#i still live in bumfuck nowhere but i need to go back to the woods

[scatmaan]

i can never live in a city bc city ppl annoy me sm the redneck in me seethes

#scatmaan complains #ppl who overreact to nonvenomous snakes #or fucking wolf spiders #like go outside bro #go crawl around in some wetlands and adjust yourself #unless smthn is actually dangerous maybe just calm down huh #i still live in bumfuck nowhere but i need to go back to the woods #i miss when it rained #and id somehow end up with earthworms in my kitchen #and snakes in my bathtub #and id always have at least one mature wolf spider #hanging out above my doorways #:( #i miss all the wild turkey vultures #theyd hop around real high up in the trees above my house #i do not miss the mice tho #lost count of how many of those bastards i had to kill

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

"Everytime I move, eventually you find me and start hanging around. Just a lame excuse to see me mad, it's getting me down."

Let's talk about this line from "Nuts" and how it plays into "I Remember You".

Imagine being an eleven year old girl, abandoned in the snow. Imagine that Simon left you even though you believe - with full faith that you never once spared your blood father - you believe that Simon could have stayed. That Simon's departure was unnecessary. That he left you because he quit. He gave up.

And when you next see him again, he has completely forgotten you. And because of your faith in him, you believe that he surrendered to the Crown. And that his departure was less a forced decision and one he made with full intent and clear consent. Because Simon is so strong. He's fought the Crown for so long. Why couldn't he stay? Why didn't he stay?

You don't understand.

He forgot about you. And maybe that was all you were worth to him. Maybe you're just an afterthought after all.

Fast forward through the years. You move from house to house. When you lived out in the woods with Ash, when you lived in the treehouse, even going way back and far out there in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, somehow this crazy, doddering, dribbling old fool would find you. Again. And again.

Maybe it's a sign that he remembers you?

But he never does. He just wrecks your shit. He once burst all the pipes in your house, flooding all your rooms, and wrecking all your shit, because he hid in your bathroom and cried into your toilet until all your plumbing froze. He lashed out at Ash (which yeah, okay that can pass, but it was not fun at the time having to deal with your pissed off bf). He crashed a few dates with Bonnie when you were first feeling each other out, and you would have wrung his neck if he ruined that for you. This stupid madman who kept hanging around, calling for your attention every five minutes until you didn't have enough silence to think.

He only pisses you off. If you ever needed proof that your Simon is gone, that he left, that he quit, Ice King was that living proof. He's nothing but a memory and Ice King is only a nuisance. He doesn't care that he's making you angry, that you ask him to back off, to go away. It's like he wants to see you mad. And maybe that's it. Maybe this is how Ice King entertains himself. He pisses off everyone and gets a hoot when he gets a reaction.

That's all you are to him nowadays. A cheap source of endless entertainment because you can't not be mad at him, you can't ignore him.

But then, you find Simon's letters, you find Simon's pleas. And that recontextualizes everything.

You thought that Simon didn't value you enough to stay. Because if she was really important, then he would've stayed. He would've remembered.

But the letters show that Simon did not leave easily. That he begs for your forgiveness because you're still someone important to him. People don't beg for absolution from those they hate. They beg from those they love, from those whose love they reach for with both hands.

Simon never stopped loving Marceline, and he never stopped looking for her. He couldn't bear to part with her. He wanted to apologize because Marceline's love is something immeasurable, something to treasure, something to seek in spite of the enforced insanity.

And it's a direct counter to her beliefs.

Because she's monster trash with a skewed moral compass. A literal parasite. Nothing more than a problem to other people. How could Marceline believe that there's something in her that could help people?

So Marceline sings, "I want to help you but I don't know if I can."

"Please forgive me for whatever I do, when I don't remember you," Simon sings back.

You are enough, Simon tells her, from five fathoms deep within his curse, from a thousand years after their parting.

He says, "your love has always been enough. You are not hollow and empty even through all the hurt and horror of your life. I will beg on bended knee because I know this, and I know you."

#simon petrikov #marceline the vampire queen #adventure time

[f1nalboys]

I have the burning desire to bring Red into rural bumfuck nowhere, lay on a blanket with him at night as we look up at the stars, drink alcohol, talk real shit and ✨connect✨

no because Red would love that???? he'd be a little awkward at first just because he isn't used to not being in the city but once he's comfortable (and has a few beers in him) he's going to have a grand time! i got a little carried away and wrote a little one shot thing for this because :,)

WORD COUNT: 1511

WARNINGS: cursing, alcohol, cigarettes, red being adorable, and also a little scary

Red needed a fucking cigarette. You had promised him a good time and he really, truly, thought you were talking about sex. So when you turned off onto back roads and the two of you had been driving for hours, he started getting worried. “Uh, where are you taking me?” He had asked, leaning closer to you in the driver's seat. “I told you, I’m giving you a good time! We’re almost there, Red, relax.”

You told him no smoking in the car so, for the time being, he held the cigarette limply in his mouth, his leg bouncing, waiting for the go ahead to get out. The second you park the car he's out, hand digging around in his back pocket for his lighter. You chuckle, getting out of the truck and grabbing the necessary things from the trunk before walking down the wooded trail. He jogs up behind you, turning his head each time he blows the smoke out of his mouth.

“So, you gonna tell me what’s going on?” He asks, slinging an arm over your shoulder. He was tall, clocking in at 6’2, which he loved. ‘Always used to be the short one,’ he had said to you the ninth time he had to grab you something off of the top shelf. “Come on, babe, give me a hint!”

“It’s a surprise, babe.” You reply, bumping him off of you with your hip. He laughs before grabbing the basket out of your hands. 

“Mhm, is it a sexy surprise?” He wiggles his thick eyebrows at you. You groan, hiding your laughter, before turning down a more hidden, beaten down path. The sun was beginning to set and he was starting to look really nervous. “If it’s not a sexy surprise, is it a murder one? Because it feels like a murder surprise.”

You ignore him, stepping through and holding back a few leaves for him. He lets out a noise of surprise when he enters the clearing, clearly shocked at how much thought you had put into this. A small cabin, which was clearly in use by someone else, was off to the edge of the forest. The grass was short here, minus a few wild flower patches towards the edge of the forest,  and there was a lake north of where you were standing.

“Holy shit, Y/N! You did all this for lil’ old me?” He asks, planting a sloppy kiss onto your cheek. He hasn’t been treated this well in a very long time. No one has really ever put the effort in like you had just done. It really tugged at his heartstrings.

“Sure did, Red. I mean, we can’t use the cabin or the lake and we aren't allowed to stay past midnight, but this little field right here? It’s ours for the next six hours.” He grabs ahold of your hand and, after putting out his cigarette, the two of you walk to the middle of the clearing where you open the basket Red had been carrying and take the blanket out.

He says nothing while he helps you set up, though you do catch him staring at you a few times. Once everything was set up, he flops down, pulling you with him. “This is awesome, you know that?” He whispers, running a hand through your hair before kissing you. “There ain’t a special occasion I’m missing though, right?”

You laugh, shaking your head. You sit up and grab two beers from the basket and hand one to him. “Ooh, seems you’ve thought of everything. You tryna get me drunk?” He teases, taking the beer gratefully. He was sitting up on his elbows now, staring at you as he tilted the bottle to his lips.

“How’d you know?” You shoot back, kicking his foot with your own gently. The sky was ablaze in color, the sun sinking down lower and lower before it disappeared completely. “Wanted to bring you here to watch the sky and talk, you know? I know you’ve been busy and I thought you deserved a break.”

“Shit, you’re too nice to me, you know that?” He says, grabbing your hand. His hands were cold from the bottle and the rings he wore sent a shiver down your spine. He looked good; maybe not picnic and star gazing appropriate, but still good. His hair, which he had just taken down from his normal spikes, was curled slightly and a few strands had fallen onto his face. 

He wore a distressed band tee Indigo, one of his roommates, had made for his band and a well loved denim jacket overtop it. His jeans were black and he wore his steel-toed boots, a staple in almost every outfit he wore. “You like what you see?” 

“Oh, shut up,” You mutter, heat crawling up your neck when he catches you staring at him. You lay back, tilting your head to rest on his shoulder, and you begin to watch the sky darken, the stars growing brighter. He pulls you in closer to him and, for a moment, the two of you sit there in silence. 

“You see that one, right there?” He asks, pointing towards a star and you nod. You turned your head and saw how big his smile was. “That’s Libra. Scales, or whatever, for balance. Kind of proves the stuff I’m doing means something.” His smile falters for a moment. 

“The stuff you’re doing?”

“With those rich assholes. The ones I’ve gotten rid of. I’m kind of like the metaphorical scales, keeping the balance of the world. Getting rid of the people who deserve it.” His eyes were darker now, his jaw set. He was angry. You never saw Red angry, though you assume it’s because you weren’t one of the people he hated. His eyes squeeze shut and he breathes in deeply before releasing it slowly.It was something he had learned in therapy. His eyes pop open and he’s back to normal. “Sorry about that, honey. I guess I just got a little carried away.”

“S’alright,” You say, kissing him on his cheek and moving back to the position you had been in moments ago. You wanted to ask him something but were worried. You didn't want to make him mad or uncomfortable. You loved him. “Keiji, can I ask you something?”

“Ooh, my real name. Am I in trouble?” He asks, laughing at his own joke. You bite at the inside of your cheek and he notices your silence, sitting up to get a good look at you. His eyebrows furrow and his hand comes to your face, his finger tracing your jaw. “Of course you can.”

You sigh, kissing his hand before asking. “Why do you hate those people so much?” He takes a sharp intake of breath and for a minute the look he gives you is one that raises goosebumps. It’s gone in a split second, leaving you unsure if you had really seen it. 

“They’re evil, plain and simple. They take from people, ruin their lives, all for their own benefit. It’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, but what about the good ones?”

He scoffs, his hand leaving your skin immediately. You had angered him with that statement, that much was certain. He sits up, his hand rubbing his face harshly. His other hand was flexing into a ball, like he was fighting back the urge to hit you. For the first time ever, you felt scared of him.

“There’s no such thing as a good rich person. Come on, let’s just… let’s just watch the stars and talk about something else, alright?” His voice is thick and he ends the conversation, laying back down and grabbing ahold of your hand with his, squeezing tightly for a second.

“You don’t know that there isn’t-”

“Y/N. I said, let's talk about something else.” He doesn’t look at you. You watch him clench his jaw, his head turned up to the sky, and you sigh, leaning into him. You had learned in your pretty short relationship that you had to pick your battles with him.

“Sorry.” His body deflates as you apologize. He pulls you in closer, kissing the top of your head.

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so… I just get angry about that stuff, you know? I’m such an asshole,” You shake your head.

“You’re not. I shouldn’t have tried to pry, that’s all. Let’s talk about your band. How’s practice been going?” The tension in the air immediately disappears as he begins to go off on a tangent about the issues he’s been having with his amp and you try to listen as much as you can. But you kept going back to how he had been just a moment ago; angry. Scary. It was a different side of him you hadn’t seen before, honestly. 

He turns to face you, a large smile on his face, as he hands you a small dandelion he had found, and your thoughts cleared. He was good. He had to be.

#keiji devlin #red devlin #slasher oc #s1mping4slashers writing #s1mping4slashers masterlist #s1mping4slashers works #s1mps slasher oc #i love that yall love him #he's a little complicated but it doesn't matter #light of my life fr #my oc #slashers

[samsflannel]

So I ran a poll on my twitter asking this: If the car crash at the end of season 1 never happened, and John never died, would he have killed Sam in season 4 once he started drinking demon blood? And the answer that won: Yes.

So, I decided to write a ficlet about it. Read under the cut.

You can also read on Ao3.

AU: John lives to see Sam drink demon blood and go “darkside.”

“This is what I warned you about, kid.” The gun in John’s shaking hands is cocked. Fully loaded. Safety off. Pointed at-

The plastic gas station bag Dean was holding drops onto the floor past the threshold of the cabin door, and one of the water bottles rolls under the worn, wood table. 

“What the fuck,” he says. Not a question. Sam’s asleep. Dead asleep on top of the sheets, book open across his chest and one of his stupid health nut breakfast bars unwrapped next to his hand. “What are you doing. Where have you been?” he whispers, hand itching for his gun.

“I told you, Dean,” John says, serious as all hell, gritting his teeth, sweat dripping down his temple. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Dean insists, but it shivers down his spine, makes his arms go cold. Sam stirs in his sleep and Dean’s feet ache toward the open door. “Let’s just go outside for a minute, talk about it before Sammy wakes up and sees that piece pointed at him.”

John takes a minute, his shoulders dropping, a sigh pushed out of his chest, but he lowers the gun and clicks the safety on, stuffs it in the back of his pants. Jerks his head toward the door, c’mon, then.

Christo, Dean whispers when he closes the door behind them- but John doesn’t react.

“Dad, what the hell,” he shouts once they make their way around to the side of the cabin, leaves crunching under their boots. “Where the hell have you been for the last year? I’ve been looking, asking other hunters-  how the fuck did you even find us out here?”

“One question at a time.” he presses the bridge of his nose between his fingers, breathing hard. 

“I’ll ask as many questions as I want,” Dean pushes, stepping forward, anger blooming up in his belly suddenly. “You show up out of nowhere when we haven’t seen you in over a year and you’re pointing a gun at my brother.”

John looks up at him. The circles under his eyes are dark and heavy- he looks different. “Your brother isn’t your brother, Dean. Not anymore.” He licks his lips, lowers his voice. “I heard things from other hunters. Disgusting things, evil things. And I thought- no.” He shakes his head, toes the dirt. “It can’t be. So I tracked you two down. Watched him. And I saw-”

He looks like he’s going to vomit, nostrils flaring, closing his eyes. “I saw what Sam did to that demon. Sucked it dry. I saw the blood on his face, Dean, he looked-” he pauses. Breathes and makes eye contact. “He’s not human anymore.”

“You’re wrong.” Dean shocks himself with how desperate his voice sounds. His hands tingle, his palms start to sweat- “I mean, you saw wrong. Sam would never-”

“Bullshit.” John cuts him off loud, and some visceral part of Dean flinches. “Don’t lie to me, Dean. You know. And I know that you know, so let’s skip that.”

Dean stills. Looks back and forth between his father’s eyes, pleading. But not denying. And then- hurt, face hardening. “So that’s why you came here? To waste your own son? And in his sleep, too, you don’t even have the sack to-”

“First of all, you don’t talk to me that way, I am your father.” He says it matter-of-fact, like it’s enough of an explanation. John gets in his space, toe-to-toe, middle finger pointed at his chest. “Get your head on straight. I told you two years ago what would happen if you didn’t control the situation and here we are with Sam chugging demon blood like it’s water.”

“I was dead.” Dean looks him right in the eyes, leaned up on his feet, eyes wide. “Not sure if you remember, but I was in hell. For months. And you let Sam walk. Knowing how broken he was, knowing he would have done anything-”

“You never should have made that deal, Dean. It was stupid and reckless and suicidal. But you made that choice. And Sam made his.”

Dean sits back on his heels, mouth tight. Shaking his head. “What was I supposed to do.” He searches John’s face. “Let Sam rot? You don’t understand. You don’t even know how much I couldn’t do that.”

John nods, solemn. “I get that, son. I do. But it would’ve been a helluva lot better than what I’m gonna have to do now.”

Flames lick Dean’s insides, his shoulders squaring up again. “You’re not gonna do shit. Look, dad, I’ve seen it too. I know it’s bad, but Sam, he-” he searches for the right words, but comes up blank. Huffs. “We’re gonna fix it. He’s gonna be okay.”

“It’s gone too far already,” John insists, almost shouting. “Sam’s gone. That kid you know, he’s so far off the reservation he’s hit the dead end, and there ain’t no turnarounds. You get that, right?”

