF CREATION.

DYNAMICS

HALIMEDE  ⋅𖥔⋅ I WAS A WINGED OBSESSIVE, MY MOONLIT FEATHERS WERE PAPER

Muse. It was by pure coincidence that you met him; in your early days of storytelling wherein your followers were few and you had to yell in order for your voice to carry above violence's incessant hum. And you recognized him immediately — prodigal son, S Corp heir. Aboveground. Delivering resources. Clearly stolen but dearly coveted nonetheless, those around you staring up at him with tears in their eyes and gratitude upon their lips. It made your stomach turn, the hero-worship for a man giving out mere scraps when he had an empire at his fingertips. BUT IT MADE FOR A GOOD STORY, NONETHELESS. Your tales of him were what started your fame, crowds eager to hear of the Robin Hood that would save them from the dark. You know he can't save anyone. You know he's doing this for nothing more than an inflated ego. Still, you drape his image in golden metaphor; assert that it's ichor that flows through his veins. At night, when your belly is full and you seclude yourself in your followers' safety, you laugh and laugh. Here's the thing about heroes — THEY NEVER LIVE.

SAGAN  ⋅𖥔⋅ HERE I WILL TELL YOU HOW THE STORY ENDS ALL THE POSSIBLE WAYS AND YOU WILL FIND ME IN EACH OF THEM

Your companionship was brief, but their presence will forever be etched into your memory by the way they left. You found them one night, injured and confused, donning clothing too fine to be risked by the elements aboveground. You took them in; you couldn't help it — always craving a good story. But they had no memory of how they got there, their mind splintered and their words more riddle than dialogue. You would have thrown them out to save resources if the way they clung to you had been any less pitiful, mouth gaping at your tales, consuming them in a desperation you had yet to witness. It almost made you hesitate when the news reached your screen of an escaped S Corp asset, their face rendered in stunning detail. But sentimentality has no place here, and the bounty was enough to compensate your loss of companionship. You never bothered to ask why they were wanted, or what punishment they could receive that could be worse than living aboveground. But sometimes, when the chatter ceases and the winds are silent, you hear the echo of their wail as they were dragged away by armed Enforcers.

SYCORAX  ⋅𖥔⋅ I WILL VANISH IN THE MORNING LIGHT, I WAS ONLY AN INVENTION OF DARKNESS.

Once, they had been your most promising client — rich, underground, and bored. There were even times when you allowed yourself to dream that they would whisk you away to the underground city; where you would finally be free of this endless fight for survival. You would lose your following, but you didn't quite mind. In the underground city, you could stop telling stories for food and simply write for yourself. But you should have known better than to dream. You are the weaver of stories. You are the one who creates the illusions; who paints them to astounding reality. When all communication was cut off without warning or apology, you realized that, for once, you had allowed yourself to become trapped in your own web of hope.

TAKEN BY ELLE ⋅𖥔⋅ ANOK YAI

#naiad. #all. #closed.

[whitefluffybearcub]

6/2/2023

— whatever it is in this human world, be aware of it but never be consumed by it.

6/3/2023

— in this dimension, everything and everyone here is part of it, each experience has been meant to be. Nothing and no one is out of place. Even the most thrilling conspiracies are backed by fate.

The light and dark, as a human would perceive, would also always be. The light and dark dance with each other, one leads this time, the other next. And it goes on like that infinitely in all ways possible. That is also part of the designated Human narrative.

Enjoy all the enjoyable. Don’t be obsessed with anything because why would you when you know all is an illusion.

Be aware of everything and everyone yet don’t be consumed by it.

— be reminded, in much of the circumstances, you are not obligated to say, or do anything. Just let it be.

— anything perceived to be physical, including human bodies, animals, plants and everything else is part of the earth experience which is temporary for all.

It is a hologram of a simulation with designated senses.

Do your best to be kind, to your own body and mind, to others, and don’t be obsessed and be consumed by anything. Some would choose the latter but it is also their designated experience in this place. Let it be.

— in the realm of duality there is good and bad. The good experiences bad and learn healing from it. And the bad feeds off on good in many ways. It is its own eco system in which has been designated.

— all the good and the bad in this humanly reality need each other for its designated purposes and experiences.

— beyond the humanly perception of good and bad, you see that each character and being on this earth does what it has been designated to do and experience. Everything and everyone, all a part of this narrative in simulation. No one is out of place. Simple as that.

— intelligence and consciousness of pure, unconditional, and infinite love is where we all come from, without shapes, noises, and visuals.

— the light and dark dance with each other via karma. One leads in one chapter, another rises in a different one.

— if you live a lie, you would definitely attract more deceit. If you have done wrong or evil, then be ready to always watch over your shoulder In these endless and sleepless nights. It is simply how vibration works in this world. You reap what you sow.

6/4/2023

— if you knew, if you knew the good would turn bad, the sweetest romance would turn into bitter hatred at some point in your journey, you wouldn’t even try to go through it.

It is designed that you do not know so you can go through this designated experience with an open mind and heart but know that everything is meant to be. Heal as best as you can, find happiness.

6/5/2023

— either way, whether it is man made or offered by Mother Nature, it is all a designated part of the plan given by fate and the soul.

Find happiness.

— the energy of people will evolve and shift as it is meant to be. It is all part of the designated journey but it is temporary.

— collective human energy goes thru the chapter of awakening, awakening from deceit, focus from distractions, inner self and peace from what needs healing. There is no disorder in anything but they are teachers.

— when the rain comes, let it replenish the greens and let it cleanse. When it is cool, play and take a walk outside. When it is sunny and warm, enjoy the beautiful and cooling ocean. There is will and there is a way to enjoy.

6/6/2023

— to live in denial is to know some kind of truth and yet you choose to live in deceit. To operate and live from a place of deceit, know that you would never find true happiness in such atmosphere.

—some of you would not understand karma so you can go forth a designated plan. That itself is in order.

6/8/2023

— human world would not have existed if there wasn’t duality and karma.

6/9/2023

— don’t lit the fire you can’t put out because you would come to regret it.

— karma actually play into everything and everyone in this reality. Human reality is basically just a karmic game. Even if one does absolutely nothing, karma would find its way by design. It is how this reality works and balances itself.

— karma: burn then be burned. Harm then be harmed. Kill then be killed. Poison the be poisoned. Plot against , then be plotted against and so on.

Love then be loved. Kind then attract more kindness. Choose peace then sleep so well. This reality operate on this simple concepts of karma and balance but karma works via inter life times and inter generations.

Whatever game you choose to play, you shall learn my love. It will be heart felt because it has been designed this way.

6/11/2023

— when it is all gloomy and dark outside, you are meant to find your inner light. Radiate that light from inside out.

— the energy of anything not genuine. It gives you a high but not lasting, then you are left with regrets.

Find contentment in the present. Anything you need would come to you in good time.

6/12/2023

— karma sometimes works in ways only you can see and feel, and no one else. Rest assured, karma is a consistent thing in this frequency. it is inter life times and inter dimensions.

— if you lie and keep lying, you would only lower your energy and vibration further and further. It would be the opposite if you wish to elevate, by doing what your heart knows to be the right.

Your choices determine your experiences.

— the most talented and intelligent, who choose to not be kind and merciful to others, ultimately their potential greatness die before their big ego.

— orchestrated theater to make believe is also a designated part of the human experiences and expressions. If you can see thru this, you would not be angry and would find everything amusing, just like watching people play house at the park.

— karma and ego would be your biggest teacher in the human realms. One day you may realize that when you get to a certain point of your journey.

I wish you love no matter where you are.

6/14/2023

— events are meant to show you that they are merely puppets without any power or authority. It is the hands behind these puppets that influence. Look at the same gestures behind the different puppets. Same sets of hands.

The universe is showing you this. It is time. Open your mind and eyes, and see with mindfulness and clarity.

— you reap what you sow in a karmic manner. You may not believe it or see it but at some point you will.

— they will do what their fate has in store for them like a script, high or low vibration, not good nor bad.

— most humans are influenced, pushed, restricted by deceit created by other humans. Both sides play into the script, and even man made there is fate and karma behind it.

— it is designed that low vibrational beings would further be deceitful, it is a way to reach even low vibrational status. It would be their chosen experience.

Some would go even further down, some would elevate at some point by doing what is right. All walks of life of all infinite expressions.

— some days like this, it is a lesson of patience, being gentle, and being content.

— fate would have it that a certain people hop on the same train of frequency and vibration, they would all be induced to do something similar in frequency but could be expressed different ways.

6/15/2023

— in this human world, everything and everyone is somewhat complicated, confused, and conflicted.

Everyone is chasing that orchestrated hype only to land on bubbles.

To have something or anything that is so pure and simple is actually an blessing. Remember that.

To accept something that is simple and pure means contentment. Happiness often times arrive when one is content.

— if you choose to promote fear, you would live in the energy of fear. It is like a person who gives out poison would be around poison all day, needing to look over his shoulders at all times.

— big ego and another big ego meet. There is bound to have a big clash.

6/16/2023

— in the world of pure man made distractions, it would become a trend and a pattern. Some would see it from miles away, and know that it is pure distractions.

6/17/2023

— it is now a collective lesson where humans learn about ego of entitlement and genuine kindness.

6/18/2023

— the ones that have chosen to immerse themselves in the very dark, see how the karma play with them. If you are meant to, just watch the energy re-balance itself. Do not judge, trust the universe and fate.

After all, it is their choice for their designated experiences.

— love that suffocates and scares you, perhaps that one day you would wake up and realize it isn’t love at all, but ego and control.

When you wake up and until you depart ego, it is when true and genuine love might show up, and it would come from within.

6/19/2023

— there is a higher consciousness in which all is a part of. It radiates an infinite of experiences at all level of frequency. The lower the frequency, the darker the energy.

— let go. Things that you have decided to let go. Let karma work its magic. It would make things right from corruption, deceit, and ego.

This reality is karmic and operates via karma in all possible ways. Be reminded that there is good and bad karma in the realm of duality.

— the evil would at some point beg and still be stoned because they once have stoned at someone else no matter how they had begged. The evil would be fearful one day because they’ve once have made someone else fearful. It goes on like that, either in the same experiences or different ones.

