#making his own arrows and eating fish like a bear

[samrut]

There are times when Tolys gets too stressed, has a mental breakdown, and runs away into the wilderness. He becomes a feral woodland man for a while, until finally, someone is tasked to go hunt him down. I like to think that Feliks is often the one sent, cause nobody else can find him.

Out there trying to catch him in nets and pitfalls, luring him with cepelinai...

#hws lithuania #hws poland #hetalia headcanons #lives with a pack of wolves #taking baths in the river butt naked #hair a wild mess #making his own arrows and eating fish like a bear

[thesistersarcheron]

Pairing: Feysand Word Count: ~2.8k Tags: AU - No Amarantha, Human Feyre Archeron x Fae Rhysand, Attempted Kidnapping, Dubious Consent - Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares Summary: Five times the High Lord of the Night Court tries to lure his human mate across the wall and the one time she hunts him instead. (Based on this prompt from deepwaterwritingprompts: Sometimes in the dead of night on the way to the kitchen for a glass of water, I see an extra door in the hallway, black and imposing.)

Read this fic on AO3!

The next morning, the snow muffled the usual sounds of the woods.

It was the sort of fresh snowfall that might have fascinated Feyre once. The downy, rolling white puffs covering the forest floor, cradled gently in every bend and dip in the barren branches like a babe in its mother’s arms. 

This far from the village, there were no smoking chimneys or muddy footprints to blacken the snow and turn it to slippery, slushy muck. Here, the snow was so white and so pristine that it shone blue in the sunlight. Feyre could see it clearly in her mind’s eye—the swirl of white and yellow and blue on a canvas, all swept together in a wave of color to preserve this peaceful, silent day.

But now, her fifth winter in these woods, Feyre knew all too well that there was nothing peaceful about the snow, beautiful as it was. There was nothing gentle about the cold.

Now, snowfall this thick only heralded harsh hunts and dangerous conditions.

Perched on a branch high in a tree, she hunched in a small ball, waiting. Her coat was damp from the snowfall she’d encountered on her journey into the forest, and the chill bit through the thin layers beneath and into her muscles. Her bones ached with it. If the deer that had left the trail she’d tracked for nearly an hour didn’t show soon, she would have no choice but to leave.

At the very least, she needed to get out of the tree. Her limbs were so stiff and sore that she was more likely to topple out of it and snap her neck than to bag a deer if she tried so much as to reach for an arrow in the quiver over her shoulder.

And returning home without anything to eat… Elain’s hungry-eyed disappointment when there had been nothing left for breakfast had been hard enough to bear. But enduring the sniffing disdain Nesta would throw at her and then focus with furious, unfaltering intensity on their father for the remainder of the night? Feyre knew her already fraying patience would snap.

There were enough dried strips of bark and herbs left for some tea, but that would be all they would eat tonight if nothing came her way.

And her own empty belly didn’t make stalking this damned deer or managing her temper any easier. Not when all she could think about was sweet, fresh bread, warm and soft against her lips, plush as a newly stuffed pillow under her fingertips.

She’d passed an uneasy night clinging to the edge of the mattress after finishing her glass of water. When Elain woke her from her listless doze with a particularly sharp elbow to the ribs, no lingering scent of chicken and bread remained in the cottage—Feyre had gone so far as to leave the cottage and scrub her face with fresh snow, breathing in the crisp, clean air deeply to clear her senses.

But, no. Even then, skin still tingling with the cold, she hadn’t detected the barest hint of citrus.

But for all that the scent of the food was a dream, it was still imprinted on her memory, more lush than any meal she’d ever smelled. She was too young to join her parents and their guests in the dining room in the seaside estate, but she and Elain used to watch the round, red-cheeked cook assemble the endless courses of soup and fish and mousse they served to their guests. He used to dote on them, too, granting each girl a small taste of everything he served before the footmen whisked it up the stairs and into the grand dining room. His little taste-testers, he called them.

Every single bite of Cook’s food paled in comparison to the feast her mind had crafted last night. Even the lemon had been sweeter and sharper than those her father shared with her in their peppermint-lemon treats.

Carefully, quietly, Feyre slid out of the small cradle formed by a pair of the tree’s branching limbs and began to make her way back down to the forest floor. She double-checked each handhold and foothold before lowering herself further. By the time she reached the ground, her head was throbbing with exertion, each beat of her pulse pounding a mighty war-drum between her ears. 

That the food smelled too good to be true was only further proof that it was a hallucination.

A shiver wracked her as the forest dimmed, shadows stretching as a cloud passed in front of the sun. She stilled, silencing her crunching boots, and glanced upward—sometimes birds left their perches if it grew too dark during the day, fooled into thinking it was time to return to their nest to ride out a rainstorm or a blizzard.

Silence. Stillness.

Nothing. 

It was a fruitless hope; most were too small to make a decent meal, and they had all disappeared before the first snows touched their village months ago, anyway.

The knots in a nearby tree trunk seemed to form a laughing face, and the bitter wind screamed through the uppermost branches.

Ha… Ha... Haaaaaa!

Feyre narrowed her eyes, scowling at the tree.

“Yeah, yeah, keep it up,” she muttered under her breath, relaxing her grip on her unused bow. Not completely, though—a dark forest was still a dark forest, and anything could be lurking the deepest pockets of darkness, wall or no wall. She huffed. “I need some firewood, too.”

She sniffled, her nose rendered numb and runny by the chill, and glanced around the forest one final time. 

The slightest crunch of snow caught her attention.

She froze.

Twitching movement low to the ground caught her attention. A pink nose. Brown fur. A puffball tail.

Slowly, fighting the strain of the cold, Feyre drew her bow tight. 

The rabbit hopped into the clearing, fleeing the pocket of darkness that must have been its warren. It moved madly, skirting the edge of the trees, its eyes wide as if some other hunter had flushed it from its safe, warm hiding spot. But no other hunter followed. No other arrow flew.

With a small, silent prayer of thanks to the gods she didn’t believe in, Feyre fired.

The three rabbits tied to Feyre’s belt were half-frozen by the time she exited the forest.

Dusk had already come and gone, stretching fingers of darkness through the trees as the sun fell below the canopy. 

