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maudlinbear · 1 year

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I know I have abandoned this brief whisp of a blog where my goal was to write about music that inspires me. Unfortunately, sometimes life just gets you down a little too much to keep a pet project going. However, today, through a rather serendipitous series of events I was privileged to experience a screening of the film Spoiler Alert based on Michael Ausiello’s memoir. The story resonated with me so much that I was inspired to write down all the feelings and thoughts swirling in my head. I wanted to write these words in the form of a letter to Michael because in my internal character narrative, it felt only right that I tell the author how impactful their work and story is to me – giving flowers while he can still receive them. Of course, Michael will probably never read it as he trudges through the masses of letters he will undoubtedly receive after word of this movie spreads, but there’s something to be said about just expressing oneself without expectation of reciprocation, right? Anywaysssss

~~~~

Dear Michael,

I just got home from a screening of Spoiler Alert. It’s only been a couple hours, but I think it changed my life? On the train ride home, I was thinking about how it is now in my top three movies of all time, battling the original animated Beauty and the Beast and Diary of a Mad Black Woman – two movies that hit me at pivotal times in my life to transform the way I see the world. I keep thinking about that TikTok trend in which the creator stands in front of their camera and then points to areas on the screen where text bubbles list things that permanently altered their brain chemistry. I keep thinking about it because this movie and your story just did that to me! I saw so much of myself in Jim Parsons’ portrayal of you, and I related to so many of the feelings and conversations and thoughts on display that I felt validated and seen and hopeful that I was worthy of my own love story. Tldr: the representation matters cliché holds true!

I am so grateful that I happened to take an Instagram break at work at the exact time that Antoni posted about his theater buyout this evening at the Angelika Theaters, and I’m even more grateful that I was able to show up and actually get a ticket on opening night! (You never know with these NYC crowds.) I haven’t seen a movie in a theater in some time. In fact, I rarely watch movies at all these days since I’m in the midst of a career change and won’t allow myself to indulge in any extracurriculars out of guilt that I’m not working hard enough and I’m taking too many risks living outside my means. But this ticket was free, I had no plans, and did I mention this ticket was free? Even better, when I raced out of work to the train, I came upon an OMNY turnstile that was still green for GO! Someone must have accidentally (or maybe serendipitously) double tapped their phone which meant I was able to save $2.75 and get a free ride to the movie! In hindsight, that was clearly a lucky sign of positive foreshadowing.

Anyway, I just wanted to share some of the random details of the film that stuck out to me in hopes that they validate or encourage the hard work, love, and care you put into this story. These are in no particular order – just my stream of consciousness as I’m reliving the movie. [Editor’s Note - Now that I’ve come down a little from the high of the movie, I’m second guessing myself as I’m editing this letter and realizing that having not read the book yet, I’m assuming the screenplay takes words verbatim from your book. Oh well, I guess I can caveat myself and just say that I hope that the screenplay is mighty close to your memoir. If some of my notes are not part of your story, please feel free to still receive the positive energy from which they came.]

First, I loved the many moments of brutally honest conversations, followed by a pause for digesting, and then ending in a thank you for sharing moment rather than a judgement-fueled argument I’ve come to expect in observing similar interactions. To me this signified a maturity in communication that I found quite refreshing. I’ve thought a lot about how being gay has contributed to a consistent baseline of anxiety in social situations for me. But there is a silver lining in that my anxiety has made me hyper self-aware and forced me to mature emotionally more than my peers. Idk, I’m definitely not equipped to get clinical about the psychology of emotional intelligence, but I just thought that was cool to see.

Second, I saw myself in so many of your moments of apprehension and was inspired by your conviction in conquering those fears. I am the one who doesn’t dance, who keeps all their clothes on in every situation, and who refuses to allow anyone visit their apartment. To see you have those similar feelings and then eventually conquer them gave me a bit of hope that I will someday conquer them too!

Third, I found the moments of silence and stillness depicted in your relationship to be so beautiful. The pauses during the first visit to Kit’s apartment as you both were processing what was happening, the burrito shop crying scene, moving from the couch to the bed to lay together, and the first pot experience followed by a gentle intertwining of each other’s fingers – these moments and so many more felt so connected even without words and I really appreciated that. Maybe those moments were created by the director or a result of the phenomenal performances by Jim and Ben, but I wholeheartedly believe they channeled you and Kit. And regardless, they were impactful and stunning!

Fourth, the line about being afraid to tell Kit he looked good in khakis because you thought he might leave you made complete sense to me. I’m slowly unpacking how I live a very fear-based existence, and these words made my heart break not only for you but also for me by exposing my own insecurities. It was actually that line in the trailer that made me really want to see the movie. I honestly don’t even think I would have the clarity to realize something like that on my own, but the instant I heard it, I knew that train of thought fit comfortably in the landscape of my mind.

Fifth, not just a here for the love story, that scene at work where you voice your interest in a Gilmore Girls piece only to be shot down resonated with me as well! Even beyond just the workplace, I feel like I so often need to adjust my expression of interests and passions to fit into the current environment. It’s like a survival mechanism or something. Only recently in therapy have I been realizing and understanding the toll that has taken on me and the tragedy of my resulting lack of sense of self.

Sixth, the childlike idea and tradition of lying under a Christmas tree and growing old with a partner – that’s mine too! Well not exactly, but I have had similar daydreams about finding a partner, moving into a cozy home with cute Christmas decor, and then just lying on the floor, starfished on the carpet, heads next to each other, staring at the ceiling, just being together. I’m sorry that dream of growing old didn’t come true for you with Kit, and it makes me sad to think it might not happen for me either. But for now, I am reveling in the hope of our shared dream.

Seventh, I was tickled with those sitcom scenes. I did not grow up with that specific image for myself, but I did on multiple occasions make decisions based on how I thought it would play out on my future E! True Hollywood Story! What was I thinking! Was it naïve? Or have I just not reached that pivotal breakout moment yet lol. We shall see.

And finally, eighth (phew!), that deathbed speech/eulogy . . . (in a Trixie voice) honeyyyyyyy. I was keeping it together and delicately wiping single tears throughout the second half of the movie, but when you crawled into that bed. Dear me, I was uncontrollably ugly cry-sobbing during that scene. I don’t know why, but something about a devastatingly sad song, movie scene, or story, just resets me, grounds me, and makes me feel alive. I don’t know how you were able to even deliver a speech like that, but it was beautiful, powerful, and idk just . . . thank you for sharing it.

So now I’m crying again just thinking about that scene. Why am I such a mess? Anyway, moving on. I first saw the trailer for the film because I follow Jim Parsons. Seeing a gay love story that spoke to my sad boy, self-deprecating personality immediately intrigued me. When I learned that it was based on your book, I went out and got a library card and put a hold on the title. Even though I’m not a big reader, I was excited that even if I never got to see the movie, I could still read your story. I guess lots of other people had the same idea because weeks later all the copies are still checked out and I have yet to get my hands on the book! I tell this tidbit to you only because I loved the movie so much that I’m putting the book on my Christmas list, and if nobody gets it for me, I’m just going to splurge and buy the book myself!

Another tidbit I wanted to share was that recently I had some small talk conversation or watched something on YouTube that reminded me of this phrase I had been obsessed with years ago from this random movie, Win A Date With Tad Hamilton. Paraphrasing: Kathryn Hahn’s character tells Topher Grace’s character about love, big love, and great love, and great love is the one that changes your life. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this idea of finding a great love because I believe a great love can power you through anything. Over the years, I’m afraid my cynicism has told my inner Disney kid dreaming of a fairy tale ending that I am over-romanticizing great love and that it doesn’t happen in real life. I’m told, “relationships aren’t like the movies”, and I feel like many people will praise (rightfully so) the messy realness of the struggles, the therapy, (the Sebastian) depicted in this film. However, during your eulogy, you alluded to the great love between you and Kit, and I just can’t tell you how much that healed a little bit of my inner child. Of course, I understand that real world relationships aren’t always rainbows, but this film and your story renewed my hope that in spite of those obstacles, a great love story can still flourish and still be worthwhile!

Alas, it’s late into the night and I’ve rambled long enough. If you’ve read this far, I just wanted to again say thank you thank you thank you! Thank you for sharing your story – the courage and effort to tell such a personal story like this is not lost on me. I appreciate you profusely. I can’t wait to watch the movie again, and I can’t wait to read your book! I wish you all the best, and I hope your dreams come true, whatever they may be!

Sincerely,

David

#spoileralert #Youtube

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rhapsodyinprogress · 2 years

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Sometimes I need to do a stream of consciousness blog post so my brain will stop fixating on whatever though train is looping through it and this is one of those times.

Behind the cut, for those curious to read, is me babbling about finishing my first full length original novel and why I’m losing my mind about it right now.

So, yes, I wrote a book! I have been “writing a book” for almost as long as I’ve been alive it feels like, but I have never actually finished anything aside from various bits of short fictions and, like, fanfic (anyone who follows me on AO3 or ff.net knows I am not even particularly prolific in these areas).

Anyway, lots of things contributed to my 0% completion rate, but a lot of it was ADHD that I didn’t know I had until...you know...February of this year, and then the rest was anxiety. I overthink. I convince myself I’m terrible, I get distracted I give up. Wash, rinse, repeat.

So since March of 2020 aside from, you know, ALL THE EVERYTHING, my grandma died and I was (and continue to be) brutally mistreated at my job and I finished three fanfics in four months and none of those things seems related until you understand that: a) all I have ever wanted to be was a writer but I convinced myself it was impossible because I never finish anything and am probably not talented (thanks brain) b) The though of leaving my terrible job for another similar job fills me with a creeping, fathomless dread and c) My grandma asked me every single time we talked if I’d finished my book yet and then she died before I got a chance to tell her that yes, I had.

Add in a pandemic putting into perspective what I actually give a shit about (hint - it is NOT being a 5-star hotel chain’s little whipping girl) and learning a lot about what I need to do to trick my hyper focus into GETTING SHIT DONE, basically I wrote a book.

It took nine and a half months. It did not “pour out of me” like many author’s claim their books do. In fact, most of his was wrenched, screaming from my brain in fits and starts. But I was patient and gave myself grace and finished my book.

I am very, very proud of finishing. I am also very very proud of my book. Because - and I need you all to understand that me saying this is like ripping out my heart and laying it in the middle of a road - it’s good. I don’t ever think ANYTHING I do is good. But I think my book is good.

I have now had four beta readers go over my manuscript and their feedback is... kind of mind blowing. Talking kindly about myself makes me really uncomfortable (Like, I’m cringing as I write this because I’m sure people are going to take this as a humble brag or just a straight brag, I dunno) But like... let’s just say they have all universally told me that the book is good as well. It’s not just in my head.

ANYWAY. So now I have this book. I have a finished book. I have the outline for two three more books tucked away assuring me that this was not a fluke, I will be able to do this again. I can be an author. For real. If I can find someone to publish me.

And I have this like... Deep Existential Terror (TM) about it. It’s really hard to explain. It’s feels like... it feels like this is my ONE CHANCE to fulfill my deepest most secret most important dream. Like I have this finished book, and it’s not a shitty finished book, it’s GOOD and people might really want to read it.

And I guess I’m basically freaking out? Like, now it’s researching agents and writing query letters (OH MY GOD I HATE QUERY LETTERS) and doing up my long and short synopsis (ALSO OH MY GOD HATE) and it’s like... I feel like so much is riding on whether or not I succeed with THIS book.

That’s so stupid. I know it’s so stupid. I can’t pin every single hope and dream on this one book. I can’t expect to just go *poof* instant success just because I finished something decent. I don’t know what’s wrong with me except that probably I’m just so desperate to escape my current employment circumstances that I’m fixating.

And the problem when I fixate like this is that I invariably send myself into an anxiety death spiral, which is precisely the OPPOSITE of what I need.

Anyhoo, I don’t know what my point actually is just that I am STRESSED and my brain is FRUSTRATING.

/end freak out

#meg random #meg personal #meg writes

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aenwoedbeannaa · 4 years

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Stone Hearts | Geralt x Reader | Parts I - III

Summary: A/U(ish). When fate landed you at Kaer Morhen, you were mostly just happy to have meals to eat and a place to sleep. But, as it turns out, fate may have led you to much, much more. (Basically, you and Geralt are students at Kaer Morhen together. These stories chronicle your lives together.)

Word Count: 7k+

Warnings: Violence, smut, the usual.

A/N: I originally planned on posting this as a series of short stories all at once, but as it is such a long story, I decided I’d split it up into groups of stories instead. So, this one is Part I, II, and III. Let me know what you think – and thank you, as always, for taking time to read my work 😊.

Thank you so much to @jesseswartzwelder for the request/amazing idea!

If you enjoy my work, consider reblogging this post following me for more Witcher fics here and on my personal/original writing blog here. You can also check out my masterlist!

Part I

The sun is hot, bearing down on the crowded courtyard and making you sweat through your leathers even more than you usually do. Still, you refuse to give any inkling of the fact that your blood is absolutely boiling, like your body is burning itself away. You know that it is more than the hot sun—you’ve started taking a new elixir, and ever since, you’ve been aching with fever. One moment, you are burning out of your skin, the next, you are shivering and sweating at the same time.

Your feet move of their own accord, purely out of instinct, as you dodge and parry, pirouette and deflect. You try as hard as you possibly can to breathe deeply and slowly, so as not to exert yourself even more. And yet, the sharp sound of dulled iron striking dulled iron reverberates you your head, loud enough to make you want to flinch.

But flinching is not an option. Not with Geralt, anyways. You don’t like losing, especially to your de facto partner. As usual, the two of you are the last pair left sparring, the others standing around drinking deeply from waterskins or laying on unclaimed ground nursing whatever wounds they incurred over the course of the day. You wish you were one of them, but only a little. If you are honest, you love being the center of attention; you love being one of Kaer Morhen’s Golden Children. You thrive one it.

“Getting tired, Witcher?” you quip, avoiding a slash of his blade with a rolling dodge, landing on your feet in a flash and only just missing him with your next attack.