Observe mindfully. It is just how karma works in this reality.

— even the devil is seemingly so despicable and is now thrown under the bus, another devil would utilize it to create smoke and mirror to fool.

It is never what it seems when it is on a stage.

— evil sometimes is another evil’s karma. They teach one another lessons as well.

— in a reality like the one you are in, do you really think Snow White would have taken beauty advices from a ugly witch in a gold plated hoody?

— everything you can see in this humanly reality has been designated to be here, even the ones humans think are not supposed to.

It has to be tuned into a low frequency in which humans can perceive.

Some humans think they are the only superior species in the whole universe. That is just ego talking. Ego would be their teacher.

6/20/2023

— keep calm and don’t react. Remember, the bigger the corruptions are, the bigger lessons they would have to go through, with the equivalent karmic debt amounts they would have to heal and balance.

Remember they chose these difficult lessons. Let them be. Judgments only come from human ego. It is what it is, it isn’t good nor bad.

Learn well my love.

— truly let go. Release it, whether it be people, places, things, events, deceit, corruptions, or others, let them embark their own designated karmic journey. It would change, evolve, and heal via its own designated karma.

Trust that everything and everyone you have released would also work itself out sooner or later in their designated journeys.

— in the frequency of karmic duality, one would of course attract bad as they have done them. It would play out as events of karma.

But if you do good, you would create good karma and that would help heal and balance. Healing is a way to bring peace and tranquillity. However some people would choose to deceive even further and therefore would attract even more bad via karma.

But it is a choice, whatever you choose should help you understand. The dark and the light both await you to make a choice. It is your journey.

I personally wish you love and hope you choose to do the right things via compassion, mercy, and kindness.

— in short, don’t react. Be calm. Keep you peace and observe mindfully. It is what it is because it has been destined to be this way via its frequency and vibration. It has to work itself out via its own karma , ego, and energy.

— people would not forget as karma would not forget. It would come to you as you have done to them.

— words that come out from a certain entities are purely just distractions. Its intents are to play with your emotions and to induce fear. None of the things they speak of truly matter.

[kill0mtr]

yes its the four elements plus shadows/darkness and magic. i was 10 years old, what do you think.

also, this is THE first time ive ever drawn them. Clara and Alex came out a bit wonky but!!! overall what i imagined them to look like.

in my first ideas for them, they were all like... teenagers?? but then i realized as i grew up that what i imagined a teenager was actually just a college student. i used to think being 15 was OLD.

so!!! here we go. youre going to learn about them. :)

SALLY - she's the magic gal! her color is purple, and so is her magic. technically, they ALL have "magic", but she's more-so telekinesis and the stereotypical wizardry magic stuff. she's 19 years old and... has a HUGE crush on Seth. she's not exactly obsessive over him, however she'll get clingy if she hasn't seen him in a bit.

CLARA - she controls the oceans and rain... well, not really, but anything water is fair-game. she's 20, and is dating Leo. they're a chill couple, not flaunting any romantic stuff around while the others struggle with their love lives.

JULIA - she floats, she glides, she soars! Julia, i think, is the one i have the most "lore" for. she's 19, and has a rocky relationship with Alex. they've dated on and off.

SETH - he's an enigma, hiding in the shadows... he, basically, controls the "darkness". in broad terms, he does technically control light. he can make the shadows into solid objects, which is neat. he's 21, and very much dislikes how Sally keeps dropping hints about her crush on him... he's much rather just stay friends.

LEO - flame on! he controls fire, flame, and anything that sparks! he's 21, and is happily dating Clara. he's childhood friends with Alex, and sees the guy as his brother-from-another-mother.

ALEX - grounded in the earth, the roots take place... Alex controls the earth, stone, and minerals. he's 20, and has no idea what he's even doing with Julia, at this point. he's a bit baby-faced, being wrongly assumed to be a teenager.

aaand thats everything i have right now. well, for the metaphorical Season 1. there are 4 seasons, in my head (or 4 "acts", i guess?)

#original characters go brrrrr

[chrancecriber]

Radio NET Bulgaria (October 15, 2022)