Feyre moved quickly once she spotted the cottage’s sagging roof, desperate to warm her sore limbs by the hearth. For once, she didn’t dread Nesta’s snapping or Elain’s whining. Smoke was curling up from the chimney, so one of her sisters had chopped enough wood to warm the cottage. They had food enough for a week, now, if they rationed it carefully, and enough thick, soft fur that she might sell in the marketplace tomorrow morning that they could afford enough rice or bread to make it stretch for two. 

The sky was an enigmatic shade of indigo, so dark it might be violet where the starlight touched it, and even the moon seemed brighter than usual against its star-speckled backdrop. 

It was as perfect a night as could be in the dead of winter.

She kicked the slush off her boots by the door, holding tight to the frame so she didn’t slip on the patch of ice that always formed on the threshold. But even the runes carved into the stone beneath her hand couldn’t dull her mood; they were undoubtedly useless, etched by a passing charlatan that had conned a bit of coin out of their father one summer when they’d had some to spare, and the sight of them usually elicited an eyeroll, at least. The ash arrow in Feyre’s quiver had a greater chance of protecting them from faeries, and she still doubted whether or not she’d be able to shoot straight if she ever were confronted by one of the bloodthirsty fae.

Feyre grasped the frozen iron handle, cracking off bits of ice that had formed on it during the day, and opened the door.

She only opened it a crack before the pungent, earthy scent of linseed oil and warm cotton canvas assaulted her.

Feyre’s hand tightened on the door’s handle, and she took a breath. Linseed oil and canvas and beeswax and turpentine—the scent of paint. The scent of painting. Her chest hurt just to smell it, as if every breath wound its way into the gaps between her ribs and squeezed tight.

“Oh, Elain, no…”

Where had her sister found the coins for this? Two years ago, they had enough spare marks that Elain scrimped and saved and bought Feyre three small tins of paint, but they hadn’t been able to afford anything as frivolous as books or ribbons or paints in over a year. They certainly couldn’t afford it now. Certainly not when the cold pressed in and they starved for days at a time. When that money would be better spent on grain.

For a split second, Feyre let herself imagine walking into the cottage, thanking Elain for the gift with a hug and a warm dinner, and sitting down to paint. She let herself wonder which colors it would be this time—perhaps a bit of expensive titanium white. 

She could finish their dresser with a bit of white. She would finally be able to paint in the hottest part of the flames on Nesta’s drawer, dot little freckles of it on the flower petals on Elain’s, and highlight the swirling, glimmering stars on her own. It would be beautiful.

And then she swallowed that hope down into the bitterest, hungriest part of her belly and resolved to scold her sister for her well-intentioned gift.

With that thought, Feyre swung the door open.

And found herself staring at another.

Gone was the empty wall. Gone was the heavy oak door.

This door was a wide, delicate thing crafted of oxidized copper and glass. A sweeping, cyan sheaf of the metal burst from the door’s handle, forming the casing for leaded, beveled panes of glass that sparkled brilliantly with every flicker of light from the hearth. The endless stems of copper curved and curled uniformly around one another, tipped in shining brass petals the size of a fist at the top of the door. 

A curtain inside the door obscured the view through the panes, but the low, murmuring voices filling the cottage were deeper and more numerous than they should be if her sisters were merely gossiping about boys from the village. A man’s deep voice hummed thoughtfully, underlined by the gentle susurrus of brushes against canvas. Knives scraped palettes, mixing paint with a methodical, shushed, wet slide.

Feyre’s stomach turned.

She was awake. She was clearheaded. 

And the door was real. 

A smear of priceless white paint on the door’s curling brass handle, as if some harried artist had forgotten to wash her hands before rushing inside, caught her eye. It was white as the snow outside, so perfect and unblemished that Feyre knew that shade was nothing Elain could ever afford, not even with her pretty face. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Elain and Nesta at the dinner table, haggling over a battered deck of cards.

Feyre’s heart pounded in her throat as she took a slow step back into the snow. 

If her sisters hadn’t seen the door… 

If she didn’t bring it to their attention… 

Maybe it would just disappear. Maybe it would vanish, just like it had last night.

But as she pulled the cottage’s door shut, the quiet whine of hinges split the air as the door on the opposite wall creaked open.

Even from across the room, even through that small gap, Feyre saw the small crowd of bodies and easels arranged in a circle around a lithe, shadowed silhouette. 

Her throat grew tight. She couldn’t look away. That salon—and that was the word, salon—looked just like the engravings she had seen in the newspapers her father once received from the continent. Her mother, Nesta, and Elain had focused on the images of balls in the society pages of their father’s newspapers, but Feyre…

She had always stolen the culture and arts pages from the stack. She had always been drawn to the printed images of galleries filled to the ceilings with paintings and lounging artists in decadent hovels and outlandish paintings formed of queerly segmented cubes or thousands of minuscule, painstakingly placed dots.

The door slid open, and Feyre’s breath caught at the sunshine streaming in through high windows, gilding the studio. Swirls of dust in the air caught the light, reaching out to her like a dozen great arms beckoning her through the door.

She stepped back into the cottage.

She would have done anything to be in that room, once upon a time.

“Close the door.”

Nesta’s voice snapped through the cottage like the crack of a whip.

Feyre started—and the movement caught the eye of the shadowed model, because she swiveled at the hips, reaching out her hand. 

Her long-fingered, green hand. 

The woman’s entire body was green and lightly scaled, her limbs alien—too slender and too long. Sable hair flowed down to her knees like a sheet of the midnight sky, that golden light reflecting off of it like starshine. She met Feyre’s eyes, and hers were all glossy, glistening black, lacking any whites at all.

Faerie.

The word was on the tip of her tongue, and the back of Feyre’s throat went sour as the model beamed at her.

“Feyre?” The faerie’s voice was faint, warbling and burbling strangely, as if they were both underwater. “Oh…yre! Is th… you? We’ve… waiting for…!”

Feyre shook her head slowly, a hand rising to her shoulder, to the quiver still strapped around her. How did this faerie know her name? Who was she?

She only had one ash arrow. She wouldn’t be able to fight back the crowd at the female’s feet.

Near the back of the crowd, a head of hair black as a raven’s wing twitched, as if the male faerie it belonged to sensed the oncoming attack—

“Feyre.”

