#anyway yet again mountain climbers are stupid

[turksichore-ex]

Actually, now that I think about it... people die climbing around a cave or cave diving in specific areas and those areas get sealed off... but mountains? Even if someone died like 3 minutes ago they give you the go ahead.

#/elena #I mean I guess the cave thing stops kids from wandering in but like... maybe not? #like the one guy died in nutty putty and his skeleton is still there and so they blocked it off #but if it was everest the other spelunkers would just use his body as a landmark of where not to go #anyway yet again mountain climbers are stupid #((im coping with elena and my favourite subjects dont @ me))

[kiwi-bitchez]

Permafrost

Chapter 2: Wrinkled Bedsheets

Read chapter 1 here! or on my AO3

Peter Parker x Reader

word count: 5,234 (sorry, couldn’t stop myself)

Warnings: SMUT, its just smut. that’s all.

Summary: You have just learned that Peter is Spiderman, and he’s excited to show you his bedroom in the tower. Smut ensues. Essentially porn with minimal plot.

You lean back against the wall, arms crossed over your chest, shaking your head. You could not fucking believe it. Your eyes follow Peter as he walks off the stage with the other Avengers, shaking the hands of your boss and the other mountain guide workers. You suddenly felt a strange combination of embarrassment and confidence. You had just given a mind-blowing orgasm to a fucking superhero, but you also hadn’t realized that for the first three hours of the night. Still spaced out, thinking of the night’s prior events you failed to realize Peter walking directly towards you. “Hellooo, earth to y/n,” he jokes, waiving a hand in front of your face, “busy thinking about me, huh?”

“Sorry, sorry, I… just feel kind of stupid,” you answer, finally looking up at him. “Hey, no, back there that was… that was great, so fucking great, don’t feel like..” he starts “Not that you dummy,” you punch his arm and shoot him a grin, “I certainly don’t feel stupid about that. Why didn’t you tell me you were…” “I just liked the feeling that you liked me as a person and not just because I’m famous or an Avenger or whatever,” he looks down, speaking softly. “Hey,” you lift his chin up, “you are fucking cool and your dick is kind of huge, and I was going to suck you off in that closet either way,” you joke, causing him to crack a smile. “Can I get you another drink? Maybe show you around a little bit?” He asks, hoping you wanted to stick around a little longer. You nod and a big smile flashes across his face. You had just thought about leaving and letting this be a fond memory, an interesting story to tell your friends, but the way he smiled at you and grabbed your hand made this feel more important than some hookup at a party. He drags you over to a large round table occupied by some intimidating figures. Before you could realize what was going on, Peter was introducing you to some people you had only ever seen fighting aliens on the news. “This is y/n!” Peter exclaims to the group, “She works for the mountain guide company that’s taking us to Antarctica.” “Very interesting, will you be joining us there?” Bruce Banner inquires, seeming to actually want to know. “No, probably not. Definitely a job for older, more experienced climbers,” you laugh, “I just feel lucky to have been invited to this party.” You feel like an ant amongst giants, a peasant next to gods, but you try to keep your cool and laugh along with the casual conversation of the table. They talk briefly of the upcoming mission, not saying much that you don’t already know. Occasionally one of them, usually Bruce or Steve would ask you a directed question to make you feel included in the conversation. The night is starting to slow down, most of the guests clearing out by this point. Peter nods his head away from the table, signaling you to follow him. “Can I show you around a little?” he asks, “and I believe I do still owe you something…” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, making you laugh. “Peter you really don’t owe me anything,” you say, leaning on him, “I wanted to do that earlier. I liked doing it.” You bat your eyelashes a little and lick your lower lip. Peter walks you around the winding hallways of Stark Tower, rambling nonstop about the building, all the rooms, the Avengers, what they do on a day to day basis. Some of what he said flew right by you, and other parts you actually found quite interesting. Most of all you liked seeing him talk about something he was so clearly passionate about. He was newly an Avenger after all, and you’re sure it takes a while for the excitement to wear off. The two of you had made your way up to one of the top floors of the tower before you realized you were at Peter’s door. “This is my room, my room here anyways,” he tells you, a nervous energy in his voice, “I didn’t mean to imply anything earlier. I want you to know that if you don’t want to do anything, you don’t have to, I was just thinking…” you cut off his stream of consciousness with your lips on his, gentile, but enough to tell him you were still interested. “Peter,” you look at him dead in the eyes, “I want to go in your room. I want you to kiss me, I want you to touch me, and I want you to…” your voice trailed off “Oh thank god,” he says, capturing your lips again, mumbling into you, “I really, really fucking want you.” He fumbles with the door, eventually leading you through it and into his small but cozy bedroom. It was generally clean other than the strewn papers all over his desk and open books haphazardly dotting the room. He moves quickly over to his bed, sitting on the edge nervously as you looked around his room. Walking over to him you place your legs between his, standing above him, positioning yourself exactly as he had stood over you earlier that evening. His strong hands grip behind your thighs and pull you into his lap, causing your tight dress to ride up considerably. Peter was still seated at the edge of the bed, but now with you straddling his hips, lips melting into his. “I still haven’t got to see you out of this dress yet,” he whispers into your open mouth as his hands move up from your hips up to your waist. You pull away from his kiss and lean back to take your hair out of its updo. It fell softly around your shoulders, a few stray pieces making their way in front of your face. He runs his hands through your messy locks, comfortably finding their place tangled in your roots. Although you wanted to jump his bones here and now, you knew that this wasn’t just a quick fuck. The bulge growing in his pants gave you something to grind against, causing him to squirm a little underneath you. You wanted him to rip your dress off in a fit of passion, and you could tell that he wanted that as well. However, this dress was perhaps the most expensive piece of clothing you owned, and the complicated mess of buttons and zippers that kept it perfectly snug to your figure were proving to be an obstacle. Getting up from his lap you kick off your shoes and start to make work on getting yourself out of your dress. “Sorry,” you begin to explain, “dresses like this always have a ridiculously difficult zip and snap mechanism. I didn’t expect you to know how to maneuver your way around that.” You laugh a little, easing up the harsh sexual tension that filled the air like thick smoke. He watched you with hooded eyes, his tongue sticking slightly out between his teeth as he watched you wiggle your way out. Before it could fully register to either of you, you were standing in front of him completely naked. Your underwear slipped off with your dress, and you had no bra to remove in the first place. You kicked your dress away from your ankles and looked over to him, eyes instantly meeting. You didn’t have to wait long for a sign to go over to him. He reaches out and takes your hand, slowly moving his touch up your arm. “You…,” he begins to say something but his words trail off as his hands wander from your arms to your waist, up to your shoulders, “are so freaking beautiful.” You giggle a little and tuck your head into your shoulder, hiding the bright red that was taking over your cheeks. “I knew I was gonna like you better without that dress on.” He pulls you into a kiss again, this one was a lot softer, he was taking his time with you. Although you were both starving for each other he wanted to wait, he wanted to make you feel good. Until this moment, you hadn’t realized how nice his hands were. They were much larger than yours, covering a vast amount of territory when he grabbed your waist. They were strong and steady and warm. You didn’t want him to stop touching you for anything. In a quick motion that caused a short gasp to escape you, he lifted you and swung you around so you were now positioned underneath him on the bed. Your limbs flopped down like they were wet rags, and your hair spilled all around your face. He positioned his still clothed body over yours, taking your face in his hands as he kissed you, tongue slipping easily into your mouth. His leg was positioned in between yours, giving your throbbing core something to make contact with. You wrap your arms around his neck, locking your heads together for the moment being. His hands that you were quickly growing to love made their way to your boobs, finding a comfortable handful that he playfully squeezed. You arch your back a little as he takes one of your nipples between his rough fingers, rolling it slightly causing it to stiffen up. You moan into his kiss as he continues to make work on your chest, finding you let out a little whimper every time he squeezes your nipple between his fingers. As you let out another noise, he presses his leg into you slightly, increasing the needed contact between him and your dripping center. “You like that?” he asks you with a slightly cocky tone, as he obviously already knows the answer. “Fuck,” is all that you can say or think in a breathy tone as he presses his hips further into yours, belt buckle coldly pressing into your soft skin. “Can I touch you?” his hand hovering between you, ready to make contact. “Please, Peter, please.” Before the phrase is out of your mouth your tongue meets his, his hand now making contact exactly where you need it. The sight of his long fingers running up and down through your folds, gathering your wetness between them, was almost enough to send you toppling over the edge. He is moving back now, his button-up no longer pressed against your arched chest. He positions himself back on his knees between your legs as his hands make slow and steady work of your pussy. Looking into your eyes for silent permission, he watches as your eyes flutter back mouth gaping open as he slips a finger into you. His thumb rubs soft circles on your clit as his long digit curls its way inside of you. “Peter, I...,” unable to complete your thought, you moan out his name as he slips a second finger into you. Your hips lift slightly to move against his hand, your motions almost completely out of your control at this point. “Y/n,” Peter looks at you, his voice much steadier than yours, “I want to taste you, so fucking bad.” You roll your head to the side and look down at him as he kisses a soft trail across your thigh. You moan out, not in pleasure but in need. He leaves open mouthed kisses all around you, but never where you want him. Moving his thumb away from your clit, but keeping his two middle fingers still slowly pumping inside of you he finally brings his mouth to your pussy, licking a wide stripe up the middle before latching his lips around yours. Although you wanted to watch his every movement, take in the sight of him completely devouring you, you couldn’t help but throw your head back in pleasure. A nonstop string of moans left your mouth, his name over and over with the occasional profanity, but mostly just your heavy breathing and whimpers. The sight of him between your legs, still in his formal attire from the party, his hair a mess from your hands constantly running through it and tugging at his roots made you swoon. His eyes flicker up to meet yours, his nose firmly pressed into the soft flesh above your center. “Oh my god Peter I’m going to…,” your body beginning to writhe against his tongue as you felt your orgasm grow closer, “fuck, fuck, Peter you are gonna make me come, please don’t stop.” The two fingers inside you start to curl against your upper wall a little harder now as he picks up the pace. His lips still latched around your clit, tongue flicking and sucking on you, driving you over the edge. One of your hands reaches down to his hair, needing something to grab on to, while the other stayed firmly pressed against your chest. Your back fully arches, giving you that extra force pressing you into his mouth. Your legs start to shake and he holds one down with the hand that’s not occupied pleasuring you. It felt as if he had been slowly and carefully pouring himself into you all night and now you were fully overflowing, and he was not letting up. You contract around his fingers and sit up slightly, your orgasm fully taking over your body movements. “Holy fuck Peter I’m…” not that you needed to tell him, as your whole body was moving with the waves of your pleasure, “Peter I’m coming, fuck.” He groans slightly into you, vibrations adding to your pulsing climax. Your firm grip around his hair lets loose a little as you relax your body. You flop back, body going fully limp as he pulls his two fingers out of you, but still leaving soft kisses on your clit. “Fuck Peter that was...” you muster up the energy to say, still completely out of breath, “so, so, so fucking good.” “Hey, I told you,” he says, wiping the glistening fluid away from his mouth and chin, “I owed you one from earlier.” He winks at you, sending more shocks of arousal to your core despite the sarcastic and cocky attitude. You had had a nice back and forth throughout the night, finding that his sarcasm and humor met yours. You weren’t expecting him to be so forward and confident in the bedroom though. He struck you more as the quiet nerdy type. His attitude toward making you feel good and taking his time with you came as a surprise, but certainly not a bad one. Although he had his moments of confidence, he did let the awkward nerd slip out occasionally. “But that was, like, good for you right? I did an okay job??” he asks with genuine concern. You sit up to meet your face with him, taking his face between your hands.