23:56 JOE MCBRIDE, THE TEXAS RHYTHM CLUB - Keepin' It Real 23:52 TIM BOWMAN - Miracle 23:48 JEFF KASHIWA - Every Now and Then 23:44 BILLY EVANS - Let's Save the World 23:40 TERENCE YOUNG - Sweet Thing 23:36 MARION MEADOWS - Twice As Nice 23:33 SHAUN LABELLE - Spin Cycle 23:29 JESSY J - Second Chances (feat. Norman Brown) 23:25 PAT BELLIVEAU - Lakeview Drive 23:20 EVERETTE HARP - Don't Look Any Further 23:17 ERIC DARIUS - Heaven Sent 23:12 RONNY SMITH - Here We Go Again 23:08 WAKANA - I Told You So 23:04 TONY SAUNDERS - Celebrate You 23:00 DAVE BRADSHAW JR. - West Coast Jammin' 22:58 HIATUS & SHURA - Fortune's Fool 22:51 BANCO DE GAIA - Tempra (Original Mix) 22:47 MOTIF, LENA BELGART - Halo (Original Mix) 22:44 AUDIO BULLYS - Take You There 22:40 JEAN HONEYMOON - Bang Bang (Lazy Hammock Chillout Remix) 22:35 JENS BUCHERT - Bug In Mind (Vocal Mix) 22:30 SUNLOUNGER - Your Name (Chill Version) 22:26 BEBE - Siempre Me Quedara (Serge Vegas Relax T!me Remix) 22:21 351 LAKE SHORE DRIVE - Seabeam 22:16 JEAN MARE - Just Equality (Electro Downbeat Mix) 22:12 JES - Stronger 22:09 ASSMONKEYS, LYCK - Embrace My Heart (Bassmonkeys & Jenna Donnelly Moonlight Mix) 22:03 BRIAN CULBERTSON - The Look 21:58 LEO ROJAS - Friendship 21:53 PETE MURRAY - So Beautiful (Acoustic Version) 21:47 LEMONGRASS - Ocean Kisses (Original Mix) 21:44 BERK & THE VIRTUAL BAND - You're My Heart, You're My Soul 21:41 JOE SATRIANI - Always 21:37 MOORYC - Communication Breakdown 21:33 KENNY G, BRIAN MCKNIGHT - Careless Whisper 21:29 JIMMY ROQSTA, THALYA HILL - Endless Summer Dance (El Gambrero Remix) 21:24 BLANK & JONES - Counting Clouds 21:21 LEMON ICE - Hello 21:14 SUNLOUNGER - Change Your Mind (Chill Version) 21:09 ANA CRIADO - Can't Hold Back The Rain (Dark Matters Original) 21:06 LE VITA, FAB - Apologize 21:01 CAFE DEL MAR - Mandalay (Beautiful) 20:56 LEO ROJAS - Serenade to Mother Earth 20:53 KEVIN SUNRAY - Stories Untold feat. Gaia Barbero (Acoustic Dubstep Mix) 20:48 DAN BALAN - Chica Bomb (DJ Dan Karim Chill Mix) 20:45 KYLIE MINOGUE - Wonderful Life (Acoustic Version) 20:39 LAID BACK - People (Banzai Republic vs. Trentemoeller Mix) 20:33 LA NUIT DEL MAR - Everybody (Luxury Lounge Cafe Mix) 20:25 LAB OF MUSIC - Angel Vibes (Original Mix) 20:20 LA CAINA - Mona 20:17 CNBK - Burning Skies (Acoustic Version) 20:15 DAVID VENDETTA - Love To Love You Baby (Lounge Mix) 20:10 LANA DEL REY - Born To Die 20:06 SUNLOUNGER - Punta Galera (Chillout Mix) 20:00 LAZY HAMMOCK - Pleasures All Mine (Chill Beat Mix) 19:55 DEPECHE MODE - Enjoy The Silence (Pacific State Chillout Mix) 19:50 DIDDY, KEYSHIA COLE, B - STAR 19:46 LEO ROJAS - Flying Heart 19:42 LATE NIGHT ALUMNI - This Is Why 19:38 CRISTINA CAMACHO - Thank You 19:33 ESSONITA, IRINA MAKOSH - Lift Me Up (Bryan Milton Chillout Remix) 19:27 GUENTER HAAS - Alone But Never Lonely 19:22 KUBA - Kailash 19:19 DASH BERLIN, EMMA HEWITT - Waiting (Acoustic Version) 19:16 ARMIN VAN BUUREN VS. SOPHIE ELLIS BEXTOR - Not Giving Up On Love (Acoustic Version) 19:12 KOSMOPOLITANS, ATHENA ROUTSI - I Belong To You 19:09 JAMES BUTLER - Dinner For Two 19:04 CANE GARDEN QUARTET - Chillaxin' 18:58 SUNLOUNGER - Sunny Tales (Chill Version) 18:54 LO TIDE - Quietly Here (Original Mix) 18:48 KITARO - Dance of Sarasvati 18:44 MICHAEL E - People Watching (Rubber Neck Mix) 18:39 LEO ROJAS - Colors Of The Rainbow 18:36 JAY SEAN - Maybe (The Xtreme Chillout Remix) 18:32 351 LAKE SHORE DRIVE - Rising Stars 18:29 KENNY G, LOUIS ARMSTRONG - What A Wonderful World 18:24 JES - In Ohm (Lime Chill Remix) 18:19 ATB - With You! (Original Mix) 18:14 GROOVE THIEVERY - Killer 18:08 CHRISTIAN HORNBOSTEL - Waiting At Potsdamer Chaussee 18:05 CJ STONE, ANNA TURSKA, SHERLOCK - Believe Me (Chill Out Classic Mix) 18:01 YURI KANE - Right Back (Chillout Mix) 17:57 ADELE - Chasing Pavements 17:53 SAGI REI - Missing 17:48 CLAUDE CHAGALL - Obsession 17:43 KITARO - Itonami 17:39 MICHAEL E - Deja Vu (Short Mix) 17:34 ANDAIN - Beautiful Things (Andain Piano Version) 17:31 LEO ROJAS - Chaski 17:25 351 LAKE SHORE DRIVE - Over 17:19 JES - Like A Waterfall (Flipside Ambient Remix) 17:15 BLANK & JONES - Pura Vida (Radio Mix) 17:09 ATB - Let U Go (Schiller Remix) 17:04 PROJECT BLUE SUN - Angels 17:00 SUNLOUNGER - Balearic Breakfast (Chill Version) 16:57 J. WHITE - Driven 16:53 DR. DAVE, THE HOUSECALL BAND - Almost Trinidad (Revisited Version) 16:48 MARCIN NOWAKOWSKI - Snow Lion (Feat. Michael Thompson) 16:44 SKINNY HIGHTOWER - Summer Nights 16:39 JOYCE COOLING - Little Five Points 16:34 DARREN RAHN - Secret Crush 16:30 BIRDS OF A FEATHER - Hollywood Way 16:25 JIM ADKINS - The Journey 16:21 TIM BOWMAN - New Day 16:17 TERENCE YOUNG - Friday Night 16:13 KEITH MASON - Ah Hallelujah 16:08 PATRICK YANDALL - Your Satisfaction 16:04 BILLY EVANS - She Makes Me Smile 16:00 TONY SAUNDERS - Push 15:57 BRIAN SIMPSON - Wherever You Go 15:53 WAKANA - Fly High (feat. re plus) 15:49 JAZZ HOLDOUTS - Port Boulevard 15:44 DR. DAVE, THE HOUSECALL BAND - Feel so Good (Revisited Version) 15:40 GREGG KARUKAS - Club Hopping 15:34 BRIAN BROMBERG - Choices 15:30 NILS - The Hump 15:25 NATE WHITE - Long Way Home 15:21 DANNY LERMAN - Saxsultan 15:17 KIM SCOTT - Glorious 15:11 ERIC DARIUS - Can't Get Enough of Your Love Baby (Barry White Classic re 15:08 TERENCE YOUNG - Take You Out 15:04 CHRIS GODBER - Energy 15:00 RONNY SMITH - Forever Friends 14:58 3RD FORCE - Carry On 14:54 TONY SAUNDERS - Best Part 14:51 ALEXANDER ZONJIC - Living in the Past 14:46 WAKANA - Hometown 14:41 DR. DAVE, THE HOUSECALL BAND - Carefree (Revisited Version) 14:36 SKINNY HIGHTOWER - California Dreams 14:32 DEE LUCAS - Through It All 14:28 JACOB WEDD - Another Day 14:22 GREGG KARUKAS - Jamba Samba 14:17 UNDER THE LAKE - Diego Nuevo 14:13 WALTER BEASLEY - St. Denis 14:08 WARREN HILL - Under the Covers 14:04 PIECES OF A DREAM - Quiet Night in the City 14:00 ERIC DARIUS - Back To You 13:56 EUGE GROOVE - Tango in Rio 13:51 TERENCE YOUNG - Come With Me 13:48 RONNY SMITH - 95 Drive 13:43 TONY SAUNDERS - All About Love 13:38 OLI SILK - London to L.A. Express 13:35 NICK COLIONNE - Spend the Night 13:30 PHIL DENNY - Got It Like That 13:26 WAKANA - Go for the Sound (feat. Darren Rahn & Koh Mr.Saxman) 13:21 SEAN U - 60 Miles 13:17 KIM WATERS - Let's Do This 13:13 DR. DAVE, THE HOUSECALL BAND - G.B. Style (Revisited Version) 13:09 SHAWN RAIFORD - I Like It 13:04 NICHOLAS COLE - Between Us (feat. Michael Stever) 13:00 GREGG KARUKAS - Your Sweet Smile 12:56 ANDY SNITZER - Breaking 12:52 NELSON RANGELL - Good Morning Love 12:48 ERIC DARIUS - Broke Down 12:45 STEVE COLE - Workhouse 12:40 EUGE GROOVE - Slow Jam 12:36 RONNY SMITH - Smooth 12:32 TONY SAUNDERS - Forever Yours 12:27 TERENCE YOUNG - Love Ballad 12:21 ROCCO VENTRELLA - Give Me The Groove 12:17 JOHN NOVELLO - Crush 12:13 KIM WATERS - Feels Like Friday Night 12:08 NICK COLIONNE - The Connection 12:04 DEON YATES - Motor City Strut 12:00 CAL HARRIS JR. - The Touch 11:58 WAKANA - Let's Get Together (feat. Peter Peet Ferencz) 11:54 SKINNY HIGHTOWER - Sample That 11:50 JACKIEM JOYNER - Take Me There 11:45 ADAM HAWLEY - Joy Ride 11:41 JEANETTE HARRIS - 2nd Nature 11:36 RANDY SCOTT - Intimacy 11:31 GREGG KARUKAS - Summerhouse 11:27 ERIC DARIUS - Never 11:23 BONEY JAMES - Sundance 11:19 TONY SAUNDERS - That Beautiful Lady 11:15 DANIEL DOMENGE - Nonchalance 11:10 KIM WATERS - With Open Arms 11:04 JOHN NOVELLO - Ivory Soul 11:00 STEVE COLE - Sidechain 10:59 RONNY SMITH - Groove 106 10:55 AL DEGREGORIS - Connect the Dots 10:51 EUGE GROOVE - Romeo & Juliet 10:46 TERENCE YOUNG - Island Love 10:41 NICHOLAS COLE - Sugar 10:37 CAL HARRIS JR. - Souful 10:33 RANDY SCOTT - Affection 10:28 GREG MANNING - Look Up 10:24 FREDDIE FOX - No U Turn 10:20 WAKANA - Saxcess Story (feat. Greg Manning) 10:16 NICK COLIONNE - C-Ray 10:12 LEBRON - The Late Hour 10:08 KIM WATERS - Free Fall 10:04 TONY SAUNDERS - And the Beat Goes On 10:00 ERIC DARIUS - Forever Yours 09:57 JOHN NOVELLO - Fiestaville 09:53 THE SAX PACK - When Morning Comes 09:49 KIM SCOTT - You And Me (Feat. Kelvin Wooten) 09:45 JEANETTE HARRIS - The One 09:40 CINDY BRADLEY - Exhale 09:36 RONNY SMITH - Just Groovin 09:31 THE SMOOTH JAZZ ALLEY - Been A Long Time Comin' 09:26 RANDY SCOTT - Joyride 09:22 CAL HARRIS JR. - Timeline 09:17 TERENCE YOUNG - Yearning For Your Love 09:12 OLI SILK - New Bounce 09:08 JAREZ - Hold On Tight 09:04 JAZZ IN PINK - Joy Joy! 09:00 FRANK SUTTON - Brighter Days Ahead 08:59 UNDER THE LAKE - Old Friends New Grooves 08:55 TONY SAUNDERS - Unlimited Access 08:51 EUGE GROOVE - All For You 08:47 JOHN NOVELLO - Shuffle the Deck 08:44 RON OTIS - Kiss Me 08:40 FREDDIE FOX - Day Dreamin' 08:35 KIM WATERS - Boo'd Up 08:32 ERIC DARIUS - Retro Forward 08:28 DEON YATES - The Sample Life 08:24 RANDY SCOTT - Copacetic 08:19 RONNY SMITH - I'm Beside You 08:15 JACK LEE - Vivre De Amor (Feat. Toninho Horta, Steve Ferrone & Tim Carmon) 08:11 RICHARD ELLIOT - Sweet Memories 08:06 JOE MCBRIDE, THE TEXAS RHYTHM CLUB - Oi Gata 08:00 ROCCO VENTRELLA - Winelight 07:59 JULIAN VAUGHN - Breeze 07:51 JEFF KASHIWA - Around The World 07:47 DAVE BRADSHAW JR. - Eastern Beauty 07:43 J. WHITE - Soiree 07:40 OLI SILK - At Your Service (feat. Julian Vaughn) 07:36 JOYCE COOLING - Imagine That 07:32 PETER HEROLD - Praise The Lord 07:28 KIM WATERS - Nina In Tortola 07:24 NORMAN BROWN - Just Groovin' 07:19 TIM BOWMAN - Summer Groove 07:15 RANDY SCOTT - Daydreams 07:11 DARREN RAHN - What Cha' Gonna Do For Me 07:08 RONNY SMITH - Ticket to Miami 07:04 PHILLIP DOC MARTIN - Paradise 07:00 DREW DAVIDSEN - Don't Delay 06:59 PAUL BROWN - Ain't No Sunshine 06:55 BIRDS OF A FEATHER - Someday Soon 06:53 STEVE RAYBINE - Maui Blue 06:49 HANK BILAL - Sunny Days 06:44 KIM SCOTT - Billie Jean 06:40 JULIAN VAUGHN - All I Do Is Think Of You 06:36 JIM ADKINS - Time With You 06:31 JAREZ - Touching You 06:26 KEITH MASON - I Wanna Thank You 06:22 PATRICK YANDALL - Laws of Groovity 06:18 TONY SAUNDERS - Sexy Somethin 06:12 WARREN HILL - Mambo 2000 06:08 RANDY SCOTT - Sanctity 06:04 BRIAN SIMPSON - Wonderland 06:00 KIM WATERS - In The Fast Lane 05:59 JESSY J - My One and Only One 05:54 EVERETTE HARP - In Time 05:51 STEVE RAYBINE - Firefly Dance 05:47 JAZZ HOLDOUTS - Morning Breeze 05:42 BRIAN BROMBERG - Never Give Up 05:39 JOYCE COOLING - Almost Home 05:35 JULIAN VAUGHN - If I Could 05:29 KIM SCOTT - Rite of Passage 05:24 DR. DAVE FT. THE HOUSECALL BAND - Suave 05:21 NILS - Detroit Strut 05:16 ZOLBERT - Focus 05:12 NATE WHITE - Sweet Summer Nights 05:09 DANNY LERMAN - Meow Baby 05:04 DEON YATES - Cruisin' Woodward 05:00 RANDY SCOTT - Make Me Over 04:56 MEKIEL REUBEN - No Where Love 04:53 ADAM HAWLEY - Dance With Me (Feat. Gerald Albright) 04:45 KIM WATERS - Hidden Treasure 04:42 BRAD ALEXANDER - It's About Time (feat. Dee Lucas) 04:38 CHRIS GODBER - Sizzle (feat. Adam Hawley) 04:34 BONEY JAMES - On The Path 04:30 AL DEGREGORIS - The Point 04:25 3RD FORCE - You Are The One 04:20 AVENUE BLUE - I'll Be Around (feat. Jeff Golub) 04:16 JULIAN VAUGHN - Joy 04:11 KIM SCOTT - People Make the World Go 'round 04:07 ZOLBERT - Ocean Breeze 04:03 ALEXANDER ZONJIC - Jazz Cafe 04:00 STEVE COLE - Turn It Up! 04:00 GREGG KARUKAS - Soul Secrets 03:54 DEE LUCAS - Take The L 03:51 MIKE PHILLIPS - Cruisin' On Sunset 03:47 STEVE RAYBINE - Second Chance 03:43 RANDY SCOTT - Heaven Sent 03:37 EUGE GROOVE - Gatito 03:33 JACOB WEDD - My Feelings 03:29 NICHOLAS COLE - Should've Been Us 03:24 CHRIS GODBER - Escuchame 03:19 GREG MANNING - Cruising' down the Road 03:16 NORMAN BROWN - My Window To Heaven 03:11 NICK COLIONNE - Go Nico Go 03:05 LEBRON - It Feels Different 03:00 ZOLBERT - Budapest 02:55 CINDY BRADLEY - The Little Things 02:51 ELLIS WHITE - Keeping It Real 02:48 JOHNNY JAMES DR. J - Foolish Heart 02:44 MIKE PHILLIPS - Hangin' With Mr. D. 02:35 TERRENCE RICHBURG - Treasures 02:31 KIM WATERS - On The Streets 02:26 JULIAN VAUGHN - Reflection 02:21 CHIELI MINUCCI - Come As You Are 02:17 JEANETTE HARRIS - You Can Dance 02:14 RANDY SCOTT - Step 02:10 THE SAX PACK - Disco Here 02:06 DARREN MOTAMEDY - After the Storm 02:00 NAJEE - Tonight We Say Goodbye 01:58 THREESTYLE - Good News 01:53 CHRIS GODBER - Chill 01:48 KIM SCOTT - Sweet Obsession 01:44 THE SMOOTH JAZZ ALLEY - Eternal 01:39 GEREY JOHNSON - Like We Used Too 01:35 ZOLBERT - Julia 01:31 NORMAN BROWN - Remember The Time 01:26 HIROSHIMA - One Wish 01:22 FRANK SUTTON - Rain Serenade 01:17 KIM WATERS - Takin' The High Road 01:12 CHRIS STANDRING - Shadow Dance 01:08 FREDDIE FOX - Thoughts Of You 01:04 PIECES OF A DREAM - Vision Accomplished 01:00 JULIAN VAUGHN - Going Out 00:56 JACK LEE - Emerald Dream (Feat. Nathan East, Steve Ferrone & Michael Thompson) 00:51 CHRIS GODBER - Soul Searchin 00:47 RANDY SCOTT - Ignite 00:43 RICHARD ELLIOT - Ricochet 00:38 JOE MCBRIDE, THE TEXAS RHYTHM CLUB - Lakewood 00:34 ZOLBERT - Good Vibes Only 00:30 ROCCO VENTRELLA - Soulful Strut 00:25 KIM SCOTT - Landscapes 00:20 JEFF KASHIWA - Because Of You 00:16 THREESTYLE - Come 2 Me (feat. Magdalena Chovancova, Robert Fertl & Tim Owens) 00:12 JAEE LOGAN - The Great Sands 00:08 NORMAN BROWN - Peace Of Mind 00:04 DAVID PETROSYAN - Dancing With My Soul 00:00 JONATHAN FRITZEN - Fingers On Fire 00:00 MEZZOFORTE - Hard Wired