“No, I actually don’t,” Dean spits, scrubbing his face, then slapping his hands down on his pockets. Shrugs. “He’s still Sam.”

John stops, then. Shakes his head a little, smiling, looks at his feet. “God,” he says. “Yeah.”

Dean furrows his eyebrows. “What?”

John shakes his head again. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. You two-” he stops himself, like he doesn’t want to finish the sentence. He meets Dean’s eyes again. “Just let me handle this, kid. It’s not gonna be any easier for me, but we can’t let him hurt anyone.”

“Dad, why do you think we came all the way out to this bumfuck nowhere cabin?” Dean spreads his arms out. “There’s no one here for Sam to hurt. No blood for him to drink, no demons, no nothing.”

John pulls his gun from his pants. “You know, I heard other things from those hunters. Things about you and your brother that I don’t-” gun at his hip, he bites at his mouth, looks at the ground. 

Dean swallows hard. Blood rushing all through his chest, climbing up his throat under his skin. “That’s not-”

“Don’t,” John says, final. “Just. Just don’t. I can’t.”

They both take an awkward pause. The knife in Dean’s jeans is burning a hole in his back pocket. 

He nods his head toward John’s hip. “Put the gun away, dad. You’re not going to kill Sam, alright? We’ll figure this out.”

“I’ve got it figured out already. Stay out here, you don’t have to watch it happen. We’ll give him a hunter’s funeral-”

Dean brings his foot up and kicks the glock out of John’s hand, flicks his knife open. Jams it right up against John’s throat. 

He takes a shaky breath. “I can’t let you do that,” he says, almost a whisper. He presses the blade flat, not trying to cut him- not yet. “Walk away.”

John’s face remains stone-serious, cold as hell. “I’m not gonna hurt you, son. You’re not the one who needs to be stopped.” He glances down at Dean’s arm, held steady at his neck. “So you go ahead and do what you need to do, but just know that you’re making the wrong choice letting evil run free.”

“Not everything is as black and white as you want it to be.” Dean swallows again, heart somewhere down in his belly. “Maybe- you know, maybe I used to think like that too. Good or bad. That black, dividing line between us and them.”

“This is as clear-cut as they come, Dean-”

“You’re wrong.” Tears creep up in Dean’s eyes, his nose burning, and he blinks them back, tries to fucking focus. “Sam is-” he tries to think of the right words. He’s never been good with words, with expression. That was always Sam’s wheelhouse.

He settles on: “Sam isn’t evil.” He focuses on the blade, not able to look John in the face for some reason. “The thing inside of him is evil. But he’s kind and smart and a helluva lot stronger than you or me. But I guess you never wanted to see that.”

John sighs. Doesn’t respond. Fear is catching in Dean’s throat, strumming across his spine. 

“Is there any chance I can talk you out of this?” Dean’s lip quivers, tears stinging his eyes again.

John gives him a look that’s almost sympathetic. Then- understanding. Or acceptance. Dean’s not sure. 

He tilts his head back a little. “I’m afraid not, kid.” He says it quietly. Soft. “I’m sorry.”

Dean nods. “Then I’m sorry, too.”

The blade cuts clean, sharp, but John still gurgles on his own blood, hitting his knees hard, leaves crunching under him- and the blood, God, there’s so much, spitting from his throat in rivers, and Dean steps back so it won’t splatter. 

Fuck, Dean thinks. Fuck. John stops struggling, twitching after what feels like an hour but is really only seconds. And Dean falls to his knees, too, pukes right there in the grass, hands burning with how hard he grips the ground.

He sits there for a while. It’s so quiet. The air tastes like copper. The sun begins to set, heavy and warm over the forest around him.

And then he pushes himself up. Drags John by the boots as far as his legs will carry him- tomorrow, he’ll get a shovel. Do right by his old man.

Sam’s still asleep when he comes back in, turned over on his side with the book thrown across the floor. Dean toes his shoes off, lets his jacket hit the wood floor. 

He tucks himself up behind Sam, nose pressed into his back, takes a huge breath. Tries to get his hands to quit shaking.

“Dean?” Sam tilts his head back a little, stretching his legs out. “You alright?” He slurs. “Didja go to the store?”

Dean nods, eyes wide open. He pulls away from Sam, then- lays on his back so Sam won’t think something’s up. “Yeah, Sammy, I did. Got that Campbell’s soup you like.”

“Nice,” Sam says, yawns. Dean’s chest feels like there’s a gaping hole, unfurling at the edges. “Sorry for falling asleep. You want me to go get some firewood for the-”

“No,” Dean says, a little too fast. Sam turns over, eyebrow raised. “I mean, uh- no. It’s fine. I’ll take care of it.” He smiles at him, the way he does when he’s about to say some stupid shit. “You need to catch up on your rest, princess, don’t let me stop you-”

Sam tries to whack him with his pillow, but Dean catches it before he can. “Dick,” Sam says. 

Later, when Dean gets up to grab wood for the firepit so they can cook dinner, Sam says: “Hey.” He’s watching The Goonies on the shitty, box TV they managed to get working. 

“Is for horses,” Dean retorts, easy, distracted with his boot laces. 

Sam does that bitchy little sigh he does when he’s annoyed or trying to say something. “Seriously. Dean, I-” 

Dean looks over at him.

“Thank you. For everything. That you do for me, I mean. For us.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “Don’t get too mushy about it.”

When he gets outside, he walks faster and faster until he’s running, cold air biting the tips of his ears until he falls at the foot of the forest and heaves, nothing left to lose from his stomach.

#enjoy!! this took me about a day so please reblog if you like it! #supernatural #samdean #john winchester #spn au #spn ficlet #wincest #wincest ficlet

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

Multiples of 6 for the OC asks!

AYYYYYYYYYY THANK YOU

i think for this one i’ll answer each question with three ocs for comparison >:V

(under the cut because, predictably, It Got Long)

-

6. Do they smoke or do they hate smoking. 

(origfic, unnamed superhero verse)

-

Neil: won’t touch cigarettes, but has been known to smoke a bowl every now and then when his anxiety gets the best of him. he doesn’t like doing it--he’s internalized some pretty negative shit about how it means he’s a trashy, weak-willed loser who can’t handle reality--but since meeting nads and then beth, he’s eased up a lot on the guilt and is able to relax more.

Nads: smokes cigarettes, but only if they’re stolen. she’s got an active lifestyle to say the least and she doesn’t want to risk fucking up her lungs, so that’s her compromise. my god does she love her weed though

Beth: smokes cigarettes to take the edge off her anxiety when she has to go outside during the day. she knows they’re worse for her than weed, but she’s wary enough of her liminal space powers without imagining what they might do if she got stoned.

-

12. What’s an outfit they’d despise wearing Vs one they’d love wearing? Draw it! 

(Tales of Arcadia; i’m godawful at drawing clothes so i’ll just describe them as best i can ashdflkshdfkl)

-

Liyen: loves comfortable, understated, professional-looking masc clothes, usually in muted shades of gray, blue, or black. give them a fuzzy turtleneck sweater and black pants and they’re happy. meanwhile they’d be SUPER uncomfortable in loud, clashing colors or anything too femme. 

Schommag: Does Not Like Clothes That Will Get in Her Way, also not a big fan of dressing femme with very few exceptions (the right Little Black Dress, for example). give her what she needs to get around the woods and stay out of her way. that said she does love showing off her muscles, so she wears a lot of tank tops and sports bras (and sometimes no top at all, if she can get away with it). 

Oryalv: VERY femme, particularly business casual. this man loves his pantsuits. meanwhile his nightmare is middle-aged high school coach aesthetic. put him in a t-shirt and khakis and he’ll start pouring smoke like a teakettle

-

18. Have they ever committed a crime? How? Why? If not, then what’s their opinion on crime?

(origfic, unnamed VALENTINE DON’T DO THAT verse)

-

Valentine: has been made complicit in a lot of their family’s cutthroat-noble shadiness growing up, is otherwise a law-abiding sort up until they jump off the slippery slope and get the war crime ball rolling in earnest. Whoops

Edmund: has gotten into plenty of cutthroat-noble shadiness of his own volition, thank you very much. unlike valentine he’s a whole lot more inclined to go UHHH and pull up when it comes to war crimes

Marcel: LOVES war crimes. LOVES them. would marry them if he could. lucky for him he’s captain of the guard and has plenty of opportunities. will otherwise use the law as a bludgeon but i don’t think he’s too bothered about it for its own sake

-

24. Mcdonalds, subway, or KFC?

(Final Fantasy Tactics A2)

-

Nebilim: subway, grease is sensory hell and makes him sick and it’s the easiest place to avoid it. the number of variables per sandwich make him anxious, but if he has to pick one then fuck it, it’s worth not putting grease in his body.  

Moovry: loves grease with all his somehow-still-functioning heart, would bring his own beer keg to KFC and refuse to leave til he’s finished his fourth bucket of chicken

York: MCDONALDS! MCDONALDS! MCDONALDS. gets the happy meal and then uses the toy to test their black magic minispells. we hardly knew ye, beyblade 

-

30. Have they ever dreamed about another oc?

(Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, taxidermy/doll horror cw)

-

Faerna: has dreams about missing his mother sometimes. he hasn’t seen her in a long time, and for all he knows she thinks he’s dead, but he can’t bring himself to go back and look for her when he doesn’t know if she’ll approve of the life he’s chosen for himself. for all he talks himself up, not everyone’s happy to have a thief and a conman for a son.

SkekNev: has recurring dreams about the victims of their taxidermy coming back to life. less of a HOLY SHIT THE DOLLS ARE ALIVE nightmare for them, more of an anger/anxiety nightmare because stop that, stop having autonomy, i made you like this for a reason.

Aivne: dreams a lot about her little siblings. outright nightmares, semi-lucid rehearsals of danger scenarios, memories from before they lost their parents.

-

36. If they’re nonhuman, what’s their opinion on humans?

(origfic, faeverse)

-

Aislinng: vampire/incubus, more specifically A Dracula Lookin Motherfucker. depending on how much of a bastard he is in a given au, humans are usually somewhere between ‘fun to dazzle with my Supernatural Charms’ and ‘boring. where are the interesting people to torment’

Meadowsweet: rabbit faun. depending on which of the two wildly different versions of him we’re talking about, he either treats humans with the same goodwill as anyone else who might need his healing, or looks down on them and considers them fair game for whatever evil bastard he’s pining after this week.

Agaric: aislinng’s son with a forest spirit, so fuck if i know what to call him at this point. humans tend to find his brand of quiet, aloof awkwardness either offputting or endearing; either one is mortifying, and he’d mostly rather just keep to himself. 

-

42. What’s their standpoint when it comes to washing hands?

(origfic, bumfuck nowhere cult)

-

Cristina: obsessed with cleanliness, washes her hands constantly, crissy please you live in the desert

Skinner: if my hands are clean i can’t wipe them on cristina’s robes now can i

Rosemary: who needs to wash hands when you’ve got tentacles ;)

-

48. If they were defeated fairly in battle, would they accept and move on or throw a fit?

(origfic, slasher movie slaughterhouse dimension)

-

Maggie: will stay down and let you think she’s beaten, until you take your eyes off her for a second too long. then she’ll go for your hamstring

Dee: will accept it and move on, but will also try to make you feel like winning wasn’t really important anyway. maggie loves her dearly but she is kind of infuriating to everyone else

Esau: is delighted when somebody beats him, because if they’ve gotten that far they’ve committed at least one horrific atrocity and will have to live with that forever (if not embrace it). the real treasure was the corruption and PTSD we found along the way. no wonder maggie kind of hate-connects with him, he reminds her of dee lmao

-

54. Have they ever lost anyone?

(misc origfic)

-

Gray: lost the person who summoned them, gave them form, and taught them how to speak. once she died, all they knew was that she’d stopped coming, and that their only friend--their only contact with the world outside the cave--was gone. they’re there alone for a long time before a hitchhiker stumbles across them, and now they’re clingy as fuck and terrified of being abandoned again.

Ashdown: lost her wife the spring before her story begins, which left her so depressed she didn’t bother flying south for the winter with everyone else. she does eventually find love again, after coming to terms with the fact that what she’s lost isn’t the only thing she can ever have.

Jake: lost his older brother as a kid, which might or might not be why some fuck haunting their own fursuit recruits him to help with their unfinished business.

-

[DYING WHEEZE]

thank you again for the questions!!! i have. so many ocs. SO many ocs, and it’s always fun to get a chance to trot a bunch of them out, especially with a good range of questions like these :D

#the golden ghost #tales of arcadia #dark crystal age of resistance #asks #tag memes #ocs #my ocs #toa tag #origfic tag #my origfic #final fantasy tag #smoking cw #weed cw #dolls cw #origfic group tag #because there's too many to tag all of them on this post asdhfslkdfhsdf

[pleom]

i. hunger

A sound awoke you. It shouldn’t have—it was much too distant and far too quiet for you to have picked up on it. But the tension in the air left you hyperaware of every move and shuffle, too high-strung to fully give yourself to sleep. You lacked the energy to open your eyes and relied on your other senses to give you a clue. The sound slowly grew in clarity—plastic crinkles and the smacks of a dry mouth.

It was Jisung, sat against a wall with an empty bag of chips dangled over his tongue. He panted desperately, and licked at the pitiful amount of crumbs that dropped into his mouth. All around him were containers of already finished food. The last meal ate was a can of green beans, and it was Minho who shoved the last bits into his mouth while everyone slept. The room never smelled of rotten food, though, as everyone made sure to pick each package and cartridge clean. No one would dare leave behind a speck in their wake. Not while the whole room starved. 

“Jisung,” Mina warned. 

“Sorry,” and the plastic bag crumpled back down to the floor. Jisung groaned with his chest, arms twitching over his stomach. “I’m just so hungry; how long do we gotta wait?”

It seemed like everyone was awake, now. More feet dragged across the concrete, and every wrinkle seemed to have its own reverb. Life sprung back into being inside this cellar bunker of yours.

You felt it, too. An emptiness none too gentle. It rocked you in violent waves that left you heaving, but even so, you had to keep a steel grip. The rest of the cabin moaned with the same predicament. And deep inside all of them, even with the knowledge they beared, they wondered the same thing.

“Long enough,” Mina said, easily irked. She kicked a can to its side and nestled deeper into the wall. “We’ll survive, I promise. But only if you guys keep it down, alright? Ever heard of meditating?”

“Meditating is supposed to be done under ideal conditions,” Jisung fired.

“Not true,”

“Very true, what—”

The screeching of metal broke the beginnings of another argument before it began, signaling either the return of someone important or the arrival of someone disastrous. Heavy boots plodded down the concrete stairs leading to your bunker, a single bated breath shared among all its dwellers.

“Guys,” a familiar, somber voice echoed through the chamber, “it’s safe.”

It’s Chan. And he came back bloodier than before. But the stains on his clothings registered later than his words—

—“Really?!” You jumped from your seat, and immediately tumbled back down to your knees. The hunger sucked the energy out of your muscles, and left you with limbs that defied your every wish. 

Chan was by your side immediately, wrapping his hand around your rail-thin arm. “Yeah, and I brought food, so you all can relax.”

The room broke down in relief, sighs and cries falling from left and right. The grumbles from their stomach sounded louder than ever. 

Chan slunk a shredded sack from over his shoulder, opening it up to reveal piles of delicate products—peaches, Hawaiian rolls, jerky. Instantaneously, the whole room charged forward on their fragile hands and feet to grab a serving.

When everyone had their piece, they laid back against the wall with renewed vigor, sated and lively. The smell of copper, sugar, and meat wafted through the air. Chan downed a bottle of water and tossed it to the side.

“Now, we just need to wait for the sun to come up, and bear till the afternoon.”

ii. dew

Exiting the bunker cellar brought forth both revelatory and crushing realizations. A new smell met your nose, rancid, and it wasn’t from the thick mush of coagulated blood and torn flesh strewn across the lawn. It was the aftermath left stuck on the grass.