Nesta’s voice slashed through her terror. Feyre’s eyes cut to her, and she found her sister glaring up through her lashes. Then her icy eyes slid away, back to Elain, as if Feyre were beneath her notice. 

Her eldest sister bared her teeth down at her cards. She didn’t spare another glance for Feyre. “You’re letting the heat out.”

So Feyre stepped into the cottage. The warmth and light inside embraced her like an old friend. And when she built up the nerve to look away from Nesta, back to the faerie that knew her name, the copper and glass door was gone.

The door was gone, but it hadn’t been a dream. It couldn’t have been a dream. She may be hungry, but she would bet every arrow she owned that she was not insane.

The doors were some new, sick sort of fae trickery. She was certain of it.

But Nesta hadn’t seen the door. She hadn’t so much as jumped when it creaked open. And last night, her father had made no mention of the oak door at all.

But Elain… 

Elain was staring at Feyre with wide eyes. 

Feyre’s stomach felt as if it were loaded with rocks. If faeries had somehow enchanted their home… If they decided they wanted to lure yet another desperate, starving young woman into their bloodthirsty world, then what might they do with her sweet-faced sister?

Feyre cleared her throat, tipping her head slowly, carefully, to the empty wall. “Did you see—”

“Fay-ruh,” Elain cut in, her voice a lovely, lilting whine that grated on every one of Feyre’s nerves. Her pert nose wrinkled, but she looked at the rabbits on Feyre’s belt with unabashed hunger on her face. “Are you going to skin the poor things in here?”

Feyre ground her teeth in spite of the cool relief that washed through her: Elain hadn’t seen the door.

But she was still staring at Feyre with those hungry, sad eyes.

So Feyre swallowed her anger and simply said, “It’s too cold to do it outside.”

And with that, she freed the rabbits from her belt, dropping them onto the table. The stiff carcasses landed with such force that Nesta and Elain both flinched at the impact. The sight of her fading flowers beneath their soft, fuzzy bodies pierced her, and she found that she had to look away as she drew her hunting knife from the sheath by her side, blinking back her tears.

Nesta gathered the cards with a huff, but Elain made a soft noise of commiseration.

Feyre ignored them both. She dragged the first rabbit to her and, with one clean stroke, slit its belly wide, painting the table with its blood.

#feysand #feyre archeron #rhysand #a court of thorns and roses #a court of thorns and roses fic #my fics #acotar #feyrhys #as the world falls down #atwfd

[turnpage]

send me a ✐ for a random sentence starter from my muse (1-1500) — tw: profanity, mild nsfw, long list

generator here quotes compiled from here inspired by

feel free to change to fit your preferences as need.