“Peter,” kissing him between words, finding his mouth to be slick and warm, but you liked it, “that…was the best…fucking head I have ever…received in my whole…goddamn life.” You look at him dead in his big brown eyes, a smile creeping up on his face. “And now,” you say lying back onto the bed, “I really, really want you to fuck me.” You reach up and stroke the rock hard bulge in his pants, grabbing at his shaft through his clothes. “You need to catch up with me Parker,” you quip as you start making quick work of the buttons on his shirt. He undoes his tie and sits up on his knees so you can have better access to his belt buckle. He slips out of his shirt and white undershirt, revealing a beautifully toned chest and abs. You were focusing on his belt and zipper, and had yet to realize the godlike body that was directly above you. Distracted by the tent in his pants, you didn’t look up until you found his hand cupping the side of your face. Your eyes widen at the sight of him, mouth opening slightly only to be captured by his in a kiss. This was not slow and gentle as it had been before. He was hungry for you. He wanted you. Not bothering to let you finish taking off his pants he moves you back flat onto the bed, one hand firmly on your jaw and the other moving back in between your legs. “Peter, fuck I…Peter I need you,” you whimper into his neck before latching your mouth to his hot skin. Your hands wrapped around his strong biceps, feeling his muscles flex underneath your touch. “You need me?” Peter asks, now moving between your neck to sensually kiss that magic spot between your jaw and your ear. “Tell me what you need, tell me exactly what you want,” he whispers in a deep tone that sends shivers down your spine. His hips were gyrating into you, the tip of his cock once again poking out of the waistband of his boxers. His pants had slipped down to his knees, and his underwear was not leaving anything to the imagination. “Peter,” you moan a little, but decide to play this game with him a little, if he wanted to tease you he would have to take it back as well, “Peter I want you in me. Ever since I saw your cock earlier, ever since I had it in my mouth, all I could think about was how you would feel inside of me.” You let every dirty thought you had all night escape your lips, rubbing your body against his and making him groan with anticipation. You bite your lip and look up at him, neither one of you able to keep it up for much longer. Reaching into his nightside table he pulls out a condom. You were slightly relieved that you didn’t have to be the one to ask, taking if from him and offering to put in on him yourself. He slips out of his underwear and pants, tossing them somewhere across the room. You had seen his dick earlier, but the sight of him completely naked was something else entirely. You tried to focus on the task at hand, the condom, but couldn’t help your wandering eyes from burning holes into his perfect body. You took control for a second, moving his shoulders to signal that you wanted him to lay on his back. Raising an eyebrow, he watched you with a sensual look in his eye as you moved on top of him, positioning yourself to sit down on his vertical cock. “I’ve been thinking about this all fucking night,” his hands moving to your hips, guiding you down onto his fully erect member. You let out a throaty moan as you sink onto him, his size stretching your walls a little. Your hands come down to his chest as you position yourself to start riding him. Your hips rising up a little bit only to sink back down. “You are so fucking perfect,” Peter says, almost lovingly, as he starts to move up into you, meeting your pace with his. His hands gripped firmly on your hips helped you bounce up and down on him, grinding your clit into his pubic bone. You lean forward and start to kiss his neck, up and down its length from his ear to his collarbone. His hand maneuvers its way between you and finds its place on your clit once again. The tight and hard circles he’s rubbing into you cause the knot in your stomach to turn and tighten. “Peter, fuck, please make me come again,” you plead into his neck, feeling his pace quicken. “I want you to come on me,” he replies, out of breath but not tired, “fuck y/n I want to feel you.” With that you lurch your body up, now sitting straight up on him as your second orgasm of the night hits you like a bag of rocks. Your legs tighten around his torso and your head whips back as his name comes out of your mouth over and over. He can feel you pulsating around him, your juices dripping between your two bodies. The way you are rocking your hips against him, riding out your orgasm is getting him there. “You look so fucking good like this y/n, you’re gonna make me come soon.” His hips snap up into you repeatedly, causing you to bounce in unison down on his cock. Your orgasm still making waves in you, you try to meet his pace and fuck yourself onto him. Lip tucked between his teeth, his eyes squinted shut as he plows a few more powerful thrusts into you before filling up the condom. “Y/n I just, fuck, I just came, I’m…” You lean down and kiss him deeply, your sticky body pressing fully against his. You grind against him a little, just to tease before lifting yourself off him completely. You flop back down onto him, face burying into the crook of his neck. “Fuck y/n that was…” “Yeah,” you respond before he can even finish his thought, “it really fucking was.” You lay there for a moment, just basking in the post orgasm feeling. You could have fallen asleep right then, your body perfectly tangled with his, but you knew you should probably go. Too afraid to ask if he wanted you to stay or not, you turn to him deciding to ask, “Where is there a bathroom I can use?” Removing his arm from underneath your head, he directs you over to a door by his closet to a small bathroom. Shuffling over to it, not bothering to take any of your clothes, you slip into the small room and sit back on the toilet. You close your eyes and replay the events from tonight back in your head. You weren’t really a hookup type of person, and the fact that you had just slept with a fucking superhero was still beyond you. You pee, wash your hands, and splash some cold water on your face before gathering the courage to go back out there and meet him. You exit the bathroom and see Peter sat up against his headboard, legs splayed out beneath him. What you weren’t expecting to see was his cock standing fully erect again. Pressing flat up against his stomach. You walk over to the bed, sitting down on the edge and looking at him with a mix of confusion and concern. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, gesturing to his raging hard on, “it’s not you, well it is you. But it’s a Spiderman thing. I have, like, a stupid short refractory period and dumb endurance, so it usually takes a while to get rid of this,” he explains moving his boner so it flopped down and back up to his chest. The way he talked just did something to you, sent all sorts of feelings to your body. He was so awkward yet confident and cool at the same time? He was funny and smart, he made you laugh and he made you come like no one else has…You snap out of your daze and seat yourself back on his lap, straddling him as you had been minutes before. You reach down in between you two and start to stroke his cock, pumping it in your hand. “I really mean it y/n” Peter says, closing his eyes in pleasure, “you really don’t have to do anything, you’ve already made me feel so good.” “But what if,” you start to say before shifting your body back, sliding down his legs so you were now eye level with his cock, “I really want to.” You lick a stripe up the underside of his shaft while making eye contact, waiting for his response. “Fuck,” he grunts out as you take his head in between your lips, “I’m not gonna stop you if you really want to.” You swing your leg around so that you were seated on one of his legs, back arched and his cock in your mouth for the second time that night. With every movement of your head bobbing up and down on him, your body moved against his leg, rubbing your still dripping pussy against his tough skin. “Fuck y/n,” he moans out, “that’s so fucking hot.” You concentrate on your breathing as you try to take as much of him as possible, his tip sliding against the back of your throat. You move your tongue against his underside as your lips continue to move up and down. You continue to grind against his leg, providing a less intense but lengthier orgasm for yourself. A steady stream of pleasure rippling through you as you continue to suck him off. “Mmmmm,” you moan onto his dick as your orgasm reaches its peak, the sound of your pleasure making him closer. His thighs tense underneath you and begin to twitch a little, signaling you that he’s close. You pick up the pace, continuing to grind yourself against his leg and ride out your orgasm, taking him as fast and as deep into your throat as your mouth will allow. “Holy shit y/n, you’re gonna make me come again,” his legs flexing and twitching around you. You keep him deep in your mouth as he comes, quickly swallowing him up. You continue to slowly pump him, licking up the come that was dripping down his shaft. You release his head with a pop and look back up at him with lustful eyes. “You’re wild,” he laughs a little, “where the fuck did I find you.” “Downstairs if I remember correctly.” You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand before laying down next to him. You lean into him for a moment, resting your head against his shoulder. Part of you wanted him to stroke your hair and kiss your forehead, the other part of you wanted him to get up and help you collect your things to go. You lay there for a few minutes in silence, just enjoying the feeling of his skin against yours. You turn to him, unsure of what to say. Although it doesn’t end up mattering, as his eyes are closed and his breathing gets deeper and deeper. You slowly get up, causing him to slump over a little bit into his pillow. You smile as you tiptoe across the room, slipping your underwear and dress back on quietly. You grab your bag and shoes before turning to look back at him one last time, asleep with his mouth slightly ajar. You wanted to leave your number, but chickened out at the last moment, closing his door behind you. He probably only thought of you as a one night stand, and the sinking feeling of not leaving your number was nowhere near as bad as the feeling you’d experience if you did leave it and he never called. He’s a freaking Avenger for god sakes, he probably doesn’t have time for things like that. You should just feel lucky to have had the time with him that you did. You close your eyes and press your back against the hallway, putting on your shoes and straightening yourself out. Completely unsure of how to get out of the building, you get in the closest elevator and let it take you down a few floors. You arrive at what appears to be a large living room and kitchen set up. Not what you were looking for, but a glass of water sure wouldn’t hurt. You walk over to the sink, filling up a cup with tap water, trying to stay as quiet as possible. You felt like you were intruding, like you were breaking into someone’s house for a drink. You slug down the water and place the cup in the sink. “Can I help you?” a stern voice from behind you asks. “Shit, fuck, I’m sorry, I,” you start to explain as you turn around to see Tony Stark, “I, umm, I was here with Peter and I was just getting a glass of water before going home. I’m on my way out I swear. I’m sorry if I woke you Mr. Stark, sir” “It’s ok, the exit is on floor B,” he says, the edge was gone from his voice, “You were here with Peter? You were here for the party?” “Yeah, I, umm, I work for the mountain guide company,” you felt as if you were being interrogated by the FBI even though he was casually sat at a bar stool in his bathrobe. “Can I call you a cab? Or give you a ride home?” he asks, noticing your slightly disheveled appearance. “Oh no, that’s really ok, my hotel isn’t far from here I can totally walk. I wouldn’t want to be a bother. I’ll be on my way out and you can go back to bed, sorry.” “I don’t do much sleeping anyways, and you are in no position to turn down a ride home from me.” “You really don’t have to,” you start to say, trying to make your way back to the elevator. “I know I don’t, come on,” he joins you in the elevator and presses a button that brings you underground to a parking garage. You follow him nervously up to a car that probably cost more than your parent’s hose. The door swings up above your head and you step in, placing your bag at your feet. “So you were hanging out with Peter,” Stark asks suggestively as he starts up the car. “Yeah, I, umm, I met him at the party, he’s really, really nice.” You tell him the directions to your hotel, only a handful of blocks from the tower. Your boss had splurged and gotten a block of hotel rooms for the event. “Peter is a good kid,” he starts, “I saw him introducing you to everyone at the party, he seemed to really like you.” “Yeah, we only just met but it was nice of him to introduce me to all his, umm, coworkers,” talking casually about your hookup to a billionaire superhero was not coming very easily to you. “You said you work for the mountain guide company? Why aren’t you coming to Antarctica with us?” “Oh, I wasn’t asked to. Stephen and Eric are going, they are really experienced, you couldn’t have hired better climbers,” you felt like you were rambling, but he was being nice and seemed to actually be listening, “I’ve never even been to Antarctica, not that it’s a super common vacation destination but...” “Would you want to?” “Oh jeez well, yeah I’m sure someday. It would be cool to explore the terrain out there,” you were unsure of what he was getting at, so you just filled the dead air with noise. Pulling up to the front of your hotel you quickly thanked him a few too many times and gathered your things. Hopping out onto the curb Tony called to you before closing the door, “It was very nice to meet you y/n, I’m sure we will be seeing a lot of each other very soon.” And with that he sped off down the dead New York City street, leaving you standing in front of your hotel, heart racing and slightly confused.