“Usually, after nights like that, the smell of the morning is supposed to be, you know, pleasant,” droned Jisung. “It feels like we woke up in hell.”

“Isn’t it?” Changbin quipped. “But, yeah, this isn’t how it was last time we were out.”

“Feels like climate change gave us its worst,” Sana took large steps to maneuver out of the way of the grass. When everyone gathered to the middle of the street, away from the festering puddles, it was time to consider your odds.

“At least we picked on a pattern,” you said, eyes following the ruptured cords from power-line to power-line. They had stopped sparking with life. “But are we sure this isn’t happening elsewhere? I mean, it’s acid rain. Pretty sure that isn’t location-locked.”

“Before the electricity cut off, I searched for news from everywhere. If psychotic raindrops were falling in anywhere major, it would be an epidemic. Hell, if it even rained in the next town over we’d know. The con of living in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, besides the obvious, is that we are truly out of sight and out of mind.”

The group shivered with the truth of Chan’s words. Everyone bore a face of both hopefulness and cynicism as they toyed with the future of the town. 

“Think the cars still work?” Jisung mulled, “Or did the rain kill those, too?”

“Only one way to find out.”

iii. forewarning

“Got a little caught in the rain?” You mused. Hyunjin dashed into the restaurant, soaked down to the bone. A group dinner to celebrate your promotion at work was planned since the announcement, although now very hastily carried out due to the sudden weather. 

A waiter came moments before, and at numerous times, each to which were turned away in consideration for those who hadn’t made it yet. It started looking bleak—and understandably so, until Hyunjin finally pulled through at the door. The rest of the group chuckled lightheartedly; Chan pulled back a chair for him to seat. 

A fist smashed it to its side. 

“Hyunjin?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he muttered, just barely loud enough for you to catch. He pulled the seat back up, and threw his coat over it with abandon. Your friends’ liveliness diminished considerably, with every head turning towards the other. A cautious concernment battled the air, with Seungmin being the first to confront it. 

He rested a hand over Hyunjin’s fist, whom now sat with a face full of red and eyes casted down at his lap. 

“You alright there?” Seungmin started, pausing to look over the group, then tried again. “Did you miss the bus? Are you angry you’re late? It’s fine, you know. You can talk—”

Hyunjin erupted from his seat, staring down at Seungmin with irrational indignation. He clenched his lips, then slowly, quietly began to speak. “Don’t push me. I am not in the mood for this.”

You could tell he was holding something/himself back, but the curtness of his words startled you all the same. The rest of the group—Mina, Changbin, Jisung, Minho, Sana, and Chan—all gaped. Seungmin pulled his hands back and held up his arms, sweat building at his temple. You watched his features morph with his thoughts, and just when Hyunjin’s anger seemingly simmered, he braved his next words.

“Forgive me—”

Hyunjin swung. 

You heard it before you saw it. The sound of bone cracking against bone, the wet splats of blood upon tableware, it all made your stomach churn, and you dry heaved at the sight of Hyunjin aiming again. Your friends gasped, screamed, and scrambled away from the table as Chan raced for Hyunjin, but it was too late. Hyunjin’s fists met with Seungmin stronger than before with the buildup of his rage. Their faces almost held the same shade of red, but the color covered just as much ground. 

The entire restaurant followed your steps, spreading chaos where they looked on in shock. 

Chan stopped Hyunjin from placing another blow, but Seungmin already laid unconscious between the crimson rows of chairs. “Hey! Hey! Come on, man! What are you doing?”

“Shut up!” Hyunjin shoved Chan off and turned around to face him. This wasn’t Hyunjin, it couldn’t be. He looked and behaved all too unfamiliar, and within the depths of his eyes, he saw the same. He stared at Chan as though he were a stranger, a nobody, and in a split-second, an enemy. 

He thrusted at Chan and narrowly missed. 

“Chan!” you screamed and nearly bounded for him, tripping over the dozens of disorder limbs in your way. Hyunjin snapped his head and you saw the shift in his focus. He took a step towards you, unrestrained, before your boyfriend’s arms wrapped around his waist and threw him down to the floor. 

The restaurant’s workers decided to pull their weight—aiding Chan in confining a thrashing Hyunjin to the ground. A server grappled for Hyunjin’s waist. In that moment, Chan let go, for a second’s reprieve, to find a stronger grasp, or to spit some sense into Hyunjin’s face—you weren’t sure which; everything happened in a blur—Chan being shoved off, Hyunjin flying for the waiter, his fists connecting to his face, blood, shrieking, Chan burrowing you in his chest, tears full of fear running down your cheeks. 

“What’s going on?!” you cried, “He’s beating his face in!”

Chan’s ragged breaths met your ears, and his arms squeezed you in a deathly grip. You backed both of you into a corner along with the others, the sound of rain drumming harder with a sense of mayhem. All this confusion, the uproar inside your brain, you screamed for an answer, his, God’s, anyone who knew the truth. Chan’s tears fell alongside yours, and thwarted, he conceded. 

“I don’t know!” 

His hands balled in your hair, his eyes buried over the crown of your head. And the storm raged on, thunder clapping to the beat of Hyunjin’s fists.

iv. outrage

“Run.”

Shrieks echoed between every nook and cranny of the abandoned school building as you bounded down the halls. You were forced to break with your group, lest you fall victim to one who was in the group.

The sight of the school was first a sign of hope, a shaky breath of air, as you all barely escaped the downfall of the rain. And barely, indeed, since not all of you were lucky. Jisung sludged slowly behind the group, and when the first sound of thunder rang throughout the woods, he struggled kicking his feet quicker. For when it rained, it downpoured; and when the canopy could no longer protect him, he was doused with the sparkings of rage. 

He reached for Changbin, also soaked with the sky-fallen petrol, and strangled him. 

The rest of the group safely arrived at the building and collapsed, not in exhaustion or thirst or hunger, but with a chest-aching hopelessness. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. And you all swore that you had enough time to make it—instead, Jisung made it at the steps before anyone could react.

“Close the door!” 

Minho’s screams sounded from somewhere behind you, but you stayed put behind Chan’s back as he clearly tussled with the thought of blocking off another despair-stricken friend. His fingers clenched and unclenched around the door’s handle, and Jisung stomped closer and closer to your team. By then, you could already predict Chan’s next action, as a man with too much faith in his heart and fists too soft to land blows, he welcomed him in.

“Run!”

Fortunately, Chan’s legs were much too fast for Jisung to catch, but that just left the rest of you. 

Now, you all raced between rooms all familiar and yet alien, as the rain from the past week seemed to have already eroded its walls. It’s decrepit and menacing, and all around not a place you’d like to see Judgment Day in.

You avoided every footfall, chased every moonlight, and studied the rainstorm. You’d assume that with enough trained practice, this night should end without any more blood spilled. With enough luck and mercy on your side, you’ll all regroup, away from the terror of Jisung hunt for broken flesh. Maybe, all you guys needed was time and patience and separation. Maybe, the rain, the cursed rain, would drown out Jisung’s prowling footsteps and the shuffling of yours.

Your steps. 

His steps.

Chan’s steps.

Whose…? 

The steps—they wouldn’t stop coming in all directions. They grew louder with every step backward you took, and grew quiet when you stood still. Every now and again screams could be heard, and they repeated as the moon sailed through the night sky, blissfully unaware—a luxury that you could not be afforded. You prayed for the hiding to end, for Jisung’s rampage to quiet, for your friends and partner to escape to safety. But as each star grew brighter, as though mocking your situation, its reality settled heavy on your shoulders. 

You were never going to see your friends again.

v. new find

A male figure laid with only skin and bones. His arms crossed over his stomach as though he died hanging onto what little remained in it. You didn’t approach, too disheartened by the reality of your situation to take a closer look. Chan clearly felt differently, because he stepped closer to kneel over the body. You sighed.

“Another person starved,” you bemoaned, “That could’ve been us.”

Chan kept his silence, opting instead to rearrange the figure despite your protests. Wincing, you turn your flashlight towards something less gruesome. 

“He didn’t starve,” Chan whispered. 

“Huh?”

“He definitely did not starve,” Chan repeated, rising to full-height. He took a step back, knocking against a wall, a jittery finger pointed at the body. He struggled to spit out his words. “He ate. His lips, his clothes, his hands—full of blood.”

Confusion swirled in your mind. You flashed your light back at the body, but remained in your spot—the thought of seeing further detail made your stomach twist in knots. But the light reflected just enough for you to see; viscera were loosely wrapped around his limbs, yet you couldn’t spot a single open wound or injury on him. 

“W-what do you think this means?” you didn’t want to think deeper on this topic. You wished you could turn your brain off instead. “Surely it could have been an animal, right? Rats must be everywhere.”

“All animals had died since the very first time it rained,” Chan said grimly. You could feel him turn to look at you, but you refused to lift your gaze from the ground. “You know what this means. You’ve seen it.”

You gulped. The truth was there. 

“I have.”

vi. is it rage?

A drop of rain fell onto your hand. 

It soaked there, for just a second. The fear in your stomach almost vanquished, replaced instead with a false sense of relief, pride, and wisdom. You had almost cheered—it isn’t the rain that’s changing people! But then it absorbed.

You felt it in your chest first—thrumming violently near your heart. It made your heart feel like a muscle, a real muscle that grew tougher and stiffer with every pump. It made your blood prod against your veins, seeking exit in holes that didn’t exist. But in the end, it made its own and tinted your vision with red splotches, boiling out the skin of your face one pour at a time.

It grew maddening, terrible, and seared through your stomach in bouts of bile, venom and spite. Your lover’s face flashed inside your mind, and in the next bruised, burnt, and pummeled. Each image ticked with a new injury, a new mutilation and somehow it was the only thing that calmed the fire underneath your ribcage. You gurgled with the little space left inside your lungs.

Your limbs twitched. Your ears pulsed. 

A drop of rain fell onto your hand. 

Blood followed next.

— An All-Consuming Rage

#bang chan #bang chan scenarios #stray kids #skz angst #bang chan angst #stray kids scenarios #stray kids imagines #stray kids fanfic #skz scenarios #skz imagines #stray kids angst #bang chan imagines #.mine #tw // gore #implied cannibalism #oop hope i dont get flagged for this #should i even tag this as bang chan scenarios if its not even focused on him #oh well

[fc5holidayexchange]

FAR CRY 5 HOLIDAY EXCHANGE 2019 FIC

‘redemption’

Deputy Rook Gordon/John Seed

@seedsplease

“Here’s my gift to you Tia! I hope you enjoy it - Rook was a joy to write, and I hope you don’t mind if I write something else for her again someday! Happy holidays! <3”

'Deputy Rook Gordon x John Seed, sharing a bed, fluff, humor, very slight angst, a little hurt/comfort, very very vague description of minor injuries’

Rivulets of icy water drip from the damp ends of her hair and collect in the crease of her neck, soaking the collar of her coat. Rook’s lived in Montana her whole life, knows the cold as well as anyone else that calls Hope County home, but she doesn’t think she’s ever felt it quite like this. Her cheeks are chaffed and numb, she can’t feel the tops of her thighs any longer, and if the tips of her ears aren’t frostbitten, it’ll be a miracle. Cold leeches from her wet clothes into what feels like her bones, and Rook finds herself longing for her tiny apartment above the Spread Eagle and the electric heat that rattles from the radiators.

Still, she thinks, there’s a silver lining to be gleaned from all this — she’s so cold that she can no longer feel just how battered she is from the car accident. Black ice doesn’t care if you’re the leader of the Resistance, she’s learned.

Wind bites at her skin. Rook doesn’t know how long she’s been walking. It feels like hours, but it’s probably only been half of one. When she’d first left the car, her steps were steady and strong, despite the shin-high snow licking at the denim of her jeans. Now, she can barely lift her feet out of the divots they make. Instead, she shuffles forward, leaving behind trenches that lead straight to her.

Over her shoulder, the wreckage of her car looks like a black dot against a white canvas. Ahead of her, she can see the smoky-grey silhouette of what looks like a cabin. She stops in her tracks, snow freezing her feet through her cheap boots, and weighs her options.

Bunker? People in Hope County are paranoid enough that Rook’s been able to find an empty bunker on just about every property she’s stumbled upon. If she’s lucky, there’s one close by, fully stocked with food and blankets. Based on the way the rest of her day’s gone, it’s probably buried under six feet of snow, too.

Cabin? The place looks as empty as anything else in the county these days. The windows are dark and covered in a thin sheen of frost, and snow has started to pile up against the door. Rook hasn’t seen a car for miles; if people live here, they’re doing it off the grid, and they’re doing it very well. She wiggles her frozen fingers and wonders if she has a chance in hell at picking the lock.

Her only other option is trying to find her way back into town before dark. The threat of nightfall has already started to tinge the edges of the sky dark grey, and as much as Rook wishes she could proclaim to know this place like the back of her hand, everything looks the same in the snow. There’s no way she’ll get back to Fall’s End before sunset – especially not on foot.

A shiver forces its way through her body, and Rook clenches her teeth against it, wrapping her arms around herself in search of warmth. It doesn’t come, but it does help her make her decision – if she doesn’t find shelter, if she doesn’t get out of her damp clothes, she’ll freeze to death in the middle of the Montana wilderness.

Too many people are counting on her for her to give up that easily. Too many lives depend on her.

Rook trudges forward, slow but steady. One step becomes another, one foot after the other after the other. Snow tumbles down the crevice between her boot and her foot, soaking through her sock as she walks. It’s another stab of cold to her already frozen body, but it spurs her on. Somehow, she finds herself at the front of the cabin, the door less than a foot away from her. Salvation in the form of pressure-treated wood. 

She wiggles her fingers again, trying to get the feeling back, readying herself for a fight with the lock, when instinct tells her to try the knob. It’s unlikely, improbable, a last ditch effort.

It works. 

Rook turns the knob and finds no resistance. The hinges creak when she pushes the door open, but it still swings inward, offering her a way into the inviting shelter of the cabin. 

She steps inside, feet slippery wet against the wooden floor, and shuts the door against the winter nightmare behind her. Immediately, she feels warmer. A figment of her imagination, maybe, but with the wind off her cheeks and the snow out of her shoes, Rook finds she doesn’t particularly care.

“Looking a little worse for wear, aren’t we, Deputy?”

Fear jolts her into action. Instinctively, she spins in the direction of the voice, dragging her gun from the holster on her hip. The grip feels like ice between her palms as she aims toward her attacker’s head. 

“Oh, fuck.”

John Seed stands in the middle of what looks like the living room, his back to a fireplace that roars with a heat she can feel, even from six feet away. It’s newly lit, the logs dry and hardly singed, and the only conclusion Rook can come to is that John’s only just made it here himself. 

“Language,” he chastises, watching her weapon sway in his direction. 

“Get your hands up,” she demands, hoping her voice sounds steadier than it feels coming out of her mouth. “Up. Get them up.”

To her surprise, he does as she asks. John lifts his arms, palms facing outward and elbows bent. Rook follows the lines of his body. There are clean, dry clothes here, she learns, because John isn’t swathed in his usual getup.

He doesn’t fill the borrowed shirt and sweatpants the way she imagines his eldest brother might - he’s too slender, not as defined, and the baggy clothes make him look more like a confused frat boy than an accomplished lawyer, businessman, and cult leader.

“Now, now, Deputy,” John drawls, a self-satisfied smile plastered across a face that’s paler than Rook remembers. “There’s no need for violence.”

Against her better judgement, Rook snorts.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” she spits out, trying desperately to keep from shivering. Her damp clothes stick to her skin uncomfortably as she adjusts her stance. “Little Johnny have a change of heart? Or is your torture room not doing it for you anymore?”