❨1❩ ❛ They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. ❜
 ❨2❩ ❛ Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters. ❜ ❨3❩ ❛ I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in. ❜ ❨4❩ ❛ Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win. ❜ ❨5❩ ❛ The world's a hard place. It doesn't care. It doesn't hate you and me, but it doesn't love us, either. ❜ ❨6❩ ❛ The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge. ❜ ❨7❩ ❛ Pull your act together and just go on. ❜ ❨8❩ ❛ I had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there is nothing physically wrong. I hurt all the time. ❜ ❨9❩ ❛ Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. ❜ ❨10❩ ❛ Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford? ❜ ❨11❩ ❛ Truth comes out. In the end it always comes out. ❜ ❨12❩ ❛ Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are. ❜ ❨13❩ ❛ No matter where you go, the same asshole gets off the plane. ❜ ❨14❩ ❛ We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives. ❜ ❨15❩ ❛ That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. ❜ ❨16❩ ❛ Human nature, baby. Grab it and growl. ❜ ❨17❩ ❛ God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you. ❜ ❨18❩ ❛ Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you. ❜ ❨19❩ ❛ How many times, over how many years, have I—a grown adult—asked for the mercy of another chance? ❜ ❨20❩ ❛ I was suddenly so sick of myself, so revolted. ❜ ❨21❩ ❛ You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. ❜ ❨22❩ ❛ But those pieces, they’ll never fit just the same way again. Never in this world. ❜ ❨23❩ ❛ Dying is a part of living. You have to keep tuning in to that if you expect to be a whole person. ❜ ❨24❩ ❛ Officious little prick. ❜ ❨25❩ ❛ I’ve been sleepwalking again, my dear. — The plants are moving under the rug. ❜ ❨26❩ ❛ How I wish you were fear. ❜ ❨27❩ ❛ But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie. ❜ ❨28❩ ❛ All we have is time, you know. An eternity of time. Or shall we end it? Might as well. After all, we're missing the party. ❜ ❨29❩ ❛ We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. ❜ ❨30❩ ❛ The way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. ❜ ❨31❩ ❛ Got to be regular if you want to be happy. ❜ ❨32❩ ❛ But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. ❜ ❨33❩ ❛ He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. ❜ ❨34❩ ❛ Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. ❜ ❨35❩ ❛ It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness.  ❜ ❨36❩ ❛ If I had ever believed it, I no longer do. ❜ ❨37❩ ❛ I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. ❜ ❨38❩ ❛ I cannot bear this world a moment longer. ❜ ❨39❩ ❛ I have a better idea. I will do as I please. ❜ ❨40❩ ❛ All my life has been murk and depths, but I am not a part of that dark water. I am a creature within it. ❜ ❨41❩ ❛ You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see. ❜ ❨42❩ ❛ When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world. ❜ ❨43❩ ❛ When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist. ❜ ❨44❩ ❛ But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults. ❜ ❨45❩ ❛ I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. ❜ ❨46❩ ❛ This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. ❜ ❨47❩ ❛ You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you. ❜ ❨48❩ ❛ Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. ❜ ❨49❩ ❛ If now I am wise, it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes. ❜ ❨50❩ ❛ You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite. ❜ ❨51❩ ❛ Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. ❜ ❨52❩ ❛ I have been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that is only a shape I’ve been poured into. I do not have to keep it. ❜ ❨53❩ ❛ I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. ❜ ❨54❩ ❛ Understanding the world is a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. ❜ ❨55❩ ❛ Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two. ❜ ❨56❩ ❛ The truth is, men make terrible pigs. ❜ ❨57❩ ❛ My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. ❜ ❨58❩ ❛ This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. ❜ ❨59❩ ❛ Witches are not so delicate. ❜ ❨60❩ ❛ Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. ❜ ❨61❩ ❛ I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. ❜ ❨62❩ ❛ There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too. ❜ ❨63❩ ❛ The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them. ❜ ❨64❩ ❛ Life is warped. I'm just in sync. ❜ ❨65❩ ❛ Now it's a whisper from the past. ❜ ❨66❩ ❛ But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more. ❜ ❨67❩ ❛ Why is it always such a surprise? The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush. ❜ ❨68❩ ❛ Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it. ❜ ❨69❩ ❛ What is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?  ❜ ❨70❩ ❛ I have scars, inside me. ❜ ❨71❩ ❛ The dead are not entirely dead but are alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. ❜ ❨72❩ ❛ However dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void. ❜ ❨73❩ ❛ Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. ❜ ❨74❩ ❛ It is another way of saying tough luck. To people you aren’t going to help out. ❜ ❨75❩ ❛ I'm waiting, far off in the future. ❜ ❨76❩ ❛ The only sure camouflage is unpredictability. ❜ ❨77❩ ❛ There are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. ❜ ❨78❩ ❛ First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled. ❜ ❨79❩ ❛ I long to swim in liquid moonlight. ❜ ❨80❩ ❛ That's right, I don’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. ❜ ❨81❩ ❛ The part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. ❜ ❨82❩ ❛ Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew. ❜ ❨83❩ ❛ Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot. ❜ ❨84❩ ❛ At last. It's you. ❜ ❨85❩ ❛ No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die. Because you are not a fish. ❜ ❨86❩ ❛ Take what the moment offers. Don’t close doors. Be thankful. ❜ ❨87❩ ❛ How many others have stood in this place? Left behind, with all gone, all swept away. ❜ ❨88❩ ❛ Is it disapproval or extreme lust? With some men it’s hard to tell the difference. ❜ ❨89❩ ❛ My hair was driving me crazy, but then … I died. ❜ ❨90❩ ❛ Seek and ye shall find, eventually. And you found. You’re right, I don’t dispute that. Sorry. ❜ ❨91❩ ❛ Everything digests, and is digested. ❜ ❨92❩ ❛ My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft. ❜ ❨93❩ ❛ You cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. ❜ ❨94❩ ❛ I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. ❜ ❨95❩ ❛ And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living. ❜ ❨96❩ ❛ The world is a beautiful place. Don’t forget that. And don’t miss it. ❜ ❨97❩ ❛ I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. ❜ ❨98❩ ❛ Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. ❜ ❨99❩ ❛ It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart. ❜ ❨100❩ ❛ We’re interpreters. We’re translators. ❜ ❨101❩ ❛ You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way. ❜ ❨102❩ ❛ No family, happy or unhappy, is quite like any other. Tolstoy was chock-fullo’shit. Remember that. ❜ ❨103❩ ❛ We lived in monochrome those nights. ❜ ❨104❩ ❛ You live in a dream. You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? ❜ ❨105❩ ❛ Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? ❜ ❨106❩ ❛ I stand here in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing. ❜ ❨107❩ ❛ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. ❜ ❨108❩ ❛ Not to warm the flesh, but solely to please the eye. ❜ ❨109❩ ❛ Selective emotional detachment. ❜ ❨110❩ ❛ Not for me, or at least not today. ❜ ❨111❩ ❛ Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene. ❜ ❨112❩ ❛ Do I sound like a hillbilly saying that? ❜ ❨113❩ ❛ Remember, you’ve got your secret weapon. ❜ ❨114❩ ❛ The dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone. ❜ ❨115❩ ❛ My shadow stretches along the carpet, as though trying to detach itself from me. ❜ ❨116❩ ❛ It curls away from me, like blood in water. ❜ ❨117❩ ❛ It’s been so long since I felt the rain. Or wind—the caress of wind. ❜ ❨118❩ ❛ But snow I never want to feel again. ❜ ❨119❩ ❛ Through adversity to the stars. ❜ ❨120❩ ❛ No hero. No sleuth. I am locked in. I am locked out. ❜ ❨121❩ ❛ Thinking hasn't gotten me anywhere so far. ❜ ❨122❩ ❛ The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you. ❜ ❨123❩ ❛ Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. ❜ ❨124❩ ❛ Women get consumed. ❜ ❨125❩ ❛ Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them. ❜ ❨126❩ ❛ A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort. ❜ ❨127❩ ❛ Safer to be feared than loved. ❜ ❨128❩ ❛ I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence. ❜ ❨129❩ ❛ It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wish I could stop trying. ❜ ❨130❩ ❛ I always feel sad for the girl that I was. ❜ ❨131❩ ❛ Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes. ❜ ❨132❩ ❛ How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. ❜ ❨133❩ ❛ See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was. ❜ ❨134❩ ❛ Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. ❜ ❨135❩ ❛ To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. ❜ ❨136❩ ❛ I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. ❜ ❨137❩ ❛ I'm tired of dying. ❜ ❨138❩ ❛ What if you hurt because it feels so good? ❜ ❨139❩ ❛ How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow. ❜ ❨140❩ ❛ Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait? ❜ ❨141❩ ❛ Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own. ❜ ❨142❩ ❛ Everyone has their own version of a memory. ❜ ❨143❩ ❛ Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon? ❜ ❨144❩ ❛ My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past. ❜ ❨145❩ ❛ Do what I want; I might like you. ❜ ❨146❩ ❛ I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been. ❜ ❨147❩ ❛ She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. ❜ ❨148❩ ❛ The sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. ❜ ❨149❩ ❛ It infects you. It ruined me. ❜ ❨150❩ ❛ Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects. ❜ ❨151❩ ❛ Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? ❜ ❨152❩ ❛ We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. ❜ ❨153❩ ❛ Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. ❜ ❨154❩ ❛ The strongest of all warriors are these two — time and patience. ❜ ❨155❩ ❛ If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. ❜ ❨156❩ ❛ There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. ❜ ❨157❩ ❛ The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness. ❜ ❨158❩ ❛ Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. ❜ ❨159❩ ❛ It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong. ❜ ❨160❩ ❛ You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. ❜ ❨161❩ ❛ If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. ❜ ❨162❩ ❛ We are asleep until we fall in love! ❜ ❨163❩ ❛ I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. ❜ ❨164❩ ❛ Everything I know, I know because of love. ❜ ❨165❩ ❛ Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. ❜ ❨166❩ ❛ If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ❜ ❨167❩ ❛ Yes, love, but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. ❜ ❨168❩ ❛ How can one be well...when one suffers morally? ❜ ❨169❩ ❛ Kings are the slaves of history. ❜ ❨170❩ ❛ God is the same everywhere. ❜ ❨171❩ ❛ Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. ❜ ❨172❩ ❛ One must be cunning and wicked in this world. ❜ ❨173❩ ❛ We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. ❜ ❨174❩ ❛ When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair! ❜ ❨175❩ ❛ For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed? ❜ ❨176❩ ❛ He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died. ❜ ❨177❩ ❛ Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. ❜ ❨178❩ ❛ Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. ❜ ❨179❩ ❛ The distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. ❜ ❨180❩ ❛ How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ❜ ❨181❩ ❛ The wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. ❜ ❨182❩ ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜ ❨183❩ ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜ ❨184❩ ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜ ❨185❩ ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜ ❨186❩ ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜ ❨187❩ ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜ ❨188❩ ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜ ❨189❩ ❛ He died alone. It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜ ❨190❩ ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜ ❨191❩ ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜ ❨192❩ ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜ ❨193❩ ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜ ❨194❩ ❛ If not for death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜ ❨195❩ ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜ ❨196❩ ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜ ❨197❩ ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜ ❨198❩ ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜ ❨199❩ ❛ I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜ ❨200❩ ❛ You've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜ ❨201❩ ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜ ❨202❩ ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜ ❨203❩ ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜ ❨204❩ ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜ ❨205❩ ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜ ❨206❩ ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜ ❨207❩ ❛ Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ❜ ❨208❩ ❛ I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.  ❜ ❨209❩ ❛ If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. ❜ ❨210❩ ❛ I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other. ❜ ❨211❩ ❛ But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. ❜ ❨212❩ ❛ I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other would have borne it. ❜ ❨213❩ ❛ There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ❜ ❨214❩ ❛ One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ❜ ❨215❩ ❛ Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ❜ ❨216❩ ❛ You must be the best judge of your own happiness. ❜ ❨217❩ ❛ Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing ; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature ; and I do not think I ever shall. ❜ ❨218❩ ❛ Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise. ❜ ❨219❩ ❛ If I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream. ❜ ❨220❩ ❛ If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. ❜ ❨221❩ ❛ Faultless in spite of all her faults. ❜ ❨222❩ ❛ A heroine whom no one but myself will much like. ❜ ❨223❩ ❛ There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. ❜ ❨224❩ ❛ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air. ❜ ❨225❩ ❛ I pity you. I thought you cleverer. ❜ ❨226❩ ❛ Evil to some is always good to others. ❜ ❨227❩ ❛ I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. ❜ ❨228❩ ❛ She is loveliness itself. ❜ ❨229❩ ❛ Time does not compose me. ❜ ❨230❩ ❛ A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ❜ ❨231❩ ❛ I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ❜ ❨232❩ ❛ I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more. ❜ ❨233❩ ❛ I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. ❜ ❨234❩ ❛ I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed. ❜ ❨235❩ ❛ With all your