“Not a chance, Witcher Girl,” he responds with a parry leading to an attack of his own. You manage to block him with the flat of your blade, but you can tell that you are off – not enough for an ordinary eye to see, but Geralt does not have the eyes of an ordinary man.

He’s got you backed up nearly to the wall, leaving you less room than you’d like, and distracting you enough with his smile, a dangerous flash of white, that you nearly lose your footing. But after another turn and other quick flurry of attacks and counterattacks, you do lose your footing – but it has nothing to do with Geralt’s smile and everything to do with a sudden blinding pain that seems to start in your head and travel down your body at lighting speed. You crumple to the ground.

Geralt drops his sword before you even hit the dirt, rushing to you side and placing a calloused hand gently on your shoulder, speaking urgently, “Y/N,” he says as he gently pushes against your shoulder to turn you over, “Are you alright? What happened?” What has him so worried is not that you fell – the two of you never went easy on one another, and each took your share of tumbles. No, he is worried because you had been steady on two feet one moment and wincing, dropping your sword, and thudding to the ground after it the next.

You have, of course, told him nothing about the extra elixir. You’d tried so many at this point that you’d grown into a sense of security, like something that couldn’t possibly harm you. After all, the really deadly shit was saved for the Trial of the Grasses – but even then, the strong ones usually made it, and you are one of the strong ones. But, no matter how many times you tell him not to worry – he always, always does. The same way that you worry about him every time you learn they’re giving him new mysterious concoctions to try.

He is you closest friend, and he has been since the moment you walked onto the grounds of Kaer Morhen and he punched Eskel in the face for lobbing an ill-timed joke at the very timid new arrival and making you cry.

Vizimir was not happy with any of you, and all three of you managed to earn yourselves extra cleaning duties that week. Geralt for punching Eskel, Eskel for making ‘unnecessary remarks,’ and you for crying. Coincidentally, that week was also the week that the three of you began a friendship that spanned even to this day.

You blink up at him, unable to speak, though you want to. Something is wrong, you want to say, Get Vizimir. But, try as you might, you aren’t able to make your mouth form the words. Instead, you just stare up at him with wide eyes. His brown curls are stuck to his brow with sweat, and his eyes are searching your eyes for an answer you can’t give him. You are also vaguely aware of other students abandoning their carefully staked out plots of grass to come and see what the fuss is about.

The only other girl, Estra of Ard Caraigh, chews her lip nervously as she looks on, though you can’t see her. The two of you aren’t particularly close, mostly because she is two years older, so you are surprised when you hear her voice from the growing crowd of onlookers, “They gave you that elixir, didn’t they? The one that’s to make sure you can train every day of the month?”

In your bleary half-consciousness, you see a flash of long auburn hair as she rushes to your side, pressing a hand to your forehead. Her face blanches and she turns back to shout to no one in particular, “Get Vizimir, NOW.”

You try once more to make some sort of sound, but all that comes out is a choked sob. You had not cried since your first day here, and the fact that tears were streaming down your face seemingly of their own accord was mortifying. The only thing that kept your from screaming in pain was Geralt as he took your hand in his own and held on tightly, leaning down to whisper that it was all going to be ok in a voice surprisingly calm given the red-hot fire burning in his eyes and his tightly clenched jaw.

Part II

Your fingers tap the glass impatiently as you peer out the window, checking for signs of life on the road that winds from the gate of the Keep out into the forests surrounding Kaer Morhen, twisting its way through the wilderness surrounding the Snow Pine Mountains. If you’ve calculated correctly, Geralt should be returning today. He left nearly two weeks before with one of the Witchers to help with a contract on a Drowner infestation plaguing a nearby town on the banks of some manmade lake.

Leave it to Kaedwen. Perhaps the people of Kaedwen had grown too comfortable. With Witchers nearby, there wasn’t much to fear from monsters, was there?

This particular excursion was his reward for being the first to return from the Trial of the Medallion – the chance to muck around in the swamps for a few days, cutting down drowners at thirty crowns a head.

Thirty crowns a head.

You still remember a time when thirty crowns seemed an unobtainable amount of money; money that could have lasted your family near a month if it had to. To think that once this was all over, you would be able to fulfill contracts earning multiples of that for each monster slain. Being considered at once a poor victim of a stolen childhood and a mutant freak who had no place existing was a small price to pay for such a steady income.

“Show me a lake, and I’ll show you the drowners,” as Vizimir would say.

Pulling yourself back from the objectively horrifying daydreams of hacking drowners to shreds in return for a sack full of coin, you resume your vigilance.

Accounting for the four days ride from Kaer Morhen, maybe five if any monsters appeared on The Path, and then three days at most to deal with the drowners, and then another four to five days ride back accounting for the supplies they’d be carrying back from the village, he should be arriving back today. Unless of course… No. You cannot allow yourself to even consider the possibility that anything had gone wrong.

You tell yourself you that the nervous energy that has you buzzing is simply born of boredom, or maybe out of frustration that you’d have to spar with Eskel today. After nearly two weeks pouring over books, Vizimir had finally determined that it was time to get back to swordsmanship and, most importantly, sparring. It was about the only thing that broke the general dullness of school.

And without Geralt, you tell yourself, sparring will be just as dull as the bloody books. You determine that this is at least a half-truth. Geralt was the only sparring partner quite at your level. So, it went without saying that sparring with anyone else was dull, mostly a waste of time. In your opinion, fighting an easy fight is not fun. And that’s not even your ego talking; it is purely factual.

And a bit of ego.

And then there is the separate issue; the fact that you hadn’t exactly realized – or had at least pretended not to realize – just how much time you spent with Geralt until he was gone. You’d been happy for him when he won the Trial of the Medallion, of course, but you hadn’t been quite as thrilled when you learned what the prize was. Sure – it was a chance for him to escape form the stone fortress for two weeks, a chance to get out and see the world. But drowners, no matter how easy to kill, could always be dangerous. Or maybe you were just upset that the second place winner – that just so happened to be you – didn’t get to go along as well. You’d finished only second behind him; it seemed unfair.

Despite its unfairness, it was reality. So, instead of out hunting monsters, you were stuck here while time dragged on at an excruciating crawl.

You’ve got other students with whom to pass the time, but to be honest, exploring the grounds of Kaer Morhen Of course, you still have your other fellow students to pass the time with – which you do – but it’s not the same. There is a bond between the two of you that far surpasses your bond with anyone else. No matter how adamantly you try to ignore it, there’s just no way around it.

You sigh in frustration and turn away from the window; you have too many things to do, regardless of how absolutely tedious everything is. Studying with Vizimir, of course. And you’ve got to spar today. At least that is somewhat interesting – even if none of the other students can quite match you; with the exception of Geralt. It is a convenient way for you to explain away any feelings. Perhaps sparring with people who cannot keep up is just boring. As much as you enjoy winning, there’s no excitement winning against people you could probably best in your sleep.

You pull on your last bits of armor – a belt with a small sheath for your dagger, and of course your leather jerkin. Your dulled iron and silver are slung over your back. You won’t receive your silver – a real silver sword – until you pass the trial of the grasses. It would, of course, be a waste to supply every one of Kaer Morhen’s students with new silver swords, considering the unfortunate reality that a majority would never need one.

Gods, you hope you need one.

You move silently through the ancient hallways, bracing yourself for the certain boredom that will greet you in the keep’s library. It is a large room full of old books, most of which are yellowed with age and feel as if they might fall apart beneath your fingertips. Vizimir explains that new books are not necessary, because monsters never change.

“Wonderful of you to finally join us, Little Vampire,” Vizimir says as you push open the wooden door to see several students sitting at the old tables all in various states of half-sleep. You just shrug in response and make your way to an empty chair. You earned the nickname Little Vampire after, during the week you spent delirious with fever, you apparently bit Vizimir’s hand hard enough to leave a scar when he tried to force a potion down your throat.

“Probably off waiting for Geralt,” you hear Stefan say under his breath to Eskel, who is sitting in the chair next to him. You pretend not to hear him; you’ve given up on trying to explain your relationship with Geralt to your peers. And anyway, it would be impossible to explain even if you tried – you cannot even explain it to yourself.

But then, you hear Eskel mutter, even quieter – “He probably won’t be back until tomorrow. Off spending that hard-earned coin the right way.” You know that it shouldn’t bother you; Geralt can do whatever he’d like. And what you’d learned from hearing Eskel and the others when they spoke about their time outside of Kaer Morhen, there was a very specific way they tended to celebrate. It wasn’t your place to be upset about it. And, yet, here you were.

Whatever, you tell yourself. He’s only following the Code. That fucking Code.

* * *

“Fucking hell,” Eskel spits, pushing himself up from the ground, heavily favoring his left ankle. You smirk, sheathing the blunted blade. You don’t need to say anything – knocking him out of the fight as quickly as you had spoke volumes.

“And all this time, we thought Geralt was just letting her win, eh, Eskel?”

You turn and narrow your eyes at Stefan, their dark amber burning like coals as you bore into him. You aren’t daft – you are fully aware of this particular rumor, as ridiculous of a rumor as it is.

“Would have been quite the charade to have been pulling off all these years.”

You have a hard time suppressing your smile at the familiar baritone, but you turn around with witcherlike reflexes regardless. And Code be damned, for all the elixirs they’d given you, emotion flooded you. You refuse to call it love; to be a Witcher and admit to such a feeling would be laughable. But you will call it joy – joy at seeing your absolute closest friend in the world after all this time.

A whole two weeks.

Not wanting to make yourself, and Geralt by extension, the butt of jokes for the next month, you stop yourself from barreling toward him and throwing your arms around his neck like you want to, you settle for smiling instead.

“Finally,” you drawl, “A real challenge.”

Your friend smirks, arms crossing over his chest.

“I’ve just returned, and the first thing you want to do is cross swords?” he fakes offense.

“Of course,” you retort, “This is Kaer Morhen, after all.”

“Damn,” Geralt responds, “Thought it was Ban Aard.”

Several others who had abandoned their activities to listen laughed at that one – you included. Fucking mages and their fancy schools, preaching about the importance of magic Witchers’ reliance on it. Ban Aard and Aretuza were the butt of a good number of jokes at Kaer Morhen, like Kaer Morhen certainly was to them.

“Enough standing around and talking,” you goad, “Grab your sword, Witcher.”

You ignore the hushed conversations around you as Geralt replaces the silver sword slung over his back with a dull iron one. The usual nonsense – something about the two of you thriving on attention and showing off and something else about the two of you needing to “just fuck already.”

He seems to be ignoring the group just as you are, reading himself as you do the same.

“Alright, Witcher,” you smile dangerously, “Let’s see if those Drowners sharpened your skills."

Part III

“It just doesn’t feel real,” you muse, turning over your shoulder to glance at Geralt who sits with his back flush against yours, “Only two days until the Trials.”

“Mhm,” he answers from deep in his chest. While you have chosen to cover up your panic and fear with excitement and fierce pride, Geralt has turned to philosophizing – existentialism and cynicism being his philosophies of choice.

“Geralt…” you mutter, wishing that you could get more than a syllable or two out of him. “It’s going to be ok.”

You are trying to convince yourself just as much as you are trying to convince him. And, given your tendency to turn everything into a game of logic – very useful in calculating opponents next moves – chances are high that you are correct.

“We’ve both responded well to all of the elixirs they’ve given us, hardly any negative reactions at all,” you expound, but Geralt scoffs, making your mouth snap shut.

“Yes, except that one time two years back when you almost died.” His voice is laced with worry, and though you are facing opposite directions, you know exactly what his expression by his tone alone. His eyebrows are knitted together, and his amber eyes are narrowed such that from a distance, someone might not notice that he was undergoing mutations at all. His lips are pressed into a tight line, and his curls fall into his face. That, combined with his bulky form, would make anyone stay away. Anyone except for you.

“That was one time,” you press, “One elixir out of hundreds. It’s a better record than most people.” Kaer Morhen was your home and you truly wanted to become a Witcher. If you’d been left alone in Crookback Bog, you would have died years ago. And if you’d grown up in some backwater village or in the poor district of a city, plague or pox could’ve taken you. For you, the potions and elixirs and the mutations they induced were just the inevitable tradeoffs to life here. If you couldn’t survive the trials, you couldn’t be a Witcher, and if you couldn’t become a Witcher, you’d be on your own with no skills to speak of, no way to make a living. At least Kaer Morhen gave you something akin to a family – it had given you Geralt.

“I don’t care to remember any details of that week,” he mutters, looking at the ground and shaking his head, “But I… I can’t stop thinking about it. About you laying there burning with fever, calling out in your sleep.”

You are stunned. Geralt, while not as closed off as the other students and Witchers liked to say, was not apt to speak with such emotion. You can’t remember the last time you heard him stumble over his words like that – or if you ever had, for that matter. You open your mouth to speak, about how that was quite a regular occurrence for Kaer Morhen’s students as they underwent mutations, but he is already speaking again before you can get a word out.

“You kept saying that you were on fire, your bones were on fire,” you pick at the grass as he continues, “And the elixirs to help the pain only made it worse.”

Truth be told, you don’t have much memory of that week of your life. You were delirious with fever, and only remember brief moments that you could not definitively place in the “real” category or mark them off as hallucinations. But, as he speaks, some memories do pop into your mind. One in particular where it took three grown men to hold you down and force one of the elixir’s down your throat. Vizimir started calling you Little Vampire after that, thanks to the fact that your perfectly average canines managed to dig so deep into his hand that he still had a scar. Now, you supposed, you understood why Geralt didn’t like that one.

“I just… I can’t…” as Geralt stumbles over his words, you cannot tell if you are hearing his heart hammering or yours. You follow your immediate urge and turn around to sit next to him, both of you now looking out towards the grounds of Kaer Morhen through the trees. You’ve had this secret meeting place for years – a place where the two of you would go to talk or just to sit. A peaceful place, away from the constant chaos behind the castle walls.

“Geralt,” you say, placing a hand on his shoulder and shifting so that he is facing you, “You’re the strongest of all of us. Even Vizimir said…well, you remember!” You are referring to a conversation you overheard one evening when you were prowling around places you shouldn’t be. He was talking to one of the other instructors, the two of them comparing notes.