“Wrath,” he sings quietly, seemingly unfazed. He points a single finger in her direction, the smile still settled in place. “Come now, darling. Surely we can resolve this peacefully. What can I do to make things copacetic between you and I?”

End this fucking holy war, she thinks. Leave Hope County and go back to whatever pit you came from.

Give me back my friends.

“You know, John,” Rook says, filtering the words out through teeth that scream for her to let them chatter, “I could just shoot you. End this now.”

“Oh, you could,” John agrees, his hands steady next to his head. “But I think I have something you want.”

Ice floods her already frozen chest. She has a hazy idea of what he means. 

“Joey Hudson,” he drawls, before she can ask him what he’s talking about. He must catch the flash of desperation that crosses her face, because he nods just once, just like he’s coaxing a frightened animal out of its hiding place. “Hm? An impromptu truce, just for the night, and I’ll let you have your little friend.”

Admitting it to him would be unwise, but she knows she won’t kill John, even if he weren’t agreeing to give up his bargaining chip. There’s blood on her hands, no matter how hard she’s tried to avoid it, and Rook would give her right arm if it meant an end to all the savagery committed across the county - her own acts included. No, she won’t put an end to John Seed in this tiny, barely habitable cabin, but he doesn’t need to know that.

She doesn’t want to die alone in the cold, either. If that means cozying up with the enemy in picturesque Bumfuck Nowhere until her clothes dry and the sun comes out, well - Rook thinks she’d be willing to have a slumber party with just about anyone at this point, just to get a reprieve from the cold.

It’s apparent that she’s been waiting too long to answer. John is watching her with sharp eyes, the gaze of a man who knows what he wants and knows how he’ll get it.

“Well, Deputy?” John taunts, wiggling his fingers. “Do we have a ceasefire? Benevolence in exchange for your precious Joey Hudson?”

She won’t kill him, but god, she wants to hit him. 

There’s a telltale twitch to her hands that says that if she weren’t gripping her gun, they’d be shaking. John picks up on it almost immediately, his eyes flashing, and before he can get a word in edgewise Rook cuts him off.

“Fine,” she agrees, lowering her weapon. “Fine. A ceasefire.”

It’s not a perfect deal, but it’s something. Satisfied, she sets her gun down on the kitchen counter and looks around the cabin. She can feel John’s gaze on her, and out of the corner of her eye, Rook sees that he hasn’t yet moved from his spot by the fireplace. 

“There’s no power,” he supplies helpfully, even as she flicks the light switch next to the kitchen doorway up and down. “No water, either, though the former occupants were kind enough to keep some bottled water in the fridge.”

As thirsty and as famished as she is, the only thing she can think about is getting warm. Her clothes are sticking to her skin, chaffing in places she didn’t think could chafe. Rook turns to John, her damp curls stuck to her neck, and gestures at him with her chin. 

“The dry clothes. Were there more?” 

John nods, eyeing her sodden jacket.

“In the back bedroom,” he says. “There are a few drawers. You may find something that fits.”

She’s halfway to the bedroom before he even finishes his sentence, shedding her layers as she goes - her coat first, which she splays across the floor in front of the fire, then her shoes. When she hears him snicker, Rook looks up.

“What?”

“Nice socks.”

She’d forgotten about those. Her favorite pair, shin height with cat ears and a little nose. The surefire way to brighten a bleary, grey day - that had been her thought process as she’d tugged them on that morning, smiling at the printed whiskers. 

Now they’re soaked, probably ruined, and the center of her enemy’s amusement.

Rook balls one up and chucks it at his head.

—

There’s only one bed. 

It’s the first thing she notices as she steps into the bedroom at the back of the cabin, 

She doesn’t find any pants, but she does find a shirt she could fit inside of three times over. It’s grey and ratty, with the words ‘Testicle Festival’ plastered on the front in faded writing. Beggars can’t be choosers; Rook shrugs it over her head and curls into it. The hem sits just past her knees - her very own oversized nightie - and despite the lack of power or electric heat in the cabin, it makes her feel warm. 

There’s a fur throw tossed over a rocking chair in the corner of the room, and Rook snatches it up before she leaves the room. 

“That bed?” she calls, wandering out into the living area to find John seated on the rickety old couch, “It’s mine. Part of the ceasefire terms.”

The look he fixes her with is toxic, and it makes her unreasonably pleased with herself. 

Rook can feel his eyes on her as she crouches in front of the fire, holding out her hands to leech the heat from the flames. It’s positively heavenly; this cabin may not have running water or functioning electricity, but the warmth of the raging fire mixed with the blessedly dry clothing makes her feel like she could take on the world.

“You’re bleeding.” 

“Hm?”

The warmth is so inviting that she barely hears him as he points out the splotch of blood on her shoulder. Rook twists, body aching, and peers at the bloodstain, tugging at the shirt to get a better look. She’s bleeding, alright, and she’s suddenly more aware of her injuries than she ever was as she trudged through the snow. 

“Shit,” she mutters. So I am. “Is there a first aid kit around here?”

Springs creak as John shifts himself off the couch, his feet gentle against the floor as he pads down the hallway towards what Rook assumes is the bathroom. While she waits, she presses a finger against the spot of blood. It’s wet, fresh, and the pain that follows her own touch makes the corners of her eyes burn with unshed tears. 

A hand on her shoulder brings her back to herself, and she ducks away from the touch. John stands over her, a medkit in one hand and the other clutching the empty spot where she once sat, looking at her curiously.

“What the hell?” Rook frowns, staring at the offending hand like he might just use it to strangle her. When he reaches out for her again, she smacks him away, a noise of discontent tumbling from between her lips. “Quit it!”

“Stay put.”

“What, and let you carve me up like a piece of meat? I’ll pass.”

“I think you’ve done a decent job of that on your own, my dear,” John says. Through the haze of pain, Rook is surprised to find that he sounds genuinely concerned. “Let me help you.”

It’s not a tough call to make - she can’t reach the wound on her back, and she’s pretty sure John isn’t going to make an example of her here. With nobody to show his handiwork to but her, Rook can’t imagine he’s interested in carving her sins into her skin.

Hesitantly, Rook lets him tug the shirt up over her head. His fingers nudge the still-wet band of her bra down a little, giving him better access to whatever cuts and scrapes litter her back. 

“It’s a wonder you’re not dead, yet,” John mutters. “How did you manage this?”

The first brush of an alcohol swab along an open wound rips a hiss from her lungs. Rook jerks from John’s grasp and whines at the pain. 

“Car accident,” she bites out, trying not to twist as he holds her in place. The warmth of his skin against her battered back is an odd mix of pleasant and disquieting. “Ruined my favorite one, too.”

“Better than ruining you,” John muses, though he seems more focused on dressing her wounds than the words that leave his mouth.

The comment makes her cheeks flame. Rook thinks she’ll have to catalogue that particular response for later, so she can work on never reacting quite that strongly again. 

It’s quiet as John works, but Rook’s thoughts swirl around in her head like a storm. Her parents, thousands of miles away and across an ocean - do they think of her as often as she thinks of them? She misses them ferociously, wishes she were there with them now in her homeland instead of sprawled in front of a fire with a man she’s considered a monster playing surgeon on her open wounds. 

That’s another thought that nags at the edges of her consciousness. Why is he helping her?

“Why are you doing this?”

For a while, he doesn’t speak. His hands are unexpectedly gentle as they work along her midsection, washing away spots of blood and tracing over battered skin. The image is oddly dissonant coming from him; Rook remembers being duct-taped to a swivel chair in a room that was tangy with the smell of blood. She remembers the eerie red lighting, the terror in Joey’s eyes as John had entered the room, the manic expression he’d held as he leaned over her with a tattoo gun clasped tightly between his fingers.

She didn’t think those same hands could be capable of kindness.

“You’re hurt,” he says eventually, eyes drifting to her face. He’s just finished taping a thin piece of gauze to the wound in her side, stark white against the bruising just starting to settle in beyond it. “Hardly fair to kick the enemy when she’s down, hm?”

“Fair?” Rook forces herself not to jerk away as John wipes at the gash in her shoulder with the damp cloth. “When have you ever been interested in being fair?”

For what feels like a lifetime, John is quiet. She feels him work at her wounds, hears the sounds of bandages crinkling as he unwraps them and his murmured apologies when she hisses as he presses them to her broken skin. 

“Your definition of ‘fair’ is different than the Project’s.” 

Understatement of the year, Rook thinks. John keeps speaking. 

“You deserve to be saved,” he says softly. Fingers brush against her jaw and tilt it up, until John has her chin clasped between his thumb and forefinger. “You’re strong, smart, capable - everything we’ll need when the Collapse comes. I’m trying to save you, Deputy. I can’t very well do that with you frozen in a ditch somewhere.”

Rook jolts as his fingers skitter over what must be a cut on her forehead. It stings, but it’s still more tolerable than being the recipient of the intensity of John’s stare. A feeling she can’t quite place starts in her chest, fluttering along to the beat of her heart and spreading out toward her fingertips.

His sentiment is skewed, Rook knows, but a far-off part of her thinks that as wrong as it is, it’s also kind of sweet. 

Without thinking about it, she reaches forward to grab John’s wrist. He’s been in the cabin longer than she has, moving around and getting his blood flowing, and his skin is warm where her fingers graze it.

“Thank you,” Rook murmurs, voice low and earnest. “I—thank you.”

John stares at her a moment. His gaze wanders from her eyes to where her fingers curl around his wrist and back again.

“Careful, Deputy,” he says eventually, twisting in her grip just enough so he can grab her hand. “If I didn’t know any better, I might think you’ve grown fond of me.”

The heat fades from her hand as John lets her go, turning toward the living room. 

Eden’s Gate is manipulative, wrong, dangerous. John, his brothers and his sister, their followers - at best, they’re disillusioned believers feeding on the tragedy they hear and see in the world. At worst, they know exactly what it is they’re doing. At worst, they’re hiding their horrors under the guise of a religion that claims to save.

Eventually, she relents.

“We can share the bed,” Rook says tentatively. John looks up at her curiously, one of the fur throws still clutched in his hands as he stands next to the sofa. “It’s probably better that way.” 

The grin he gives her is uncannily sharp. It’s predatory; all teeth and curled lips, compensation for his brief moment of vulnerability, and it makes her wonder if she’s just made a terrible misstep. He looks thrilled, like he’s never been offered a more lucrative deal in his life. Slowly, that awful, smug smile crawls back into place.

“Change of heart, darling?”

“Shut up,” she scowls, regretting every nice thing she’s ever said to him. “We can both use the body heat, that’s all.”

He follows her down the hall, past their still-burning fire and into the bedroom.

“This,” Rook says sternly, patting out a thin strip of space in the middle of the bed, “is the demilitarized zone. Stay out. Don’t get any ideas.”

When she looks up, John is standing at the edge of the bed, eyes dancing with what looks like amusement. A fluttering starts low in her stomach, and Rook has to swallow the feeling down. She tenses her shoulders and focuses on the stab of pain that radiates from her wound – a distraction from the nervous energy she feels as John stares at her.

“You have my word,” he agrees, placing his hand over his heart. “Scout’s honor.”

Rook can’t help the way her eyes roll back into her head. She tugs the blankets down and slips into the bed, curling on her side. The covers offer a warmth she’s been missing since the minute she stepped out of her ruined car, and as she pulls them up to her ears, she feels safer than she has in hours. 

Next to her, the bed sinks as John slides in next to her. 

It’s a dark night. Rook has her back to the window, but she can tell the moon is only a sliver in the sky based on the depth of the shadows in the bedroom. Nights like this, she wishes she could be outside, staring up at the inky black sky and the stars that lie across it.

Their skin doesn’t touch, not with Rook’s mandated safe-space between them, but she can still feel the heat that John’s body generates as he lies next to her. Something about it is comforting - she doesn’t remember the last time she was this close to somebody. 

The bed shakes as John jostles around next to her. A curious part of Rook wonders if he’s always like this – always moving, always trying to settle himself, always looking for comfort.

“Tell me something, Deputy.”

John’s voice startles her. She rolls over to find him on his back, gazing up at the wooden boards that make up the ceiling. Talking to him as she lays next to him in bed seems too intimate, too close; it’s not something she’d planned to spend her evening doing.

“It’s late. We should sleep.”

A weak effort to shut him down, Rook learns. A smile quirks his face, and he huffs out a sound that might be a laugh. 

“Humour me,” he murmurs. “How did you end up in Montana?”

Rook settles on her back next to him, perplexed by the question. Is this a new game he’s playing? Is this another tactic to play with her emotions? She tugs the blankets higher, curling them just under her chin. The thought of looking John in the eyes has her skin itching, so she keeps her gaze firmly on the ceiling.

“My parents are from Fyvie, Scotland,” she says. Her voice is quiet, but it sounds loud and echoey as it travels through the room. “My mother got a job teaching, so she and my father moved here before I was born. I grew up in Helena.”

Silence settles over the room. Rook finds it deafening, almost unbearable, and the nervous energy settling in her chest implores her to speak to fill the void.

“What about you?”

The words come so suddenly, so unbidden, that Rook almost doesn’t realize she’s said them until John turns his head towards her. 

“I—” John starts, then cuts himself off suddenly. A few quiet seconds pass before he speaks again. “I followed Joseph.”

“I read his book.”

She knows her voice is tentative. She’s read the Book of Joseph – know thy enemy, and all that – and the stories of John’s childhood had all but gutted her. If it’s all true, then it explains a lot. If it’s a carefully crafted lie, well – the Seeds were never very trustworthy to begin with. 

“Then you know most of the story already,” John says easily, as if it isn’t a story filled with horrors. “Joseph found me in Atlanta, a shell of the boy he once knew, and rescued me. The life I was living before he found me…it was shameful. I was shameful. But Joseph, he looked past it. He saved me.”

The room is silent, save for the gentle noise of their mingled breathing. Outside, the wind has died down. The cabin no longer creaks under the pressure of snow squalls and ice pellets, doesn’t ache quite as much with the vestiges of the cold outdoors. Next to John, Rook is warm and comfortable despite the cuts and the bruises. 

“When my brothers and I found each other again, it was like all the broken pieces had finally settled into place. My sins, my addictions - they were my weaknesses, but they served a purpose. They helped put my family back together. After twenty years apart, we were suddenly back together, eating the wrong kind of soup in the dining room of my apartment, reminiscing about the night our biological father was arrested. All of those things brought me here.”

It’s not a story Rook expected. It makes the empath in her ache, makes her want to soothe this man who’s done nothing but torture her and her friends. It makes him a human, flesh and blood, for the very first time.

“You know, Deputy,” John muses, “I think you might be the first person I’ve ever told that story to.”

Rook’s heart stutters uneasily in her chest, an unexpected reaction to the vulnerability in his words, and she rolls her head to the side. John’s jaw is tight and tense, and she can almost feel the uncertainty that seems to roll off him.

Tentatively, she slides her arm toward him under the covers, past the safety net of space, and takes his hand. John freezes, like her touch borders on painful, then relaxes into her hold, squeezing her hand tightly. His skin is warm and soft where their fingers lace together.

Time seems to pass slowly the longer they lay there together. Dim light, just the light of those handfuls of stars, filters through the window. In the corner of her eye, Rook can map the profile of John’s face.

“You’re full of surprises, Baptist,” Rook murmurs sleepily. “Didn’t think you knew how to be kind.”

It’s so quiet that she thinks John may not have heard her, that he may have finally, mercifully fallen asleep. Waves of exhaustion lap at the edges of her consciousness, begging her to give in and rest. 

If he has anything else to say, Rook doesn’t hear it. Their hands still linked together, she lets herself drift away. 

—

Rook wakes, eyes heavy with the last dregs of sleep, and very nearly forgets where she is.