#peter parker smut #spiderman smut #peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #marvel smut #marvel fanfiction #tom holland #peter parker

[tanadrin]

Reordberend

(part 19 of ?; first; previous; next)

“Careful!”

Andrac, a massively-built young man with a great bushy beard, caught Katherine as her foot slipped; the rocks up here were ice-covered and slick in places, and even where they weren’t, it was hard to find a good footing. The last time Katherine had done any real hiking was years ago, in northern Italy, and there it had at least been sunny and warm. But Andrac and Eadwig had promised her dragons; how could she pass that up? More importantly, they had promised a way to maybe get her augs working again, or at least figure out what was wrong with them.

They were six days from the High Settlement, although between the treacherous terrain of the mountains and the darkness, it was probably not so far as it felt. Not long after Katherine and Ælfric had returned from the shipwreck on the coast, a party of scavengers had come back from a trek over the mountains; they had been visiting the ruins on the coast, far away down in Oates Land--the Hills of Broken Houses, to the Dry Valleys People--where they got most of their high-strength metal, the stuff that made for the best knives and chisels. A landslide had forced them to take a new route over the Transantarctic Mountains, and in the crossing they had found that rarest and most valuable thing of all: dragons.

Dragons? Katherine had asked. Dragons, the scavengers confirmed. Eadwig, Andrac’s brother, had nodded knowingly. Katherine demanded an explanation. Long ago, Eadwig had said, not long after the People had built their first houses in the Valleys, strange ships came to the coast. Great ships, that could be seen for miles off; they let smoke into the sky, and many men came ashore. They brought with them great machine-bones, which they assembled into hulking beasts; and they set those beasts loose on the glaciers, hunting for iron and gold and other treasures. At first they roamed the coast and the hills only; and then as time went on, they ranged further inland, and deeper into the mountains, high into Victoria Land. They sniffed out wealth in the ground and burrowed into it, digging it up for the men-from-the-ships; but they soon became a terrible danger to the People. The beasts were made to roam a land considered uninhabitable, devoid of people. Hunters who strayed into their path were easily killed. On more than one occasion, their path threatened to take them through the Valleys, potentially razing any settlement they came across. Only with great effort, and the loss of many lives, could they be crippled or destroyed, and such a catastrophe averted. You know. Dragons.

Over the centuries, many of these old beasts slowed, then ceased to move altogether. There were sometimes rumors, hunters who saw what looked like one of them moving far off in the distance. But they were considered much less of a threat now. More importantly, sometimes you could salvage things off their corpses you could find nowhere else: they were resilient, made to last decades on their own, made to repair themselves and stay in touch with the ships off the coast; some of the sharpest weapons and most useful machines the People possessed had been cobbled together from the bodies of these ancient beasts. Andrac and Eadwig got it into their heads to put together an expedition to the place the scavengers had described to them; they talked excitedly with Katherine and Leofe and the other villagers about it, and Katherine realized eventually that they wanted her to go with them.

At first, she laughed. “I don’t know anything about machines,” she said. “I’m no good to you.”

“No. You have to come,” Andrac said. He tapped his head. “For this.”

“You can tell me all about it when you get back. I look forward to hearing your tale.”

Andrac shook his head. “No, no. It’s not about the story.” This time he tapped the side of Katherine’s head. She made a face at him. “Thing in your head. The device. You want to fix it?”

“My augs? What does this have to do with my augs?”

“The dragons are old, but cunningly wrought. Many subtle devices. The old stories say, the men of the ships spoke to them with spells.”

Katherine was getting used to the metaphorical way the Dry Valleys People sometimes spoke. They used the language of poetry and magic for the technology of the outside world; it wasn’t that they were superstitious. Quite the opposite; but these were things largely outside their day-to-day experience, and so they used the words of things old and remote to them to describe them. Spells usually meant computers were involved somehow.

“They did not make the spells with their mind or hands,” Andrac added. “They used their heads. Like you.” He gestured at Katherine’s head again. Actually, the core aug systems were located in a little case at the base of her brain stem, in her neck; but close enough. She got the picture.

She was skeptical, but Andrac and Eadwig were insistent. There was a decent chance the main systems of the prospecting platforms could be reactivated; if so, there was a decent chance Katherine could run at least a basic diagnostic on her cybernetics. That was a chance it was too tempting to pass up, she decided. Hence, being in the mountains with Andrac, Eadwig, and a dozen other adventurous young men who wanted to see a dragon for themselves.

Katherine straightened up, found her footing, and kept going. She was near the middle of the pack; Eadwig was out ahead, scouting the way, and an extremely enthusiastic youth named Ceolred, who couldn’t have been a day over sixteen, was bringing up the rear. He was given the brightest lantern, so everyone in front of him could see where they were going; it cast a soft, warm light ahead of them.

“Hey! Almost there!” Eadwig’s shout bounced off the rocky slopes and slowly died in echoes; Katherine could just about make out his lantern-light on the top of the slope they were climbing. Already her lungs were burning and her chest felt like it was going to explode; the difficult footing wasn’t making things easier. She picked up the pace anyway. Better to get it over with. Andrac, beside her, was also breathing pretty heavily, which at least made her feel like she wasn’t the only one having no fun.

Before she’d left with the expedition, Katherine had had what was by far her most mysterious interaction with anybody here to date, including the ones from before she had any language in common with them. And strangest of all, it was with Leofe. She’d noticed after the trip with Ælfric that Leofe seemed to be avoiding her; at first, she thought she’d just been busy. Leofe’s usual role in the village was not taking in wayward strays like Katherine; it was helping her father keep track of the settlement’s stores, and to let the salvagers and hunters know what they needed the most when they went out on their expeditions. In the wintertime, she also seemed to have a side job teaching the little ones their numbers and letters. Katherine had peeked in the lessons, wondering how Leofe’s fairly harsh methods went over with the children, and to her surprise, had found that there were some parts of Leofe’s personality she did not know at all.

The schoolroom was one of the side-rooms of the settlement hall, one with lots of books and benches, and a big stack of writing-slates in the corner. Tapestries with colorful animal forms decorated the walls, and there was a big bright fire in the middle of the room that Leofe sat beside; surrounding her, on the benches and floors, was a gang of fifteen or twenty kids ranging from somewhere around six to ten years old; she was reading to them from a book in her lap, in a bright, clear voice, pausing often to answer their questions patiently, and at length. She looked, in fact, happier than Katherine ever saw her the rest of the time. And when she saw Katherine standing at the door, looking on, she didn’t seem embarrassed or self-conscious at all; she just nodded and smiled, and went back to reading.

Still, Katherine noticed, Leofe seemed suddenly to have no time for her. She was around much less at the evening meals, the ones everyone usually ate together in the hall. When Katherine did run into her, she was always hurrying off somewhere else; and Katherine soon got the impression she had done something to piss her off. She’d try to make small talk, and Leofe would answer curtly or not at all, before making her excuse to go; and when she tried to ask Leofric what was up with his sister, he only shrugged. “I ask myself that often,” was all he said. So that was no help.

Finally, the night before Andrac and Eadwig’s expedition set out, Leofe came up to Katherine after the evening meal.

“You’re going tomorrow with the others?” she asked.

“I am,” Katherine said.

“You shouldn’t.”

“They said they need me,” Katherine said. “I’d hate to disappoint.”

“They’re idiots. You shouldn’t go.”

Katherine was puzzled. Leofe definitely seemed annoyed at her, and she had no idea why.