“Geralt, Y/N, and Eskel will be this year’s Three, mark my words.”

“There’s no need to be scared,” you add after a moment, voice quiet. You hadn’t known he was so scared to undergo the mutations. He was always the best in your training exercises, always the strongest, the fastest, the one getting all the special elixirs. You hadn’t even thought that he might still be worried.

Quite suddenly, he turns, placing his hand over the one of yours that is resting in your lap, “I’m not worried for myself. I just… I can’t… It makes me so angry to think of them putting you through that again.”

You look down, staring at his hand on top of yours, which is suddenly the only thing that you can focus on. Relationships at Kaer Morhen aren’t forbidden, but they aren’t common. There had been a handful of moments like these – none of them that went farther than stolen glances and they always left you feeling somehow empty, aching for what you couldn’t have.

Silence stretches between you. The only sound either of you make are the thundering of our hearts and carefully controlled breathing. Though, you notice, each time Geralt breathes in, there is a slight unsteadiness to it, a shakiness, as if he is trying as hard as you are to keep your breathing in check.

Finally, you draw a breath that would be noticeably shaky, even for a person who hadn’t undergone all of the mutations that the two of you had. You tear your eyes from your hand to look up at him and say, “I’m an adult, Geralt. I’m going through the trials willingly.”

Geralt doesn’t respond, just clenches his jaw and lets out a huff, so you continue, “We’ve always known about the Trials, I agreed to it when I came here, and I’ve continued to agree to it every time that I’ve taken any of their elixirs. I’ve...We’ve been training for this for our whole lives. Without Vizimir I would have died without getting a chance to experience real life.”

“I know the speech,” Geralt shoots back almost immediately, pulling his hand away and leaving you feeling hurt.

“Geralt.” You are struggling to keep your voice steady. You can’t decide if you feel like screaming or crying, so you keep to the Code and shove both of those urges down as deep as is possible given the situation. “It’s not my fault we have to undergo the mutations, so don’t fucking snap at me.”

“Fuck,” Geralt says, shaking his head and burying it in his hands, “Y/N, I’m sorry. I know.”

He is silent for another moment before he finally lowers his hands and looks up at you. You realize in that moment how close you are, your faces only inches apart. You can see the gold flecks in his amber eyes and the stubble on his cheeks and have to fight to ignore the urge to reach out and see how his skin feels beneath your hands, and what his eyes would look like if you did.

But then, he reaches out with one hand, hesitantly and ever so gently, to cup your face. You shiver as the pad of his thumb brushes just beneath your lower lip and the very corner of your mouth. Time feels suspended, as if the two of you are floating on some separate plane where the day of the Trials will never come and the two of you can just stay right here, just as you are, forever.

“I hate the idea of you undergoing the Trial because I can’t stomach the thought of losing you, Y/N.” The words are like a punch to the stomach that is somehow pleasant, knocking all the breath out of your lungs.

He leans even closer, until your foreheads are touching. “I know the Code, and I know I’m not supposed to, but I love you.”

You breathe in, memorizing the smell of him. You’ve only ever been this close during sparring exercises. You decide you like this a lot better.

“When I had the fever… The one thing that kept me, you know, here was you, you know,” you breathe. You’ve never told him because you know that no matter how much he had pretended to hate it as of late, he sticks to the Code. The Code, which doesn’t look highly on Witchers being in relationships – especially with one another. “And that’s why—and you’re the reason I know that I’ll survive the Trial.” Your eyes have drifted down, unable to meet his as you confess this – the secret you have been hiding from him for so long.

He is silent for a moment, frozen there with his deliciously warm hand on your face before finally letting his and slip lower, resting under your chin and gently tilting your head up so that he can meet your eyes. “Fuck the Code,” he says, eyes flashing before pressing his lips to yours.

It is your first kiss, and it is pure bliss. Your lips fit together like pieces of a puzzle and the sensation has you drunk with pleasure before he even deepens the kiss. And, when he does, you are ready. You part your lips for him, and he greedily explores your mouth. You keep thinking that it can’t get any better, but yet it does. You moan involuntarily as his hand slips from your chin, ghosting along the curve of your neck and coming to rest on your shoulder, calloused thumb sweeping across your collar bone.

His touch is electric, leaving your skin feeling hot and charged, and longing for more. Your arms wrap around his neck, pulling yourself flush against him. He responds with an appreciative grunt, moving his hands to explore your body, starting by sweeping down your sides, just barely grazing the sides of your breasts in the process.

With his hands now firmly wrapped around your sides, he breaks the kiss, leaving you in a huff of frustration and disappointment – you hadn’t had nearly enough of him. But before you can get too out of sorts, his lips touch your neck and you moan, tipping your head back to grant him complete access. You don’t even have time to worry about the fact that you have no idea what you’re doing – that you have never done this before – because Geralt is so thorough, so in control of the situation. It’s like he knows all the right places to touch, and exactly what to do with his mouth to have you breathing heavily, small sounds of pleasure slipping through your lips.

Tentatively, you begin exploring his body with your hands. You love the way that his muscled form feels beneath your fingers, and it makes you want to explore every inch. As your hands move down his chest, you find yourself tugging at his shirt. You don’t know if it is an involuntary reaction to his teeth grazing your neck as his lips continue down to your collarbone or whether it is simply a feeble attempt to pull the fabric away because you would very much like to know what his sculpted abdomen feels like beneath your fingers without the offending material in the way.

Geralt’s hands, on the other hand, have gripped your white linen shirt, identical to his own, and already began pulling it over your head. You raise your arms to make it easier for him, and the moment it is off, you greedily reach for his own tugging the material up and over his head. For a moment, you just stare at him, drinking in the sight of him shirtless before you. It wasn’t as if you had never seen him this way – but you had always done your best not to look too long, afraid that he would notice as question why.

However, he interrupts your moment of slightly embarrassing admiration when he wraps his arms around you, hands grazing your hyper-sensitive skin. You sigh, content to let him touch every inch of you. Encouraged by this, his hands wander up to unlace your bra and you bite your lip in anticipation. You cannot wait to feel his hands on them, arching your back, willing him to make faster work of it.

He grins as he slips the material off your shoulders, grin turning into more of a smirk as he sees you staring back at him with wide, expectant eyes. He slides one hand up your back, easing you down so you are laying beneath him, eyes drinking in the sight of you naked form and making your feel suddenly exposed. But, given the way his pupils dilate, he likes what he sees as much as you do.

He leans over you, lowering himself so that he can bring his lips to yours once more. You greedily bite his lower lip, hands back to their game of exploring as much of his body as you can reach. And then all of a sudden, you feel his stubbled cheek graze against yours as he leans to growl in your ear, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this to you, Witcheress.”

His words add fuel to the fire burning in your core, and you whimper as his fingers brush your nipple. It feels so delicious it is almost painful. You’ve never even allowed yourself to fantasize about this scenario, as much as you may have wanted to. You never thought it would happen – and you weren’t one to dream of impossible things. And yet, here you both were.

“Geralt,” you breathe, completely lost I the feeling as he kneads and pinches your breasts. And then… his lips. The feeling of them against your breast and his tongue flattening against your nipple is warm and soft and better than you could have ever imagined it feeling. Your eyes roll up into your head as he makes use of his free hand to gently twist and pinch the bud not currently receiving the attention of his tongue.

Heat pools in your core, twisting and tightening and aching for his touch, and, oh gods, for his tongue. Any nerves you thought you would have doing this for the first time have evaporated. There is no room in your pleasure-drunk mind for nervous thoughts.

Once again, seemingly able to read your thoughts, he slips a hand between the two of you, unfastening your belt and unlacing your trousers. For a brief moment, your mind blinks to a thought of just how practiced his hands are – but you don’t dwell on it for more than a split second. You are burning with need, and you could care less how many women Geralt has had before you – if the stories of the young man’s exploits on those rare occasions when Kaer Morhen’s young Witchers in training were given leave to take on smaller contracts here and there under supervision of elders – it doesn’t matter to you right now.

It matters even less when his hand slips into your waistband, expert fingers finding their way to where you need him most. His finger dips between your folds, gathering the wet heat pooled there for him, humming appreciatively against your chest as he lets his finger trail back up to the little bundle of nerves. His touch is perfect parts gentle and firm as he circles the small bud, making you cry out into the open air.

“You like that, Witcheress?” he asks gruffly, swirling his finger again and making you buck your hips against his hand. Making yourself form words is pretty much hopeless at this point, with his finger dancing over the hard little nub that no one save yourself has ever touched before, but your pleasured cries are more than enough answer for him.

He loves watching you like this – writhing beneath him, hips moving of their own accord, eyes blinking open and closed again. He especially loves your little gasps; the way your pretty mouth stays open in a constant ‘oh’ as he works you with his fingers. Your ragged breathing turns him on even more; your breasts rising and falling at uneven intervals as he increases his pace and pressure. And, oh gods, he loves the groan that escapes your lips when he does.

“Gods,” you say with a great deal of effort, “That feels… G-geralt!”

He watches you as your body tenses for a moment, amber eyes fixed on you as he watches you fall apart, already committing this image to memory; the first time you’d come for him. You are still twitching as the aftershocks of your orgasm wrack your body when he grabs your waistband and tugs your pants off roughly, breathing in your scent and greedily taking in the sight of you.

Your thighs tremble as he presses his lips to the inside of your calf, peppering the soft skin with kisses as he moves his way up your leg. You are still reeling from your orgasm, but already you need more. His hands follow his lips, massaging the seemingly always sore muscles of your legs and making you sigh with pleasure.

You reach down to run a hand through his hair, and he lifts his amber eyes to meet yours as he moves to your other leg, pressing kisses across ever inch of your skin. His tongue traces the crease between your thigh and your most intimate area, and your hips thrust towards his face of their own accord. But then a thought enters your mind, and you tug at his hair, “Geralt.”

“Yes, Witcheress?” he says, locking you in his intense gaze.

“I should… Shouldn’t I? You know…?” You can feel his bulge through his pants, and you are eager to touch him, to feel his hardness with your fingers, your tongue, and inside of you. But for now, Geralt clearly has other plans.

“Shh, Witcheress,” he says, nipping gently at your inner thigh with his teeth, “I’m not done with you yet.” His words send your mind into a whirl as his hands slip under your thighs to your ass, letting his shoulders hold your already quivering legs apart so that you are completely exposed to him. You whimper as he blows cool air on your heat, making you shiver.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he says gruffly, eyes locked on yours once again, “But first I want to taste you.” He lets his tongue just barely graze your clit, and you whimper again, on the verge of begging. “I think you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Y/N?”

You can only whimper in response, your need for him an almost painful ache in your core.

“Hmm?” he rumbles, looking up at you with an impish grin, “Didn’t hear you.” You cannot think of a more beautiful sight than Geralt – the boy who was your first friend and the man who you fell in love with little by little until you were mad with it – looking up at you as if you are the only person in the world.

“Y-yes,” you whimper, voice laced with need.

“Mhm,” he growls, finally running his tongue from your opening to the little bundle of nerves. The feeling of his tongue touching you there has you seeing stars. It feels even better than his fingers as he explores you, paying particular attention to the places that make you gasp and tighten your grip on his hair.

He takes his time, savoring the way you taste, better even then he imagined – which he often had despite his efforts not to think of you that way. He’d tried to stick to the Code, he’d tried everything to keep his mind busy – every time he made a trip out of Kaer Morhen, he’d tried to distract himself, but now, as he explores you with his tongue, breathes your scent, feels your soft skin beneath his fingertips, and hears your soft gasps and moans, all he can think is that he has abided by the Code for way too fucking long.

You are absolutely lost in the feeling of his mouth on you. And, when his lips close around your clit, sucking it into his mouth and attacking it with his tongue, you cry out so loud you are almost convinced everyone back in the Keep can hear you, not that you care. He moans against you, delicious vibrations making you cry out again.

His hand has been traveling closer and closer to your entrance, and you find yourself desperately moving your hips, urging him on. This time, he obliges without teasing, seeming as if he couldn’t pull away from you if he wanted to.

He groans along with you as he slips a finger inside of you, stretching you gently. He takes his time here, too, slowly pumping his finger in and out, committing to memory every place that makes you gasp and writhe until he finds that spot. He adds another finger, focusing on the sensitive place inside of you. Your eyes screw shut as he curls his fingers in time with his tongue; he has turned you into a senseless mess.

The pleasure is too much. Every muscle in your body tenses before finally, you release. Your back arches as you cry out, thighs trapping Geralt in place as you ride out wave after wave of pleasure until finally your body goes slack and you fall back against the grass, breathing heavily.

For a moment, Geralt doesn’t move, yellow eyes drinking in the sight of you lying there slowly coming back to your senses. When your breathing has somewhat returned to normal, he slowly kisses up your body until he reaches your lips, capturing you in a kiss that seems to last forever, but still not long enough. You can taste yourself on his tongue and it drives you mad.

You are already reaching down, desperately and clumsily attempting to yank off his pants, wanting there to be nothing between the two of you. He helps you with the task, kicking off his boots and tossing his remaining clothing to the side. You watch him, eyes committing every muscle and every scar to memory, and finally you allow yourself to look lower.

It takes you a moment to realize that you’re staring, eyes wide as you consider the size of him. Not that you have anything to compare it to, but he is huge, and, considering the only thing that had been inside you before this day are your own fingers, you shiver at the thought of it. He lowers himself back onto his elbows, eyes finding yours as he brushes stray strands of hair from your sweat-soaked forehead as you blink up at him through your lashes, chewing your lower lip, feeling equal parts nervous and impatient.

As your heart hammers in your chest, he leans down to press his lips against the sensitive spot at the crook of your neck, positioning himself between your legs. You whimper as he teases you with the head of his large cock, sliding it from your entrance to your clit and back again, pausing there when all you wanted was for him to push himself inside you.