It takes longer than she’d like to realize that she’s not in her homey apartment above the Spread Eagle. There are no colourful pillows in this bed, no throw tossed over the back of the chair in the corner. The shadows don’t fall across the hardwood floor in quite the same way.

She’s warm in a way she didn’t think possible. It melts into her clothes from the body pressed against her, seeps into her bones at all the junctures where they touch, comforts in a way that’s unfamiliar but not at all wrong. 

Jagged lines of scarred lettering greet her as she blinks the sleep from her eyes. Sloth, it reads, a sin carved into flesh in a desperate attempt at absolution. The realization that this is John Seed she’s curled against, that he has his arms draped over her and her head tucked beneath his chin, doesn’t terrify her the way she thinks it should. 

He looks content. That’s the only word she can use to describe him as she follows the lines and scars of his body, the inky black marks of his tattoos that tell more of a story than any book ever could. John’s face is slack, relaxed, and for a moment Rook thinks she looks more like the boy she read about in the Book of Joseph than she ever thought possible. He’s soft, gentle; he’s not the monster the Valley has made him out to be. Not in this moment. 

Rook reaches out to drag the tip of a finger across each letter. She curls the pad of it around the ‘s’, scrapes the edge of her nail down the ‘l’, feels the bumpy surface of the ‘o’, the ‘t’, the ‘h’. 

Her mind is hazy, but she knows she has to get up. People will be looking for her, and if they find her wrecked car, the Resistance will send out the cavalry. This isn’t the place she wants to be when Sharky shows up wielding a flamethrower. 

Tentatively, hesitantly, she slides out from John’s embrace. His arm is loose around her, slack with sleep, and she knows he won’t wake as she slips out of bed and stands next to him. Rook can see into the hallway, sees her clothing spread out in front of the dying embers of the fire. With any luck, it’ll be more or less dry when she wanders out. With any luck, her socks won’t be destroyed. 

Sunlight filters in through the one window in the room. The warmth of John’s body is fading from her skin, but she thinks the worst of the cold is behind her. 

There’s a blue, fur throw crumpled into a ball on the floor next to the bed. Rook picks it up and shakes it out, then leans forward to drape it across John’s sleeping form. She gets close enough to brush her lips against his forehead.

Then, she’s gone. 

#fc5holidayexchange #john seed #john seed/deputy #deputy oc #gift: fic #seedsplease #fluff #humor #bed sharing #light angst #hurt/comfort #minor injuries #submission

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [757]

Mahanon’s hand is on his phone, yanking it to his ear halfway through the first ring. He doesn't have to open his eyes to read the name or see the picture that flashes on the screen to know who it is.

“What,” he grumbles, face half turned into his pillow. It’s not even close to dawn. Mahanon would wager it isn’t even midnight yet.

Of course his sister would call on one of the rare nights he’d coerced himself into actually sleeping earlier than am hours.

For a moment he can only hear the background noise of his sister’s side of the call. Her breathing, the strange echoing quality that means she’s on speaker, the ambient sound of someone driving. For a split second Mahanon’s mind goes to the worst possible situation.

She’s been taken, she’s being held hostage, she’s in danger and it’s his fault, his fault, his fault and he’s her brother he’s supposed to protect her —

“Mahanon,” Ellana says, voice trembling — fear? Excitement? Nerves? What is it it? — “I’m about to do something stupid and I need your help.”

Mahanon’s is sitting up before his mind can connect the words stupid and help.

“Where are you,” it’s meant to be a question but Mahanon snaps it out like an order. He doesn’t mean for it to come out that harsh. But it does and he regrets it immediately. Ellana’s never held his sharpness against him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t.

Ellana has suffered for his selfishness with a patience Mahanon can’t even begin to understand. And she’s never blamed him. Not once.

“There’s a man,” Ellana says and Mahanon’s heart spikes painfully against his chest. He’s moving. “And I know this is going to sound stupid, so fucking stupid — I’ve only known him for a couple of weeks.”

Mahanon’s put on his bluetooth earpiece and switched to that, tossing his phone onto his unmade bed as he yanks his clothes off to change.

“We met by chance,” she says, voice shaking. “We met by chance in an unimportant way and he just happened to stay. Three weeks. Four? And it was nice. It was — it was really nice, Mahanon. I don’t know how to describe it as anything other than nice.”

Mahanon’s shoving his legs into pants, teeth grinding together.

“But he doesn’t live here,” Ellana says. “He’s not from here. He’s from — from somewhere else? I don’t even know where he’s from. He was here on vacation. Mahanon, who comes to bumfuck nowhere south Orlais for vacation? No one. I don’t know.”

I do, Mahanon thinks.

“No one comes here without a reason, but he was just here and I don’t know. Maybe he was just stopping through and he happened to stay because of me and I don’t know if that’s ego talking or maybe I actually am able to read people after all.”

Mahanon’s throat constricts around the words he wants to say.

Of course you can read people. You’re the best at reading people. You understand so much about people that it ruins you and I don’t know how to tell you that but you know I want to tell you that anyway so you just smile at me. Ellana, you read people the way some people read a map. You can find your way through the world just by talking. It wasn’t you who was wrong.

Mahanon did this to her. Mahanon and his dumb choices and the consequences of thinking that whatever shit he starts would be something only he had to worry about. What damned hubris.

“But now he’s — he’s leaving. And it’s only been three weeks but I feel that I want — I want more than three weeks. I’m going after him.” Ellana’s voice trembles. “Mahanon, is that stupid? Am I — I’m a hundred different tropes, I’m sure.”

Mahanon’s mouth opens to spit out confirmation yes, that she’s being very stupid — now pull over and let me come get you and talk you down from this.

Three weeks? That’s nothing. Ellana’s known Mahanon her whole life and he still wronged her a thousand times in ways that surprised her. Three weeks? What is that in the context of a life? Nothing at all.

All of that over one man?

And she’s right, no one stays in the little town Ellana settled in after. No one. Mahanon goes because Ellana’s there but that’s it. Before Ellana moved there he didn’t even know that the place existed on a map. Which is half of why Ellana moved there, really. To be alone.

But Mahanon’s brain kicks in as he draws in breath to say all of this. His hands loosen around the zipper of his jacket and he lets it fall back open.

His brain says think.

His heart says listen.

Miracle of miracles, he actually does.

Mahanon sits down right there on the floor of his apartment hallway, staring at the door he was about to throw himself out of into the night to drive halfway across the country to get to his sister.

He breathes.

I’m about to do something stupid and I need you.

Ellana’s good at people and she used to be good at trust, but not anymore. It takes a lot for Ellana to open up now. Three weeks?

Ellana knows that this is stupid. She knows it’s absurd. She knows that three weeks is nothing. And she knows that Mahanon knows this.

But they also both know how important this is for her.

To act, to choose, to want after so long hiding.

His heart aches for his once-sunlight sister. Mahanon imagines her face in his mind, the stress and the anxiety and the hope that he knows is in her face. He imagines streetlights flying past as she drives towards — what? An airport? A train station?

Towards what she wants. Towards what she’s been running away from for almost five years.

Ellana doesn’t need Mahanon to say what they both already know. Ellana needs Mahanon to support her and let her know that even if it’s the stupid thing, it’s the right thing. Possibly.

What Ellana needs is courage.

“Do it,” Mahanon says, voice remarkably calm as he lets his keys fall from his damp palms to the floor, quietly clattering on the wood. “This man is important to you. Important enough that you’d wake me up in the middle of the night. Bold of you, sister.”

Ellana laughs.

“The worst that can happen is he says no,” Mahanon says. “But at least you’d have an answer. At least you’d know for sure. It costs you nothing to ask. To try. “

“It was only a little,” Ellana says, “But sometimes when we were together, for a brief moment, I felt close to normal again. And it felt so good to make someone smile, Mahanon. It felt even better to have someone who wanted to make me smile back.”

“Then go and get him,” Mahanon says, closing his eyes as he rests his knuckles against his forehead, phone clenched tight in his hand. “And if he’s a dick about turning you down I’ll be the one to go and get him. Just give me a name and a cardinal direction.”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

[jeminy3]

FMA Fic - Despondency

First finished fic in literal years and it's more sad/angst stuff? Ugh. Sorry. I guess that's My Thing now...

Features: Trans girl/feminine Ed pre-transition, or more accurately, pre-realization. Quiet dysphoria, Self-loathing, Anxiety, mentions of nudity, but only one vague reference to genitalia.

Pronouns change between he/she because she's barely realizing anything, really.

Kinda based on personal feelings.

Read on Google Docs

Read on AO3

---

"Y'know kid, you never bathe with us. This is like, what, the fourth time now? What's your deal?"

Greed was frowning, leaning with his hands on his hips in the manner he usually took when he was fed up with something. Like right now. With Edward. As usual.

They're standing in front of a freshwater lake, part of a long, winding river they'd been following through the woods lately. They'd stopped here for the evening, and after setting up camp, Greed had the bright idea to have another of their group-bath-slash-swimming-party-things. And as usual, Ed refused to take part, because it was fucking stupid when they could just bathe by themselves, with fucking privacy, like they usually do.

Behind Greed, Darius and Heinkel exchange glances, then shrug and turn back to the business of taking off their shoes and shirts. They'd already grown numb to these arguments.

Ed groans, standing in front of them with his meager armful of towels and bar of soap. Bathing had been uncomfortable for him for as long as he can remember, but out here in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, it's nearly unbearable. Especially now that he's travelling with two shitty chimeras and an even shittier homonculus wearing his friend's body like a fucking skin-suit and asking him the one question he didn't want to fucking hear right now.

Ed grinds his teeth, scowling. "My deal is how much I gotta deal with you fuckers until the Promised Day arrives. Now fuck off," he growls.

Irritatingly, Greed only cocks his head at him, looking at him quizzically.

"What, you shy or somethin'? You got a-" He twirls a finger at him, glancing down toward his legs. "-like uh, an issue, or something?"

Ed blinks at him. The gestures mean nothing to him, until he follows Greed's gaze and pointing finger and realizes that he's actually- looking at his. Crotch.

Ed jerks back, almost flinching, dropping his bent arms to his waist to hide himself as if he were already naked. "You fuckin- NO! I DON'T! There's nothing fucking wrong with me, you stupid-ass homonculus!" he barks out.

Greed just sighs at him, lowering his hand. "Jeeze, you don't gotta be so defensive all the time..."

Then he shrugs, lifting his arms and smirking in his trademark shitty way. He gestures toward the lake and half-naked chimeras behind him. "Look, dude. It's fine, really. I mean, c'mon..."

"-We're all men here," he says, almost laughing.

Wow. As if that made him feel any better. 'We're all men here'? More like 'we're all assholes ready to laugh at you'. Fuck that.

...Laugh at him for what, Ed doesn't really know, but his brain is insistent that they will. And it was usually right, since apparently it was a running theme for these guys to take the piss out of him as much as possible, since this "trip" had only made his day-to-day attitude more and more unpleasant.

And the words just... rub him the wrong way. He doesn't know why, he doesn't want to know why, all he knows is that it makes his skin crawl and he hates it.

Ed huffs turns on his heels. "I just- I like my privacy, okay? Fuck off already."

And then he starts walking, not even bothering to glance behind him. He doesn't need to - he can hear Greed's exasperated "Okay..." and Darius and Heinkel's laughter well enough.

Told you they'd laugh at you, his brain says. They always do.

Ed just keeps walking.

-

After an annoyingly large amount of hiking, Ed finally finds a place where the river pools into a round, swollen body of water, still flowing but much calmer than usual. There's a large bank that's muddy but has some large rocks perfect for sitting and drying clothes on. There's a lot of tall grass and foliage too, but he'll deal with it.

He looks behind him. There's no sign of the others or the lake they're at, just the long stretch of river he's been following, surrounded by trees. He must be downhill, or in a dip in the forest ground. He can't hear any voices, or much of anything, above the babbling of the river and the occasional sounds of tree branches rustling from the wind.

It's not the most ideal spot, but it's the best he can ask for right now, so he decides to settle here. If he walks too far downriver, it'll be dark by the time he gets back to camp.

He sits down on one of the big, flat rocks that juts out from the mud, partly-submerged in the water. He sets down his pack, his handful of towels, and his small bar of soap. He doesn't have a clean change of clothes or underwear to change into - tends to happen when you're branded a criminal and have to run off into the wilderness with just what's on your back.

He scoots himself near the water, takes off his boots and socks, rolls up his pants and dips his flesh foot into the water - it's pretty cold, as he suspected, but he doesn't pull his foot out, acclimating himself to the temperature. Still, he keeps cringing and shivering as he uses his soap to scrub his boots and socks until they're at least somewhat cleaner. Then he lays them out to dry on a flat-ish slab of rock next to him.

Then he prepares to strip down.

...He has to psyche himself up for this a bit. It's not that he's a stranger to stripping naked in the wilderness - he'd done it already several times since going on the run. And before then, he did it a few times in the past, during trips to particularly remote parts of the country in his travels with Alphonse. But it still feels... awkward. It's not like anyone's watching him, except for whatever random forest animals were out here - and they wouldn't give a shit about him - but it's still, it's...

...Eh, whatever.

One by one, he takes off each article of clothing, trying not to think about anything in particular, and heaps them in a pile next to him. Once he's got nothing but his bare ass sitting on the cool rock, he takes a deep breath, and slides into the water.

"FUCK! Fuck it's cold! Shit!" He can't stop himself from crying out at the shock, and he's alone here, so he lets himself curse and scream and groan as much as he wants just to deal with this cold-ass water. It's not even that deep, just barely up to his hips, but still. Jeeze.

He bends down to wet his face and splash water over his shoulders, which just makes him even colder but forces his body to acclimate faster. Fuck, though. Still sucks. Hopefully that lake the others are at is just as cold. Fuck 'em.  

He tries to slowly wade around in the water to try and warm up, but it's so cold. His teeth are chattering too much to even speak anymore, and he can't do much but stand here shivering, rubbing his own arms vigorously. When the water is still enough, he catches a glance at his own reflection.

Ed looks at it, at his naked body. He's built like a barrel, short but stout, muscular and strong. It's... nice.

But it also feels... not. Like it's... not nice.

He tilts his head at his own reflection, studying it.

Like he looks good, sure, especially for his age, but he's kinda... lumpy. Too thick. Too uneven.  

And on top of that, he's covered in scars and bruises, his flesh discolored and grotesque where his automail is attached, throwing his metal limbs into even greater contrast to the rest of him. He's all bumps and scratches and hard lines and dark shadows. Nothing's soft. Nothing's... pretty.

Wait, pretty...? He doesn't- Bah. Just thinking about stupid shit again. Like he always does.

Besides, there's nothing wrong with him (besides the automail). He's fine as he is.

...But at the same time, there's nothing... great about it either. Like sure, it was his body and he appreciated it well enough, but at the same time... well...

To be totally, completely honest? He wouldn't be against giving up another limb, or an organ, or any other body part, to bring back Al's body. If it came right down to it.

He wouldn't, ideally, but it was an option. A last-resort sort of thing. He could probably live without another limb or two. He'd get used to it. Just like he is now.

Just... used to it.

He's started lowering himself into the water by now, still trembling and gritting his teeth with the cold, but pushing through it. He wades around until he reaches a part of the pond deep enough for him to sort of sit under the water, drifting in place. He dips down his head to wet his face and hair, getting rid of whatever dust or dirt was on them.

He can't really remember a time when he didn't think this way about himself. Looking at his own body and feeling like it was just... there. Like in some way, it wasn't really his. But it still is?

It's... hard to put into words.

It's like he's just... A skeleton. A framework, looking out from a shell-like body that he was just... stuck with. Kind of like Al, in that sense.

Wait-

No, not like Al. Stupid- Don't even start comparing your suffering to his. Nothing you've gone through, or ever will go through, will compare to what he's been through. And you caused it.