“Why not? I can be helpful, and maybe I’ll get something out of it. Andrac seems to think I might be able to find something to help fix my augs.”

“Your augs are stupid, and you don’t need them,” Leofe said. “Going with Andrac is stupid. It’s dangerous, and you’ll probably die.”

Katherine was taken a little aback by this. “I don’t think it’s that dangerous. We’ll have a lot of experienced salvagers with it, and we won’t be more than seven or eight days out.”

“But you’re not a salvager. You’re not a mountain-climber. You’re not like us. And you’re even weaker than you are with your cybernetics. You should stay, and not get yourself or somebody else hurt.”

“I thought I didn’t need my augs?”

“You don’t, but you haven’t learned that lesson properly yet.”

Katherine thought about this for a second. Leofe was clearly not an indirect person by habit, but there was definitely something bothering her she wasn’t telling Katherine, and maybe that bluntness was rubbing off on her a little. Because she was not at all in the mood to play a guessing game about what it was.

“Leofe, what did I do to piss you off? Why are you so irritated with me?”

Leofe just shook her head. “I’m not irritated with you. I don’t care at all. Just giving you advice. You shouldn’t go. You’re not one of us, and you shouldn’t try to be.”

“What do you--” Katherine started to say; but Leofe just walked off.

Fucking hell, she thought. She tried not to let it bother her too much; but even after all this time in the Valleys, Leofe felt like one of her few real friends, and it would have been a lie to say it was not painful to find herself feeling very alone again.

The party crested the ridge a few minutes later; Eadwig pointed out their destination Katherine. Ahead, nestled between this ridgeline and the next, was a small glacier-filled valley; at the top, only a couple of hundred meters away, wedged into a crevasse in the ice and half-covered with rubble, was a hulking splayed-legged form, like a big tailless lizard. The dragon. Another limb seemed to stick out of the rubble further on; a second, perhaps lured in by the same ground scans as the second. Beonna, their most seasoned scavenger, seemed more interested in the deeply buried one; he seemed to think its components would be in better shape, despite the rockfall. At this point, though, Katherine mostly just wanted to rest.

They had to make their way down to the dragons even more slowly. The slope was mostly loose scree, and nobody wanted to go ass-over-elbows into the darkness below. It took almost an hour of careful, single-file descent, until they came to the place where the ice met the rock, and were able to follow that margin to the dragons themselves. After that it was a short break, only five minutes, and the others began setting up a camp and building a fire. Katherine, for her part, sat panting on a rock, still trying to catch her breath.

“No time to get too lazy,” Eadwig said with a smile as he passed by. “We have work to do soon!” Katherine just nodded and gave him a thumbs up. Maybe Leofe was right. Maybe she wasn’t as tough as the others. But they hadn’t brought her along for her toughness, so she didn’t feel too bad.

When the camp had been set up, they started crawling all over the dragon’s corpse, trying to see what sort of condition it was in. Once she was feeling a bit more human, Katherine got up and walked over to see what she could make of the thing.

“Dragon” was actually not a bad word for one of these mobile prospecting platforms. It was unbelievably huge, more than two hundred meters long, and indeed shaped like a mythological beast. Its main digging section resembled a pair of jaws, enclosing a great toothed wheel; here, they were crushed and splayed open by enormous boulders. Supporting pylons on its back stuck out above the rocks, and two of its big elephantine feet were stuck in the ice. The thing looked like it could eat mountains.

“Over here!” Beonna called. “Hey! Outlander! You too!”

Katherine followed his voice. She clambered up the metal flank of the platform, grasping for handholds, until she found an actual ladder; Beonna was standing with Andrac and a few others right on the beast’s spine, beneath one of the tall pylons. He pointed down at his feet. There was a hatch there; and next to it, a small control panel.

“You think you can talk to this?” Beonna said.

“I’m not a wizard, but I’ll give it a shot.” Katherine was trying to be funny, but Beonna just nodded seriously. She looked at the control panel. It had some big, colorful buttons on it, with abbreviations that didn’t mean anything to her; and a screen that was intact, but dead. There was a thin metal cover to the side that she could pop off; beneath that was an array of ports. Katherine would not say she had more than average knowledge of computers, and she knew nothing at all about autonomous mining machines, but she did recognize a basic BCI when she saw one. Nestled in among the ports was a long, thin, whiplike piece of plastic, with a sharp tip. A neural splice. She tugged at it gently; it extended with little resistance, just enough spring to draw itself back into the panel when it wasn’t in use.

“Well, here goes nothing,” she said to herself. She pulled back the hood of her cloak and yanked off one glove; then, feeling carefully with two fingers for the right spot, she took a deep breath, and jabbed the sharp end of the splice into the back of her neck.

It hurt like a bitch, of course, because she couldn’t deaden the area, and the cold seemed to make it even worse; but she’d aimed correctly despite the bad angle, and the splice seated itself neatly the first try. Good thing, too; she had not liked the idea of having to stab blindly into her spine on the back of a desolate glacier. Now to find out of this thing was still functional. She called up a few basic activation sequences, in order by how common they were. Three red squares. A big hollow blue triangle. Green thumbs up? Think, Kate. Old system. Basic BCI. One large, red circle.

The screen lit up, a solid white square.

“Yes!”

Katherine’s triumph was immediately cut off by a stabbing pain in her forehead.

“Fuck!”

She screamed loud enough that for a second she thought Beonna was going to fall off his perch; but it was all she could do not to curl up into a little ball and start crying right there. The pain ran down from her head and into her spine, and for a second, it felt like every nerve ending in her body was on fire. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the pain almost entirely subsided, leaving behind a low-grade throbbing headache. A mishmash of symbols and technical jargon flashed in front of her eyes, then was replaced by a series of Critical warning! messages moving rapidly through her field of view.

“Are you all right?” Andrac asked.

Katherine smiled, then laughed, then clutched her head because laughing made her headache worse; then she laughed again anyway.

“I’m better than alright,” she said. “I’m back in action, baby.”

* * *

Whoever had built this machine had clearly foreseen the possibility of some lost soul relying on it in an emergency. Once the console was active, Katherine was able to work out how to pop the hatch, and they squeezed inside. The space was cramped--a little more than a short hallway, a small control cabin, and some lockers stocked with emergency supplies and rations that had long ago crumbled to dust. But there was an extremely basic aug maintenance kit in among the first aid supplies, and another neural splice that this time was at least out of the wind. Katherine found a bulky hard-copy manual labeled Your Neural Interface and You, with a cartoon brain on the front giving her a deeply unnerving thumbs up. From what she could piece together, the dragon--sorry, the LMK Autonomous Mining Platform Mk. 7--had been designed so somebody with a third gen or better neural lace could run diagnostics and do basic software maintenance. Katherine’s augs were built on what was probably a ninth or tenth generation lace, and by comparison to the crude interface third gens offered, were considerably more sophisticated, but, importantly, it still relied on a basic support layer that used the same instruction set as a third gen. Which meant she could use the platform’s built-in safety and recovery features, if not to try and fix her entire aug set, at least troubleshoot the support layer. And maybe help the scavengers out, too.

Unfortunately, she had to spend the first three hours sorting through error messages. The bulk was Fatal Error: See Medical Professional Immediately! spam that just meant her main augs were offline. Medical monitoring, cardiopulmonary maintenance, neurological maintenance and stimulus management, etc, etc.; nothing she hadn’t been living without for weeks or months by now. Once she dismissed all these messages, and switched off the processes that kept trying to reboot these augs, the worst of her headache, and the tingling feeling all over her body that occasionally got replaced with hot and cold flashes, subsided. She tried to access the cortical aug suite, the thing that would have helped her most when she was trying to learn the local language, but even trying to call them up in safe mode gave her a splitting headache and more stabbing pains all over her body. Okay, fine. She took them offline for good. Not going to try that again without a doctor standing over me, she thought.

Eventually, she had managed to shut down every single higher process in her cybernetics, leaving only the support layer, an interface layer, and the networking layer active. By the time she’d got to this point, everyone else was getting ready to tuck in for the night; Andrac offered Katherine a sleeping spot near the campfire, but Katherine declined. She didn’t want to risk having to start this process all over in the morning, so she curled up in the cramped little cabin of the mining platform, dug some chemical heating packs out of the supply locker, and did her best to doze with her brain still plugged into the machine. She slept pretty well, all things considered; though she did have unsettling dreams about being inside the belly of a monster.

In the morning, Andrac brought her some food, and she went back to work. By flipping back and forth through the manual she managed to piece together a series of commands to try to boot the platform’s main control system. All the peripheral systems were basically nonfunctional--which was just as well, what on earth would the DVP do with even a partially operational earthmover the size of a small freighter?--but the main control system had the diagnostic tools Katherine needed, and it also meant easier access to the interior of the machine. To Andrac’s delight, she was able to pop every hatch and secure panel at once; she also disabled the “autonomous threat response protocol,” just in case that was as dangerous as it sounded.

“The beast is yours,” Katherine announced. “Just don’t touch the power plant. I’m pretty sure it’s radioactive, and I need it to fix my augs anyway.” They did not need to be told twice. As the others in the party hacked and sawed and drilled away, Katherine turned her attention to a little brain surgery.

Okay, technically not surgery surgery. And technically not her brain--not the really important bits, anyway. But there was something undeniably primitive-feeling about trying to muck around with her cybernetics using a keyboard and text display, like she really was messing with the elemental components of her mind. She did in some sense think of her augs as part of her; one of her favorite parts, since they were relatively customizable. She had never made any conscious choice about her eye color or her height, for instance; but she had built up her personal aug set piece by piece over the years, like furnishing a living room. Or carefully curating a wardrobe.

Unless you were like the Dry Valleys People--hard baseline, that is--everybody these days relied on some degree of augmentation. But the ucytes, the stuff you got when you were a kid along with your immunizations and your retroviral therapy, they hardly warranted the term “cybernetics.” They were little more than artificially engineered white blood cells, boosting your immune system and protecting your metabolism and helping cuts and scrapes heal faster. Almost everybody, when they were a teenager, opted for one form or another of actual cyberization. You could program somebody’s ucytes to grow a neural lace within the space of a couple years, and then a doctor could implant what was basically a compact computer in the spine that connected to the lace. From there, more systems could be developed, more augs installed, depending on what you wanted or could afford. Some people liked to really self-modify--if you signed enough waivers and paid enough money, there were augs that could heavily modify emotions and brain function and senses, almost everything about your subjective experience of being human. Most people ended up like Katherine--five or six extremely useful aug suites they relied on in their day-to-day life, one or two more rarely useful ones, and some emergency and medical augs, which hopefully you never needed but which could save your life if disaster struck.