And all at once, he does. You draw in a sharp breath at the mix of pain and pleasure. He holds still for a moment, letting you adjust to the size of him. You hadn’t thought it’d feel this good. You’d not had much in the way of women to tell you about things like this here at Kaer Morhen. Most of what you learned, you learned from the boys – and you’d learn to take anything you heard from them with a grain of salt. But this – gods. It felt like pure bliss.

Finally, he slowly drew out and thrust back in again, groaning into the space between your neck and shoulder. By his third thrust, you were already raising your hips to meet his, wanting more, faster, harder. But Geralt was taking his time, despite your fingers raking his back, leaving red marks that could be mistaken for claw marks, in all honesty.

“Geralt,” his name spills from your lips in something between a sigh and a moan. He responds by kissing your neck, then moving up to kiss your lips, the two of you lying there, drinking each other in, hips moving harder and faster as he fills you up over and over again, somehow hitting every single spot inside of you, making you whimper beneath him.

You are both sweating, breathing heavily, and clawing at each other as if your lives depend on exploring every part of one another. His thrusts are even, though. A perfect rhythm that has you repeating his name over and over like a prayer. Each time, he hits that spot, and you feel that tightening in your belly, like a coil. And then, all of a sudden, it snaps, and you are lost in a sea of pleasure.

He finishes almost immediately after you, thrusts growing more and more sporadic as he finishes inside you.

The two of you lay there, half-clothed but unworried. No one will stumble upon you out here. Code be damned, you are in love. And for tonight, you are just that – not two people about to undergo the Trials, not a future Witcher and Witcheress – just two young lovers, all tangled up together, staring up at a sky fully of stars, watching the moon rise over the Snow Pine Mountains.

Taglist: @fairytale07, @geeksareunique, @jesseswartzwelder, @haru-ririchiyo, @unnamedmaincharacter, @lazilyscentedwerewolf, @stretchkingblog97, @curlyhairedandconfused, @valkyriepuff, @comicbeginning, @alwayshave-faith, @hp-hogwartsexpress, @angelic-kisses13, @holyhumorliteraturelight, @nogitsunelichen

(Let me know if you’d like to be added!)

#geralt x reader #geralt imagines #geralt of rivia #reader insert #witcher reader #geralt of rivia x reader #story: stone hearts #series #the witcher #the witcher fanfiction #fanfiction #geralt fanfiction #the witcher au #au #witcher school au #fanfiction series

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onmywaytobe · 4 years

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Writeblr Hunger Games Prompts 1 – 4

I decided to try something not like my usual style and go for a no-dialogue present-tense stream-of-consciousness type deal for these prompts! I’ve only done the first half so far bc I started thinking about it a little too seriously and I upset myself lol second half coming soon or maybe not at all depending on how I feel

Thanks @whgmasterofceremonies for putting this all together, I’m excited to see what happens in the arena! Although I’m gonna be real sad when my kiddos die lol at least they stay alive in their own canon for the most part. PLUS I’ve found some new super cool writeblr friends to follow and really, that’s all that matters!

Anyway, enjoy my take on the prompts!

The Big Day

Margot puts on her best dress and braids her hair carefully. She wishes she could wear it the way she likes, long and loose, but her parents insist that she cleans up a little. At least if her hair is out of her face, it’s easier for her to think. Having her hair up makes her feel like she’s about to go to work. She focuses on the little things to distract from the fact that it’s her last ever Reaping. So she braids her hair, polishes her glasses, smooths down the fabric of her dress. One last time, she reminds herself, and tries not to think of the odds that her name gets pulled. It had happened to her best friend; it could happen to her too.

Logan thinks he looks too pale in his father’s somber black suit. This is the first year he’s been tall enough to wear it, and he hates how much it ages him. He’s seventeen, and already bored with the whole affair. He’s the son of one of the richest families in town, and that’s saying something in District 5. He knows there’s only one slip of paper with his name on it; the odds are in his favor, like they have been every year. He’s already thinking about when he can take the itchy suit off and celebrate the start of another Hunger Games with his friends. The best part about the Games was the parties. The Games themselves were a little too real.

The Reaping

Margot stands at the back of the crowd with the other eighteen-year-olds. She clenches her fists in her skirt, wishing she had Diana’s hand to hold. But Diana’s name was the one pulled from the bowl last year, when the colorful Capitol representative said “Ladies first.” Margot keeps her head down, as if that will keep her safe. She’s barely listening, and she thinks she misheard the first tribute’s name. But the nudges in her side are unmistakable, and her brain fogs over as she begins the slow walk up to the stage. The name called was her own.

Logan feels like he’s been punched when he hears that Margot is the first tribute. No one volunteers for her, but no one ever does. He never liked watching the Games much; his father enjoyed them too much, and Logan could never help but wonder if he would still be as excited if his son were one of the tributes. This year, he wouldn’t have to wonder. His name was the second one called. Soon, he was standing on the stage beside Margot, shaking her hand. Now he felt sick for a different reason. He would have to kill the girl he loved.

The Visit

Margot is shuffled off the stage into the town hall to wait. Her parents bid her goodbye and give her a medallion that they say will help her be safe. All three of them are numb. They hold each other as long as they can. A few of Margot’s other friends visit her as well, but it’s hard for them to say goodbye. They start to blur together; Cam, Owen, Fabian, Kendra. She notes that it’s the first time she’s seen them cry. Maybe she’s crying herself, she can’t really tell. She tries to stay strong, like Diana did. Nothing seems real.

Logan’s only visitors are his parents. They aren’t prone to shows of emotion, so they stand a small distance apart and give him advice. He’s not listening to their vague platitudes. His mind is with Margot. He’d always said that he could win the Games. What child didn’t make the same brag to their peers? But the cost of winning has never seemed as high as it does now. He remembers a neighbor of his who won the Games a few years back. Hopefully he would be a helpful mentor. He lives with another victor now, seems to have a normal life with her. Logan hopes it could be that easy for him.

The Train Ride

Margot had always wanted to go to the Capitol, but not like this. At least she was with Diana again. Diana had won her Games, and Margot could only hope to live up to the legacy. She sits with Diana on the train, smiling for the first time since she’d been reaped. Diana starts talking strategy, while the other mentors look on. Her boyfriend Simon sits next to her, a fellow mentor. Margot wishes that Logan would stop looking at her like that. She doesn’t want to get too close, now that they’re on their way to die. But they can’t help but talk. She recognizes him from school; he likes the library as much as she does. He’s an only child, just like her. Before all this, she probably would have considered him a friend. Now, she is willing to be his ally once they get into the Arena, but no more. She knows the odds aren’t in her favor, and she would need all the help she could get. But she also knows the odds of her needing to kill him eventually are too high to get emotionally invested.

Logan is worried about Margot. She’s brilliant, but from what he can tell she’s not much of a fighter. The Games can be won with brains alone, and it always helps to be underestimated, but he still wants to protect Margot however he can. Of course, he’s not much of a fighter either. He sees the way Simon looks at Diana; of course the boy he knew was in love with Margot’s best friend. Logan squashes the hope that one day he would get to look at Margot like that. That both of them could possibly get out of this alive. He’s heard rumors that there are ways to sneak out of the Games, but the Capitol is controlling, and he wouldn’t want to put his family in danger by going against them. He’s lucky that one of the mentors for District 5 is Brian Percival, the oldest surviving victor of the Games. He has coached several other tributes to success. Logan wants to continue the winning streak, but doesn’t know if he has it in him.

Prompts 5-8

#writeblr hunger games #whg #my writing #logan #margot #diana #not gonna tag the others bc they're barely mentioned #i really am excited i'm just having a moment thinking about people dying haha #the hunger games is so fucked up man #either way lol #thinking about my characters in a different light is fun! and writing again is fun too #so enjoy this #whatever this is haha

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thistransient · 4 years

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obligatory retrospection, 2019

I have zero desire to contemplate the entire decade, one year is already enough for me. Where I’ve been since I started writing here is already listed in the blog description anyways.

2019 was an odd time. Felt like a year of learning where my limits and boundaries are. If 2018 was full of being sad to leave places, 2019 had a lot of being perfectly fine, dare I say even excited, to move on. I was quite happy to leave New Zealand, where I’d been significantly depressed. My plans for Russia fell apart (thankfully), my mental health was largely in shambles as I bummed around Eastern Europe waiting to meet my father for the Camino de Santiago (which generally made things worse), until my partner refused to even ride the Kyiv subway with me due to my crazed reaction to the ear-rending screech of the rails (really guys, it could do with some updating). I don’t think I really calmed down until after spending a month in the woods of northern Sweden, at which point I started to worry about moving to Australia instead. I’ve been suspiciously chill here though, some minor panic incidents aside. I’d like to blame the HRT for balancing out my mood, or perhaps having enough money and my own vehicle. I don’t think my plan to circumnavigate the continent is going to pan out in the long-run, but I’m pretty content with how things have gone so far. All’s well that ends well, they say. (To be fair though, the first part of the year wasn’t all bad: my best friend and I did start dating, I read some good books, met some cool people, ate a lot of cinnamon buns and burek, and sorted out some priorities.)

Goals for 2019

- Make it to Australia and buy a car when I get there Done and done

- Turn 30 in a country I haven’t visited yet Well, we chickened out about going to Transnistria cause I didn’t feel like dealing with corrupt border officials in any way, shape, or form, but we did go to Iași instead, so at least I spent my birthday in a new city.

- Keep improving my Russian - Oh, I failed miserably at this

- Keep improving my Chinese - 成功啦～～～

- Finish the stream-of-consciousness autobiographical graphic novel I’ve started drawing - I finished the first segment before leaving off because it was too stressful, does that count?

- Start HRT Thank you Ukraine for your laissez-faire approach to what western countries consider controlled substances ❤

- Do more linocut printing I finally figured out that it was my roller and not the paint that was causing me so much woe

- Share less of my precious bodily fluids with parasitic insects - The bedbugs of the Balkans have won this battle fair and square

Goals from 2015 - 2018 yet to be achieved:

-Travel more in Ukraine It finally happened

-Learn to white water kayak - still not likely in the near future

-Learn A2 Arabic - this is so far on the backburner I’m not even sure it’s on the stove anymore

-Actively work on my French speaking/listening skills - I’m just crossing this off because I had to listen to the French comrades on the permaculture farm

-Go to Xinjiang - I don’t think Xinjiang is really the place to be right now

- Experiment with anxiety reduction techniques/chill the fuck out a bit - after everyone and their dog telling me to try meditation, I’ve discovered that painting is what actually works for me. Not just drawing, the magic is in colouring it in too.

Goals for 2020

- Travel by train between Harbin/Irkutsk/Ulanbaataar/Beijing

- Take a massage class

- Get a tolerable job in east Asia

- Look into artist residencies

- Continue to improve my Mandarin

- Continue to improve my Swedish

- Buy new sneakers (sounds simple but god is it an ordeal)

- Do something nice for my golden birthday

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neatpoems · 6 years

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trains of thought

i suppose this is the best way to transcribe

thought

slow fast it doesn’t matter

thought doesn’t have grammar (which is why i think writing things down formulating thoughts into sentences onto paper matters a whole lot)

its more disjointed ideas concepts firings of neurons?

its “oh this also applies probably” and just shoving that into a train of thought to get it out of the way and go to the original track unless you get sidetracked (i could go on about trains right now, and am cutting out about three things i could transcribe from the imagery flashing through my head)

this is still a process of formulation of reduction otherwise it would be well unparseable

i’ve been told i jump around a lot at least, by people who i’ve less talked to and been more well stream of consciousness with (i still havent read joyce/ulysses)

and its not just the ordering, or the defying of grammar i believe in thought emphasis derives from repetition circling back to some point over and over (and over) reformulating it getting out the mental thesaurus and juist thinking similar iterative things over and over

until the thing that is important deserves emphasis is properly explicated (sorry, that’s my academic background peeking through)

i wonder if the spilled thought tag promted this line of thinking this line of inquiry but i do believe i’ve always thought about like this kind of poetry, supposed poetry as a manner of just conveying thoughts i’m pretty sure, yes

but it does reflect on the nature of thought obviously not thoroughly or completely as i’m cutting out a lot of auxilliary garbage

and originally i thought i’d ask if that reflects remotely the thinkings inside other peoples heads or how they’d transcribe it in the middle i was actually pretty sure for a moment and well telling people/yall how it works and now i’m wondering if i should circle back to the writing down bit because obviously well, i think its obvious anyway even just attempting something resembling transcription is transformative in that it’s a bit hard usually to just go on thinking like this returning to the string the train of thought more often than not but i dont think its dishonest or even altering the manner of thinking more, like, anchoring/guiding

and my finishing paragraph which im now realizing i didn’t lead up to well it was about how i could have written three things, for each of these endings and i think saying that also demonstrates well something about the way i conceive of the shape of thought and the difference between thought and more intentionally written poetry

and as there is no real end to this the best i’ve got is kinda pointing out how that also is kind of how thought goes some trains of thought just sort of peter out rust over but unless outside influenced or like very focussedly pursued all the way through they don’t really end, they’re just sorta parked until you come along and they just jump back to life

and this is usually where i’d reference a previous thing to bring things full circle but i think that wouldn’t really be true to the transcriptive nature of this thanks for coming on the ride

#poem #my poetry #my poem #poetry #self care #my art #creative #creative writing #spilled ink #spilled words #spilled thoughts #spilled poetry

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neubauje · 7 years

Text

BEGT ch. 10 (rated M)

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 AO3 Mirror

At the end of the day that day, Aizawa stays behind after class, waiting for Toshinori to swing by, as usual. As the minutes pass and the traffic in the hallways dies down, though, the Symbol Of Peace is nowhere to be found. Eraserhead wanders the halls for a while longer, checking in both teachers lounges, the computer lab, and even the gymnasium, but his host is nowhere to be found. As he's heading out, Aizawa spies principal Nezu passing by, his head in a book. "Excuse me, sir."

The white rodentoid pauses in his tracks and looks up, then smiles amicably at the teacher. "Ah, Mr. Aizawa, how are you getting on?" He tucks the book into the crook of his elbow and waits for the employee to catch up to him.