So shut up and get back to helping him first, his brain says.

He closes his eyes, a familiar, crushing weight re-emerging from the depths of his heart, weighing him down and threatening to pin him here, in the water.

He needs to distract himself before he ends up bursting into tears or something.

He wades back to the rocks to retrieve his bar of soap and clothes. Starting with his shirt, he cleans them one piece at a time, soaking them in the water and scrubbing them with the soap, then spreading them out on the rocks to dry in the fading sunlight.

Despite himself, his mind wanders again.

And thinking about it, hey, no one ever feels completely okay with their own body, right? Everyone sees mistakes in themselves, since they're so easy to notice. We're all petty, insecure beings who want to be bigger and grander than anything we can actually be in reality. So you may as well settle with what you've been dealt. Be happy with it.

Besides, he'd feel better once Al and him get their bodies back. He'll have his real arm and leg again. He'll feel whole.

...Hopefully.

With his clothes now cleaned and drying, Ed finally gets to the task of cleaning himself. He sits in a shallower side of the pond, lifting his legs to scrub at his feet and ankles first. He works his way up his body to his head, scrubbing his scalp and working the suds into his hair in place of any decent shampoo.

Ugh. His hair's gonna be gross for this whole trip, isn't it? It sucks because, if he had to decide, he'd say it's the only part of his body that's his 'favorite'. Oh well... He cleans it as best he can, with what little he has.

Then he rinses, submerging his head under the water for a moment to wet everything, coming up and  shaking the water out of his face, pulling away his long, sticky bangs from his face.

And then he sees it again... his reflection. And something... strikes him about it.

He-

She looks at it again. Really looks at it. Her long hair, dark and honey-colored with its wetness. Glittering and shining brilliantly in the fading sunlight, a halo of gold flowing from the top of her head, draping along her face, neck and shoulders. Long, elegant lines of color flowing down along his features, softened by the warm light of the early sunset.

She looks beautiful.

And at the same time, she looks... normal. Comfortable. Like a real person. Somehow in this blurred, warped image, gently undulating  with the flow of the water, she looks more real than anything she's ever seen.

She's just... here.

The real Ed.

Er- wait... Who even was "the real Ed"?

She's not really sure. She's not much different from Edward, she guesses, but at same time she's... totally different, somehow. Intelligent but strong, elegant but fiery, gentle but firm. Ready to take on the world, and win. And look damn good while doing it.

Yeah. A good looking.... Woman. Person. Thing?

...What the fuck is she even thinking at this point? A bunch of nonsense, That's what. Who cares what she is? Right now, she's Edward Elric. State alchemist. Child prodigy. Grade-A Ass Kicker.

...But also, an arrogant shithead. A naive child. A pitiful, angry little boy who couldn't bring his mother back, couldn't protect his brother, doomed them both to a life without a home, without redemption, without even whole human bodies.

He couldn't even save a little girl's life.

She rubs her eyes- rubs his eyes. Stupid. All of it.

None of that now. Back to the task at hand.

He wades back closer to shore until he can stand up and out of the water, dripping and shivering again at the exposure to the chill of the evening air, intensified by the water clinging to him. He powers through it as best he can as he retrieves the towel he left next to his wet clothes and wraps it around himself, padding off the water from his body. He squeezes water out of his hair before ruffling it with the towel, leaving it a mess.

His clothes are still damp but he puts them back on anyway, making him even colder. Beggars can't be choosers, and neither can naive state alchemists.

All the while, she keeps her back to the river's surface.

-

Soon enough, he's gathered his things and started trotting in slightly-squishy shoes along the river, back to the others as night began to fall.

Back to business. Back to being Edward Elric, currently a wanted criminal on the run with two chimeras and a homonculus possessing the body of a prince of Xing, all trying to survive in the wilderness until the Promised Day arrived.

She sighs. Yet another big. stupid mess she'd gotten herself into.

END

#transfem!ed #transgirl!ed #trans edward elric #jeminy3 art #jeminy writes #blleghhh #trans girl ed

[spectral-cervid]

hey i saw your tag so only the odd ones

oh my GOD

is this just gonna be a..recurring theme now? ( fine

Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?Spotify. Pandora isn’t in canada anymore and soundcloud is horriblewhat color are your eyes?A brownish color with bits of amber-ish near the centerwhat is your relationship status? Dating a jerd (jock-nerd) (cryptid but very real) (he’s the best tbh?)what color hair do you have?Naturally it’s a weird...brownish red? It used to be dark blonde but I dyed it too much, speaking of I’m bleaching it white at some point

where do you shop?store

favorite social media accountLinkedIn...sarcasm aside, probably tungl so long as I avoid the Disk Horse. Facebook keeps trying to reconnect me to the half of my family that I’m estranged and disowned from

any siblings?I have two sisters, I’m the youngest

favorite snapchat filter?the one that makes your mouth rly big because I like scaring my friends at 3 AM with a “whatcha doin?” and a wide-eyed grin

how many times a week do you shower?Whenever my hair’s too greasy + depression allows it tbh

shoe size?I actually have no fucking clue but I think I’m a.... 9 or a 10 in canadian size?

sandals or sneakers?Sneakers because I do too much fucking about to risk a sandal falling off while going about my day

describe your dream dateProbably equal parts thrill and chill? Ziplining followed by cuddling n watching the landscape, sort of thing.

what color socks are you wearing?I am not wearing socks. Or pants, actually.

do you have a job? what do you do?Currently still just an artist taking commissions when I can. I was nearly a delivery courier, but I have too many balance and general nervous system issues to safely drive a motorcycle in the dead of winter in a city of reckless and aggressive drivers.

whats the worst thing you have ever done?Define worst. Morally worst? Embarassingly worst? Stupidly worst? I picked up a deer skull once only to find that a nest of very angry harvester ants was living underneath it. That was bad. Very, very bad.

3 favorite boy namesUhhh can I get back to you on this one? I don’t think I’ve ever thought about this one much tbh

favorite actor?I really admire and respect the talent of the entire Stranger Things cast tbh

who is your celebrity crush?Don’t think I have one? do fictional ones count

do you read a lot? whats your favorite book? I read a lot when I find a good book or series, but it’s finding something that interests me that takes a while. I don’t think I really have one favourite?

do you have a nickname? what is it?Depending on if I’m using my first or middle name, it’s Lee or Jensi, both of which I don’t mind

top 10 favorite songsIn no particular order:- Lover, Lower Me Down! by Major Parkinson- sl0t by Mili (it’s been stuck in my head...all damn day)- This Is Transcendence by Ritual Howls - Golden Antlers - Glass Animals- Mykonos - Fleet Foxes- Honestly, the entire album “IV. - Wake” by American Murder Song- U,U,D,D,L,R,L,R,A,B,Select,Start by Deftones- Arsonist’s Lullabye - Hozier- Earth - Sleeping At Last- For The Best - Gregory And The Hawkwhat is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)....like skin? I’m not sure it’s not really anything

how many kids do you want? If I had kids I’d rather adopt (never mind that I can’t, physically, have kids if I wanted) and I’m not sure how many I’d want. I’d much rather adopt older kids and teens, to be honest, if I did. For one, the idea of having to...raise someone from infancy, teach it everything, be responsible for all those crucially formative years...... That terrifies me. That absolutely terrifies me and I do not want someone’s life in my hands like that. But for second, I’d like to be able to give some older kids some stability. Especially at an age where they really need that stability and accepting base.

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc)Rented Duplex (two-floor house split into two units, I live in the lower unit.)

what was the last compliment you received?“I WANT TO HUG THEM AND TELL THEM EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE OKAY” - directed @ me about Vier. I consider that a compliment tbh

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?Already answered, 6ish I do believe

opinion on smoking?Don’t mind people that do, but it burns my lungs too much and sends me into the worst coughing fits without fail. No matter what’s being smoked. I require water if I plan on it.

what is your dream job? Already answered..? “I used to want to work on the trauma floor eventually, but I’m pretty sure my hands are screwed for dropping things so I’m going to settle for something else that I have a different sort of passion for- art and writing. I’d love to be on the creative team for a game developer some day, whether for concept art, writing, storyboarding, what have you. I’ve got a little ways to go but hey- I’ve got time.”

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels?The only time I did, it was because they said “GAYLORD” on the labels and I’m a certified 12 year old

do you smile for pictures?Sssometimes?

have you ever peed in the woods? I’ve gone on week-long forest treks, they don’t build loos 10 miles out in bumfuck nowhere I’m afraid

I have fallen ass first over a short cliff trying to take a dump over the ledge.

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?Wendy’s has nuggets?

what do you wear to bed?skin, blankets, enough raw power to kill anyone who walks in on sight

what are your hobbies?Also answered! I’m getting back into metalworking mostly because I’d like to make a knife Because I Can, aaand other than that? Beyond art & writing, I do competitive target archery (or did, can’t afford to get out to practice these days), am a semi-professional vocalist and used to do traveling theatre when I lived in British Columbia. I also code things, but I haven’t been in the right brainspace for a while.

do you play an instrument?Several! I can play guitar, bass, harp, piano, violin & sing with reasonable proficiency. I used to play trumpet too but I didn’t like it too much.

tea or coffee?Both

do you want to get married?I have mixed feelings

are you going to change your last name when you get married?It depends, to be honest. I like my name now (picked it myself, I did) and god damnit it’s going to be a pain in the ass to get it changed twice

do you miss anyone right now? A few people. Friends too far away to visit anymore, my sisters, my sleep schedule

do you believe in ghosts?Yyyyup.

last person you called?Got a call about a job offer that sounded sketchier than an unmarked van with “KANDY” painted up the side

regular oreos or golden oreos? What, pray tell, the fuck, are golden oreos

what shirt are you wearing? None. A blanket wrapped around my shoulders?

are you outgoing or shy?I can act outgoing but honestly I’m naturally pretty shy.

do you like your neighbors? The person in the duplex unit on top of us is a cool guy and puts up with way too much.

have you ever been high? Yyyuuup.

last thing you ate?Piece of toast with cinnamon sprinkled on it for taste

summer or winter? I prefer winter aesthetically but my health issues prefer summer so long as I avoid the sun

dark, milk, or white chocolate? Milk, or semi-dark

what is your zodiac signI’m a cusp between Leo and Virgo.

#Asks #maalacath #I SWEAR #long post

[dynamax-corviknight]

i do not love men; i love what devours them

chapter one is here!! its also on ao3 here

Graves lives alone in a house that is way too large for him. He likes it that way. The strange loneliness of the house on the hill, overlooking the non-descript seaside town he calls his home, is perfect for him after the hustle and bustle of the city. This way, he can spread himself out, let himself go, and live his life unrestrained by the expectations that had been placed on him in New York. He had been a high-ranking police officer before he had taken early retirement, citing stress and (for once), old age. He had found that more often than not, instead of feeling invigorated after cracking a particularly complicated case, he just felt exhausted and particularly old. He couldn't keep up with the chatter in the break-room as easily, and a lot of the things the junior officers did confused him.

Seraphina, bless her soul, had allowed his retirement to go through without any bumps. She could see how the fast-paced lifestyle of New York had worn on her friend and was now beginning to upset him, even if he didn't notice himself until it was too late. He had fallen into a depressive slump, often not remembering or having the energy to shave or shower for days on end. Only when he had felt truly pathetic had he managed to drag himself away from his bed or work and attempt to fix himself up. Seraphina had noticed something was wrong almost instantly, and after observing him for a short while, she confronted him, and breached the idea of early retirement.

He had fought her on it for a long time, but even he could admit, life as an officer no longer held the lustre it did when he was young and fresh out of training. Every day he could feel his bones weighing heavy on him, and it felt a struggle to merely change out of his clothes to sleep. He had thought that, with how much he had filled his life to the brim with work that he would not take to retirement well at all and that he would be back in his office surrounded by paperwork at the end of the month.

Except… it had actually gone well. At first, he felt disturbed at how little he found himself doing at his apartment, and it was then that he realised that he had truly abandoned his hobbies in lieu of using his apartment as an extension for his office. He loosened the leash that he had wrapped tight around himself; he let his beard and hair grow out (his face was marvellously warm of a winter now), and he allowed himself to wear less formal clothing. He swapped his constant 3-piece suits and uniform for oversized sweaters, jeans, and sweatpants.

Still, he hadn’t found himself a fixed hobby. Sure, he had things he enjoyed in passing, like cooking for himself when he needed it, but nothing he truly looked forward to doing. That was until, he received news from the funeral directors that his grandfather (may he rot in hell) had passed away, and as he was the last Graves, had left his property in Bumfuck Nowhere to him. He had checked the portfolio; it was a large, colonial style wooden mansion situated by the cost with its own damn lighthouse.

It was perfect. He had told Seraphina as much and had upped sticks almost immediately.

The house was just so isolated enough that should he want to withdraw completely, he could do so with ease. And yet, it was within walking distance of the nearest town, if it could be called that. It was a complete contrast to New York. The place had approximately 2 shops, a small church and graveyard, a veterinary surgery, and a local market open on Saturdays.

The people had been wary of him to begin with, but they had warmed up quickly. At first, he had been an outlier; a rich man from the big city moving into the large Graves House on the hill which had lay in a state of disrepair for years.

That was something he hadn’t foreseen when he had carried out his move. The place was in shambles; infrastructure falling apart, damp eating away at the walls, and mysterious holes in the ceilings that he was sure he didn’t want to know about. He had ended up staying in the small bed and breakfast the other side of the village for nearly a year while restoration work took place the make the house habitable once more. In that time, he had become much more familiar to the people of the town, he had listened to their stories and had told ones of his own, yet one in particular had caught his attention.

According to Mrs. Goldstein, (the elder; her daughters, Porpentina and Queenie, worked in the markets in the main square), the town was haunted by a creature that lived in the woods towards the north. Apparently, it visited the town in the dead of night to raid the homes of those it thought unworthy of their circumstances in life. Of course, due to this, no one would admit whether their home had been visited, but many reported supposed sightings of the creature. It stood 7 feet tall, with a hunched back and elongated arms tipped with large claws. There were other vague details, but nothing that interested Percival. Except, that is, for one. Out of all of the sightings he had heard of, most of them occurred in the patch of forest nearest to the run-down church.

He had promised Seraphina that he would leave his work behind, but this was too interesting not to chase further. For all the locals knew, it could be some poor, starving animal searching for scraps around the church, with superstitious citizens extrapolating what they had seen into something supernatural. But either way, he wanted to see this through ‘til its end; he couldn’t leave a town of (mostly) innocent people terrified to leave their homes at night.

With that promise in mind, he had left the admittedly amazing care of Mrs. Goldstein for the old house, which was looking marginally better now that all the major damage had been taken care of. However, it still felt… impersonal. It felt as though there was a deep emptiness clinging to the old panelled walls and the moth-eaten curtains. The wind rattled the old window frames, the paint on the outside of the house was peeling with age, and every night the house would groan as the wood and pipes settled. It had taken some getting used to, and he promised himself that as soon as he awoke tomorrow, he would leave town to get some supplies to fix it up as much as he could.

The morning was a long time coming. Percival woke up to pitch darkness, the display of his phone reading out 3:13AM. At first, he wasn’t sure why he had woken up so early; he was a strict man and kept to such a schedule that his body clock woke him up at 5:30AM sharp, no earlier. Then he heard it. A twig snapped, followed by leaves crunching underfoot; something or someone was outside his window. Heavy breathing, laboured and wet. His heart clenched, surging up into his throat. Was he being robbed? He knew how to defend himself, yet the implications of not being safe here set his pulse racing. A shadow crossed his curtains, temporarily blocking the moon’s glow. Then a familiar sound soothed his fears, the tired grumbling of the caretaker he had hired when he arrived. Frank was all together a cantankerous old man, unpleasant to be around, but he got the job done. Nothing to be worried about.