Only a neglectful or extremely paranoid parent would forego the ucyte injection for their child; Katherine’s parents were softly against more elaborate cyberization, but once she’d left home, she didn’t have to worry about their opinion. And they had not more than grumbled when she’d finally had the procedure done. More elaborate augs had never interested her, and she was counting herself very fortunate in that regard now. She was starting to realize how well and truly fucked her cybernetics were; if she had been too dependent on them, she might not have survived their breakdown.

The core problem seemed to be the neural lace. Katherine had suffered a blow to the head; the medical support system had done its job and prevented a concussion, but the fragile lace was damaged in the process, and couldn’t repair itself. The repair protocols for the lace were extremely limited by design--there were horror stories of early lace designs going haywire in lab animals--but damage to the lace meant most of her other augs simply couldn’t function properly. One or two, maybe, she could force, in a way that would probably void their warranty and put her at risk of seizures or worse, but she was not at all inclined to try. She could keep her cybernetics functioning at their most basic level, and maybe later try to jury-rig something crude using the default instruction set, something that would at least help her manage sensory input and metabolic function, but there was still the risk of something going wrong, of her having to perform some kind of maintenance she was deeply unqualified to attempt.

She sighed deeply. The only sane, responsible thing to do in this situation was to turn all her cybernetics off, in a more orderly fashion this time, and leave them off until she could get to an aug clinic or, preferably, a real hospital. The closest aug clinic was Port Alexander. The closest hospital with a cybernetics ward? That would depend on whether New Zealand or South America was technically closer. Katherine couldn’t remember. She was not, she knew, in the habit of always doing the sane and responsible thing. There was an argument to be made she would not be here at all if sane and responsible was her usual approach. But maybe it was time to give it a try. She entered the manual shutdown sequence; there was no tone this time. The text readout on the console just went blank. She pulled the neural splice out of her neck, and fished around in the supply locker for a band-aid; then she climbed to her feet and went outside to see if she could help take anything apart.

(next)

#tanadrin's fiction

[elyvorg]

Celeste: When Even Your Issues Have Issues

As I've already mentioned, Celeste is a game with an amazing story. There's a lot of reviews out there that talk about the story's merits, but they understandably do so in a fairly vague way, since they don't want to spoil exactly how the story goes. But this leaves a lot unsaid about the precise reasons why I think the writing is so good - like, it astounds me that the game's creator has apparently never written anything before and "learned to write while making this game" - and this can't really be talked about without getting into specifics. So most of this is going to contain spoilers. If you haven't played Celeste yet (and, as I cannot emphasise enough, you should), I don't recommend going past the cut.

When most people praise the story of this game, they talk about how the narrative represents mental health issues and suggests a method of trying to deal with them. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy that aspect of it, too. I happen to suffer from depression and anxiety myself and can relate to Madeline and her struggles in at least some respects. But that's not the main reason I love this game's story - even if I wasn't mentally ill and couldn't personally relate, I think I'd still enjoy it almost exactly as much.

What I love the most about the story is specifically the writing of "Part of Madeline", who for ease of phrasing I'm going to call "Shadow Madeline" from here on. This isn't just a term stolen from Persona 4; it's actually a legitimate term from Jungian psychology which describes pretty much exactly what Shadow Madeline represents - the suppressed part of your psyche that you hate to acknowledge and hide from everyone, including yourself. I adore Persona 4 partly because of the characters' Shadows it features - I'm fascinated when a story takes a part of a character's psyche and makes it into a separate character, as it tells you so much about the original character in ways you'd never have seen otherwise. But Celeste goes above and beyond in terms of writing Shadow Madeline like absolutely 100% her own character and not just a part of her host's psyche, in ways that Persona 4, as much as I love it, only vaguely and occasionally hints at.

So what parts of Madeline does Shadow Madeline represent? A lot of people would probably say "Madeline's depression", but I don't think it's quite that simple. There's a large part of depression which is just feeling like crap for no good reason, the part that's caused by your brain chemistry not working right. This part of depression is mindless, unthinking, and is, in my interpretation, represented by the monsters in the Mirror Temple that also come from Madeline but have no sense of self and only want to hurt her for no reason. Meanwhile, the part of depression that the humanoid Shadow Madeline represents is the actual conscious negative thought patterns brought on by feeling like crap all the time. This part of Madeline would still exist in some form even if she wasn't depressed - her depression just makes her Shadow's thoughts worse.

On the surface, Madeline tries to hide this side of her, mostly blocking it out through sheer stubbornness. Even so, a number of the things she says subtly indicate that she has a very low opinion of herself: insisting she's not very photogenic (even though, when she's in the right mood for a selfie and not caught all deer-in-the-headlights, she totally is), wondering why she reminds Theo of his sister when his sister sounds so great (because obviously Madeline can't be that great, right?), wanting to help Mr. Oshiro because "maybe I can actually do something good for once", as if she never usually does anything good at all. Her Shadow is all of these subtly self-loathing thoughts brought right out into the open - "you aren't a mountain climber", "you can't handle this", "you deserve this". She takes Madeline trying to help Mr. Oshiro to feel like she's doing good for once and twists it around into "she only helps people to feed her twisted ego" - hardly; Madeline's self-esteem is so low that she doesn't have anything like an ego, but her Shadow latches onto the part where she's somewhat doing this for herself and blows it way out of proportion next to the part where she's genuinely just trying to help someone out. That said, Shadow Madeline's negativity isn't only directed at her other self, as she also tells Mr. Oshiro how much of a dump his hotel is, something you could tell Madeline was thinking throughout the chapter but chose not to voice out of kindness.

But it's not just negativity for negativity's sake - as Theo points out, Shadow Madeline is also something of a twisted defence mechanism. Madeline mentions how she "can't stop thinking about dumb crap that doesn't matter" - it's likely that a lot of these thoughts are about hurtful things that happened to her in the past. Most of them probably don't matter at all in the present, but her Shadow can't stop fixating on them anyway because it still hurt and she doesn't want anything like that to happen to herself again. There's implications that Madeline might have been hurt or betrayed by people in her past, even though she doesn't go into details: "I was probably always messed up. It just took something hurtful to bring it out"; that strange person on the phone in her dream who says they haven't spoken to Madeline in months and why would they start now. Shadow Madeline also implies this in chapter 7 when she says "you put too much energy into bad people who will just end up hurting you", implying Madeline has some level of trust issues, and that this is partly why Shadow Madeline wanted her to get out of Oshiro's hotel as soon as possible - so that she wouldn't get hurt. And of course, her "you aren't a mountain climber" isn't just her dragging her other self down; it's also the Shadow trying to protect her other self because she might get hurt on the climb.

Because when it comes down to it, climbing a huge mountain that's apparently trying to kill you at every turn (especially when you have very low self-esteem and a history of panic attacks) is scary. Interacting with new people you don't know when you've been hurt by people in the past is scary. Since this fear is part of Madeline, but a part that she once again hides from the surface through her sheer stubbornness, that means it's a part of her Shadow too. Shadow Madeline is actually just really goddamn scared of everything that Madeline is dragging both of them through. And what's so great about the writing in this game is that, even though Shadow Madeline is only a manifestation of a part of Madeline's psyche, she's still written like her own character enough to have her own defence mechanisms and ways of trying to hide and run away from this fear.

Think about it: with how much she appears to enjoy criticising Madeline on the surface, you'd think that Shadow Madeline would have started doing so from the moment she burst out of the mirror in chapter 2. But no - the first thing she does is run away. I love this detail and think it's so, so important. She must have been overwhelmed at suddenly having a physical body separate from her other self, able to think all these awful, negative terrifying thoughts for herself without them being drowned out and shot down by Madeline's surface stubbornness and rational reasoning. She runs away because she doesn't know how to deal with it and doesn't want her other self to see her in this state.

It's a little while before Madeline catches up to her. Shadow Madeline must have spent that time convincing herself that no, her being scared is just logical, and climbing this mountain is obviously a stupid idea that'll never succeed, and now she needs to do the sensible thing and convince her reckless, unreasonable other self to give up and go home so that she won't get the both of them hurt. Look at her, she's being helpful. Not small and scared and useless. Madeline asks her Shadow "Are you the weak Part of Me?", and she's right - Shadow Madeline is the weaker part of Madeline. But the Shadow can't admit that and lies to both her other self and to herself by claiming that she's the pragmatic part.

This is just one of many occasions where Shadow Madeline keeps insisting that obviously Madeline needs her around - "Where would you be without me?" "You owe me one. Add it to the list." "All I do is babysit you and you hate me for it." Because Madeline does indeed hate this part of her and want to be rid of her. She's specifically climbing Celeste Mountain in the hope that reaching the summit will change her in such a way that she'll be able to leave this hated part of her in the past. So it's no wonder Shadow Madeline is so desperate to act like Madeline needs her - because she's terrified of being left behind. Again, I just love how Shadow Madeline is written as absolutely her own character: the fear of being abandoned like this doesn't make any sense as something from Madeline's psyche that she's representing, but it makes perfect sense from the perspective of Shadow Madeline as her own individual who's made out of these parts of Madeline, and the fact that the game's creator actually thought about her to this extent while writing her is so impressive.

Another interesting thing to note is that, when Madeline asks her Shadow why she looks so creepy, Shadow Madeline seems uncomfortable with her appearance. Now, based on how the old lady talks about it, it doesn't seem in the Mountain's nature to make things come across as creepier than they really are. All it does is reflect the truth. So the only thing that makes sense to me as to why Shadow Madeline looks this way is because her appearance is reflecting how Madeline views that part of herself - as bad and monstrous and something she should be afraid of. It's no wonder Shadow Madeline dislikes her own appearance, then, since it implies that she really is that way and Madeline is right to want her gone. Not to mention that Madeline spends almost all of their conversations not even engaging with her arguments in favour of constantly telling her to shut up and leave her alone, which has to make Shadow Madeline feel even more unwanted - at one point she tells her other self, "Stop trying to make me feel like a monster."