"My well-being is irrelevant. Do you know where All Might is?" Aizawa closes the distance to the hallway intersection, shooting a glance down either direction for good measure.

The principal chuckles and rocks up onto the balls of his feet, grinning a little wider, "Oh, he was pulled away during your class to aid in the police investigations. He mentioned to remind you that you have a key? (more under the cut)

The precinct's ward is closing in a half hour, I'm sure he'll be done soon and will meet you from there. Was there anything else you needed?"

"Tch. No, sir. Thank you for the info." Aizawa turns heel and stalks out in the other direction, clear through the main entrance and all the way to the subway station. There'd be no use in waiting at the school, since the police station is clear on the other side of town anyway. The injured hero manages to make the commute by himself by wrangling the help of a station attendant to swipe the fare card for him and let him through the turnstile, and by bracing firmly against the wall and floor of the train with his legs. With a sigh of annoyance, Aizawa notices that he's actually receiving MORE stares traveling alone than he had during any ride he'd spent tucked under Toshinori's arm, and not all of the stares seem too friendly, either. He keeps both eyes warily trained on anyone who gets too close, ready to improvise a hands-free fighting style if need be. None of the other passengers actually make a move, though, and the frustrated teacher admits to himself that he may have been acting with a touch of paranoia.

The sun is just sinking out of view as Eraserhead tromps up the stairs at the end of All Might's apartment building, kicking first at the correct door (in case he'd been beaten there), and then reluctantly, on the door across the hall. "Mrs. Ogawa..." Aizawa calls loudly enough to be heard over the sound of that TV beyond the threshold, turned up too loudly once again until it silences a moment later.

Another minute out in the hallway, Aizawa takes the chance to listen for signs of the other neighbors. The smell of something frying down the hall makes his stomach rumble, and he realizes anxiously that without Toshinori there, his food options will be very limited. A baby at the end of the hallway can just barely be heard, its cries waning and waxing over the sound of a couple arguing loudly one door closer. The neighbor he's actually waiting for, with the buff-shined pangolin scales, finally answers the door with first a squint of suspicion, and then a little nod of recognition. "Ah, little Yagi's friend, Shouta was it? Did you arrive on your own today?"

"Yes, ma'am." He bows his head more properly, now that he's able, and tries his best to return her kind smile. "He got pulled away, but should return soon." He lifts his elbow and twists out of the way to let the matron get at his pocket and belt, where the key has hung since Toshinori had clipped it there.

"I'm sure he will," she agrees, nodding along as she fiddles open the lock and lets the door swing open. Sticking her head in past the threshold, she blinks at the clean state of the adjacent apartment, a far cry from the state she'd glimpsed a few other times. "Just in case he'll be a while, dear, did you need my help with anything in the meantime?" She shuffles in to Aizawa's side and clips the keychain back where it'd come from.

"A couple little things, yes, since you're offering," Aizawa points with his nose, indicating the small collection of pill bottles on the half-wall, "I should take those pills before too much more time passes, one of each. And there should be a few of those puree pouches still left in the shopping bag on the counter, if you could just open one up for me that'll do just fine."

"Pills, hmm? I'll do you one better." Shuffling over to the pill bottles, she fiddles with the tops, her finger joints swollen and knobby with arthritis. Shouta grimaces, wishing he could be the one opening them instead, but eventually she gets them opened, setting out one of each pill on the counter-top. Then she narrows in on the silverware drawer to find a tablespoon, and the jar of applesauce from the fridge, and with a mostly-steady hand, pokes each pill into a spoonful of the stuff and feeds them to her temporary neighbor. "You're a lot easier to feed than the wee one down the hall, after all. I've taken to watching her on Saturday nights, she's already got some troublesome habits with her food. At least you don't spit this right back up!"

"That you know of," Aizawa jokes, keeping a straight face for a moment before letting a little smirk break through when Mrs. Ogawa catches his eye in concern. "This should at least tide me over until All- uh. Until Yagi gets in." He gulps down the last of the applesauce, hoping he hasn't just blown his friend's cover.

"Don't worry your little head about it, you just come let me know if he's out too late and you need anything else." The kindly neighbor pats at Aizawa's back, just above the remnants of the footprint-shaped bruise, and toddles back over to her own residence, pulling both front doors closed along the way. Aizawa notes that it would probably be more trouble than it's worth to try to open the round knob again between his casts, much more trouble than the handles on the doors at school. And besides, 'anything else' doesn't exactly consist of much he would WANT help with... at least, from anybody who isn't Toshinori.

Aizawa dwindles a couple hours away plucking away on the laptop with the straw they've been keeping beside it for his utility. While waiting for a response to the check-in message he managed to send to Yagi's phone through the school profile system, he wastes time checking and replying to emails, catching up on the news, and eventually, his favorite channel of cat videos. Eventually the notification comes in from the reply, Sorry, got caught out in a bit of a tussle, just helping to clean it up and make a couple appearances. Don't wait up if you can help it, I'll be there when you wake up in the morning.

Annoyed but relieved that All Might is at least in good enough condition to reply, Aizawa yawns and stretches his way down the hallway, then falls into bed in his uniform, finally allowing his consciousness to give way to the dull, fuzzy weight of the painkillers. He doesn't stir again until his shoes are plucked from his feet and set aside on the floor. Ordinarily he'd have remembered to leave them by the door, but had forgotten amidst the worry about the missing Number One Hero. Squinting against the bright morning sunlight, Aizawa groans softly and struggles to sit up, blinking when a large hand swoops in to assist against his back. Shifting his squint to the bright numbers on the digital clock, Aizawa groans even louder as he finally levels his annoyed glare on Toshinori, who grimaces nervously and turns to fish around in the dresser for a fresh set of underclothes. "Sorry again," he murmurs, piling together a little bundle in his arms, "I should have been here. I couldn't let you sleep in like usual, we needed the extra time to get you taken care of, since that didn't happen last night. You're probably starving and in pain, and I'm sure sleeping in your hero costume without so much as a shower must not have been very comfortable."

Aizawa doesn't correct the second part, since he'd rather not admit that it's no new experience for him to sleep in those conditions. "Mrs. Ogawa already administered the pills and some applesauce."

"Good, good. We'll have to grab a quick breakfast on the way, or..." Toshinori coughs a little blood into his elbow and turns to meet Aizawa's glare with a sheepish little gulp, "Or we could cook in, and save time by sharing a shower."

"You've spoiled me on your American breakfasts. I'd rather stay away from the fast food." Shouta hides a little smirk under the folds of his scarf until they're scooped away with a practiced arm as Toshinori nods and starts piling his trappings on the duvet. The bag of bags and roll of masking tape have already migrated there to the bed-side night stand, and Yagi makes quick work of prepping the casts as usual and assisting Shouta in stripping the rest of the way.

Leading the way without much of a discussion to distract them on their tight schedule, the taller hero gets the shower running to a good temperature, then stands aside and shuts Aizawa in with a mumbled "Be right back." The warm spray clumsily wetting down his hair forces Shouta's eyes closed, and the crinkling and spattering of the water droplets hitting the protective bags creates enough white noise to prevent being able to hear much of anything else until the shower door slides open and closed once more, the nearest bottle is popped open, and those large, calloused hands are plucking the stray strands of hair up into a lather. It's not much different than the previous times they've run through this routine, with the main difference being a change in orientation (the bulk of the water streaming down his back, rather than his side), and a tense silence stretching out between the two of them.

As the gentle push of fingertips against his collarbone urges Aizawa to tip his head back into the stream to rinse, he huffs out a bit of a sigh. "What exactly happened last night, Toshinori, you..." Blearily blinking the water away, he frowns up at the other man, who is... suddenly, alarmingly, very close; his extra fifteen inches of height all the more apparent in close quarters. Faltering in his train of thought, Shouta struggles to continue with the accusation, "You were just supposed to be gone long enough to aid the police, Nezu said."

"Yeah, I uh," Yagi tries to collect his varying excuses into something cohesive as he works conditioner into Shouta's roots, a little unnerved at the unwavering stare rather than the expression of bliss he'd grown used to watching during this step. "It had been a while since I'd gotten out to save face and do any hero work, and there I was, watching this petty criminal run by with five purses, and... well... One thing led to another. I kept going until I hit my limit, which is when I paused and saw your message. Here, trade me places while that soaks in," he envelops Shouta's shoulders in each palm and gently man-handles him to the other side of the little stall, stealing the water for himself. Aizawa stares unabashedly as Yagi ducks his head a few inches to fit under the shower head until the long bangs are plastered to his neck, using it as an excuse to avoid that stare as he lathers up his own golden tangle. He blathers on about the various villains with various quirks he'd encountered, and their locations, and how much collateral damage he'd caused in the fights, and Shouta can't tell whether he's trying to distract them both, or to come clean, or ...he truthfully can't be bothered to care at the moment.

In the stark overhead bathroom light, leaning back against the wall of the shower, Aizawa can pick out every detail along Toshinori's body. The new cuts and scrapes rinsing free of crusted blood; the bruises on his jaw and chest, fresh purple in the next day; the old faded scars along almost every inch of his skin; the giant flower of scar tissue puckering his left side (upon closer inspection, Shouta notices, it's not as grotesque as he'd first thought); the lean whip-chord muscles shifting and flexing subtly along each long limb; the faint smattering of golden hairs catching in the water, starting just next to the big scar only to darken and grow coarser as Aizawa eagerly allows his gaze to drift downward as Yagi distracts himself with reminiscing the previous night... The shorter man can nearly feel his pulse skip a beat as he drinks in the sight before him. To be sure, there is nothing little about "little Yagi." In all honesty, this seems to be the most normally-proportioned part of Toshinori's nearly-alien physique, but... it's relative to a giant of a man, and proportions hold little value when Aizawa mentally compares it to one of his own arms, had they not been bound in casts. He gulps, his throat suddenly dry and cheeks heating up in the steam as one of his deeply-suppressed points of curiosity suddenly gets a clear, definitive answer.

As Aizawa had wondered and suspected for years, All Might's dick is definitely bigger than any other he's seen in person... Or in film, for that matter.

With a concentrated force of will, Aizawa licks the water from his lips and drags his eyes away, struggling to pay attention to the words spouting forth over his head. But his effort is futile, as Yagi turns in place with the scrub-poof in hand, bending to grab the bottle of shower gel from the floor, and Shouta's gaze inevitably continues its merry path over the other hero's backside. Those surprisingly-thick thighs give way to well-sculpted glutes, rounding out into a lovely show of cleavage until Toshinori stands up and turns back to Shouta with the lathered scrub, guiding him with one hand to turn in place as he scrubs with the other. Aizawa silently prays to whichever deities may be listening that he hadn't been staring long enough to actually build a physical reaction... If he had, Yagi graciously doesn't call attention to it. Poor Eraserhead watches helplessly as Toshinori follows the act by copying it along his own frame. He tries to keep his mind from racing into unwarranted directions, closing his eyes once more as Yagi half-dances him back in under the water to rinse the foam and conditioner away. With a small, shuddering breath, Aizawa obligingly leans forward when prompted until his forehead rests against Yagi's sternum, nearly melting on the spot as those fingers work across his scalp and down his neck.

And then, all too suddenly, the water cuts off and All Might pulls away, one hand steadying Shouta by the shoulder before it, too, pulls away to grab three fresh towels. "Hey, Shouta, are you alright?" Toshinori glances worriedly at Aizawa, who has grown far too quiet and seems to be swaying slowly on his feet, a blank expression settled upon his features.

The dazed guest snaps out of it at the sound of his name, glancing up with a nod as he steps clear of the slick linoleum and holds still for the toweling. "I'm sure I'll be fine once we finish breakfast. That's all."

"Yeah, I bet!" Yagi grins that familiar ray of sunshine, excitedly hyping up yet another iteration of eggs and toast he'd read about, this time with the eggs cooked into a hole cut in the bread, griddle-fried as a solid combination. He says it has too many dialectical names to know which one to use, but regardless of what it's called, Aizawa enjoys it all the same. But then... he could enjoy just about anything, in company like this.

Chapter 11 (rated M) - Chapter 12 [...] Chapter 14

#boku no hero academia #My Hero Academia #bnha fanfiction #erasermight #slow burn #Behind Every Great Teacher #my writing

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ellebeebee · 7 years

Text

I decided to backtrack a little and write one of the things on my long and neglected to-do list: the marriage between Sabine and the baron, how it progressed and ended. Uuhm, I hope my tinkering the timeline/the way I structured the later parts isn’t too confusing. :) Various other characters make appearances.

6484 words, Baron of Namaire/Revaire!MC, Zarad/Revaire!MC, teen

Four Years and Seven Months

“Thank you, that will be all,” Victoire said.

The handful of maids fussing with the few parcels they’d brought from the Guyenne estate looked up. Two hat boxes and a steamer trunk that if opened would only be half-packed with gowns and dresses leaning towards unfitness for the station of a baroness. A few other boxes. One jewelry case with some of the better pieces Lady Guyenne had been willing to impart to her eldest daughter. It was a good thing the baron had already purchased a new wardrobe for his bride, along with new furnishings, jewelry. A horse the baroness would probably seldom ride. He’d commissioned a new formal garden with a delicate little garden house perfect for tea; it would be finished within the month.

It was good insight for him to make all these preparations. If Sabine and Victoire had come to the Namaire estate with only their little battered cases, it would have incurred the derision of the staff. And in fact they seemed to be doing just that now, with the way the handful of maids were glancing up at Victoire and back to each other.

Sabine turned from the window. She cleared her throat and pointedly arched a brow.

The girls murmured their acquiescence and quietly filed out.

When the door clipped behind them, Sabine looked up at Victoire for a long pause. The arched bow dropped and tightness pulled in around her lips. She exhaled. And she looked far more her seventeen years.

“Thank god,” Sabine murmured, letting herself lean into the window frame.

Victoire advanced on her and gestured with her fingers. “Come. You should rest.”

She groaned, but straightened anyway and turned around.