#Radio NET Bulgaria #Smooth Jazz #Chillout #Lounge #Downtempo #Ambient #Trance #2022 #October 2022

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony’s Stupid Daily Blog (123): Thu 14th Jul 2022

As soon as I showed up for my surfing lesson Dan the instructor said that because the school didn't have my number on record they couldn't call me to say that there were hardly any waves so the surfing lesson was off but if I wanted to I could join in with the stand up paddle board class. I was disappointed but since I was there I figured I might as well give it a go since it's something I've never done before. Although I struggled initially after half an hour I was able to stand up on the board and maintain my balance. I was able to paddle while I was on my knees but I just couldn't get the hang of paddling towards the beach while standing up as no matter how hard I paddled I just didn't seem to be going anywhere, in fact it felt like I was going backwards a lot of the time. One time I fell off and went completely under and got a mouth full of seawater and nearly puked. The one thing that's stopping me from believing in God is if he existed surely he would make the ocean taste like chocolate not salt right? Anywho about 45 minutes into the lesson something phenomenal started to happen. The sky was covered in black clouds and the instructor warned us that it was about to piss down. We stood and watched as a wave of rain quickly descended on us. It was like that scene in The Day After Tomorrow (Which I'll to my grave defending as it's a cool movie, even if the science is nonsense and the bit with the arctic wolves is moronic) where the weather literally chases after the protagonists. All of a sudden I found myself stood up on a board, looking out into the ocean as the rain pelted down on the water. I'm not exaggerating when I say this was one of the coolest and most beautiful things I've eve seen. Me, the instructor and the other student didn't say anything for the next 10 minutes or so as we just stood gazing out at this amazing spectacle Mother Nature had treated us to. There were a bunch of little kids on a children’s paddleboard lesson not far from us but they must have been similarly gobsmacked by the majesty of what they were seeing as everyone in the water was completely quiet and the moment was so peaceful. Man I really wish I could have had a camera on me but then again sometimes the most special memories are the ones that you store for yourself and don't share with others. I sometimes get so obsessed with work and money that I sometimes forget that life can still be pretty great if you stop and take a moment to take in your surroundings.

[insomniac-dot-ink]

Headlights Girl

Genre: Urban fantasy + wlw romance

Words: approx. 8k

Summary: The story of a girl with headlamps for eyes and the moth-girl she meets along the way.

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Most humans carry the night with them. Even during daylight hours, they can shut out the sun, turn off the light, recede into themselves and into that soft secret place behind their eyes.

Did you know certain animals don’t have eyelids? Gecko’s have nothing between them and the violent sun which wishes to cook the colors of their world. They have to use their tongue. Dust and sand and rain, can you imagine? I was obsessed with lizards as a kid.

I stacked up books on snakes and lizards and skinks. I traced the way that sand snakes crested across the dunes, sideways and wrong. I put glue on the pads of my hand and tried to climb the walls of my room— I didn’t even get one handhold up. I went to the zoo and peered into their cages, up on my tiptoes, trying not to smudge the glass or breath too hard. I tried make out their triangle heads and slow tongue-flicks, but they each shrank away deep into nooks and crannies of their cages. Most things do when I look at them.

Most humans carry the night with them, right there behind their eyelids is an entire world of darkness. I have something else inside me, not quite, not soft, not secret. They called me “headlights girl” in the newspapers.

There were even stranger kids born in the Age of Spirits. I checked. Every morning of fifth grade, I scanned the papers for mentions of “oddities” growing into anomalies.

A boy who could breath fire. A girl with leaves sprouting from her head. A kid with antennae that could taste the wind. There are stranger things than me in the age of beasts and magic. My father called it the “Epoch of Bastards,” sons and daughters of flickering fire elementals and wind ghosts who seduced half-asleep ladies from their beds.

He didn’t look at me much growing up. And I knew what he meant. I knew what he was getting at by calling it the Epoch of Bastards. Growing up, I played in my little puddle of carpet on the floor as he blustered in and out of rooms like gale force winds. He’d be looking for his keys or a left shoe or wallet since he was going out, out, out. I think I missed him at first, in the way you miss strangers you’ve never met.

Later, still on my puddle of carpet, still on my island, I would glare at him with that sour, acid taste in the back of my throat. Acrid, smoky, I would barely blink as he passed; he’d jump when he turned too quickly and accidentally fell into my path. Later still, I would begin to wish they were both like that—blustery and calling people names, gone more often than not.

It sometimes felt better than hearing my mom weep to herself on the couch. I wish she’d do it in her room or outside or anywhere else than that theatrical sobbing in the middle of the house, a naked heartbeat to the place. She spoke to her friends on the phone in that same watery voice, handkerchief in hand and sniffling, she spoke to them more than me.

What else am I supposed to do? This isn’t how it was supposed to be. She’d wail, just a bit, and then find a new thing to wail over. They could barely afford to send me to That School. They could barely afford the special doctor’s appointments for my eyes. They barely knew what to do with me.

Sometimes, I wanted to shout right back: It’s not like I didn’t want to be here either!

But she wasn’t talking to me. 

School wasn’t much better. We weren’t the same, not really. None of us were the same age or had the same affliction. Plus, most everyone else stayed in dorms where they bonded with secrets and whispers and hiding from matrons. It wasn’t the same.

They called me The Lighthouse and Car Face and Nightlight. Sometimes they’d give me a few bucks to close my eyes so they could see my face. I did it. They’d laugh and reassure me I was as ugly as you’d think. Or beautiful. Or perfectly average-looking or I had a pig-nose or unibrow. I’d never seen anything but the blinding light of my own eyes in the mirror so I could never contradict them.

A boy with antlers handed me a twenty for a kiss in the 6th grade. I closed my eyes for that too. It was chapped and dry and he ran away with a screaming laugh afterward. There are stranger kids than me, I reminded myself. So why do I feel so much stranger than the rest of them?

I was 16 when I heel-toed my way down the stairs toward the front door. A duffel bag slung over my shoulder stuffed with loose clothes, change, a bath towel, three books with broken spines, all the tampons in the house, and a Swiss-army knife.

I hoped to stuff as many cheddar-cheese sandwiches in my sack as possible before the midnight bus came, but he was at the kitchen table. I don’t think either of us expected it, like running into your teacher at the mart and you’re both buying the same brand of toilet cleaner. There was a beer in front of his idle hands and he still wore his rumpled work shirt. He glanced at the bag on my shoulder for a long minute.

Finally, he sighed like I cut him off in traffic.

“Gimme a moment.”