(This is also why it really bothers me that a lot of people have settled on using the creators' placeholder name of "Badeline" to refer to Shadow Madeline. She's not inherently bad, and it would make her so upset to know that people called her that! The only thing that makes sense to me for why the creators use that name is that they coined it early on in development when she was merely a game mechanic, before they'd decided what she represented as a character. Don't call her Badeline. You don't want to make her sad, do you?)

But what's scariest to Shadow Madeline about the fact that Madeline wants to leave her behind is the thought that perhaps she's right to want this. After all, despite her insistence that she's helpful and pragmatic and Madeline needs her around, Shadow Madeline knows full well that she's actually just uselessly scared and pointlessly negative and doesn't really have anything good to offer her. Another reason she repeatedly tells Madeline "You aren't a mountain climber" is because, well - what if she is? What if Madeline actually does have the strength to climb this mountain? That'd mean she's so much stronger than her Shadow - strong enough not to need something so weak and useless at all. In getting as far up the mountain as she has and refusing to give up despite everything her Shadow tries, Madeline's been proving that maybe she really is that strong - and her Shadow desperately can't let that be true. This gives yet another layer to all of her criticism of Madeline throughout their encounters - one one level she's voicing Madeline's inner self-loathing thoughts because she is those thoughts, but on another she's trying to insist that Madeline is weak and pathetic because she can't deal with the possibility that maybe she actually isn't. Recall how I mentioned earlier that Madeline likely has trust issues and her Shadow got her away from Mr. Oshiro because she was afraid he might hurt her. As Shadow Madeline tells Oshiro "She never cared about you", her expression is desperate and angry rather than her usual smug grin. Because Madeline did care about Mr. Oshiro on some level, and the fact that she could do so despite her trust issues is a sign of strength - strength her Shadow hates that she has.

When Madeline confronts her Shadow at the beginning of chapter 6, saying that the Shadow is only the weak part of her and that she doesn't need her any more, it's everything Shadow Madeline was afraid of. The only thing she can do to stop her worst fears being realised is to furiously try and prove that no, Madeline isn't that strong at all - "You are not above me." Even though she hated being considered monstrous, here she embraces the creepy powers the Mountain has given her as the only way to prove that she's "stronger" than Madeline, because she'd still rather be a monster that Madeline's forced to keep around than be left behind. Her "You're going to think about a feather to stop me?" when Madeline uses the breathing trick sounds like she's mocking the idea, but really she hates the idea that all it takes is something so simple to give Madeline the strength to fight back, as if Madeline actually had all of that strength herself in the first place.

Fortunately for both parts of Madeline, it's literally impossible to actually get rid of your Shadow like that, because you can't remove something that's a part of you. If Madeline had "succeeded" in leaving her Shadow behind, all she'd actually have done would be to repress her really hard, locking her up in a tiny corner of her mind and refusing to listen to her. Which is not a healthy solution and pretty much the exact problem Madeline had in the first place. All she actually needed to do was realise that her Shadow is acting the way she does because she's lost and scared - and then try and help her through that. Because yes, Madeline is stronger than her Shadow, but that's a good thing; it means she can give her Shadow the emotional support she needs.

This applies to everyone, not just Madeline. Your Shadow is the part of you that you suppress from the surface, so it's essentially all of you except for whatever surface personality you have and defence mechanisms you use to cope with your problems and get through the day anyway. It's you, but weaker. So the next time you find some negative thought about yourself cross your mind, think of it as coming from that weaker part of you that doesn't have any other way of dealing with whatever crap you're going through. But you do. Your Shadow is probably just lost and scared and in need of a hug from someone stronger than them who understands what they're going through but has some idea of how to deal with it. And that's you. Go give your Shadow a metaphorical hug like the literal one Madeline gave hers. They'll appreciate it.

(Thanks for reading this whole thing! If you enjoyed this, and you’ve played or seen chapter 9 of Celeste, you might also like to read my post about chapter 9, which is something of a follow-up to this.)

#celeste #celeste game #shadow madeline #madeline #character analysis #ramble #shadows #always hug your shadow

[hillywooddestiel]

Chasing Spiderboy

Characters: Peter Parker x friend!reader (although things may not be as platonic as they seem…), Ned, Happy

Warnings: violence, strong language, high levels of sarcasm

Word count: 1.3k

Description: When Peter goes missing from homecoming, it’s up to Y/N to find him. But when he lands himself in deep trouble, it’s easier said than done.

A/N: I got bored and wrote more Peter. If you’ve sent in a request, I’ve got it and it’s in the works, this just got finished first xx Masterlist

Story:

“Hey Ned! Have you seen Peter anywhere? I still need his ballot for the homecoming king and queen vote.”

“Oh I dunno. Ask Liz, he came with her. Maybe she’ll know.”

“Okay. Thanks anyway.” Y/N turns on her heel to scan the crowds for Peter, or failing that Liz. The gym is packed with teenagers: some awkwardly dancing together, some gathered by the table of chips, others stood watching everyone else have fun. She spots Liz talking very animatedly with her hands to some of her friends in the corner. But Peter is nowhere to be seen.

“Hey Liz! Have you seen Peter? I need his-”

“Forget the vote. The night’s ruined anyway.” Liz turns to face Y/N, looking defeated and close to tears.

“Wha- why?”

“Peter just ran off and left me. After he finally asked me out and everything!” She explains using her hands a lot. Y/N waits for a second before asking her question,

“Where did he go exactly?”

“He ran off that way! Couldn’t get away fast enough.” Liz points to the side doors, clearly pissed and not enjoying her night. And Y/N suspects being elected homecoming queen won’t help improve her mood (she may have snook a peak at the ballot cards as she collected them). With the new information she now has, Y/N marches off out of the double doors in the hopes of catching up with Peter. You better not be in trouble Spiderboy.

“Ned!?”

“Y/N!? H-hey what… What are you doing out here?”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Smoking?” Ned says very unconvincingly and Y/N rolls her eyes so hard they almost get stuck in the back of her head. Seriously Peter, this is who you trust with your secret?

“Whatever. Where’s Peter going?”

“No that was Spiderman. Peter’s not here-”

“Ned! I already know that Peter’s Spiderman.” Y/N rolls her eyes again, pulling up her AI on her watch. “Ally, give me Spiderboy’s location.”

“Right away Miss Y/N. He’s on the move just entering Brooklyn. Bringing up map visuals now.” The British woman/AI produces a hologram map with a small red dot moving along the roads.

“Wait! How do you know about… Are you an Avenger too?” Ned goes off with his own imagination and Y/N lets him, fiddling with the map trying to bring up coordinates. “Oh! Are you Everglow?” Cue another eye roll .

“Look! I guess Peter trusts you so you’re bound to have found out anyway.” She turns, her face deadly serious, making Ned shut up immediately. “Technically yes, I am an Avenger. I’ve been working for Tony Stark for nearly two years now. Peter was introduced to me as Spiderman and obviously we recognised eachother from school so we promised that we would keep each other’s secret. Hence, we both started the "Stark Internship”. And… Yes I am Everglow but that’s the name people on the internet have given me. I personally think it’s stupid.“

"Cool! So can you really shoot lights from your hands?” He switches into fanboy mode, excited to be in the presence of a super hero.

“Help me locate Peter and I’ll laser a car in half for you.” Y/N shouts over her shoulder, talking off in the direction of Peter’s tracker. Her dress and heels prove no hindrance to her speed.

The red dot stops in the parking lot of a warehouse in Brooklyn. Y/N manages to make up the time gap pretty well having borrowed one of Stark’s motorbikes; it cuts through all the traffic with ease and the engine has such a loud growl that everyone instantly moves out of the way. She has seen a lot in her time since starting working for Stark but the mountain of rubble that was the warehouse comes as a shock. Plumes of dust rise from the fallen concrete making Y/N cough and waft her hand in front of her face.

“Peter! Peter are you here?” She cups her hands around her mouth to act as a megaphone. No reply. Like a professional mountain climber, Y/N scales the piles of crumbled rocks to reach a higher vantage point. “Peter! Make a sound of you can hear me!” Still nothing. Flexing her fingers, Y/N closes her eyes and focuses on calming her breathing. A warm sensation spreads through her veins and settles in her palms. When she opens her eyes, two beams of light are shining from her hands providing plenty of light to search for Peter.

“Woooaaaaaah!” A scared yell comes from over one of the bigger mounds. Y/N races after whoever made the sound.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me!” She sighs exasperatedly. A man with metal wings, much larger than Falcon’s, soars overhead, swiftly gaining altitude. And hanging onto the man’s leg by a thread is the unmistakable red and blue of Peter’s crappy handmade costume. Oh Peter you are so dead!

Yet to feel any fatigue, Y/N races back to the bike and kicks it into gear before speeding after Peter and the winged weirdo. They’ve long disappeared above the clouds so she’s looking up at nothing. A sudden beeping startles her. Luckily, Y/N had the sense to borrow a helmet from Stark as well as the bike so she can pull up Ally on the interface.

“Incoming call from Happy, Miss Y/N.” Shit!

“Answer it… Hey Happy, how’s moving going?”

“Fine. The plane just took off. Why am I getting calls from kids claiming to be friends with you and Peter?” Damnit Ned!

“Uh, it’s a long story. You know, Peter would probably be better at explaining it-”

“Are you on a motorbike?”

“Yes… I’m going to… Homecoming. Yeah, I took too long to get ready so I’m running late and decided to take the bike.”

“Cut the crap Y/N! Just get Peter out of whatever trouble he’s in and leave it alone. If we need you for a mission, Tony will call you.” Happy instructs, thoroughly unamused, before hanging up.

“Oh my God, Peter! What did you do?” Y/N screeches upon finding the boy lying down in the sand surrounded by fire and a destroyed plane.

“Oh hey Y/N/N. I stopped the bad guy.” He lifts his head briefly to point at the man stuck to a crate with webs.

“And you didn’t think to let Mr Stark handle it? Or tell me and let me help?” She looks down to Peter again, her arms folded.

“Hey! I did a pretty good job on my own, thank you very much.”

“As evidenced by the burning plane crash. Wait! Is this all the gear from the Avenger’s tower?” Y/N asks, recognising some of the weaponry lying on the ground.