Dread suffused his body, an invisible weight settled on his chest, and his breathing shallowed. No. He was seeing things, surely. There was nothing following Frank, and it certainly wasn’t an inhuman beast. It had a long snout and a lolling tongue, the sound of heavy pants filling the air. Please no. Its jaws snapped open, and a loud howl sounded in the night before a heart wrenching scream, followed by a sick gurgling sound, as if something was choking, and then a decisive crunch. He knew that sound, and he felt bile rising in his throat. He didn’t dare move, the sound of… of something walking over the dry earth outside had set his heart to a rabbit’s pace, his breathing coming fast and shallow. The bathroom was further down the hallway, and he did not want to alert whatever was out there to any activity.

Percival Graves was a rational man, he didn’t let his emotions rule his responses. And yet, in the face of this… thing outside his window, his instincts were shot. He knew Frank was dead, the man barely had time to yell before his life was stolen away from him. He could hear squelching now, the smacking of jaws as they shut around meaty sinew. He could just see it, blood squirting out of the jaws of the beast as Frank’s body was consumed piece by piece outside, sharp teeth tearing into soft fat and limp muscle, the tearing of flesh from bone and wet gurgles as blood vessels burst under the sickening assault, the sound of the beast eating its fill echoing in his ears. He leant over the bed and vomited, drool and bile dripping from his mouth, and the sounds stopped. He could faintly hear chuffing at the window, the beast likely picking up on the acrid scent of bile and his earlier dinner. He could hear it tapping against his window and he froze, his throat tightening around an imaginary lump. The shadow had returned, this time curious and inquisitive. Claws struck against the glass before scratching the surface, the beast tilting its head like a dog looking at its owner.

Ignoring the stench from the floor beside him, Percival kept his eyes wide open and his attention rapt, gaze turned towards whatever was currently eating his caretaker, ready to bolt at any given second, should the beast decide to be more than merely curious. The shadow dipped back out of sight and the squelching returned, and Percival grimaced, his stomach turning in protest. He desperately hoped, as bad as it sounded, that Frank had been enough to slake that thing’s hunger, he very much wished to survive this encounter.

Eventually, the sickening sound of the thing feasting outside fell silent, instead, he could hear scratching at the stone patio, before the beast padded away elusively. Opening eyes he didn’t know he had closed, Percival dared to let himself heave out a breath, and with no further sounds forthcoming, gingerly set his foot down on the old wooden floor. Emboldened by his apparent safety, Percival hesitantly left his bedroom to go to the kitchen to get some cleaning supplies. Still, he did not feel entirely secure, and kept his back to the walls out of sheer paranoia. What if it was still out there? What if it managed to somehow get into his house?

With those thoughts swirling through his head, he broke uncharacteristically into a run, pausing only to grab the supplies, and rushed back to his room, cleaning his earlier discharge before burrowing under the covers of his bed. Despite the horrific images that kept popping back up into the forefront of his mind, sheer exhaustion of being woken in the middle of the night and the crash from the adrenaline draining out of his body, his eyes slipped shut and he fell into an uneasy sleep.

As the sun shone through his curtains, Percival awoke, only for the tang of vomit and bleach to reach his nose and have the memories of earlier rush back to him. Flinging himself out of bed, he rushed down the hallway to the bathroom and promptly threw up into the toilet, the dregs of his previous meals rushing out. He groaned and lay his head on the rim of the toilet. What the ever-loving fuck happened earlier? He dreaded the thought of going outside only to see the mangled remains of Frank in his back garden, his guts strewn in the flowerbeds, bloody paw-prints trailing off into the woods.

No. He shook his head in attempt to clear away those thoughts, flushed the toilet, and stripped down to get into the shower. As he scrubbed his face and chest, he decided that going out to get the paint and other tools to fix up the house could wait for a while. Drying himself off, Percival dressed himself in a large hoodie and a pair of sweats, before shutting himself in the study across the hall to take his mind off the events that has transpired earlier.

#percival graves #credence barebone #gradence #gravebone #original percival graves #southern gothic au #blood tw #gore tw #vomiting tw #my fics #fbawtft #fantastic beasts and where to find them

[thethinkpit]

Temporary Freedom

I can’t quite describe the sound of a car starting. A vroom does not quite cut it. A chug- chug- chug is what happens when the car fails to start, or nearly fails. There is a kind of hitch, and pshh and then a low purring and a rolling of the r’s. There’s no singular sound that I can write that quite describes the sound of that hitch, pshh and purr. hi-pshh-purr. hII-psh-pururur. The sound is familiar to all of us, yet it is not easy to describe. Perhaps because we never really have to.

              For some, hearing that sound can mean freedom. After walking up the long hill from the kitchen, slowly unbuttoning the top buttons near the neck, and yanking the shirt out from under the entrapment of pseudo-belt/apron rigged around through the loops of the pants all I can think is freedom.  Gravel crunching under the soles of the shoes, opening the car door and trapped latent heat pouring out and sitting on the hot seat is freedom. To wrench off tight shoes and peel now-gross socks from my feet is freeing. Slamming the door, rolling the windows down and to pressing my bare feet against the brake and the clutch while turning the key is all to hear the familiar hII-psh-pururur, the sound of my freedom. My red freedom-chariot absconds from the gravel parking lot.    

              Daily, I submit to this torture. I wake up at 4:30, get dressed and prepared to leave by 5 or usually by 5:15. I spend approximately 30 minutes driving to work, and on certain days I take the long way around to pick up my co-worker. Arriving at work by 6:00, I go down to the nearly empty kitchen. Greet the young, sourly judgmental chef named Kyle as he putters around and start the coffee, I admit though, I preferred the days where the French sous-chef Sylvain started with me.

Then I start flipping over cups and putting out the little things: flowers, carefully piped whipped butters, house made jams, salt and pepper shakers. Carefully align the silverware- spoon with a knife facing inward on the right side, forks on the left- expensive, polished glassware -Simon Pierce water glasses positioned off the mat above the knife and spoon- and the mats on which they rest, making sure that the leftmost mat always overlaps the one on the right. Then grab the stack of identically folded napkins and place them in the same identical position on every mat. Thankfully, it is raining, and I don’t have to move these all outside and put up the umbrellas.

As I do this, the housekeeping ladies come in to clean and fill the fireplaces with wood - because only rich people would ask to have a fire in the summer- as well as vacuum the crumbs from dinner last night. After they are done rearranging the chairs to vacuum and prop the hose into the housevac with the chairs, I move them all back and inspect each chair pillow for the correct amount of fluffiness. Then it’s time for the continental. The coffee is freshly brewed just in time for me to empty it into polished silver carafes, and carefully arrange pitchers of cream, milk and almond milk beside carafes of coffee, decaf coffee and hot water. Add a wooden tea box, expensive Farmhouse Pottery mugs and honey as well as napkins and it is almost ready. Finally, stacks of newspapers on the table opposite of the Barn Room with the Times, the Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal. Seriously, I don’t know anyone who reads the Wall Street Journal, must be a rich person thing. Also, if these people are here to visit Vermont, they should have a copy of the Herald or the Valley News, right? Incorrect, only one visitor that entire summer asked to have a local paper with his daily morning room service of coffee and pastries.  Still, if I am lucky, and my early morning partner competent, I should have a few moments to read the headlines. I run into the kitchen to grab the breakfast menus and stack them on the table near the door in a perfect pile. Only then is every, single, tiny, detail is similar and perfect all before we open for breakfast at 7:00.

              Driving blind is generally not recommended. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. I can see, but the rushing air flying through the car moves my now loose hair in awkward, un-traceable flows. I could slow, but I do not want to slow my escape. I could tie my hair back again but denying my hair of the same freedoms I pursue seems contradictory. Especially now that I just allowed it to be free. I can see through changing masses of brown curls that infect my vision, just perhaps not completely.

              Quickly I prepare the baskets for room services. Deftly, I check that every basket is filled with whatever the guest could possibly need. Butter and Jam go with every bread like item, half-and-half with every order of coffee as well as a sugar box, and ALWAYS water and water glasses with every room service- but not the Simon Pierce glasses, those stay in the dining room, instead we send the Ridel ones carefully wrapped up in a cloth napkin. Once Kyle or Sylvain had finished the food I would wrap it and put it in the basket before running out the door.

              I didn’t love that it was raining now. Room services were not fun in the rain. At first, I had to use the map to figure out where I was on the property. The cottages were not clearly labelled “Orchard Cottage”, or “Chalet Cottage” and there weren’t signs that pointed toward where you wanted to go. When I had the pattern down though, it was amazing to drive the van around the property. For a few seconds, I had the luxury of having power. It was me versus the guest. I held their beloved coffee and buttermilk pancakes hostage. They may have the wealth and power to book a few nights at a five-star resort, but their demand for caffeine and carbs at 7:30 in the morning was thwarted by some eighteen-year-old college student from the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Of course, I had to give in to their demands, but I could’ve taken the van, ran into the woods and ate the pancakes myself.

When I would set up breakfast for guests, usually they were wearing their fluffy white bathrobes, sometimes they would ask about me to avoid awkward silences or to learn more about my backstory like I was some character in an interactive story they indulged in when they came here. The usual story was that I was working here during the summer to help pay for my college education and they seemed happy with that. The traditional idea of a hard-working girl putting herself through school usually appeased them enough to stop their questions, despite that not being the truth because it was not just me working hard. It was my entire family. My mother overworking herself, and my grandparents for taking me in. I worked fifty hours a week for something that these people could buy easily. That what was the most intimidating about these people, if they were feeling generous they could make my unending struggle go away. A couple thousand dollars was nothing to them, but it was costing me my limited, youthful summer days.

              The Royalton Turnpike was a beautiful DIRT road that wound its way from Royalton to Barnard. As I left ‘the hidden gem’ that was Twin Farms, I could see the descent into ‘my folk’. Suddenly the lawns were not all well-kept, and the further down the turnpike I was the more likely I was to see the junk in people’s yards. The further away I was from Barnard the rougher and bumpier the ride got, washboard rattles were more frequent as were potholes in the road. Driving my car, I was in control. I could slow if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t have go with the curve of the road, but I did. I was alone, and free of anyone’s expectations. I could pump my music as loud as I wanted, I could sing at the top of my lungs in a horrible off-key way and no one would care or correct me. My performance was only for me and no one depended on me.

              The only time I wasn’t running around- but with the esteemed grace and even-pace as if everything was under control- was in the rare case that I wasn’t doing room services and the kitchen wasn’t behind. Then I would stand diligently at the doors to the dining room (leaning was not tolerated). I would check my apron was straight, all the buttons buttoned then stand with my back straight, hands clasped behind me, and smile on my face waiting for guests to arrive. However, as the summer went on they depended on me more and more and that meant no more waiting for guests to arrive but rather I was the one running the show in the kitchen. The Expediter- or Expo- as we called it. I called the shots, told house-keeping whose room to clean, told servers where to take food. I went out and calmly took orders from the guests with a happy go-lucky persona that pleased them. I always never could understand this idea we portrayed: happy to serve and be there. Once a Guest asked me if I would be at dinner later after I had served them both breakfast and lunch. I told them that “unfortunately I had to go home and cook dinner for my grandparents”.  They seem to forget that I am an actual human being with a family and life to go home to at 4:00 pm every day. Perhaps they thought I was just part of the furniture, that I lived here, and was part of the dining room, part of the hotel’s experience.

              The longer I stayed there the less I believe I existed. I became part of the dining room, and part of the quaint Vermont existence. I became the stereotypical poor farm girl, who knew the area and could recommend good spots to go swimming. The more I served the more subordinate I became, and the more I believed in the power of these people. I became powerless. My ideas and beliefs no longer had meaning because I was meaningless in these people’s lives. They forgot me as soon as they saw me, which had never happened to me before in my life. People always remember me until I became a server.

              I need the job to be free, but I need to be free from the job. I live in a world of sacrificed happiness to obtain my eventual freedom. We are taught to value freedom because once I am free I am supposed to be happy. But what happens when our search for freedom becomes the drain of the happiness I desire? We are happy as children despite a complete, utter lack of control and ability to make decisions. Once we are given opportunity to make choices what if that’s when-

              I slam on the brake, and the curls littering my vision fall to the side.  I can see the stop sign, the same red as my freedom-chariot, bright in the afternoon sunlight. The engine sputters and stops.

              I sigh and push the clutch in as well and turn the key. The familiar HII-pshh-PUurur sound enters my mind. The sound of temporary freedom.

#Look I tried to braid ideas into this and here I am #Freedom #Temporary Freedom #Freedom Chariot #Creative Writing

[hrrytomlinson]

hiiii, here are a bunch of fics I’ve enjoyed and loved reading throughout the month of february. I recommend that you read these great fics in march, if you haven’t already. there are SO many good and unique AUs this round, so please check them out!!

(all fics with a star are my favorites and if there are two stars then it was a favorite favorite)

1. Saved Tonight (30k)**

Harry is the world's most persistent seduction-baker, a questionable dog-sitter, and Louis's biggest fan. Louis hasn't written in years, is trying to pass loneliness off as cynicism, and absolutely hates his fans. It's probably destiny.

2. Too Real to Fake It (82k)*

With seven years of blissful marriage behind them and four wonderfully unique kids to brag about, Harry and Louis seem to finally have life all figured out and under control. How much more real could it get?

Very real it turns out, when Harry reluctantly leaves home for a 5 day business trip leaving Louis to manage their rambunctious, hyperactive household. Do they really have it all under control or are they just faking it?

Featuring all the usual suspects, inside jokes, embarrassing moments and of course, Harry and Louis' wild antics + the addition of their four equally wild and outrageous kids.

3. When You Look Like That (16k)*

“You… you still have the dress form I got you for your eighteenth birthday? You've kept it for ten years, Harry?” Louis’ eyes flick around Harry’s studio. It’s big and modern, with floor to ceiling windows that help flood the room in bright sunlight, just like the lobby. However, he can't stop staring at the faded, but present, heart surrounding the “H + L” written delicately in Louis’ handwriting in the center of the mannequin.

Louis is a songwriter who is nominated for a Grammy and he needs a suit. Fast. He seeks out help from a very popular, very mysterious designer who just so happens to be his ex-boyfriend.

4. Dress You Up In My Love (103k)**

Harry is single, and more than anything wants to find love. Agreeing to sign up to a dating website was a bad, bad idea. Niall's bad, bad idea. Louis is single, but has no interest in relationships. Or so he tells himself. 

Harry is a lawyer whose boss, Nick, happens to give him a bonus, which he decides to splurge on a new work wardrobe. Louis is a frustrated designer, working as a personal shopper at Selfridges. Louis happens to be working on the day a very beautiful, but out of his depth, new customer ambles into their department in need of advice. Louis might have just found the muse he never knew he was looking for.

5. Of Honey (24k)*

Harry wants what most hybrids don’t have. Love, for instance. Companionship. Understanding. And sex so good it hurts.

6. If You Keep Holding Me This Way (22k)**

Harry is a uni student who just so happens to enjoy dressing up as a long-haired androgynous sub persona to go out to bars and pick up men to dominate him. He tries to keep his BDSM life and his personal one separated, but that gets difficult when his crush on a classmate gets serious and his two worlds collide.

7. Then We Talk Slow (20k)**

The picture showed Harry smiling widely (with a fucking dimple) at the camera, his glossy brown curls situated artfully around his shoulders. Louis couldn’t see his whole outfit, but it seemed to consist of a pink, floral button-up with most of the buttons undone. Louis could also detect the dark outlines of tattoos on his chest, although he couldn’t quite make out what they were underneath the shirt.

What he could make out was that his own heartrate seemed to have picked up significantly.

Shit.

This was so not good. Not only had Louis drunkenly sent messages in a deliberate attempt to interact with this man, he was now insanely attracted to him without ever having met him in person.