My father leafed through a wad of cash he kept in a safe. He handed me almost three hundred bucks and we nodded at each other. At the time, I thought there was a kind of satisfaction to that nod, an endnote.

I was out the door before the midnight bus arrived.

Only three people were at the terminal. None of them looked at me with my pack and my knife stuffed in one hand and my eyes glowing. They did look at the glow, but not for long.

Remote and empty like maybe the world had ended and the last bits of if were nothing but strangers not making eye contact.

Finally, I watched the headlights of the midnight bus approach through dense summer night. I was struck by the thought that it was like looking at like, the glow of my eyes against its eyes. Can a bus be your father? Can your father be a man after all this time? Will your mother come looking for you?

I got on the bus and kicked my feet up against the seat in front of me. Scrunched into a ball, crossed my arms over my chest, and watched the trees turn into flickering bodies of shadow with each passing mile. ------------- My feet moved like tides. They tossed me against nameless city streets and toward empty forested slices of land. I stumbled into the painted deserts toward the west. I dipped my toes into the neon districts of the east with lights brighter than my own. I slept on benches and in kid’s treehouses and hunched my shoulders against brick walls of back alleys.

No one touched me. Maybe they’d approach now and then, but I’d open my eyes and they’d see nothing but heaven or devils or an absent lightning-God father that would smite them. I was the daughter of spirits after all.

I found my way to the ocean; beaches where other stragglers gathered and it was easy to stretch out on empty pieces of warm sand. I didn’t talk much by then, I didn’t like to; people stared whether I was speaking or screaming and clamping down on my jaw so hard it ached. Sometimes I get yelled at: Turn that off! No phone lights in here. You’re blinding me, bitch!

I’d never seen a movie in any theatres, but I could imagine what it’s like.

It was crowded, but I liked that ocean city, despite myself. It had pale buildings built into cliffs, narrow winding sidewalks where cars couldn’t fit, reckless bikers, and crushed seashell parking lots. I liked the tang of salt in the air and the way my hair crinkled from the ocean water as it sun-dried. I camp out on beaches and bummed cigarettes and hotdogs off strangers. I was good at taking care of myself once I got into a rhythm.

I had a tent by then and even an enormous sun umbrella to keep any prying eyes away. I still liked to sleep under the stars most nights though.

I often dreamed of sinking to the bottom of the ocean. I dreamed of descending on pointed ballerina-feet to the silted black bottom. I’d be weighted down through the cold and the silence to where no human being had ever been. I’d open my eyes there, open them all the way, lightning-bright, and unflinching. In my dreams, the salt didn’t even sting. I lit up the world, the whole untouched world of whales and fish and terror and maybe I’d do something good then. Maybe I’d do something good and bring the sun to places that had forgotten it. 

I hated those dreams.

I met Mags on the beach after one of those dreams. Mags had one eye and twelve teeth and carried around nothing but string and scissors everywhere. She smelled like seawater and burning kelp, dank and crusted over. Her clothes were neat despite her leather-cracked skin and arms and neck covered in tattoos of shipwrecks. We ran into each other at some bum gathering and she cackled and pulled me aside.

“What’s your name?” Her voice was old creaking wood. I didn’t answer. “I could give you one.” She offered with a grin that was more empty space than anything.

“Nana.” I gritted out. “You want something?”

“Not sure. What do you want, kid?”

I glared openly, my beam of light slanting. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come here.”

I didn’t know why I was chosen.

Mags liked me more than I deserved. I pocketed her last pair of socks when she wasn’t looking. She never mentioned it and dragged me down to the community showers to get clean with soap and shampoo. She took me to the soup and salad restaurant for something that wasn’t burnt or freeze-dried or from a convenience store. She cackled, she spat when she talked, people shot her looks as well.

I thought she was normal, not touched by the spirits, but she liked me more than most people and I didn’t know why.

“You like art, kid?”

I snorted. “No.”

“Why not? You broken?” Yeah. Probably.

“How am I supposed to know?” I snapped back.

“Lippy squirt. Come on, I’ll show you something worth your forked tongue.”

She heated the needle before she used it, red hot and untouchable. She dipped it into deep black inks, only black and sometimes red, she called them the only colors that matter. She shows me how to prick the skin and clean it. She showed me how to slowly, painstakingly etch images. I wasn’t sure I liked it, there was something so permanent and intentional about the act.

I watched her lessons though: stick and poke to her right foot, all over those fine little bones that must hurt, in and out, a little bloody.

It took her six hours to make a tiny shipwreck right above her big toe. It was a narrow schooner going under and I was the only witness. She made the waves come to life and crash against its sides and sometimes I forgot to blink. She didn’t seem to mind.

She washed another needle. She heated it red-hot. She dipped it in ink and handed it to me.

I still wasn’t sure I liked the permanence of it, but I told myself I was bored and it was something to do. I decided quickly I did like the bite of it, I liked the focus it took, and the ability to pull something from nothing.

I practiced all over my thighs first, there was enough meat there and it was easy enough to reach: a lizard design that looked like nothing but squiggles, a TV set playing static, a tiny smudged skink with its tongue out. I practiced designs in the sand and then on paper when Mags splurged on pen and paper.

Mags took me to the museum on Sundays. They were always free on Sundays.

Something stirred in my chest, even as the guards yelled at us about how flash photography wasn’t allowed in the museum. Even as I was shooed out of exhibits for ruining the paint. Still, an ache so old it rotted roared to life in my chest.

I stabbed in and out, gentle, a collection of stars right above my right knee. A winding sand snake on my wrist, and then finally, something good, something that gave people pause and reason to stare. I made it in the mirror: a ghost on my collarbone. Shadowed and intricate and yet simple, I put a ghost right above my collarbone and it bleeds more than any of the others.

That was a good year or so; one of the best I could remember.

I didn’t want to leave the ocean city though and Mags said she had to keep moving. She had places to be. She gave me a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“You're a gem, kid. You’ll knock ‘em all to the pavement.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You’ll be back?”

She cackled. “Wouldn’t miss it. You know me.” She winked as she turns to the bus, my second father. “You think I’ll miss your great becoming, kid? I’ll be back.”

I wanted to make her pinky-promise like I was a kid again begging one of the others to tell me if I’m beautiful when I close my eyes. I couldn’t do that; I waved as she tottered up the steps of the bus and was taken away with the tides of her own feet.

A had a moment of thinking it was the end then; I was ready to get back to my real normal. I was ready to disappear again. But even shipwrecks with no witnesses leave things left to be found.

------------ I got an apprenticeship. Technically, Mags talked them into it and I just followed up when I had nothing better to do.

I didn’t think I’d like it much, but couch surfing and camping out was the pastime of the especially young. And I’d lost my giant umbrella.

It was a small shop that smelled like bleach and dried flowers. A tattoo parlor in one of the steep arts districts neighbored by food trucks and beaded necklace shops.

Penguin Davies and Bitch-Annie ran it together. Davies walked like he’d never encountered land before, and Bitch-Annie had a throw-pillow embroidered with “If you don’t have anything nice to say then come sit next to me.”

Davies was covered in nothing but birds and dizzying M. C. Escher house-designs up and down his chest and arms. Bitch-Annie had topless mermaids and pinup girls across her shoulders and legs. She’d been asked to leave a number of stores before the children started staring or thinking thoughts.

Neither of them had ever met someone like me. It was not that type of town. I rankled at most their questions, a cat meeting a steel brush. Where are you from? What’s your family name? What kind of school did you go to? Is your sight better than other people you think?

I brushed off anything more personal than my favorite type of soda. Bitch-Annie called me “Shadow” probably as a joke, probably. Davies said I must be possessed by the ghost of some dead star: a blackhole that takes everything in and lets nothing out.

Neither of them let me touch a needle in those first six months. They had me practice on pig skin and trace designs and stand by their shoulders as they worked. I felt like a dental assistant except I was the hanging light shining into open mouths instead of anything with a pulse. I stood at their shoulder as they drew thick lines and thin dots and made hearts and wolves and names of dead lovers come to life.

They asked me to stand still and stop wiggling the light. I almost walked out several to find a new cliff to crash against, almost. 

No one had ever expected anything of me before. They never expected me to show up somewhere or do something well. No one really cared if I went to school or if I did my homework, if I dressed well or went to bed on time. And no one kept any tabs on me at all after I took that first bus. That’s how I liked it.

I should’ve left, tattooing didn’t mean anything to me, not really. But Bitch-Annie stomped up to my attic-apartment one morning and threw pants at me.

“Get up, Shadow,” she barked. She was sterner than Mags, no hint of humor in her eyes. “I told you 9am so I expect 9am.”

“The fuck!?” I was eloquent in the mornings.

“Pants, shirt, shoes, and bra if you don’t want that desk idiot staring at something other than your eyes all day.”

“Are you serious?”

“Serious as a root canal. Mags swore up and down about what you. Let’s see some of that, up, up!”

I grumbled. I put on everything but the bra. No one ever expected me to be anywhere before and 9am shouldn’t have even been a concept much less a real thing. I told myself I hated it. I’d leave the next week. Or maybe the week after that or in just one more month. I kept a bus ticket under my pillow but every time the date arrived I shrugged and made myself busy.

There’d be no harm in having a savings too and seeing what all the fuss was about with having a dishwasher and a kitchen.

I wasn’t an artist of course. I didn’t understand what everyone else was seeing when they looked at the “old masters” paintings of water or war or lovers pulled apart. I didn’t feel anything in front of stain-glass windows in churches or mosaics on walls. Maybe there really was something wrong with me, my eyes. I didn’t let up though. I put on pants for it after all.

Penguin Davies hovered by my shoulder when I made my first real design.

“Mm.” He rumbled deep in his chest. He’d gone grey at an early age, had tired eyes and quick hands. The desk kid said he’d been in medical school once, a surgeon. It was hard to tell. Davies muttered a lot, stared off into space too much, and laughed like it was always a painful surprise

“Perfectionist,” he muttered at me as I start over on a crappy unicorn design. “That line was barely off. You’re being a perfectionist, Nana.”

I scowled over my shoulder and let the full weight of my light hit him across the face. “Got a problem with it?” I challenged. He chuckled darkly. His grin was crooked like a broken door handle. I tried to hide my work from him with my shoulder. “It’s not done yet.”