“Uh huh. I stopped that bird guy from stealing it.” Peter winces as he pushes himself up into a seated position.

“Oh. Good job then… I guess…” Sirens in the distance catch both of their attentions, “We should probably get out of here.”

“Yeah, hold on.”

“Why?”

“I gotta leave a note.”

The pair perch on the edge of a tall building close to the beach with a good view, watching as the workers scan the area with their flashlights. They snigger as they spot Happy down below; he seems unsure of what to do with the webbed up criminal.

“Do you think Mr Stark will give you your suit back after this. Cos as much as I love this… look, I think you’re due an upgrade.” Y/N jokes, noting the many holes in Peter’s suit. He laughs, leaning back on the antenna pole.

“I dunno. But I don’t need it to be Spiderman.”

“I’m glad I’m not lactose intolerant. That was cheesy as hell!”

“Hey! You love cheese.”

“Yeah, on pizza. Ooh, we should go and get pizza!” Y/N quickly gets distracted by the thought of food- after chasing Peter all night she’s worked up quite the appetite.

“Um, sure! I know a place nearby.” Peter claims standing up and offering her his hand. She stands up to take it only to pull away,

“If we crash again, I’ll laser your precious hair off!”

#peter parker x you #peter parker imagine #peter parker x reader #peter parker x friend!reader #spiderman homecoming #spiderman x reader #marvel x reader #marvel fic #marvel #mcu #avengers x reader #avengers imagine #avengers #superhero!reader #tony stark

[forestbathing-studies-blog]

The Art of Forest Bathing VI

In order to write I decided to live in Chamonix, France, next to the Mont Blanc, highest mountain in Western Europe.  get the cross-country skis out. Without snow in Lappland yet I have not skied through the forest every evening and some mornings too. My body misses the excercise and movement. And these short sojourns in nature go far beyond keeping fit. ‘If you want to solve a problem, take a walk,’ the saying goes.

We all remember our favourite hike, or trek. I remember my favourite cross country ski journey. It was in the Alps, in France, and I’d skied up the Chamonix valley to give blood at the village of Argentière. I’d settled into the comfortable couch and let the pretty nurse slide her fingers up my arm to find a vein and drifted into pleasant flirtateous dreams.

When finished in Britain one is lucky to get a cup of lukewarm tea and stale biscuit. But I was in France. At tables laden with salamis and red wine the locals found out I was Scottish, who are great friends of the French.

It was dark when I staggered out, bottles and blood empty, laughter and hearts full. Of course I had quite forgotten the effects of copious red wine on a relatively empty stomach after a blood donation, and when put on skis skied straight down a bank into a small river, where I stood chuckling for a few minutes.

Unbeaten and undaunted after this mild setback, I struggled downriver, cracking through the ice, until I pulled myself up onto a wooden bridge, from where I set off on my journey again straight off into the mountains, lost for a full two hours in the moonlit dark.

Back in time, just, for a conference on organ donation, where I unfortunately fell asleep and was escorted out.

But I had donated blood from my heart infused with love-at-first-sight for the prettiest nurse this side of sunrise. I found the most illogical way home on the postcard mountainside. Through snow sprinkled with moonlight I plunged, like falling into a warm desert dune with a nurse’s whispered words on my lips, skipole firm and snow crystals still soft and plentiful, like Saharan sand.

My pilgrimage home had taken me further than the longest route I could find, to thoughts of far places. And I had done more than enough for the haiku, composed while clattering in a river bed, remembered and thus rendered below.

I took a job as a mountain refuge warden there for a while, at some 2,000 metres altitude, but soon enjoyed reading the mountains more than a reader would have reading my never-appearing novel, so I moved down to the centre of town as winter set in. I loved Chamonix.

In the town I enjoyed a friendship with the PGHM, the mountain rescue team, a friendship I struck when working at the refuge, and particularly when one night a hammering at the door woke me; a man in a terrible state, having stumbled and jumped down the steep mountain side to the refuge after watching his wife fall over a cliff. The rescue helicopter went up to look with searchlight and found her, but radioed back they could not get near her in the cliffs at night, and that anyway, she had not survived the fall, that much they could see. I had gone up anyway to find her, especially after the helicopter team told me in no uncertain terms not to tell the man his wife had been killed in the fall until morning, as he might very well just step straight over a cliff himself at the news. So I went up the mountain in order to not have to answer his questions, and after a few hours saw she was not in a state of survival, and I waited till morning, standing at the door of the téléphérique, the cable car, to tell him, at which he crumpled onto the floor of the cabin, and the big moustached cabin operator later remarked:

‘’you know Hamish, I would have expected him to fly at you in a rage and hit, beat you.’’

‘’Yeah, great. Thanks.’’

The PGHM had recovered her body and then got into an argument with the local police, who wanted to take the man back to the scene for ‘questioning’.

‘’I’ve seen it before,’’ the station head of the PGHM had remarked: ‘’we’ll have two bodies over cliffs. He’ll jump.’’

There were other solid friendships; with the ski instructor, a woman who had skied down the very difficult Bossons glacier, after walking up with her skis for over eight hours, and who giggled at my British reserve when she and her friend had thrown their tops off to sunbathe at a mountain lake only hours after meeting me; and there was Catherine D’Estivelle, the climber, who that summer had climbed the Aiguille Verte — the Green Needle, alone, over eleven days, bivouacking on the rock face, and the woman who owned the bar that let me keep a tab running all winter, the bakery owning couple who made the freshest bread on the spot, which I ate where it was cooked, and the other mountain people, who regarded the tourists with mild indulgence; the tourists who had a penchant for acting like tourists — you know what I mean, of which perhaps the most touristy were the Swedes, who drank copious amounts of booze but would not touch the water, for fear of it not being pure, who boasted of a clean Sweden while uprooting all the Christmas trees in Viking exuberance and drinking coffee slowly each morning, wearing heavy mountain gear that clinked and jangled and jarred on their nerves.

And I decided to leave. To leave the town I loved. The blue/green late afternoons in the shade of the pine tree slopes of the mountains, the cream mornings of snow-capped mountains between open shutters, the newsagent who gave me my morning newspaper and coffee every morning when I walked through the door, and the mountains, again, and my mountain climbing partners and the seasons.

My last season in Chamonix was late summer, in the Saami definition of eight seasons. I was living my last few weeks in a tent at the bottom of the Mer de Glace glacier, and my morning plunge into the water rushing off the bottom of the glacier brought a new definition to the word cold, as well as embarrassment, when one morning I had jumped in, lay down briefly in the current and clambered out quickly, and heard a ‘’coooeeee!’’, looked left, looked right, looked behind, looked in front, my skin growing red, my vital parts shivered to mere millimetres, and then heard the ‘’coooeee!!’’ again, looked left right front back sideways and finally..upwards, to see a woman on delta wing, circling before landing, and laughing at my lack of restraint.

And the morning I left I met a silver-haired solitary Czech climber, who was hammering nails in his boots and knotting old ropes — his dream happening at last: climbing Mont Blanc, his food with him in cans, his home a tarpaulin over a wire, his happiness complete.

I was going to Oymyakon, the coldest town in the world (lowest temp recorded -71.2ºC/ -96.16ºF) , in Yakutia, Siberia, and chosen because I was sure that sitting in a hut in the coldest town in the world was a sure-fire way of writing, and importantly, completing a book. Immediately I set about planning an expedition through Yakutia, until I remembered it was to write I was going, and to attempt to ensure I was getting myself stuck into a small cabin, with a pile of logs, tea pot and long lost love deep in fur. The last one was not actually a requirement, though it was true that having someone to cook always means a necessary routine can be installed into a writer’s drab existence at the table, which is in reality a window of course. Yakutia, and in particular Oymyakon, fits some requirement’s of a writer’s retreat, but not all: it was exotic, not pricey — the cash flow is going in 1 direction after all, if the book is to be scribed — and the fish can be caught and cooked, a welcomed way to meditate. Oymyakon is a small town, the nature is beguilingly beautiful, but it forces you back to the writing table quickly, and the natives are not too restless. The town is found on the infamous Road of Bones. It does get a sprinkling of tourists, which is nice, and not all are similar to the Norwegians who got stuck and needed rescuing, claiming to be broken down, or the Germans who also got stuck and chose not to leave their vehicle when being rescued to thank the rescuers. (They would have been charged in another country of course, in places like Vancouver, but then would have probably found ways to sue for being charged for stupidity, as some do.) The fact that conditions were harsh, and risky, like the mountains of Chamonix, is something of a bonus for a writer. But it is also a pleasure when the little luxuries are available — bananas were prevalent, which was comforting, because at -55ºC ( -67ºF) they are more useful to hammer nails into wood than a badly made hammer, and don’t stick to the tongue like the head of a hammer does — something I can personally vouch is true, and if you don’t think you look absolutely stupid walking around town, even in Oymyakon, with a hammer stuck to your tongue, then think again. The wolves do hunt at night, and it if true that if the cold mist descends with the plummeting temperature in the deep snow and you are lost, then you have about 15 minutes to unlose yourself and find your way. After that your chances get pretty slim pretty quick, except your chances of being found next morning when the day is clear, a mere few metres to your cabin. But this provides the tension for your novel, so is worth the risk. Did I write the book? Yes. Did I find a cook deep in the fur, in a cabin down the road? The culture in Yakutia is captivating. And for those against fur, I can honestly tell you from experience that artificial fur just shreds; falls apart at those temperatures, and not keeping warm is not a question of fashion. Everything is different in summer though, when they welcome dawn on the longest day of the year at the summer solstice. Travel narrows our horizons — the more we learn about other cultures, the more sure we are about universal truths. And in Yakutia a universal truth is hugging cooks keeps you warm, as long as you compliment the mammoth steaks — tens of thousands of mammoth bones or even frozen mammoths have been found throughout history, so there’s a chance…

[docsamurai]

Sleeping With the Enemy: Breaking Dawn

It has been some time since my last update. Even after everything that had happened before I still find it hard to believe the twisted lengths Carlisle and his minions would go to see their madness through. Let's start where we left off: the wedding. The Cullens were as unimaginative as ever and Edward and I were married in a fairy tale ceremony in the woods near their home. I dreamed that night of raining blood, it was enough to get me through the ceremony. As much as I hated having to go through this it was at least nice to see my friends and family one last time before I was turned. Jacob even showed up during the reception and I was glad he had shown enough restraint to not try anything foolish to disrupt my plans though he still tried to warn me that Edward would kill me on our honeymoon. I still don't know how he can be so dense to not understand that if they wanted me dead that I would have died a long time ago.