Victoire unpinned the veil (blue for the girl’s vivid blue eyes) from the back of her hair, tutting. “Really. We sent the things ahead of us. These girls should have had everything put away hours ago.”

Sabine just hummed. The lands rolled away from the estate in pleasant green swells and dips, lightly touched by a tepid, cloud-filtered noon light. The morning had been brighter, with yellow sunlight flooding the small chapel where they’d had the ceremony. Close family and friends only. The baron’s neighbors, a minor noble gentleman and his wife, had attended on his side. Lord and Lady Guyenne and the oldest son, Chretien, had sat for Sabine. It had been small and quiet.

Fingers moving with mechanical swiftness, Victoire unlaced the simple dress the girl had worn, and deposited her of corset and skirts. At the mother-of-pearl inlaid vanity, they unpinned her hair.

Victoire glanced up at her in the mirror. “Are you worried?”

Sabine slid a finger around a curl, twirling it. “About tonight? No.”

Victoire pulled away a set of braids and began unraveling them. Her pale fingers stood stark against dark curls. She remained quiet. It wasn’t in her nature to push for more details; Sabine didn’t expect it and had no compunctions about going on if that was her desire.

“I’ve heard too many of my mother’s stories to be worried about that,” Sabine said, closely inspecting the end of a mahogany lock.

Victoire said nothing, and kept working. When her charge was left in a simple shift that bared tawny, chestnut legs and her hair streamed over round shoulders, Victoire stood and went to draw back the silken blankets from the bed.

Bare feet padding quietly, Sabine crossed the parquet for the enormous and elaborately-carved bureau. It opened to a line of jacquard, damask, chiffon, and great swathes of silk embroidery and beading. She put out a hand and ran it through the dresses. Humming (poorly), her fingers plucked at the different materials, feeling the whisper slide of the silks and the heft of the fine woolens. She moved on to the other cabinet beside it, to the furs. The beautiful, beautiful furs. She sank her palms into the softness.

Sabine closed the cabinet doors. “Do you think I made the right choice?”

“You should rest,” Victoire said. She paused before the pile of their cases. “I’ll have a bath readied for you before dinner.”

Sabine wandered to the sitting area before the empty fireplace; delicately fluted cherrywood and pearled upholstery. She ran a finger over the curved back of the settee.

“I’m not tired, really,” she said.

Victoire popped open the trunk. She leaned back and put her hands to her hips as she considered the contents, most on the verge of being threadbare. It would probably be best to just throw it all out. She glanced up.

“Sabine,” she sighed.

She stood looking up at one of the many paintings in the room: a picturesque Corvali gardenscape.

“There’s no point in regrets now,” Victoire stated. “We have work to do.”

The baroness finally turned back to her.

They’d spent a year getting here. Bribing some shepherd boys to throw rocks under the carriage of the relative of a neighbor of the baron’s, these people being old friends of the Guyenne family. Old enough friends that, should they be laid up in a local inn and coincidentally run into Lady Guyenne and her daughter, they would be obliged to renew their friendship. Thus, a few dinners, an introduction to the Baron of Namaire, and several more dinners and teas and hunts later-- and etcetera and etcetera.

And now-- now that they could afford to dump that sad trunk’s contents into the fireplace and be done with it. Now with all of those fine gowns the girl could at least begin to look the part even if she didn’t feel it. The rest would follow. Look, even now Sabine had something like confidence in her gaze.

She nodded.

“I know,” Sabine said.

She finally went to the bed, and Victoire drew the curtains, already making a mental tally of what needed to be kept from the old life.

Four Years and Six Months

“I simply don’t see the point,” Sabine said.

She leaned into the elbow she had planted on the breakfast table and idly twirled a small spoon about the porcelain walls of her teacup, making random little chimes. Before her spread plates of fresh fruit, bread and cheese, and hard-boiled eggs in their little stands. Across from her sat the baron.

Enzo IV of Namaire’s long frame fit the delicate gazebo furniture with surprising elegance, and his hands manipulated his teacup with surprising grace. Surprising if only on account of his unmistakeable height and spareness in dress and in personal manner. His tailor cut his jackets and waistcoats with clean lines, always in blacks and grays. His pale gray eyes matched the peppering in his trim beard and hair, their blackness offset by his tanned calf’s leather skin. With a sharp click, he put down the cup in his hand.

He considered her. “You don’t see the point of learning how not to sound like the farmer’s daughter at formal dinners.”

She stared back, lips stiff. “That’s pleasant. Quite pleasant of you.”

“You also don’t see the point of sharpening that wit rather than relying on that pout?”

“My pout serves me quite well,” she said, her spine curling self-consciously. “And nothing about Madame Illais or Ser Grenbarrow would ever sharpen a thing of mine.”

He sipped at his tea. Sabine gazed at him for a long time as the silence between them lengthened. The garden around them still held slightly raw edges, with vegetation not quite settled in and nervously holding their boughs apart from one another. As if the damask roses and adolescent wisteria were a party of ladies not yet on good acquaintances. Warm morning light staved off chilly dew, but heat would set in later.

Namaire removed the napkin from his lap and tossed it onto the table. He stood, gesturing to her.

“Come. You’ve been tardy to your economics lesson enough.”

She threw her own napkin down.

“Oh, very well,” she said, taking his arm.

The waiting staff at the perimeter of the gazebo descended upon their breakfast table to whip it clean as the baron and baroness stepped out onto the path back towards the house.

“If you really want me to attend to an economics lesson,” she went on. “You could give me the household books instead. Much more useful, no?”

Her voice attempted a playful lilt.

His gaze slid toward her. “I have told you already. That is not your concern.”

“It’s my right as your wife.”

They stopped in the middle of path, the clicking of their heels silencing. He swiveled toward her.

“Is that as far as your ambition goes, Sabine?”

“What--”

“Tallying up bags of sugar and cabbages, handing out payroll?”

She tilted her chin up at him.

He sighed. “You’re not creating convoluted schemes to keep all your creditors in the dark about each other here.”

Her jaw tightened. “You are not a gentleman.”

“And you are not a lady. Not yet. The house will take care of itself. In the meantime, you ought to listen to my counsel.”

With the hand she had tucked into his arm, he nudged her back along their path. She followed with a small huff.

“Fine,” she stated.

Four Years and Two Months

The blue-emerald silk of Sabine’s train disappeared up into the shadows of the carriage’s interior, and the baron followed after. As the coachman called out and the team pulled them all into a lurching start, Namaire plucked his own hat off, leaving it beside him on the plush bench. He pushed open the small carriage windows on either side. Spilt from the slowly sinking sun, rosey evening light and breezes crept into the tight confines of the vehicle.

Namaire leaned back into his cushions and sighed. “I told you to stay. Comtois would have brought you back.”

“And suffer the gossip? For once you shock me.”

“I’m far too old and rich to care for what the gossips say of me.”

“That’s all very well, but what of myself?”

“You? You are far pretty and young and quite securely married to worry about your reputation.”

Across from him, she choked a bit, hand flying up to her long, tawny neck. She stared at him.

“What?” he demanded.

“You really aren’t feeling well, are you? You just called me pretty.”

He exhaled and turned to the rolling streets outside their carriage window.

“You needn’t look so vexed about it,” she stated. She half-stood, careful of the vehicle’s sway, and moved the black silk hat over to her vacated seat so that she might take its place. “Be assured. I never trust men that pay too many compliments or too few.”

She slipped a gloved hand under the hand he had resting on his knee. Namaire glanced at her. They inspected each other: her full brow cocked playfully, the sweat she could now see on closer inspection at his temple, the play of pinkish shadows across her smooth skin, the thickness of his eyelids. Deliberately, he squeezed her fingers once before removing her hand to her own lap.

“Comtois is a good influence on you,” he said over the surprise in her expression.

She considered him before leaning back into her corner. “Is he?”

The lanterns and tall, pike-like tools of the street lamp lighters whisked by the open windows. Inexplicably, he could smell pine resin and fir trees. Like the winter he spent in the Arlish countryside, riding about with the freezing air burning his nostrils. So many seasons ago.

“We’ll leave for the summer house before the week’s end,” he said. “The heat will soon be intolerable. Take in the shade and the cool air about the lake for a month and come back to town for the season’s close.”

“Very well. I suppose everyone else will be gone soon, too.”

“And I want you to take up a project.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh?”

“There’s a parcel of land adjacent to ours that I’ve left alone for too long. I want you do something with it.”

“‘Something’?”

“Something. Find a tenant or sell it or whatever you can think of. Figure it out. Ask Comtois for help if you like.”

She watched the unrelenting placidity and severity of his expression. Her fingers sought out her little tasseled pouch and loosened the drawstring, pulling out a handkerchief. Despite the unrelenting placidity and severity of his expression, she leaned forward to dab at his temple. The heat was indeed beginning to linger overlong into twilight now that summer waxed full.

“Very well,” Sabine said.

He leaned away. “What is this?”

“A handkerchief, lordship. Quite clearly-- a handkerchief.”

Three Years and Ten Months

After the coolness of the hall, her room’s warmth enveloped him, seeped into the chilled crannies of his woolen outer layers. With the wave of warmth rolling over him came the scent of dried lavender and shepherd’s purse, several bundles of which hung along the mantle with silky ribbons. The fire in the grate leapt and billowed. The parquet floors shone with a dark murkiness, like a pond at night. The furniture was polished, the curtains and velvety upholstery kept free from dust and cobwebs.

Everything was in its place, and was quite as it should be.

The far away clocks deeper in the house rang the midday hour. Her maid, the strange pale one, was not in the room. He approached the four post bed. A pot of yarrow root tea steamed on the bedside table. An empty teacup, more dried lavender, a jug of water resting in an ice bath. He sat on the edge of the bed, and he felt eyes on the back of his neck.

“My lord.”

Sabine looked up at him. She’d woken. Maybe before he walked in, maybe shortly after.

As she shifted to sit up, moving slowly, he reached for the teapot and poured out a cup. He handed it to her, and she accepted with the saucer carefully balanced in her fingers. Their eyes met.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

She turned the cup around in languid circles. “Better than yesterday.”

He nodded. The silence between them grew. His bones itched with restlessness; he hadn’t gone on his morning ride, the same ride he’d taken since he’d turned eleven and his own father had brought him along to cover the hills and gullies their blood knew by instinct. He’d missed plenty of these rides before. Being away for the social season, traveling, illness. But as the years went by it was harder and harder to recover from their absence. As if his momentum became more and more permanent the older he got; his ability for malleability slowly crumbling away.

“Sabine,” he said. He reached out and took one of her hands. “I’ve made a mistake.”

She didn’t say anything. Her warm fingers held his, long, slender fingers-- not even the shadows of callouses lingered under her hands, the traces of the world she’d come from.

“It was a mistake…” he trailed off, his focus going elsewhere. “It needs to be let go. This idea of an heir.”

Her eyes sharpened. “But you… you have no male relatives.”

“I know. Everything will go to you when I die.”

“You-- you just… So what, one misfortune, and you want to give up?”

“It’s not important. I assure you, you will be taken care of.”

“My mother was pregnant twelve times, you know. She had nine children. These things happen.”

“I’m aware. Sabine.”

She paused at his tone. Then she exhaled and shook her head. “So what? You-- alone, without consideration for what others want-- You make the decision and that is the end of the matter?”

He leaned forward to catch and hold her gaze. “I’m sorry. All of this is my fault. You can blame me. I’m sorry.”

She sank back into her feathered cushions, jaw setting.

“For so long, I’ve done what was right. What was necessary,” he sighed. “What was expected of me and my name. But I’m tired.”

He studied her, framed by her dark curls and white linens.

“If it’s a child you want, you can… do as you like. I won’t say anything. I’ll accept it. But it can’t be me.”

“That’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?”

Her lips pressed thin. She put aside the teacup. “I don’t know. I… I don’t know. Just-- yesterday, now this…”

The door opened.

“Beg your pardon, your lordship.”

The strange pale maid, Victoire, stopped in the doorway with a kitchen girl holding a tray standing behind her. Namaire stood.

Sabine tightened her hold on his hand. “Wait.”

He looked back.

Her eyes searched over him. “Is this about your first wife?”

He gave her fingers one last squeeze before bending down to ghost a kiss on her forehead.

“Eat and rest,” he told her, already moving away. “I’ll check on you again later.”

Three Years and Nine Months

She pulled the fur collar of her coat closer. The staff cleaned the room regularly, but not near as often as the rooms actually in use. Blues and pinks from last light painted the objects of the chamber, crawling up the tall empty vaults and over the chill floors. It had not gotten to the point where all things fabric and vulnerable had to be moved elsewhere or covered in case of weevils, dust mites. White shirts and dark jackets and well-used riding habits filled the wardrobes. A pair of oiled riding boots sat by the door, the chestnut leather dull in the blue light, a riding crop leaning against them as if waiting for their owner. Pile of books with places marked.

The desk still had the remains of correspondence littered across it. An open inkwell had dried up with a quill sitting in it. The fireplace was empty.

Over the mantle hung a beautiful cityscape of the old Revairan capital flooded with golden light. An interesting choice. Where most hung their prized portraits, he had chosen a painting of a place that had never existed. At least not in that manner.

There were portraits, of course. Elsewhere in the room. Here, a depiction of the young man who figured in another painting, down in the major library. This one was a few years younger, but it was clearly the same man. The tanned skin, like the underside of leather. The sharp grey eyes. The full and dark hair.

If not for the curl of a smile and the glitter of laughter in his eyes-- clearly comfortable features for the lines of his face-- the man could well be her husband, some decades ago.

She looked away. Various other descendents of the Namaire name gazed down at her from the walls. Some of the lords and ladies stood out as family members by way of marriage, but they all became assimilated into the same expressions and coloring eventually. Would some day come when she herself peered down from a wall, just one out of many other Namaires?

She crossed to the desk. Over the smooth mahogany curls of the desk’s back, a woman’s portrait hung, washed in the demure colors of a winter’s day close. The curtains were already open. She knew Namaire came in here sometimes.