“It’s late.” The rest of the street was dark. I knew that.

“I said I’m not done yet! You can go home.”

“Hmm.” He scratched his grey beard.

“What?”

“Look at you. You know who makes the best artists, Nana?” He was always a bit of a philosopher. Maybe he used to study that before medicine.

“Yeah, yeah, shut up. I’m working on it.”

He gave my shoulder a light push. “The ones that don’t quit.”

They let me touch a needle gun after that. I told myself I’d only sign my new apartment lease as an experiment. I didn’t have to actually stay. I’d just run from the ink on paper and hope no one chased after girls with eyes that glow.

I didn’t break my lease. I drew suns and moons, trees and fireflies, hunks in speedos on tipsy college girls who swore they were sober and erotic vampires on the chests of men getting their first divorce. I had to give two refunds for a duck that turned out lopsided and a tattoo of someone’s dog which I swore really was that ugly to begin with.

There was one at the end of that next year though, another college girl with perfectly white piano-key teeth. She asked for a stick and poke, that was what I was best at anyway, she asked for a butterfly. Butterflies were easy, I could do the little ones in my sleep. She wanted one all across her back, she said I could make it look however I wanted. So I did. Wings like fringed shawls and straight heavy lines combined with wispy swirling ones. It was dark, black ink with red highlights and gray shadows under each wing to give it movement and flight.

I hid my smile when I finished and showed her the results in the mirror. She went to my bosses and jumped up and down. She pointed and babbled, ohmyspirits, the best thing I’ve ever seen! Fuck. I should pay you double! Where did you get this girl? 

I held myself perfectly still and studied the ceiling until my eyes dried out.

I took the long way home that night. I stopped once, at the corner where the midnight bus arrived, and watched the the passengers trudge off. I didn’t expect to see Mags again so soon, not really, but sometimes I wanted to show her: Hey, maybe your work wasn’t all wasted. Maybe I did start to become.

---------------- “I’m getting you chocolate.” Annie spat, her thick arms flexing as she cleaned off the spotless counter. “I’m getting you fucking chocolate, Shadow, ‘less you tell me what flavor you actually like.”

I hung at the back of the shop next to the narrow window that faced the road. I let the sun warm my face in thick strips and watched the bicycles pass. “It’s not my birthday.”

“Tell us what your actual birthday is then, you sugar-toasted tart.”

I shrugged. “Not today.”

“Well happy fucking birthday. You’re turning two. You came to work for us two years ago today, washed up from the beach like a deranged feral cat, so this is your birthday now.”

I rolled my eyes which served to look like a flashlight given a shake. Annie spent another minute splashing disinfectant on anything that might have had even a passing conversation with a germ.

“You talk to Birdie?” She asked, but mischievously this time. I responded by setting my mouth in a hard line. “You’re turning twenty-something and you’re not even talking to Birdie, are ya?”

“I’m not telling you what I’m turning. It’s still not my birthday.” I dodged inelegantly.

“Birdie will give you a proper go-around. Even shadows like you must need a little rub now and then.”

“Go dunk your head, Annie.” I huffed.

“Afraid you’ll blind her in bed?”

I turned with a snarl. “I’ll start with you.”

“I’ve seen you flipping through those poetry books, every word about hands or mouths or rosebuds.” She gave me flat a once-over. “You’ve got a sweet tooth in you.”

I dragged myself over to the desk to snarl at her some more, but Annie was already putting her hand up and going toward the backroom.

“I’m getting you a chocolate cake either way.”

There must have been a proper way to get her to never look at my little leather poetry books again, the ones with watermarked pages, the spines broken-in, and words that oozed. No one had to know that I could read, much less that I read that.

The door dinged instead.

“Excuse me.” She walked in. Her. “Is someone, um, named Nana here?” I turned before I could stop myself. That was still my name. And it was still my work.

Twenty-something, curtains of straight black hair falling in her face, pinched nose, thin energetic lips, shorts that gave way to milk-dipped legs that never seemed to end. A slight girl in a university t-shirt. College kids came in often during their breaks, but this one was a bit different. My eyes dragged up and fish-hooked there.

Feathered tendrils sprouted from her head and reached toward the ceiling. Long and searching, a pearly green color that reminded you of leaves or plumage.

I knew within a moment where I’d heard of this: Antennae Girl. The newspapers ran our stories close together along with the boy that breathed fire and the girl with roots growing from her head. We were all born in the same year during the epoch of monsters and bastards.

I think she recognized me too.

We stopped like heartbeats seizing up before the ambulance could make it. A confused, unnatural silence. I glanced at the door and considered making a run for it.

She cleared her throat first.

“Someone said that Misty’s butterfly tattoo came from here?” She blinked once and I noticed how her feathered antennae seemed to twitch. I averted my eyes so I wouldn’t blind her. She took a step forward. “So are you . . . Nana?”

The door was right there.

“What do you want?” I had been spending too much time with Bitch-Annie.

“A tattoo?”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Then why are you here?” I grunted. Footsteps came in from the back room. I was examining the smudged off-white tiles of the floor one by one.

“I wanted to . . . hey, you can look up if you want.” She said, curiously, softly. I didn’t look up. “I’m still figuring out the design.” She trudged on ahead.

“Fine.” I pivoted away. “But we’re busy. Come back later.”

A hand slapped across my shoulder. “This is Nana.” Annie stopped me from leaving. “Don’t let her eyes fool ya, it’s her personality that’s actually the problem. You saw her butterfly you said?”

“Yes!” She gushed. “It was gorgeous.”

“It was fine,” I corrected.

“It’s her birthday today.” Annie shared because she could and because she was a failed evil villain still trying to get her kicks in.

“Oh cool, happy Birthday.” A deep pause followed that could fill oceans. “You can look up. I don’t mind.” She repeated.

I opened my eyes wide and lifted my chin in one jerky motion. A beam of fluorescent headlights hit her across the face. “Is this what you want?” Venom dripped from my lips. This was why I tried not to talk too much.

The young woman squinted for a moment before covering her eyes and nodding. “I read about you,” she stated as if it was nothing. “I’m turning twenty-two this year . . . so I guess, you are too?”

“What?!” Delight filled Annie’s entire expression. “Hot damn! Twenty-two?” I groaned deeply. “Hey, you, girlie,” she addressed antennae-girl, “you want to come out for drinks tonight?”

I tried to protest as quickly as possible, but somehow didn’t summon the words quickly enough.

“Sure.” She agreed. ----------------------

The night was humid and clung to us like a second skin. I wandered through the hilly streets with Penguin Davies wobbling beside me. The desk kid—Daft Jeff, said Davies had some inner-ear problem that made it hard for him to keep his balance. Annie said he just didn’t belong on land— he couldn’t walk straight unless something was tilting and rolling under his feet.

Davies made his way up the hill, faltering and missing the musical beats of it. He refused to let me steady him and I refused to have him sing to me. It was apparently my birthday.

“Someone saw your design.” He noted on the downhill.

“Yeah. Some college girl.” I grumbled.

“What’d you think?” He asked in his usual mysterious way.

“She just wants a good look.” I returned in a neutral tone. “She read about me in the paper. All she wants to do is look.”

“She saw your design.” He paused. “And Jeff said she was like you.”

I blinked hard so the path ahead was eaten by shadow and Davies stumbled. “Not all of us have to be friends . . .” I said sourly and didn’t fill in the rest. “I’ve met kids with antlers and frog-hands before. I doesn’t mean anything.”

“Any of them come visit?”

“They’re smart enough not to.” I snark. “But the ones who manage to be pretty don’t have the brains to stay away.”

“Mm.” He made a soft sound. “What kind of tattoo do you think she’ll get?”

“How should I know? A heart or anchor or something dumb like that.” I walked on ahead. “Maybe I’ll give her a quote from some dead poet.”

“You like poetry.”

I huff dramatically, “Not what I mean. Girls like her don’t like my type of poetry, you know I’m saying.”

“What kind of girls?” Davies was patient. I hated that about him.

I stopped at the corner to let him catch up. “Don’t play dumb. Hot ones, college ones, getting a degree in money or music. They don’t watch over their shoulders enough or know when to stay away.” I scuffed my shoe on the ground. “Whatever.”

Davies was still thinking. I considered pushing him over. He finally spoke up again as we approach the bar, “That sea witch ever show up again?”

“Mags?” I snorted. “No. Why?”

“Cause I’m sure she’d like to see this.”

I didn’t say anything else as we reached the doorway. -------------------- The bar was loud. More people than I liked came to my “party.” I should have seen it coming. If the cliff city liked one thing it was an excuse to drink.

I crammed myself up against the bar and ordered a gin and tonic before the rest of the night crowd could arrive. Birdy was holding court at a corner table and waving at me. “There she is! Someone put a blanket over Nana, lights out, party up!”

Her puns usually left something to be desired. She sang “Blinded by the Light” every time she saw me for half a year.

I drank half my gin and tonic in the first gulp as a new stream of townies burst in. They arrived to buy me birthday beers and shout their opinions on the shitty new chain restaurant on 3rd street. I was almost tasting the bottom of my second glass when someone tapped on my shoulder.

I barely looked over.

The girl with sheets of black hair and a practiced-appearance stood before me—like she was at dress rehearsal and expected everyone else to know the lines as well. She carried a baby-blue bike helmet in one hand, and I noted there were two hand-drilled holes in the top.

“You.” I was tempted to shake her hand like I might make this a transactional hello and goodbye in short order.

“Hey.” She smiled, hesitant, like maybe the food on the fork might be too hot. “Nana, right?”

“Yep.” I sighed the word real long and heavy. “Listen, I really can’t give you a tattoo if you don’t know what you want.”

“No, no, I get it. But I want you to know . . . I didn’t know it was you.”

“Uh, okay. Though I’m pretty hard to miss over here.” I was looking at the dirty wine bottles stacked near the ceiling. Her antennae hang over both of us like fern fronds.

“No. I mean, when I saw the butterfly. That’s when I wanted to come here. Not after.”

“After what?” I was gonna make her say it.

“After I found that it was, well, you know, Headlights Girl.”