For the honeymoon we flew down to a private island that Carlisle had bought and named for his wife Esme. I feel I should mention that Esme is around the same age as the rest of the Cullens. It was only Carlisle who was centuries older than the rest. How many times had he tossed families aside to create a new batch of Cullens?

We went through the charade of the happy newlyweds as Edward attempted to be romantic with a moonlit beach and candles. At this point I actually think I might prefer for him to think I'm a lovestruck idiot because the alternative is that he actually does love me and that might disgust me more than anything. He forced himself on me that night. I acted willing enough but there was no way to overcome my disgust with him and his icy touch did more to repulse me than anything else. Edward had told me once that he had never "made love" to a woman. I had thought he was either lying outright or simply meant that he had never felt love for the women he fucked. After that night I was convinced that was his first time.

The next day he acted horrified at a bruise left on my arm he had left while "in the throes of passion". Thankfully I wasn't facing him as he said that because even after everything else I couldn't stop myself from rolling my eyes. I was so grateful that he wouldn't force himself on me again that I didn't question it at first. It took a week for me to finally realize something was wrong when I felt sick. I didn't want to believe it, they had told me vampires couldn't breed. I chalked it up to having to spend so much time with Edward. He took me again that night, probably to make sure. Another week passed and the signs were unmistakable. I called Carlisle directly and could almost hear his fanged smile over the phone.

This had been their trap all along! They never intended to turn me, only to create a Vampire-human hybrid. An immortal hunter with no fear or weakness who owed its very existence to Carlisle and his twisted family. Carlisle knew as soon as I had asked to be changed that I wouldn't go along with their plans. He knew when I allied with the wolves that I was to be reckoned with. He knew when I agreed to be married that I would go to any lengths to get what I needed. He knew just what to tell me to get exactly what he wanted. And I had let myself be led into his trap.

It was no longer about vengeance, it was no longer about justice, the only thing I could do was stop this abomination from coming into the world. I could not let this happen and if I had to die to do it then that would be exactly what I did. Before I could find something to end it Edward had already packed the bags and was ushering me out the door. Naturally they had worked for years to create this thing, they weren't going to let me destroy it and their plans that easily. I knew before we were even on the plane that it would be pointless to openly search the house for knives or pills as I would be under constant watch. As much as it horrified me, I saw no other option but to play along and hope they dropped their guard.

It almost worked too. Over the next week the creature inside me drained me, feasting on my blood and making me sicker with each passing hour. It was growing unnaturally fast for a human and would be ready to be released in a matter of weeks. Jacob came to check on me and see if the Cullens had broken the pact with the Tribe by turning me. He saw my weakened state and begged me not to keep it. I had never been so furious at Jacob for being so goddamn dense. I begged him silently staring deep into his eyes. If I could have spoken I would have implored him to change and kill me. I knew it would mean his death too but the creature in my womb would be the death of everything if it wasn't stopped. Unfortunately Jacob couldn't pick up on my pleas and left saying that he would return with the pack to kill them and the child if it killed me.

The next day I was so delirious from the blood loss that I actually drank the blood the Vampires gave me to sustain the child long enough for me to birth it. Even with the blood though it was destroying me from the inside out, growing rapidly, feasting on me when it couldn't get enough blood elsewhere and breaking my ribs as it grew not only in size but strength. Four weeks to the day that it was conceived, I went into labor as the hybrid broke my spine. There was no surgical precision as the Vampires tore my stomach open using their fangs to deliver it via caesarean. I died too weak to curse the Cullens as my blood poured from my mouth and stomach.

I awoke three days later, astonished that they had actually gone through the process of changing me. Maybe it was accidental and when Edward had used his fangs he may have infected me with his curse. Maybe they realized they were so far removed from their humanity that they were incapable of raising a child. Maybe Edward really was a big enough fool to love me. Either way I was renewed. Finally I felt the power I had sought for years. Finally I would be able to destroy my tormentors and I would even be able to remove the hybrid stain. I also felt the thirst.

For the first time I fully comprehended the monstrous thirst for blood. With my enhanced senses I could smell the blood of the animals of the forest surrounding the house. Edward and I went out to hunt and that's when I smelled human blood for the first time, it was intoxicating. A rock climber was working his way up a nearby cliff face. Undoubtedly this was Carlisle's doing, hoping that I would feed on a human and through that act of savagery I would fall into his clutches. He had cut himself on an outcrop and had fresh blood dripping down his arm as the wind whipped past him and carried the scent to me. Even from a mile off the smell of him was delicious. To this day I carry the shame that I felt that day when I knew how badly I wanted to drink that man's blood. Part of me tried to rationalize it: "If you drink his blood it will strengthen you enough to take them on, you can't fight all of them unless you're at full strength. If you don't kill him one of the Cullens will anyway. It would be a waste to let them have the blood when it could benefit you. Do it." Edward saw the hiker too. My nerves were on fire, I needed that blood more than anything.

Suddenly an opportunity appeared and I lunged. I had resisted killing that human and instead had killed a mountain lion that I had noticed just in time. Edward was amazed that I had resisted the call of human blood. On my first day as vampire I was already proving myself more in control than the blood crazed Cullens who could barely keep from attacking me on my birthday. For a moment I let the satisfaction of seeing the astonishment on his face wash over. My adrenaline was high, I finally had the power I needed and I had just sated my appetite without giving away my humanity. Nothing would ever get in my way again. I was in such a good mood I decided I could wait to kill Edward, besides, I wanted to make sure he watched his brethren die.

We went back to the house so I could meet the Child for the first time. She had been named for our mothers… Shit, I just realized I already told you that their names were Renee and Esme… Those aren't their real names but I can't think of a way to combine Renee and Esme that doesn't sound ridiculous. I know it will sound odd but I'm just going to call her Renesmee for simplicity's sake. I wouldn't even name a half vampire abomination something that stupid.

Anyway, back at the house I met… Renesmee… for the first time. I don't know how much of it was the hormones from the pregnancy, assuming that those even applied under the circumstances, but I didn't hate her. I couldn't hate her. I wanted to hate her, but she was just an innocent, like so many others. She had killed me, but it was because of her that I finally have the power I sought and I felt that as long as I could protect her from Carlisle's plans that there might be enough human in her that she wouldn't have to be a monster. I could be that monster for her. I could protect her from the Cullens.

I was genuinely surprised to find Jacob there, caring for my daughter. I hadn't thought about it yet but I suddenly realized that he should have been dead or have killed the Cullens. Jacob told me that he had imprinted on Renesmee, he had explained this process once, something wolves went through when they found someone they would bond to for life. At first I couldn't believe what I was hearing, that this full grown man had bonded with an infant, but as soon as I started to lose my temper with him I realized that he had finally had a decent idea. Jacob had seen me dead and the sight had broken him. Finally realizing the error of his ways he knew that he had to defy the Cullens but couldn't fight them by himself and instead found a way to keep himself close to the baby, ready to strike when the opportunity presented itself. Inwardly I smiled and found a new respect for an old friend who finally understood the world I had lived in for years. Outwardly of course I had to keep up his "imprint" ploy and acted disgusted with him but allowed him to stay.

With my friend and ally close at hand we were still watched closely by the Cullens and Jacob and I had to keep up our respective acts though it was easier with him around. I also found myself growing attached to the Cullen women. Esme, Rosalie and Alice all took turns helping me with the baby and I started to notice the way they all had their own handlers the way I had Edward. Finally their stories had made sense. Each of them had been coerced in their own way into becoming vampires. Rosalie had been "saved" by Carlisle. Alice had been sent to a mental hospital due to her psychic visions and had been turned while there, finding out later that she had been declared dead when she was sent the intuition in the first place. Even Esme had attempted suicide only to be drawn back from the brink of death by Carlisle turning her when she came to the morgue he was working in. Each of them had been robbed of their futures, had their lives, deaths and continued existence orchestrated by the mastermind of the Cullen clan. We were all under constant surveillance but we found ways to communicate right underneath our captor's nose. A time would come soon when I would need all the allies I could get and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the other women would be there to help me kill Carlisle when the time came.

Days pass into weeks and weeks pass into months before our plan is ready. Alice fakes having a vision of the Volturi coming to kill Renesmee for being a violation of vampire law and tells Carlisle. Carlisle had come to trust Alice's visions and decided to summon his forces while ordering her to go with her keeper Jasper on a private mission. Vampires began appearing from all over the world, preparing for open conflict against the Volturi, who in kind gathered their own forces fearing that Carlisle was trying to wipe them out. As more and more of the new vampires flood in I realize the ugly truth: the Cullen clan is far from unique. Vampires from all over the world show up to fight and if a woman does come to fight it's almost always with a male keeper.

The war finally began on New Year's Eve as the Cullens and their forces meet the Volturi for open battle in the mountains. Edward and I attempt to broker peace for the sake of my daughter though I was buying as much time as I could for Alice to return. Just as the tensions reached their breaking point she returned from her mission. Carlisle had sent her to retrieve his secret weapon: another hybrid that had been accidentally created nearly 150 years prior. Carlisle had hidden its existence from the Volturi for over a century and had been trying to recreate the process ever since. Alice promised the Volturi to show them a vision of the battle, of Renesmee's future and why this fight was pointless. When she made contact with the Volturi leader Aro instead she showed him our true plan: we had staged the fight to gauge Carlisle's forces and would soon kill him leaving the Volturi free. As long as the Volturi spared us the fight we would remove Carlisle's control and leave them alone. Naturally Alice had left out that it was only a matter of time before we came for them as well. Aro gazed in wonder at the visions Alice had showed him before becoming delighted that he would finally be free of Carlisle's control. As he commanded his forces to back down one of his own objected and was subsequently destroyed without a second thought.

The battle was done, Carlisle's forces were exposed and he would have no one coming to his aid when we came for him. It had been a long time coming but things were finally in place. Carlisle would die tonight.

#twilight #fanfic