The woman in the painting was older. A few pale lines trailed through her hair which she hadn’t bothered to dye. Or saw no need to. She wasn’t beautiful. But what use was beauty? Sabine’s mother was beautiful, she herself was beautiful, but look where that had gotten them. Either stupid and useless or unhappy and with an unattractive temperament.

She sighed.

“I miss my mother,” she told the empty room.

After some time, she left for the warmer parts of the house.

Years Afterward

“Ah, I see now,” Sabine said with hauteur, the effect a little ruined by the twitch of her lips. “I thought you two invited me to tea for the pleasure of my company. Rather, you wanted to use me for advice.”

Penelope’s jaw dropped, her eyes widening in horror. Cordelia caught on, but still squirmed with being teased, trying not giggle. Giggling-- how it would ruin her dignity.

“Oh, no, of course not!” Penelope said. “I’m always eager to spend time with you-- oh, please don’t think--”

Sabine cut her off and patted her hand. “I’m only joking, dear. And thank you. I’m also always eager for your company. Both of you, dear pets.”

Cordelia considered her with her serious, dark eyes. “If it is too forward of us to ask…”

“No, not at all. Hmm. Well, things as they are-- and we three being so fortunate as to have the choices we do-- I can’t say that one should be stubborn about hoping for some idealized romance. A relationship like marriage takes a great deal of work, and that may be the more important element than any initial infatuation.”

Cordelia nodded. Penelope’s eyes wavered with uncertainty.

Sabine continued. “I would consider any woman fortunate to be permitted the sort of freedom and understanding my husband gave me. We spent the seasons in town where I met many lovely people and made many valuable contacts. Winters on the estate were a bit dull, I suppose, but occasionally we did have friends spends a few weeks with us. I was afforded my own portion of wealth to do with as I pleased. I wasn’t always successful, but I did learn a great deal.”

She sipped at her tea. “All in all, I was fortunate indeed. Respect and space are the better parts of a good marriage between nobility.”

Eight Months

“My lady?”

Sabine rotated her neck to inspect another angle to her face. She pointed out a minuscule smudge in her eye makeup to Victoire.

“Yes?” she called to the door.

It opened a fraction. A maid dipped a knee and straightened.

“His Lordship wishes to call.”

Sabine did her best to keep her face muscles slack for Victoire’s brushes as she answered. “Let him in.”

The door clicked and a chair was moved near her vanity.

“Good evening, my lord,” Sabine said.

“Good evening.”

Victoire finished, moving aside and curtsying to the baron. He placed a wooden box of deep grain into her lap.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Happy Birthday, wife.”

She raised a brow at him. “Really? You actually sound a bit cheerful.”

“I’m not always a decrepit shell of despondency.”

She balanced the box on her palm, feeling its weight. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I’ve been merely adequate in my gifts for the last few years. I think I’m overdue. Open it.”

He handed her a little key and she unlocked the intricately inlaid lid of the box. Emerald velvet lined its interior and the necklace form sitting inside. The necklace itself sparkled; a broad choker of diamonds arranged in a flowering pattern. Worn, it would fall from where the neck met jaw down to the clavicle.

Her finger grazed over the fine-cut stones, and she struggled to find her words. “I… I doubt even the queen has something so…”

“Careful. You’re showing quite a bit of your vanity. But you’ve always been weak to shiny things.”

Her eyes cut to him in annoyance. He merely gestured to Victoire, who lifted Sabine’s hair and pinned it quickly. She pulled the necklace from the box with care and enclosed Sabine’s neck with it.

“Well,” she said, looking into the mirror. “Thank you.”

Namaire nodded. He unfolded from his seat, patted her on the shoulder, and departed the room. Some arrangement downstairs probably called him, or some other task for the evening’s host.

Sabine turned her jaw about in the mirror, watching herself and her angles. Victoire worked to redo her hair to suit the new present. Their eyes met in the reflection.

“Don’t say a thing,” Sabine told her.

“I haven’t said a word,” she said flatly.

Years Afterward

“--and that is the story of my greatest failure as a woman of noble consequence.”

She giggled, the one hand she had free from Zarad’s arm flying up to her face. It took her a moment to realize his laugh was more of a weak chuckle. Turning down another nondescript hedge row of the garden maze, she peered up at him.

“What?”

He quickly smiled. “Nothing.”

“Really,” she said.

He stopped walking. His fingers grazed his chin as his eyes slid away. She felt a turn in her stomach; his nerves made her nervous, but at the same time she felt a flush of pride that he was showing his nerves at all to her. She knew quite well that he wouldn’t be like this if they weren’t alone.

He sighed. “I shouldn’t really…”

“Well, I’m too curious now. You might as well just say it.”

He paused, still with that lingering half-smile. “You… you still call him ‘his lordship’.”

“Oh. And… and that bothers you?”

“No! I mean,” he sighed. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She studied him. The silence between them stretched.

She shifted. “I’m glad you did, but I don’t know what to say. It’s not…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself. I’m sorry.”

“I…” she shook her head. “Look, I’m late to an invitation. Let’s talk about this later.”

“Of course.”

Five Months

In late spring, while they were preparing to leave the estate for town and the social season, he began taking a long siesta on the conservatory’s settee every morning after his rides. An unfamiliar pain had seeped into his back at some point. Teas and unguents did little. Staying home instead of enduring the journey to the capital and the following balls, luncheons, and events tempted him.

He went along anyway, silently perusing a book with his baroness across from him. In town, few raised a brow when Sabine floated about the usual scenes and social circles without him; he had always been averse to excessive company and tiresome conversation.

As the heat of summer rolled down through the valleys into the streets, Sabine left to visit for a fortnight with a friend who’d just had a child. It was early to already be making the migration to the summer homes, but Namaire departed some days after she did for the cooler airs off the lake.

She returned from her visit during a sunny afternoon. Her heels echoed before her approach down the hall outside of the small dining room where he was sitting at a light lunch with the broad wall of patio doors propped open.

“...will be here next week, so please send for more fruit and make sure cook has plenty of pastries ready. And I think we should go ahead and have a pig slaughtered. You mentioned the bacon was low?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And go through all the guest rooms and replace all the old linens-- there you are--”

She swept into the room and to the table, dipping into a quick curtsey. But she stopped a few steps from him. He looked up from his paper.

“You’re back from Odille, then?” he asked. “...What?”

She looked away as a servant pulled a chair for her. She sat and waved away the girl about to put down a place setting for her, as well as all the others in the room. He raised a brow.

She leaned toward him. “Have you lost weight?”

He slapped down his paper and frowned.

“Has no one mentioned anything?” she said, eyeing his plate of picked over food. “You don’t look well.”

“I…” He wasn’t sure what to say. Since her departure he’d only had the company of the summer home servants who were far too leery of him to ever make a comment of a personal nature.

“We’re sending for a physician,” she said.

In the three days it took for a runner to reach the capital and a doctor to make the trip out to the summer house, he fell under a feverish weakness. Tinctures and teas and unguents were provided and the resultant rise and fall of his fever sent him in a whirl of numbingly chill days and scorching sweat-soaked nights. His temperature broke after a week. Sabine had canceled the hosting plans they’d had and checked on him often. At least, he assumed that’s what she did. The majority of times he woke she was beside him.

Although the fever broke, an insistent fatigue plagued him, left him bedridden and unable to stomach much food. The physician stayed on. A good thing as the fever resurfaced. A cycle of inflamed wasting away and tepid recoveries lasted for weeks. When it finally looked as though he was on a definite recovery, Sabine made the arrangements for a slow and careful return to the Namaire estate.

He told her he’d go on alone; she should attend the last events of the season in town.

“No point,” she said. “Anyone worth seeing is long gone. I much more fancy a rest at home. Maybe I’ll actually improve on my embroidery. Or my pianoforte playing.”

She was lying. She was a terrible liar, and never had the perseverance to really become more than proficient at any lady’s skill.

“Your skills include having good taste in dresses and being a good drinker.”

She patted his knee across the carriage. “That’s the spirit.”

A Fortnight Afterward

Victoire paused in the south hall. At the hall’s end, where it created a junction with another hall, two maids passed. Aimee and Lan. Glancing behind her, Victoire reached down and slipped off her shoes with their tapping heels. She backtracked on her stockings to a door she’d passed. Sabine had requested to take tea in the green parlor, and Aimee and Lan would have been the ones sent to clean it. Victoire had the feeling this was an opportunity.

She cut a silent path through empty rooms to the reading room just adjacent to the green parlor, and placed her ear near the corner where a window’s frame met the other wall. It was the best spot to hear into the parlor.

“...don’t see the point. She’ll just go back to using the gazebo or the east drawing room.”

“Well, when you’re the richest woman in the district, I guess you can decide where tea gets served.”

“Not if I have to murd--”

“Shhh. Are you out of your mind?”

“What? It’s just you and me.”

A long pause. Victoire leaned even harder against the corner.

“...just doesn’t make sense, though. For three years they use separate bedrooms, he gets sick, makes a recovery, they suddenly rekindle the-- the-- romance--”

Giggling.

“And he just, bam, kicks it?”

“...It is strange.”

“You know it is. Not to mention, I mean--” The maid’s voice lowered to a lurid hiss. “She, ‘wakes up’ and he’s just dead?”

“I know. I can’t imagine how...”

“It’s more convenient, isn’t it? All of those friends of hers. Having him out of the way, she can do as she pleases.”

“Right? That Comtois man doesn’t look like he’s in a hurry to leave.”

“Still. The baron wasn’t completely himself. Not really recovered.”

“...Recovered enough, apparently.”

More giggling.

Victoire pushed away from the corner. She padded across to the door, exited out into the hall. In front of the green parlor’s door, she dropped her shoes to the floor noisily. With deliberate care, she nudged them with her feet so that she could slip back into them as the parlor’s door swept open. The two maids, wide-eyed, stared out at her.

Victoire glanced at them. “How strange. I was just thinking of taking a stroll, and here my shoes have traipsed off without me. Lucky thing I caught them.”

“Miss…”

“Quite lucky. Who knows where they could have gotten to.”

She swiveled on her heel, feeling their eyes glued to her back as she walked away.

As a child, the adults would say: such a serious boy, he’ll make a good lord one day. His father passed early, and his mother and grandmother ran the estate until he came into his majority. He never attended university. Never cared much for lessons. He regretted that later. The knowledge itself wasn’t hard to come by later. But it took him more time to create connections, which his personality did not help.

But that’s not what he wanted for Alain, decades later. That’s why he sent him to the best schools. Sent him on a tour of all the nations after school. Arranged a spectacular match for him. For all the good it did.

Stupid boy. Getting himself gutted on some scumbag’s blade.

He’d had him too late in life. Things had become harder and harder to recover from. He would dream of the sugared, bitter smell of unripened grapes and the hunched form of his grandmother on her horse. Her black silhouette against the sun and the shadow of the vineyard’s lattices. The way his father’s breath misted before his long beard during those rides. His wife’s hands, un-young and showing slackness in the skin.

His first wife. Alain’s mother.

He wondered sometimes, if he reached that other place and he met her there, what would she say? What a good lord he’d made that day, when he lost Alain.

He’d been a good landlord, he’d known. He’d protected the estates, all their wealth. The heritage of his name. His ancestors could blame him for nothing. Except for leaving the line to die.

He’d tried. But the years had slipped from him, and things had become harder and harder to recover from.

He had regrets, but it seemed inconsequential in the face of time.

The only thing, really, was her. But the girl would be fine. He was sure of it.

Some Hours Afterward

She slipped awake slowly, resisting all along the way. It had become such a habit: curling around her sleep possessively until half the day was spent. And better still, since she was usually free to fling her limbs in empty space, that he lingered for once.

Good. If he had changed his mind, then he could at least afford this as well.

Eyes struggling, she exhaled and shifted. Her head and hand rested on his chest. A gap in the curtains behind her cast a long line of sunlight over the blanket. Her fingers flexed, clenching and splaying across the fineness of his shirt.

She sat up, on instinct. But her instinct, her mind, moved sluggishly and could not prod her body into urgency.

She stared. The cold of his skin pulled at her, at her warmth. Her own movements dizzied her, in relation to his stillness. Her hand reached forward.

“My lord.”

She called for help. Or she heard herself call for help.

The following days blurred.

Years Afterward

She slipped awake slowly, urging herself onward. Her subconscious self. Or part of it, or some form of it, or perhaps not that at all and it was just residual animal instinct that made her grasp for lucidity as if she were drowning and the undertow had its fangs in her. Had she been dreaming within the form of a mermaid, fleeing the pursuit of some terror of the deep? Something Victoire would say.

Her flesh abhorred cold.

“Are you awake?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you alright? You were murmuring…”

She raised her fingers to her eyes, shifting her cheek on his chest. It was very nearly overwarm, but she pressed closer. Closer to the rhythm of his heart’s beat, the vibration transferred through touch.

“I’m sorry. I know that’s your special purview.”

“Oh?”

“Talking my ear off even here.”

He combed through her loose curls, a steady counter-beat to the heart in her ear. The sheer curtains about the bed filtered moonlight in the emeralds and indigos and purples of its elaborate pattern. How much more rare and precious a gift-- the trains and ribbons of the moon, when its appearance was so transient in comparison to the sun, and so stark when beset upon by the night’s darkness. Heady scents of the sea filled the room.

“I don’t know if you want to hear it,” she finally said.

This was untrue. She did know he would hear it, would want to hear anything that she needed to say. But a warning seemed necessary, or at least a buffer for herself.

“Sabine,” Zarad said.

She sighed. “It’s Namaire.”

“Go on.”

“A few months before, he got sick. But god knows if he was hiding pain or something before that. After a few weeks of physicians and medicine and humors, it seemed he’d recovered. And then.”

The immense murmur of the ocean mixed with the sound of their pulses.