“Mm.” I was spending too much time with Davies. “You want something to drink?”

She sighed as well, real long and heavy. “Sure.” She took the seat next to me. “I’m Park by the way.”

“Park.” I rolled the name around in my mouth. “And you already know me.”

“I don’t think I do.” She laughed, sharp and bristly like something you can get cut on. “And I’ll have a beer. . . but only once you look up. Come on, I’m not like that.” I looked up. Her face was bright, round like the moon, her grin was sneaky and unearned. “There we go.”

She waved over the bartender Kipp and ordered her dark beer.

“It’s not really my birthday.” I informed her, dumbly. Every word felt dumb and clumsy all at once.

“Why not?” She was teasing. I knew that.

“That’s not how birthdays work.” I informed and wished I could backtrack into hostility again.

“Oh darn,” she winked. “And here I was about to make it my birthday too.”

“Uh, well,” I really should have left when I had the chance. “It’s not too late?”

“That’s the spirit!” She laughed, fuller this time and rounded. I looked her straight in the face and then quickly looked away again. Her grin was aimed at me, somehow, and seemed to reach high cupboards inside me you usually needed a stool for.

“Park,” I repeated the name and shifted in place. “So did you go to Haveryards or Simmons?” There were only two schools in the country for spirit bastards like us. Haveryards was close enough for me to get bussed to—an hour one way and then an hour home.

“Neither. I went to public and then Bakerville Uni.” She rapped on the counter. “Hey, you want another gin and tonic? Or I’ll mix you up something.” Her eyes flickered over everything. “I bartended my way through college so I can make a mean margarita.”

“Oh, Bakerville U., yeah. That ones close.” I stuttered a bit. She was leaning across the counter and trying to get Kipp’s attention a second time. My words were feeling dumber and dumber by the moment, perhaps losing all shape and meaning altogether. “That’s where you went?”

“How’d you guess?” She said playfully and pointed to her t-shirt. She finally got the bartender over. “Right, you want something hard? Vodka maybe? A mule?”

I scratched my chin. “ . . . I don’t care. I’m easy.”

She rolled her eyes and I knew she must feel me staring. “I can’t imagine shopping for you for today then.” She snickered and climbed over the counter. “Happy birthday, how about one chocolate mule for a free tattoo?”

“You wish.” I made a face. “You don’t even know what you want.”

“And you do?” She was still grinning, somehow. “I’ve decided I’m making you the equivalent of all the soda flavors mixed together at once. Close your eyes.”

I closed my eyes and I tried to turn off my thoughts. It was bright as knives inside my skull; I carry the daytime with me. Panic threatened to rise up (for no reason of course), but a soft hand brushed against mine, soft like sheets in fancy hotels and flower petals. I peaked and Park slid a full murky glass toward me.

“Drink up.”

It was sweet. It wasn’t even my birthday. I didn’t care. She called it a chocolate-mule-Park Special and maybe chocolate really was my favorite flavor. -------------- Park started coming around. She rode a sky-blue bike with a white basket and rusting hinges. I couldn’t imagine doing all the hills in the city without any gears, but she managed. She said she was figuring things out after graduating. She said she liked it here.

I grumbled when she came by. I complained like Annie when Wicker the cat visited: Get that thing away from me. I hate that. Smells awful. I’ve got allergies. Put that away, it’ll kill me.

I never said anything when Annie left fish heads out and bowls of milk of course.

Park smelled like sunscreen and breath mints. She had strong opinions on everything from street paving techniques to which sun hats went with which dresses. She invited me on walks. She invited me to help her change a flat tire. She invited me to the corner shop to help her pick out bottle can openers.

I said no. Sometimes I said no. I started to say yes.

“Look at this,” she liked to show me things. She liked to show me pictures of squirrels on her phone and weird pieces of glass she found. She liked to point out new restaurants (that I’d already been to) and play videos of funny traffic jams.

This time she held up a seashell. It was rounded and flat with a swirl in the center.

“I’m looking.” I said carefully.

“Watch how it catches light.” I shun my eyes on it and she moved it back and forth. There were bits of silver veins caught in the cracks of it.

“There’s tons of those.” At this point, I had valiantly refused to be impressed by even her cutest squirrel pictures.

“Ugh.” She pouted. “Are you kidding? I spent all morning looking for this.”

“They're right by the surf. I could find you five bigger ones than this before sunset.”

“Alright, hot-shot.” She jut her chin out and jabbed my shoulder. “Prove it.”

I said yes to that one. I left right after my shift ended with the sun setting in the waters like a stabbed orange bleeding out. I met Park by the parking lot with drooping palms trees lining the sides and lost flipflops everywhere.

“This is where you went wrong.” I announced. I couldn’t help it. “This is the tourist beach. You have to go somewhere real.”

“Alright, alright. You’ve already established you’re the hot-shot here. Lead the way.”

She followed me. I ignored how she lingered by my side. I ignored how her hand wrapped around my arm as she stopped us to look at a tiny horseshoe crab. Her hand was soft, like velvet, soft enough to smother something in my chest.

I found two seashells with streaks of silver and rainbow through them, both bigger than my palm. The sun was a flat line on the horizon before I could find a third and Park hooted.

“You said before sunset! It’s sunset, baby, pay up.” She called. “And you were so sure you were a better seashell hunter than me.” She tsked.

I scanned the ground more quickly. “It’s barely nighttime.” I pointed to the sky. “And I can keep looking. I have the built-in equipment for it.”

“Oh I know.” She planted herself on the soggy crusted sand and sat down in a heap. “But can you find why kids love the taste of not doing that? Take it easy. Take a seat.”

“So pushy.”

“You know me.” It was fond. It had only been a few months, but there was something fond there.

I ran a hand through my short choppy curls. “Fine.” I sat next to her, not too close. “It’s your loss.” We both looked out at the gently lapping waves, foaming and anemic. She let a long breath of air and for a moment I considered brushing her hair back. It was always in her face.

It was a quiet moment, bottled, and pitching toward something. Like the the moment where you miss a step on the stairs and the certainty of the fall was right there.

I was the one that scooted a little closer.

“I’m considering getting a storm cloud,” she commented off-handedly. “Can you do storm clouds?”

I made a sound of consideration. “Sure.” I glanced toward the opposite corner of the night sky. “I think I’ve seen one of those before. Big puffy wet things?”

“Kinda fluffy? You’re getting there.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” I’m smiling, which is alright since there’s no way she could see it. She’s silent for another moment longer.

“Or would you make fun of me if I got something like a butterfly? Like your other one.”

“A storm cloud butterfly?”

“No. The cloud would it’s own thing.” She chewed on her bottom lip, ragged and chapped. “I mean, I’ve been doodling some ideas. And tattoos should be personal, right? So I thought a storm cloud might be fitting. Kids used to pay me a couple dollars to predict the weather. It could be a memorial to childhood entrepreneurial spirit.”

I watched her speak and something beat inside my chest like a second animal. I wanted to be closer. I wanted to feel velvet again.

“Why?” I rasped after a moment.

“Uh, why did they pay me? It’s just something I can do. Whenever it's going to rain or storm or be sunny out. I dunno, I don’t know why the rest of you can’t sense it.”

“And you didn’t become a meteorologist?” I smiled a bit bitterly.

She made an indignant noise. “And you didn’t become a professional lighthouse?”

I choked on a laugh. “Not yet.” A quiet consumed us from both sides, I made sure my light didn’t crash into her. I made sure to look at anything but her. She’d have to squint if I did and cover her eyes and I’d be there, ready to run her over.

“Kids in my class paid me too.” I barely realized I started speaking. “They slipped me a couple bucks to close my eyes so they could see my face.”

“You got money for that?”

“There wasn’t always much to do. Teachers were quitting all the time and sometimes it was just the TV. I dunno, they paid me. Then they’d giggle and run away afterward.” My voice sounded automated like the announcer at an airport, informing travelers their flight was canceled. “They always said I had a pig nose or a unibrow or looked like the lead singer of that Minx girl band-- super hot, but you know, it didn’t matter.” The laugh that escaped was high, girlish in a grotesque way. “Since, you know, no one would ever see it.”

“Kids are fucked up.” Park contributed simply.

“Adults are too.” I sniffed. “Everyone wants a light show.”

“Oh.” She said slowly. “Is it . . . is it bad I wanted to meet you then? I mean, I wanted to see the art first, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a factor.”

“No.” I said quickly. I lit up my own lap and empty hands. “Does it matter?”

“I never went to those schools,” she said hesitantly. “My parents fought them, said the schools were unfit. They shouldn’t be able to force us there. And that I wasn’t even dangerous since,” she gestured helplessly upward, “I just have these. So then, well, I never really met anyone else like me.”

“I mean, everyone’s different. It’s not . . . a big deal.”

“You’d think so,” she commented sardonically.

I folded up into myself like a complex origami piece. “Yeah, well, sometimes I wish I was dangerous. Actually dangerous.”

She giggled. “Didn’t you just say everyone’s different? I’d say everyone’s dangerous too. Just gotta find the niche.”

“Oh yeah,” I dared to turn toward her. “What’s yours then?”

“My danger niche? Hmm.” She was leaning now, pitching forward like a wave come to drown me. “I do have a few tricks up my sleeve I’ll admit.”

“You have a pair of wings hidden away?” I stopped breathing as her hand lifted up, strange and all at once. I wasn’t ready.

“Here.” Her skin was against mine. She cupped my cheek with one velvet-hand. It was heated cashmere, tiny feather-light hairs on her palm. “Feelers.” She whispered with a hesitancy there.

“Ah,” I was indulgent. I closed my eyes. I leaned in. “And you want to put a needle over these?” I put my hand over hers, loosely, so she could pull away if she wanted to. Tiny hairs pulsed there with some kind of life all their own. 

“I wanted . . .” She paused and I peaked open my eyes. I could see every detail of her face, illuminated. “I dunno.” She finished. “I guess I just wanted whatever I saw there, before.”

“In the butterfly?”

“In the butterfly.” I turned toward the ocean, but my hand remained over hers. “I’m not sure how good it will be a second time. It’s not like I’m really an artist. . .”

“What did you want to be?” Soft.