Maybe Liam was right – drunk tweeting really was a horrible, rotten idea.

A famous/non-famous AU in which Louis banters back and forth with his new record company on Twitter, only to find out that Harry is the man behind the tweets.

8. Love Endless (The Road to Recollection) (171k)**

The year is groovy 1973, and eighteen-year-old Louis Tomlinson is as gay as the rainbows that never waste their time in gloomy ole' Fortwright. Would be fine if he wasn't so viciously bullied at both home and school for such a "harmful" sexual preference.

Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this story, haven't we?

Believe him, Louis didn't think he was anything special either.

Until he found the mansion. The notoriously haunted mansion hidden deep within the forests of his tiny blip of a town in Bumfuck Nowhere, Idaho. No one with a brain ever goes near it, but Louis could use a little excitement in his life...and possibly a Band-Aid or two.

After discovering the mansion was less abandoned than he'd thought, he's now left with the most riveting mystery of a lifetime; every new finding leaving him with more questions. Who is this elusive owner, and why won't they show themselves? Why is there a set of journals in the same handwriting that span over centuries? Why in the world is there a padlock on the refrigerator...and who the hell is Alexander?

9. Dance Me (to the End of Love) (19k)*

You would think that it's a simple process - you meet, you fall in love, you get married. But when you add one lawyer and one overly-competitive high school teacher to that equation, it's no longer a straight line from beginning to end. Or the story of how a simple proposal becomes a competition where no one loses in the end.

10. For a Spell That Can’t be Broken (8k)

“Why do you have to bug him so much, Lou?” Niall asked, chewing on the sleeve of his Gryffindor robes. “He’s a good kid.”

“I’m aware of that,” Louis argued petulantly.

“Are you sure?” Niall asked, his expression sincerely concerned.

“Don’t mind him,” Zayn spoke up. “Louis’ just got a weird fetish for tormenting boys he likes.”

Or a Harry Potter AU where Louis' got a secret crush on Harry and won't admit it until a late entrance into potions class outs him.

11. Cocoons and Crow’s Nests (10k)*

Harry is happy to live his life in the confines of his Cocoon. Louis specializes in breaking down barriers.

It's a young love, coming of age Larry Stylinson one shot.

12. Dance Like Warriors On A Battlefield (20k)*

Down in the arena, the triumphant gladiator places his foot on the back of the loser, holding him there as he waits for instruction on his next move. Kill or let live. It’s barbaric, really, the bloodlust involved in this sport. Louis is pretty sure that if it wasn’t for his distaste for the killing there would be a lot more blood soaking that sand.

As it is, his father rarely gives the kill order anymore. He gives the order to let the loser live. Louis rolls his eyes, turning away. He doesn’t miss the way the gladiator’s eyes linger on him.

13. Record Your Fate (and Write Me In) (13k)*

Harry is the Archivist, it's his job to record what happens in the universe.

He's only a few days into the job when things take an odd turn.

Suddenly, the small blue eyed boy seems more important than writing about crowning dignitaries.

14. Tangled Up in You (45k)

Harry blinks once. And blinks again. And says, his voice dangerous: “Niall, did you get me a mail-order bride?”

Because what the actual fuck. It kind of looks like Niall’s just purchased a person. For Harry.

“What did you get me, then?!” Niall must hear the tinge of hysteria in his voice, because he’s pulling himself together, trying to stop himself from laughing.

There’s still a big grin on his face, though, when he says, “I got you a professional cuddler.”

A professional…what. “What?”

15. This Ain't Just a Thing That You Give Up (34k)

Harry turned to Liam to whisper something about not being in Kansas anymore but his best friend was frozen to his spot with a look of complete disbelief on his face. Harry looked to his right, the direction Liam seemed to be focused on, and saw a small group of people who had paused their discussion to look towards him in confusion.

A small group including Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson.

Harry is fairly sure his jaw actually dropped.

"Li, is that...?"

Liam nods his head emphatically. "I'm about 110% sure that yes. It is."

Or… The one where Harry is a baker in addition to being a college student who just happens to meet the crazy famous Louis Tomlinson while on spring break. Featuring personal assistant!niall, roommate and best friend!liam, and costar/model!zayn.

16. Resist Everything Except Temptation (100k)**

The lethargic sound of heels clicking against wood resonated across the sea. Footsteps descended the staircase, every assured step creating a menacing aura as it grew closer. Perspiration gathered along Louis’ palms as the rhythmic sound halted in front of him.

There was a metallic slide of a sword being pulled out of its sheath, the sound startling Louis out of his cocoon of sterile shock. His shoulders jumped as the tip of a blade flattened underneath his jaw. Louis’ distorted reflection stared back at him in the polished metal. Engraved rose petals twisted his appearance as they crawled up the length of the sword. The sword lifted and took Louis’ chin with it.

Standing in front of Louis was Captain Styles.

OR The one where Louis is the commodore's son who is forced to become a part of Harry's crew when he is captured.

17. Far Afield (11k)**

Harry Styles is a witch who owns the best flower shop in Manchester. Lottie Tomlinson is planning her wedding, and brings her brother along to her first appointment. Both men have been having a bad day and sparks fly.

18. You’re Either In Or You’re Out (12k)

Louis' tone is maybe a bit harsher than necessary, but he still stinging from the suggestion that he was staring at Harry. Sure, the way his legs are encased in those skinny jeans is mildly intriguing. But Louis is here to be the next Top Designer, and he'll be damned if he lets a pretty boy with a sinful mouth get in the way of his dream. Especially if that sinful mouth is spewing phrases like bohemian pantsuit. Honestly.

Or the one where Louis tries out for Project Runway, Harry is his stupidly gorgeous competitor, Liam is Tim Gunn, Zayn is the supermodel host, and Niall is the guest judge who knows nothing about fashion.

19. These Bountiful Silences (123k)**

They live in a world where they can only say four words per day. Harry meets some people that don't want to live that way.

20. Kiss the Boys (8k)

“Being able to blatantly kiss pretty boys out in the open is my favorite part of Pride,” Harry says without preamble, leaning into Louis’ space, inviting pink lips quirking up as they get closer to him. “You up for it?”

“Um,” Louis glances at Zayn for help. He’d thought for sure after the way he’d just seen Zayn and Harry kissing, there had to be something more going on there. The last thing Louis expects to see on Zayn’s face is a knowing grin.

Harry leans closer and for a split-second, Louis wants to meet him halfway but then he thinks better of it. He doesn’t know the landscape here and in just a couple of weeks living with him, he’s already learned that Zayn is really bad about holding his feelings in. He doesn’t want to risk stepping on the toes of his closest friend here at Uni. So, at the last second, Louis raises his empty hand and covers Harry’s mouth before the boy can complete his mission.

“Sorry, Curly,” Louis says jokingly, “I just don’t know where that mouth has been.”

21. Manhattan From The Sky (47k)**

Harry's been raised to know that successful men do not fall in love. Louis believes that love is all you need to be successful in life. They meet.

#monthly rec #mine #fic rec #SO MANY GOOD FICS LIKE.... #resist everything except temptation #these bountiful silences #love endless #!!!!! #AND DONT FORGET #dress you up in my love #and #too real to fake it #if you keep holding me this way and dance like warriors on a battlefield were so fricken good too #SO READ THEM PLEASE! :) #larry fic rec #larry stylinson #larry stylinson fic rec #one direction #harry styles #louis tomlinson #niall horan #liam payne #zayn malik #ziam #ziall #zouis #lilo #YALL THESE WERE GREAT OK #GOOD READ THEM

[morgan-drake]

gone girl || self-para

Date: Tuesday

Morgan had been sitting in her rented car, parked on the outskirts of the farm her GPS had led her to. This place really was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. She was a city girl through and through. Nothing against nature, but it was highly uncomfortable for her to be somewhere that didn’t have at least a laptop within a thirty mile radius. She had been sitting here for a while now, unable to push herself to go investigate. It was anxiety of what could happen if she did. What would she find? What if she didn’t find anything? What if she found something she didn’t want to find?

The main question since last night had kept Morgan up --what was Camden doing out here? She tapped on the steering wheel as she had this internal dialogue with herself. Whatever she was up to, she was moving around. And if Morgan wasted anymore time, she could lose her again. With a deep breath, she finally stepped out of the car and walked into the farm. She squinted to observe the landscape in front of her. Two silos. Like what Tess saw. It was still light out and Morgan could spot nothing but the silos, a seemingly aged barn, and an old worn house. No vehicles. No people. Morgan’s heart sank. What if she was too late?

She walked towards the house first. It looked like it hadn’t been inhabited for quite some time. A few windows looked either broken or cracked. The wood the house was made of looked rotten. Morgan definitely felt she was on the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She doubted anyone would answer, but she walked onto the porch to knock on the door anyway. 

“Cammie?” she called out. “If you’re in there, it’s me, Morgan. Come out please.”

She stood there, but the only noise she heard was the breeze that came by in that moment. She peeked through the window. An empty living room with a broken, dusty couch. Nothing out of the ordinary. “Cammie?”

With a sigh, she placed her hand on the knob.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” a voice behind her said.

Morgan whipped around in fright. Standing there were two men, a clean-shaven redhead and a brunette with a stubble, both appearing to be just a few years older than her. Both were wearing black clothing. In their hands were rifles. Morgan’s eyes fixated on the rifles, her nerves tying the knots in her stomach into more knots.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” the redhead asked. “You lost?”

Morgan eyed them both. All black clothing? Guns? Her heart started racing. She couldn’t see under the sleeves of their jackets, but she would bet money that hidden underneath were gauntlets.

Hunters.

“I live nearby. I was just taking a stroll,” Morgan lied, trying to remain calm.

The redhead’s brow furrowed and he looked at his companion. Then he looked around them. “Nearby where? I don’t see any other farms around here.”

“Not literally nearby… I like taking long walks.” 

The brunette cocked an eyebrow and looked behind them. Morgan’s heart dropped into her stomach. She knew exactly what he was looking at. God damn it Morgan.

“So that ain’t your car right over there?” the brunette asked suspiciously. 

It was pretty obvious that if Morgan denied it he wouldn’t believe her anyway. She didn’t know why she even said that, but seeing those guns made her flash back to the last time someone pointed a gun at her and she lost all sense. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

“It is... I like to start my walk in different places.” The hunters exchanged looks that made it obvious they weren’t buying that excuse.

“Don’t move,” he commanded. He turned to the redhead. “I’m gonna make a call.” He gave Morgan a look that sent a shiver down her spine before turning away and taking out his cellphone. He walked out of earshot before dialing and muttering on the phone.

Morgan looked at the redhead. “I told you, I’m just taking a walk. My family’s expecting me home soon so I’d like to go.”

“It will only take a second, ma’am,” the redhead told her before glancing at his companion. Morgan also looked, and with narrowed eyes, she tried to get a reading on his cellphone so she could hear what he was saying.

“… never seen anyone not one of our own out here. It’s suspicious,” she heard the brunette say. “Should we just take her out? It’s best not to risk it.”

Morgan felt nauseous. There was no way she could just stand here and wait for one of these psychos to shoot her in the head. 

“Don’t take her out,” she heard the voice on the other end say. “If she’s a crone, she found out where we are somehow. And she might have friends. Take her in for questioning, then search the perimeter.”

A hunter base. She was near a hunter base? But if Tess had located Cammie here… did the hunters have her?

“Alright.”

Morgan knew it was now or never. If she got out, she could tell everyone about where this apparent hunter base was and the Paladins could take care of the rest. There was no way she could save her sister on her own. She overpowered the brunette’s cellphone first until it exploded in his ear. The small boom and scream of pain was enough to distract the redhead, who looked back at his partner in confusion. Morgan took advantage and shot a stun spell at his head, knocking him out. With both now incapacitated, Morgan dashed towards the car.

She seemed to be in the clear when she finally got to her car, but as soon as her hand was on the door handle, she felt someone behind grab her by both shoulders and throw her onto the ground. She let out a small cry as she hit the ground.

“Stupid bitch,” she heard a new hunter growl as he climbed on top of her and jabbed her in the cheek so fast she didn’t even have time to try and fight it. Pain didn’t come immediately due to the shock, but her ears rang and her head began to pulse with pain. She could taste blood in her mouth – she must have bitten her cheek. She looked up at the hunter. The punch had jumbled her mind and she couldn’t immediately sense if he had a cell phone on him as well. She tried to focus her powers – but then the real pain hit her cheek like a second punch, and that turned her thoughts into complete gibberish.

The hunter looked up, presumably at someone else who had arrived. Morgan was too disoriented to notice that he had began to tie her up with something. “Can’t we just kill her?”

“No.” The voice was a female’s. “Not yet, anyway. If she found us that means any of them can find us now. This location’s been compromised. Let’s round up the others, move up north. Destroy any trace of us here. Even this car. We’ll handle this issue with her at the next base.”

Morgan remembered the necklace. Tess’s necklace. She couldn’t feel her cellphone anymore to text for help, but the necklace she could use to let Tess know she was in trouble. What was the word she had to say? The goddamn word.

“A-ad--” she began.

The hunter covered her mouth. “Shut the fuck up, harpy!” he hissed.

She could feel the female hunter kneel over her. She looked as far up as she could but she could barely process the huntress’s features. Dark hair and -- Morgan felt something sharp in her neck.

“Sleep, little witch bitch,” the huntress spoke. “You’re going to need it.”

Morgan’s sense began to quickly fade. She no longer felt the pain in her cheek, or anything for that matter. Then voices began to distance from her. Her vision began to fade, until all she saw was black.

#para #self para #para: gone girl #cammie

[turtlesandfrogs]

A bittersweet goodbye

Yesterday, I went out to my childhood home (we moved there when I was six, and I only left when I went to college) for the last time. Childhood is a world apart from the life I live now, in almost every way.

Those five acres that I grew up on and wandered through were nestled in the woods, and as my friends in college would say “in the middle of bumfuck nowhere”. We lived 8 miles up a road from the nearest town (pop. 3000), up a gravel road, backed into forest land. To say it was a secluded childhood would be an understatement. In fact, only 2 of my friends from high school/college ever saw the place, and I’m married to one of them, and the other one was a best man at our wedding.

Add on a serving of homeschooling, a dash of post-culthood religious teachings, a heap of parental hoarding tendencies, and parents who missed the 70′s, 80′s and part of the 90′s due to the aforementioned cult, and you may begin to see why I spent many hours of my childhood alone or with my siblings in the woods and creek. We would wander for hours, completely alone and unsupervised through our own five acres and the seemingly endless Weyerhaeuser lands.

That, those trees, the old growth stumps, the creek valley, the land is my heart. Soft forest soil, shaded by alders, climbing in the vine maples. It is my core. It is where I went when I needed to think, or be free, to escape. It was my shelter, my haven. It was also beauty and perfection, endless hours of wonder and fun. It was peace. Solace. Home. (now imagine dorm life, college in the grasslands, living in the city as an adult. Still the sights and sounds and smells of our civilization get to me; I have a knot in my belly and I feel like vomiting when I think of the sterility and noise of the city). I haven’t adapted to life away from there yet. Not fully.

And I will never see that creek, those trees again. Many of the trees (which had names, by the way) fell years ago, but they still stand in my memories. Some of them still stand in reality- the old ceder is one, the tall maple that thought me how to climb another. The birds still sing, and the salmon still spawn. The forest renews itself, given the space and time needed. Will the next people take care of the land? Will the creek still flow cold and clean in the coming decades? Will the salmon return each year?

And in the back of my head, there is a thought that keeps coming up. If moving from a place, losing a place, that has such mixed memories is so painful for me, what is must it be like for those who have been and are now being forced off of their land, the land that they have lived on for centuries? If I am so attached to a place, having only spent 12 years of my life there, what must it be for those whose land memories go back generations.