“It’s not something I’ve ever told someone,” she said. “It’s not-- I think he knew what was going to happen. Somehow. Not that there was intention, or anything. I think he had a feeling. You hear things like that, don’t you? That people can feel it when the time’s… As if you start to waver here, and the oscillations sink to your bones.

“For years… we used separate rooms. Lived largely separate lives. But those last days, I think he needed an affirmation. That he was living, that he existed. So he… needed me… I guess. It’s hard to think about. To remember. Because it seemed like he was drowning and nothing I could do would help him.”

She continued. “I thought…”

“You thought…?”

He sounded just as uncertain as her, just as much treading on a thin shear of ice.

“I don’t know. He’d lived a full life long before we met. I only knew him for four years. Even if you know someone their whole life, you’ll never know everything. I have no doubt I knew so very little. But-- those last days--”

She rolled over and covered her face.

“I’d wake up and feel like a completely different person in the light of day. And then the nights swept in and the dark changed everything-- I don’t know. I felt that I knew him. At least in those moments. I was never in love with him. But still. It was amazing and frightening to see how fragile a person could be.”

He shifted, and she could feel him hovering with his fingers going to her hair again. “And that morning?”

She removed her hands. “As about as bad as you’d imagine… I’m glad you wake before me.”

“I’m not going to leave you, you know.”

“Good. Despite what the rumors say, I don’t fancy making a career of this widow business.”

In the face of her poor attempt at a blithe tone, he pulled her close and told her he loved her. And told her again. Created a mantra of it, crooned her to sleep again to I love you I love you. Everything else was like those long ago nights; profound and ephemeral but ultimately not as dear and near and real as this. She much preferred a sharper moon that saw her clearly and stayed with her in their travel across sleep’s dream-dark sky.

#7kpp #fanfiction #revaire!mc #zarad #penelope #cordelia #my writing #sabine #it's been a while since i've posted something serious #aha...#don't get me wrong i like writing #but sometimes i hate how guilty i feel when im not really working on anything #and then i feel bad bc the best way to keep writing and to improve #is to /actually/ write #yknow #:////#blegh

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whitedreadlocks · 7 years

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Blog Post 4: Shanghai

Name: White Dreadlocks Date: 10th May 2017 Occupation: Teacher and shit cutter-out-er Location: Zhenjiang, China

Dear the Internet,

I promised a blog about Shanghai and how could I possibly not deliver? (What, like with that Terracotta Army post you never fucking finished? (Shut the fuck up, there were load of them, the end. Anyway, this stream-of-consciousness, neurotic style of writing is messy and unoriginal.))

The water town was about as beautiful as you could expect, even on the cloudy day, even with a hangover. Some other company had tried to poach us the night before and we declined the job opportunity but accepted the shots despite our early morning rise for the bus. The bus didn’t come, the hostel changed their mind last minute about our pre-booked trip, so we spent an extortionate amount on a taxi instead. And it was worth it. The shops were fucking quaint, the water was beautiful, the boat-ride offered the perfect opportunity for selfies, (and also calmly reflecting on the refreshing nature of the sea, of course. We’re writers before we’re millennials.)

Due to our sleep-deprived, hungover state, a plot-point you will see arising regularly in my retellings, we had to sporadically stop for snacks, coffee and sit-downs every few hours; like toddlers who you didn’t want to get too over-excited in case they got tired and cranky later. On one of these sit-downs we found a punk bar, with Sex Pistols and Ramones memorabilia everywhere, union jacks hung up on the wall, cool owners with tattoos and hairstyles where it seemed like vital parts were missing, the whole lot. I loved it. I felt hopeful in Shanghai. Like the present was going to protect me even if I was still nostalgic for the past. I drank a beer (hair of the dog, innit?) ate some chicken nuggets and read through the line-ups on posters of old punk festivals in Shanghai. I decided this could be the place for me.

But this is a White Dreadlocks post and it wouldn’t be White Dreadlocks without a massive fuck up so let me talk about getting home after our admittedly delightful day. There are no fucking taxis around ancient, water cities. This a trip we did not plan, having stormed into a taxi, livid that our bus had been cancelled. We had no idea how to get back.

Now my Chinese is not the best. However, certain basic phrases help me in times like these for example:

1) ‘Excuse me, where is the metro?’ 2) ‘Excuse me, we would like a taxi, we’re going to the train station. Where can we get a taxi?’ 3) ‘Hello, I don’t speak much Chinese. Can you help us?’

All these phrases would be amazingly helpful if the answers to these questions were not:

1) ‘The metro? There isn’t one.’ 2) ‘Taxis? Hmm, I’m not sure I don’t see any.’ 3) ‘No.’

We had no way of getting back and in a state of desperation, walked half an hour back to the water city. There we saw it! A taxi! Except it was empty and there was no one in it.

Across the road there was a friendly-seeming man with nine fingers. He didn’t speak English but I managed to ask him to call a taxi. I speak better than I understand so I couldn’t exactly figure out if the situation had been sorted or not, but he took my phone off me and called many numbers and seemed like the most helpful person in the world. He had no reason to help us obnoxious, privileged foreigners who didn’t plan well for a trip. We thanked him profusely. He handed me back my phone and we were unsure if a taxi was coming or not but we were grateful he’d at least tried. He took out his car keys and started walking away and we figured this was the last we would see of this kind, helpful stranger right up until he crossed the road and unlocked his FUCKING TAXI.

Now I don’t claim to understand much about rage but I understand it’s what I must’ve felt when I unthinkingly stormed after him screaming in my broken Chinese something along the lines of:

‘YOU HAVE TAXI. WE WANT TAXI. WE GO TRAIN STATION. WILL GIVE YOU MONEY.’

This was followed by repeated, angry shouts of ‘WHY?’ while he desperately tried to tell me that he couldn’t take us because of something about the morning, (my Chinese is really terrible.) My friends had gone hysterical and were laughing across the road at our pathetic stand-off and then my phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Wei, ni hao,’ I passed it back to the nine-fingered man. He spoke for a while then took us to the corner of the road to wait for the taxi he told us would be here in ten minutes. He waited with us while it came. I decided he was without a doubt one of the nicest people in the world despite the fact that he had a taxi and for some reason inconceivable could not take us. I offered him a cigarette he didn’t accept.

‘He can’t smoke, he’s lost a finger!’ my friend whispered to me appalled.

‘He has another hand, you fucking moron.’ It was then I realised we were all too stupid to deserve the help we got.

The taxi came. We said our thank-yous and goodbyes. I hugged the nine-fingered, taxi-driver man and promised myself that if ever anyone in the world at any point needed a damn taxi I would call them one, no matter the language barrier, no matter the remoteness of the location. I owed it to nine-fingered, kind, taxi-driver man, our hero and God.

But there’s no fucking chance I’m driving them there myself.

Travelling Quote of the Day: ‘Not all those who wander are lost. But those white girls over there screaming at each other and bitching about phone signal probably are.’

#shanghai #china #travel #blogpost #writing #taxi #whitedreads #please read my stuff #love #from #'white #dreadlocks

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waldowski89-blog · 5 years

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02-02-19 - Work?

Here I am again at my desk with half an hour to waste. I actually would rather use that time writing these diaries than playing an app game. I feel like that can be a waste of time… although I do now crave a go on some.

Eurgh, what can I really write here anyway? I’m at a standstill here. I need to write something creatively. Actually, maybe I could look at doing a competition for writing a short story online. That might be fun. Gosh, I long for my University days. Back when I had some real work to worry about. Not this drivel of mine. Blergh anyway I’m being too depressing. What to do, what to do. This only wasted five mins. I think I will play a couple of apps. It’ll only take ten minutes, I think.

I need to set up my whiteboard too. I’ll take a walk today too. “Take” that always sounded funny to me. How does one take a walk? Certainly not lying down. Okay that was barely even a joke. Sorry. I’m taking the piss as it were.

5 seconds into SeaPort and there’s an ad to double rewards. I wanna watch it for the stuff. Frick though, it’s glitched. I don’t want to watch a three minute ad. Why can’t they sort this out properly before implementing the change? I don’t (well I do really) have the time for this. Gosh I love typing random nonsense. Thank god a thirty-second ad has now loaded this time.

Talking of implementing things, Apple seem to have implemented a thing or stricter grammatical help in Pages. Maybe they’ve seen the ads for that Grammarly thing on YouTube that’s always on. You know the one with the really stilted actors who are probably reading some random stupid idiot’s review from the internet. “I like grammarly” “It’s really good” “My dog has worms” etc…

Thinking of how to get back on Twitter. I make everything so complicated. I want to do a few Gifs that tell a kind of story. Like the terminator regaining its mind or something. I also like the crawling one but that was kind of me during my hospital time. Just crawling on, regardless.

I watched Billy Connolly 1994 this morning. It was good. It kind of gives me nostalgia from my childhood perhaps. Like it’s kind of sunny out too. It’s a bit… almost a bit like the six weeks holiday. I must work though. I don’t know if this counts as work but it feels right at least. At least perhaps. I’m never sure of anything really. It’s quite sad in all aspects… OH SHUTTUP ANDREW WE BOTH KNOW THAT’S BULLSHIT! Just get on with it all. Dumbo. I want some AirPods badly. I know I’d use them all the time. Maybe even when out walking too. They’re quite concealable you see or hard to notice I mean. Good keyboard. It’s not so bad typing on this keyboard once one gets used to it. It feels a little small for me though. I’d like to try out an old laptop I have though. Just to see if it’s any more comfortable. [Edit 13-02-19: This is because of a book I was reading about writing called: “How to Write Your First Novel” by Sophie King. The book mentioned trying different tools, as it were, to write with. Keyboards, pens, etc… Funnily enough, I usually write my blogs out by hand before typing them up. A keyboard is faster, however, as the writer goes on to also say herself.]

[Edit 18-02-19: I’ll put in a quote here from the book… oooh, this is like university again. King (2014: 10-11) writes:

“Writing Tools Personally speaking, I write best on my laptop. In fact, I can’t write very well on paper any more. But that’s because I’ve been using my keyboard for years now thanks to my original training as a journalist. I find it faster - my fingers fly across the letters in a way they couldn’t if I wrote on paper and that means my pace is more immediate and I can get my ideas out without forgetting them.

The golden rule about writing on a keyboard is to always, always, back up. This means saving your work somewhere else apart from your computer in case it breaks or is stolen. One tip is to email yourself with your novel file. You should then be able to access this from another computer if something happens to yours. I do this - and I also email it to my daughter with the words DO NOT READ! Alternatively, you could save it to a memory stick, although you need to make sure you don’t lose it.

However, I have friends at the top of the Bestseller lists who can only write on paper. They then type up afterwards. Some people pay others to do that for them, although obviously this is going to cost. However - and forgive me if this sounds basic - an agent and publisher won’t consider a piece if it isn’t typed.”

That was a long bloody quote but I believe most of it was relevant. It’s 19-02-19 now… no joke. It was already late anyway.]

This is almost a Tumblr a day speed. JUST WRITE PEOPLE! WHATEVER IT MAY BE ABOUT IT DOESN’T MATTER! I want this to be inspirational in a kind of way. Not just dreary drivel but like I’m slowly getting somewhere. Somewhere maybe out of my comfort zone but safe. If you know what I mean. Like a steady income job kind of way… hint hint. Getting paid for diary entries. How luzurious. Ha Lazurious. I meant Luxurious.

I think also the barrier may be that I think it won’t go anywhere. As a dream it stays perfect and the “what if” can be a good outcome. Reality has a way of sucking life out of you sometimes. In any case let’s move on. To what I don’t know.

YouTube has automatically gone onto Pogo music. It’s really good music and the edits are amazing. I’ve linked them before on Twitter but I could put a few at the end here too. Yup (this makes me happy), another Tumblr here has just formed by luck and happenstance. I don’t even need to release this yet. I can stack them. I definitely want to hand write one at some point too though. For this Wednesday. That’s 6th February 2019 dependent on when you’re reading this. I love all this because it feels somewhat productive. Don’t judge me too harshly please. This is what I spend my time doing I just never feel confident in publishing any of it. I have like six-thousand notes on my phone too. Most of which are jumping off points (harhar) and ideas for short stories. I should work through all that too. This IS my work now. I love it and you. NOW SHUSH MUSHY.

Anyway, wow, from The Terminator (which I must watch again) to all this mushyness. AHEM. now I’m stuck on what to write. Stream of consciousness this is. Oh that’s a point, I want to be doing Waldowsky Readses. So that will include maybe Jane Eyre for starters I believe and my Tumblrs when I get around to it all. I’d like to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland too. Talking of Pogo that’s what they use in their vids sometimes. I love when Alice says: “That explains the troubles that I’m always in.” For me it’s heartbreaking. A realisation of one’s predicament in life or just existing I mean. That explains it and she tears up. It’s like (MGS REFERENCE INCOMING) when Otacon says: “It’s no use.” Like fighting as hard as one can and then grinding to a slow halt. Although it’s like settling. Like a night of struggling and then the sun rises. You just pip the post. That’s what it takes. All until you cannot fight anymore and settle in. Acceptance of one’s position in the world. In any case, shuttup now thats just over one thousand words. BIG HUG! See you sometime soon on here. On the line.

My name’s Waldowski/y and thank you for reading this, whoever you may be.

I may explain the Waldowsky thing later on. For the time being let my reasoning be that I just think it looks better that way. It suits me that way. You can pronounce it how you like by the way but it simply can be exactly the same. Or with an emphasis on the SKY. That sounds nice, wall-doe-sky. It sounds a little silly which is fine and suits me perfectly too. Silly is good. Weird Al oh yeah Grumps had him on that I haven’t watched okay thats’s the end I’ve gotta go now… not really but shush. Join in the charade. DARE TO BE STOOPID!

Bibliography (oooh, spangly):

King, S. (2014) How to Write Your First Novel, Robinson.

Links:

POGO - Bloom

POGO - Carpet Ride

POGO & JEESH - The Trouble

POGO - Grow Fonder

POGO - redruM

Bonus

0 notes