“Who knows. I mean, I’m glad my parents didn’t try to fight the schools. Being there during the day was better than being home, listening to my mom crying all the time and my father exploding . . . They wouldn’t have wanted me home.”

Before the sunset, when I was walking over, I thought maybe we’d kiss that night. I thought I’d feel that first electric pulse and maybe we’d climb into the ocean and swim in circles, laugh until the moon rose. I thought maybe I’d get something out of my system and there wouldn’t be anything left to say or do.

I’d kiss Park, once, and she’d be satisfied. She’d understand. She’d go on her college path and I’d go on on mine.

But the words spilled out, unbidden. Park stayed in place, steady and unflinching. That made it worse, so much worse.

“My parents weren’t like yours.” There was an accusatory edge to it. Don’t you know? I wanted to shout. Don’t you know? Even without the eyes or the school bills or the bus.

“Hey,” she cradled my cheeks with both hands now and smeared the tears away from one eye. “Hey, listen, I know. Alright? I know.”

I scowled back at her feathered little feelers.

“It’s not about the damn antenna or head beams or anything else.” I tried to pull away. “Even the kid with the antler’s kissed me and I didn’t stop him. I ran away from home and my mom never came looking. It didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter! You wouldn’t even get it. You wouldn’t get it!” I squeeze my eyes closed. “You were wanted.”

Slowly, like an awkward animal burrowing into soft earth, she pressed her forehead to the crook of my neck. I could feel us both breathing in, strong and steady. She was lean and silky, and I swore I can feel her heartbeat hammering through my throat.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered. I inhaled her sunscreen scent. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know. But I could.”

“Why are you here?” It was miserable and wet, I hated that my eyes were so different and yet still the same. Could still spill over like theirs. She took a long breath but didn’t move away.

“My last girlfriend broke up with me for being . . . sensitive and I thought maybe if I got a tattoo, I’d stop feeling so much. I’d prove something. I’d feel everything less, you know? It would hurt and then it wouldn’t.”

I took that in a parsec at time. “Are you,” I sniffed. “Are you alright?” Her legs and arms were plastered over mine. “You’re so soft, but, but I don’t want to,” I wipe at my face like it didn’t matter. “Hurt you.”

“I know.” Her face was still pressed to my neck and her lips fluttered across the hallow of my skin. “I didn’t want to hurt you either.”

A stillness settled into my bones. I glanced toward the moon, and it was like looking at like, a terrible moon to another moon. I gathered myself. I took a deep breath. I flattened.

“I shouldn’t have said all that.” My voice had dried up. “We led different lives.” It wasn’t her fault if she was wanted.

“No.”

“I wasn’t thinking . . .”

Her hand wrapped around my wrist. “I talk to Annie sometimes when you aren’t there.”

“Okay?”

“And Davies. And that front desk guy.”

“Daft Jeff. Yes.”

“They all say the same thing . . .” I blinked a couple times. “That I really should wait for you to give me the tattoo. You have a steady hand and an eye for detail.”

“Alright . . .”

“That someone taught you tattooing the right way. They wanted to show you the right way to do it.”

I snorted despite myself. “It’s not that hard. Mags was batty. Who knows why she showed me how to pick up a needle.”

“Don’t you see? They say they wouldn’t know what to do without you.” She was still there. She wasn’t moving, almost in my lap now. “You were wanted.”

“Park?” My voice cracked like a question.

“And you come with me to restaurants and help me buy bottle openers. You find shells for me and help me fix tires.” Her breath was hot and dragged across my cheek. “You are wanted.”

I blocked out her face, her voice, I turned on the sharp white sun inside and for a moment I imagine never opening my eyes back up again. Maybe I could make it night forever inside myself as well. Wouldn’t you rather have something quiet inside?

She wrapped herself around me, fully, one long arm at a time until it was cocoon. Soft. “Listen, sometimes the first people aren’t the right people. Sometimes your first relationship isn’t the right relationship. Sometimes you’re sure the world is one way, and like, always one way . . . and then it rains and the whole world is different again. You know? People pass.”

“My parents aren’t the weather.”

“But they’ll pass.” I should have pushed her off. But even against that, even those words— I liked being held, indulgent as chocolate and twice as guilty. “People sometimes feel forever, especially those kinds of people.” I was off again. “But it rains. And hey, I always know when it’s going to rain.”

I hiccupped; a smile found its way uninvited onto my face, unsure and just wobbly on its feet as Davies. I glanced down after a deep breath. Park grinned back at me and it reached the highest shelves of me all over again.

“So what happens when it rains again? Do you people like you pass?”

“Nah, not me. I don’t know how.” She winked. I didn’t notice that we’re lying flat now, stars and carpet of black above. “You can’t get rid of me. You haven’t given me that tattoo yet.”

The sound of shushing waves filled the midnight air and the moon looked down like that very first bus arriving to get me all those years ago. I wrapped my arms right back around her. She didn’t seem to mind that I was sticky or strange or sometimes kept tearing up all over again even after we’d stop saying anything worth tearing up over. ------------------

It happened. I felt like I should have been more prepared, brought flowers or poetry or earned it through honored warfare. But it happened. I was wearing ripped jeans, a spotty t-shirt and my breath smelled like coffee. We were looking for Park’s lost earring along an overgrown hill she usually biked along.

I found it, one shiny red dewdrop in all that green. Park pointed at some clouds that looked like my last “abstract” tattoo. We lay back in the grass and let the sky pass overhead. She giggled and touched my wrist, side by side. I let her.

“Summer’s almost over.” I mumbled it first.

“Yeah?”

“You find your next step then, college girl?” I tried to keep my tone light. She turned to be on her side.

“Maybe.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Oh, you know. This and that.”

“That does not sound like a college-girl plan.”

“Maybe I’ve got other plans. Maybe I’ve got other priorities, huh?”

“Ridiculous.” A playfully push her shoulder. “A lousy seaside town really isn’t priority material. There’s only one bookshop you know.”

“Two thank you very much. And that’s not my priority either.” Her voice wavered.

“Are you going to share with the class?”

“Is the class ready?” She whispered and I turned toward her as well now, taking in her perfect round face and question-mark mouth.

“I have been.” I matched her whisper. I tremor from my center outward and hopes she can’t tell.

“Do you know what they say about moths?”

“What?” I gave a breathy laugh. It wasn’t what I was expecting. “I’ve heard of them.”

“They tell your fortune.” She was grinning in that way that put out a stool and reached up. “I used to cry a lot growing up, because some kids said that moths are just evil butterflies. I was sensitive and ran all the way home. I threw myself at my mom’s feet and threw a fit about how moths were just evil butterflies. They were just ugly, wicked versions of a good thing.”

“Evil? Well, I suppose you are rather sinister when you haven’t eaten.”

“Shut up. I’m telling you something.” She put a hand on my shoulder. I inhaled deeply and turned over in place to face her. Only the shallow breeze kept us apart.

“I’m all ears . . . though maybe not as many as you.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute.”

“What can I say? The sun is adorable. I take after him.”

A finger ghosted over my cheek, tracing the arc of my cheekbone. “Well, you’re not so bad behind those headlights too. Some of us have good day vision you know. And good taste.”

I wished those words didn’t make my chest do funny things. “Thanks.”

“Do you want to hear what my mom said or not?”

“That you shouldn’t worry about evil butterflies?” I wiggled closer. “Because you’ll be really hot and funny and smart one day. So who cares if you’re evil?”

“Yeah, those were her exact words.”

“So?”

“So,” a firm hand took my chin. “Look at me.” I looked at her. I was glad she couldn’t see the flush in my cheeks in any way. “Moths show good fortunes she said.”

“Right. Lots and lots of good fortune.” I breathed, dumbly, of course. She was close and sweet and there was hair in her face. The fronds of her antennae tickle right past my ear.

“They can help you find good fortune. They’re good omens. You know why?” Park’s lips were barely moving as she spoke, hypnotic and unhurried.

“Why?”

“Because they follow the light.”

It happened all at once. Like every cheesy love poem or bad lyrics I wrote in my journals at night. It was every cracked-spine of a book using words like “rosebud lips” and every overdone song about people who find their way to each other.

I kissed her, leaning in with no life vest on or readied crash-landing position. She kissed me and my chest filled with her, breathless, drowning, soft as dreams and stranger than hope. I cradled her and she dragged me closer and closer until it was nothing but floods and brimming.

I’d been nothing before I think, I’d been an island that waits, a bus that leaves, a shadow that hides. And then I had been hers. ----------------- I was strolling home from work along the main road. The thin strip of sidewalk was streaked with bleached sunlight and the salt air was thick enough to burn throats. It was the long way home, but I was in the habit of going back to this corner.

The bus pulled up with little ceremony. It was an interstate one that crisscrossed over empty bellies of land. I stopped in place to watch, just in case, as I had many times before.

A silver head bobbed down the steps and planted herself on the concrete, unbelieving. She took an enormous noisy sniff of the air. “Not so bad!” She bellowed.

“Are you?” That wasn’t meant to be my first word. She was more stooped now and wearing shiny things on her wrist that clanked. She’d lost another tooth. “Mags.”

“Eh!” She yelled and waved frantically as if I hadn’t shot up another inch since I last saw her and started wearing clothes without holes in them. Her eyes sparkled as she tottered over. “So how’d you do, kid?”

“See for yourself.” I smiled. It was nice when the tides came back in. Mags gave me a thorough appraising. “Like this I guess.” I held up my hand. I wiggled my ring finger at her, heavy with a silver band and glittering opal.

“That’s my girl! Always knew you’d find your feet.” She cackled. “Am I too late to give you away, kid?”

I shook my head. She waddled over to me so I could take her hand. I took her home to show her my art and new tattoos, I showed her our terrible one-eyed kitten, Basket (Wicker’s son), and the little house we styled ourselves. I showed her our shoe closet and our queen bed, our messy kitchen and busted screen door. I showed her the moth tattoo over my heart, and Park showed her the matching lighthouse one over hers.

I tried to thank her, of course, I tried to say I owed her more than she knew for picking up an angry, dirty kid and seeing something in her. I owed her everything. But she just patted my hand and said that it’s not about our debts in life, kid. It’s about the becoming.

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