little faults, you are an excellent creature. ❜ ❨236❩ ❛ You have another long walk before you. ❜ ❨237❩ ❛ The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. ❜ ❨238❩ ❛ What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ❜ ❨239❩ ❛ Out of the frying pan into the fire! ❜ ❨240❩ ❛ We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. ❜ ❨241❩ ❛ She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. ❜ ❨242❩ ❛ And, oh, God . . . how frequently I weep! ❜ ❨243❩ ❛ From the coffin of your madness there is no escape. ❜ ❨244❩ ❛ I am feeling supernatural tonight. I want to eat diamonds. ❜ ❨245❩ ❛ All the same there is a chance that if we keep on shaking our chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles will part. ❜ ❨246❩ ❛ It was sad music fit to make you cut your throat. ❜ ❨247❩ ❛ Nothing is more boring than being forced to play. ❜ ❨248❩ ❛ Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest? ❜ ❨249❩ ❛ Wherein does a woman’s honour reside? In her vagina or in her spirit? ❜ ❨250❩ ❛ Perhaps...I could not be content with mere contentment! ❜ ❨251❩ ❛ Have you ever stared stark failure in the face? The trick is to outstare it. ❜ ❨252❩ ❛ Sometimes it seems that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the one who will wear them, who will bring them to life. ❜ ❨253❩ ❛ I have the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet I exist. ❜ ❨254❩ ❛ I felt myself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ❜ ❨255❩ ❛ She looks wonderful, but she doesn't look right. ❜ ❨256❩ ❛ The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind. ❜ ❨257❩ ❛ I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs! ❜ ❨258❩ ❛ I love to hear my bones rattle. That’s how I know I’m alive. ❜ ❨259❩ ❛ I learnt, first, as the birds do, from the birds. ❜ ❨260❩ ❛ Inside and outside match exactly, but both are badly wrong. ❜ ❨261❩ ❛ During the less-than-blink of time it took the last chime to die, there came a vertiginous sensation. ❜ ❨262❩ ❛ I fear a wound not of the body but the soul, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind. ❜ ❨263❩ ❛ I fear the proof of my own singularity. ❜ ❨264❩ ❛ Still nothing could calm the fearful storm in my erupting skin. ❜ ❨265❩ ❛ Petersburg, loveliest of all hallucinations. ❜ ❨266❩ ❛ A breathless second between black forest and the frozen sea. ❜ ❨267❩ ❛ I'm beginning to feel totally cut off from the world. ❜ ❨268❩ ❛ What does this all mean? Where are we? ❜ ❨269❩ ❛ Sometimes I bleed. ❜ ❨270❩ ❛ If you see a ghost, you say "hello". ❜ ❨271❩ ❛ The war is not over. ❜ ❨272❩ ❛ You're not going. You left us once already. ❜ ❨273❩ ❛ You can’t go! ❜ ❨274❩ ❛ I loved you, but that wasn't enough, was it? ❜ ❨275❩ ❛ If you're dead, then leave me in peace. ❜ ❨276❩ ❛ The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything. ❜ ❨277❩ ❛ I won't ask for forgiveness for something I didn't do! ❜ ❨278❩ ❛ Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. ❜ ❨279❩ ❛ Death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things. ❜ ❨280❩ ❛ Sooner or later, they will find you. ❜ ❨281❩ ❛ They're everywhere - they say this house is theirs. ❜ ❨282❩ ❛ You're always teasing me, and telling lies. I'm sick of it. ❜ ❨283❩ ❛ Others will come. Sometimes we'll sense them. Other times, we won't. ❜ ❨284❩ ❛ No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. Look what an awful face you've got when you cry. ❜ ❨285❩ ❛ You listen to me. I've seen them too. ❜ ❨286❩ ❛ You'll see. There are going to be some big surprises. There are going to be... changes. ❜ ❨287❩ ❛ Why did you go and fight that stupid war that had nothing to do with us? Why didn't you stay like the others did? ❜ ❨288❩ ❛ Your place was here with your family. ❜ ❨289❩ ❛ So you say you know this house well? ❜ ❨290❩ ❛ I wasn't expecting you so soon. ❜ ❨291❩ ❛ What's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue? ❜ ❨292❩ ❛ You mean they just vanished? Into thin air? ❜ ❨293❩ ❛ No door must be opened without the previous one being closed first. ❜ ❨294❩ ❛ Here, most of the time, you can hardly see your way. ❜ ❨295❩ ❛ Whatever you do, don't open the curtains. ❜ ❨296❩ ❛ Now, come on. Eyes closed. ❜ ❨297❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. ❜ ❨298❩ ❛ By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨299❩ ❛ I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. ❜ ❨300❩ ❛ And the reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨301❩ ❛ Love does not exist, it's like religion, made to control you. ❜ ❨302❩ ❛ After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. ❜ ❨303❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨304❩ ❛ Everything in the street today seems soft focus. ❜ ❨305❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low. ❜ ❨306❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin’ miles off the pace. ❜ ❨307❩ ❛ It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the way things are in a dream. ❜ ❨308❩ ❛ It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but I fear that this internal sea is going to subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in my body. ❜ ❨309❩ ❛ It cuts me up. It confuses me. ❜ ❨310❩ ❛ It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. ❜ ❨311❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨312❩ ❛ They mean well, and they mean well to me, but there's no way under the sun that they can appreciate what I feel, what I need. ❜ ❨313❩ ❛ The pit of melancholy is a bottomless one, and I am descending fast. ❜ ❨314❩ ❛ Living like this is a full-time business. ❜ ❨315❩ ❛ I’ll stand or fall alone. ❜ ❨316❩ ❛ We are no wiser now than at the start. ❜ ❨317❩ ❛ This is pathetic, and fucking boring. ❜ ❨318❩ ❛ Death is usually a process, rather than an event. ❜ ❨319❩ ❛ We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? ❜ ❨320❩ ❛ We are all acquaintances now. ❜ ❨321❩ ❛ The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads of poisonous flotsam and jetsam. ❜ ❨322❩ ❛ Life is beautiful. I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. ❜ ❨323❩ ❛ The grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ❜ ❨324❩ ❛ There must be more to life than this. ❜ ❨325❩ ❛ We all see what we want to see. ❜ ❨326❩ ❛ Statistically speaking, you're more likely to be killed by a member of your own family or a close friend, than by anyone else. ❜ ❨327❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨328❩ ❛ Maybe that's what love is: it's being pissed off. ❜ ❨329❩ ❛ You can forget who you are if you're alone too much. ❜ ❨330❩ ❛ Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. ❜ ❨331❩ ❛ Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.  ❜ ❨332❩ ❛ We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. ❜ ❨333❩ ❛ Everyone wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing. ❜ ❨334❩ ❛ We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. ❜ ❨335❩ ❛ How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. ❜ ❨336❩ ❛ Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering: Mine! Mine! ❜ ❨337❩ ❛ All creatures know that some must die ; that all the rest may take and eat. ❜ ❨338❩ ❛ Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? ❜ ❨339❩ ❛ Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ❜ ❨340❩ ❛ Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy? ❜ ❨341❩ ❛ Love is useless, it leads you into dumb exchanges in which you give too much away, and then you get bitter and mean. ❜ ❨342❩ ❛ Maybe sadness is a kind of hunger. Maybe the two go together. ❜ ❨343❩ ❛ Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody -- a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules. ❜ ❨344❩ ❛ If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time. ❜ ❨345❩ ❛ You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. ❜ ❨346❩ ❛ I'm fine, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in. ❜ ❨347❩ ❛ Because if you can't wish, why bother? ❜ ❨348❩ ❛ It's better to hope than mope! ❜ ❨349❩ ❛ Reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows. ❜ ❨350❩ ❛ In any case, time is not a thing that passes, it’s a sea on which you float. ❜ ❨351❩ ❛ I know I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to deceive myself. I desperately need to believe such pure joy is still possible. ❜ ❨352❩ ❛ Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered. ❜ ❨353❩ ❛ Behind my eyelids I saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. ❜ ❨354❩ ❛ ‘Why can't I believe?’ I asked the darkness. ❜ ❨355❩ ❛ Everyone’s too sad for everything. ❜ ❨356❩ ❛ If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. ❜ ❨357❩ ❛ I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. ❜ ❨358❩ ❛ Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. ❜ ❨359❩ ❛ In the end, we'll all become stories. ❜ ❨360❩ ❛ I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ❜ ❨361❩ ❛ If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. ❜ ❨362❩ ❛ If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. ❜ ❨363❩ ❛ Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ❜ ❨364❩ ❛ Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been. ❜ ❨365❩ ❛ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? ❜ ❨366❩ ❛ We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. ❜ ❨367❩ ❛ If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ❜ ❨368❩ ❛ You fit into me like a hook into an eye. ❜ ❨369❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. ❜ ❨370❩ ❛ Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. ❜ ❨371❩ ❛ Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. ❜ ❨372❩ ❛ This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons. ❜ ❨373❩ ❛ Get rid of death. Make it be spring. ❜ ❨374❩ ❛ You are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. ❜ ❨375❩ ❛ I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. ❜ ❨376❩ ❛ Favour me and give me riches, destroy my enemies. Save me from death. ❜ ❨377❩ ❛ She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. ❜ ❨378❩ ❛ Isn't the moon warm enough for you, why do you need the blanket of another body? ❜ ❨379❩ ❛ This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn. ❜ ❨380❩ ❛ If you look long enough eventually you will see me. ❜ ❨381❩ ❛ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head. ❜ ❨382❩ ❛ I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief. ❜ ❨383❩ ❛ But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling. ❜ ❨384❩ ❛ How else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ❜ ❨385❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨386❩ ❛ Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. ❜ ❨387❩ ❛ We loved with a love that was more than love. ❜ ❨388❩ ❛ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ❜ ❨389❩ ❛ The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ❜ ❨390❩ ❛ There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. ❜ ❨391❩ ❛ Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. ❜ ❨392❩ ❛ Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. ❜ ❨393❩ ❛ And all I loved, I loved alone. ❜ ❨394❩ ❛ Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. ❜ ❨395❩ ❛ The best things in life make you sweaty. ❜ ❨396❩ ❛ There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. ❜ ❨397❩ ❛ Anything is better than this agony. ❜ ❨398❩ ❛ You fancy me mad. ❜ ❨399❩ ❛ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. ❜ ❨400❩ ❛ Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? ❜ ❨401❩ ❛ Leave my loneliness unbroken! ❜ ❨402❩ ❛ A more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrills every fibre of my frame. ❜ ❨403❩ ❛ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. ❜ ❨404❩ ❛ Let my heart be still a moment. ❜ ❨405❩ ❛ You call it hope —  It is but agony of desire. ❜ ❨406❩ ❛ Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ❜ ❨407❩ ❛ To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! ❜ ❨408❩ ❛ The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ❜ ❨409❩ ❛ Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. ❜ ❨410❩ ❛ I have been happy, though in a dream. ❜ ❨411❩ ❛ Nevermore. ❜ ❨412❩ ❛ The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life. ❜ ❨413❩ ❛ I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. ❜ ❨414❩ ❛ The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. ❜ ❨415❩ ❛ And if I died, at least I will have died for you! ❜ ❨416❩ ❛ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ❜ ❨417❩ ❛ Hurt and humiliation — But this, I can not take. ❜ ❨418❩ ❛ The walls in there have ears. ❜ ❨419❩ ❛ This is for your ears only. ❜ ❨420❩ ❛ What is it? You have me scared. ❜ ❨421❩ ❛ Whoever isn’t for us, is against us. ❜ ❨422❩ ❛ You are just a body; to be dumped, disposed of like a carcass, left out for the birds to feed on. ❜ ❨423❩ ❛ The dead will have to forgive me. ❜ ❨424❩ ❛ From now on and no matter how your mind may I change, I will not accept your help. ❜ ❨425❩ ❛ If death comes, so be it. There will be glory in it. ❜ ❨426❩ ❛ Live, then; and live with your choice. ❜ ❨427❩ ❛ I am doing what has to be done. ❜ ❨428❩ ❛ Nothing is going to stop the ones that love you from keeping on loving you. ❜ ❨429❩ ❛ Worst is the man who has all the good advice, and then because his nerve fails, fails to act in accordance with it, as a leader should. ❜ ❨430❩ ❛ Only a loony would walk himself into this. ❜ ❨431❩ ❛ Why do you need such fences and defences? ❜ ❨432❩ ❛ Enough. Do not anger me. ❜ ❨433❩ ❛ The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him? ❜ ❨434❩ ❛ Watch it. You are over stepping. ❜ ❨435❩ ❛ I warn you. You should keep a civil tongue. ❜ ❨436❩ ❛ There is no such thing as an oath the can not be broken. ❜ ❨437❩ ❛ Every now and then, the things you’d hardly let yourself imagine, actually happen. ❜ ❨438❩ ❛ And you stand over this? This is the truth? ❜ ❨439❩ ❛ The bigger the resistance, the bigger the collapse. ❜ ❨440❩ ❛ Iron that’s forged the hardest, snaps the quickest. ❜ ❨441❩ ❛ Even the wildest horses come to heel when they are reined & bitted right. ❜ ❨442❩ ❛ That’s how guilt affects some people. They break and everything comes out. ❜ ❨443❩ ❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜ ❨444❩ ❛ So you know something no one else knows? ❜ ❨445❩ ❛ They know it too. They are just too afraid to say it. ❜ ❨446❩ ❛ If you die, how will I keep on living? ❜ ❨447❩ ❛ There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'. ❜ ❨448❩ ❛ How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. ❜ ❨449❩ ❛ Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body. ❜ ❨450❩ ❛ I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. ❜ ❨451❩ ❛ For this moment, this one moment, we are together.  ❜ ❨452❩ ❛ Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. ❜ ❨453❩ ❛ I am as neat as a cat in my habits. ❜ ❨454❩ ❛ Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me. ❜ ❨455❩ ❛ I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. ❜ ❨456❩ ❛ We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe ❨457❩ that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie ❨458❩ asleep. ❜ ❨459❩ ❛ These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. ❜ ❨460❩ ❛ Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. ❜ ❨461❩ ❛ The moment is all; the moment is enough. ❜ ❨462❩ ❛ I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given. ❜ ❨463❩ ❛ I am not one and simple, but complex and many. ❜ ❨464❩ ❛ And if you are dead, I shall weep. ❜ ❨465❩ ❛ But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. ❜ ❨466❩ ❛ But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love. ❜ ❨467❩ ❛ I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. ❜ ❨468❩ ❛ Life is a dream surely. ❜ ❨469❩ ❛ I think sometimes I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. ❜ ❨470❩ ❛ Oh, I am in love with life! ❜ ❨471❩ ❛ I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. ❜ ❨472❩ ❛ There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death. ❜ ❨473❩ ❛ I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am. ❜ ❨474❩ ❛ I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me. ❜ ❨475❩ ❛ I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. ❜ ❨476❩ ❛ I see it all. I feel it all. ❜ ❨477❩ ❛ Death is woven in with the violets. Death and again death. ❜ ❨478❩ ❛ We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember. ❜ ❨479❩ ❛ If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged. ❜ ❨480❩ ❛ When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass. ❜ ❨481❩ ❛ Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word; - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase.  ❜ ❨482❩ ❛ Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. ❜ ❨483❩ ❛ If the world treats you well, you come to believe you are deserving of it. ❜ ❨484❩ ❛ If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go. ❜ ❨485❩ ❛ It’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. ❜ ❨486❩ ❛ There is no fool like an educated fool. ❜ ❨487❩ ❛ There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ❜ ❨488❩ ❛ I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened. ❜ ❨489❩ ❛ Underneath it all is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. ❜ ❨490❩ ❛ And underneath all that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.  ❜ ❨491❩ ❛ The small details of life often hide a great significance. ❜ ❨492❩ ❛ Guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you. ❜ ❨493❩ ❛ I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once? ❜ ❨494❩ ❛ It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between. ❜ ❨495❩ ❛ Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam. ❜ ❨496❩ ❛ I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again. ❜ ❨497❩ ❛ I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely. ❜ ❨498❩ ❛ If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one. ❜ ❨499❩ ❛ It’s as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent. ❜ ❨500❩ ❛ Today you wear your habitual expression of strained anxiety; you smell of violets. ❜ ❨501❩ ❛ Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude. ❜ ❨502❩ ❛ I wonder what would become of me, and comfort myself that in a hundred years I will be dead and at peace. ❜ ❨503❩ ❛ For it is not always the one that strikes the blow that is the actual murderer. ❜ ❨504❩ ❛ There is a “do this” or “do that” with God, but not any “because”. ❜ ❨505❩ ❛ If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. ❜ ❨506❩ ❛ They say, why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won’t bend in that direction any more. ❜ ❨507❩ ❛ I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out. ❜ ❨508❩ ❛ I see what you’re after. You are a collector. You think all you have to do is give me an apple, and then you can collect me. ❜ ❨509❩ ❛ If you want to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before you have made the same life choice. ❜ ❨510❩ ❛ Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo. ❜ ❨511❩ ❛ Nature is to zoos as God is to churches. ❜ ❨512❩ ❛ After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? ❜ ❨513❩ ❛ There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive. ❜ ❨514❩ ❛ These things sneak up on me for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. ❜ ❨515❩ ❛ Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast. ❜ ❨516❩ ❛ You can’t buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price. ❜ ❨517❩ ❛ As a species were doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. ❜ ❨518❩ ❛ I am not my childhood. ❜ ❨519❩ ❛ Human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else and live on forever. ❜ ❨520❩ ❛ “I'll make you mine”, lovers said in old books. They never said, “I'll make you me.” ❜ ❨521❩ ❛ How much is too much, how far is too far? ❜ ❨522❩ ❛ Expectation isn't the same as desire. ❜ ❨523❩ ❛ Why not cut to the chase? ❜ ❨524❩ ❛ Maybe there aren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. ❜ ❨525❩ ❛ I thought you didn’t believe in God. ❜ ❨526❩ ❛ I need at least the illusion of being understood. ❜ ❨527❩ ❛ What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much. ❜ ❨528❩ ❛ You are only looking at the dirt under your feet. It's not good for you. ❜ ❨529❩ ❛ I like to keep only the bright side of myself turned towards you.  ❜ ❨530❩ ❛ Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition. ❜ ❨531❩ ❛ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. ❜ ❨532❩ ❛ Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? ❜ ❨533❩ ❛ When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing. ❜ ❨534❩ ❛ Don't be so fucking sentimental. ❜ ❨535❩ ❛ Wrong, as usual. ❜ ❨536❩ ❛ Why do you want to talk about ugly things? ❜ ❨537❩ ❛ I understand why serial killers send helpful clues to the police. ❜ ❨538❩ ❛ Take your time, leave mine alone. ❜ ❨539❩ ❛ You will hear thunder and remember me. ❜ ❨540❩ ❛ If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly. ❜ ❨541❩ ❛ I seem to myself an accidental guest in this dreadful body. ❜ ❨542❩ ❛ Call me a sinner, mock me maliciously. ❜ ❨543❩ ❛ I, from the very beginning, seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium. Or a reflection in someone else's mirror. Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. ❜ ❨544❩ ❛ I knew the list of crimes that I was destined to commit. ❜ ❨545❩ ❛ The future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future. ❜ ❨546❩ ❛ You are untranslatable into any one tongue. ❜ ❨547❩ ❛ I was hoping my silence would fit yours. ❜ ❨548❩ ❛ See, we were never about butterflies. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ❜ ❨549❩ ❛ You do not know just what you've been forgiven. ❜ ❨550❩ ❛ I need to slaughter my memory.  ❜ ❨551❩ ❛ Forgive me that I appeared to you in waking dreams. ❜ ❨552❩ ❛ I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy. ❜ ❨553❩ ❛ I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death. ❜ ❨554❩ ❛ Wild honey smells of freedom. But gold smells of nothing. ❜ ❨555❩ ❛ You are three times more beautiful than angels. ❜ ❨556❩ ❛ I will kill you without spilling your blood on the ground, not touching you with my hand, not giving you one glance. ❜ ❨557❩ ❛ You invented me. There is no such earthly being. ❜ ❨558❩ ❛ You’re late. Way too late. I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. ❜ ❨559❩ ❛ Forgive me that I felt forsaken. Forgive me that I kept mistaking too many others for you. ❜ ❨560❩ ❛ Real tenderness can’t be confused, it’s quiet and can’t be heard. ❜ ❨561❩ ❛ What else lived in that house besides us? ❜ ❨562❩ ❛ How unhappy we are together! ❜ ❨563❩ ❛ I defend not my voice, but my silence. ❜ ❨564❩ ❛ Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. ❜ ❨565❩ ❛ I've got no more tears or explanations. ❜ ❨566❩ ❛ I’m not complaining. Happiness is not for me. ❜ ❨567❩ ❛ Are you not the only tie between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? ❜ ❨568❩ ❛ In the morning we shall find out who has died in the night. ❜ ❨569❩ ❛ I was not a lovable child, and I've grown into a deeply unlovable adult. ❜ ❨570❩ ❛ The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it. ❜ ❨571❩ ❛ I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark. ❜ ❨572❩ ❛ I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple. ❜ ❨573❩ ❛ I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way. ❜ ❨574❩ ❛ I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen. But the meanness usually wins out. ❜ ❨575❩ ❛ I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. ❜ ❨576❩ ❛ Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it. ❜ ❨577❩ ❛ Coffee goes great with sudden death. ❜ ❨578❩ ❛ I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite. ❜ ❨579❩ ❛ “Smile, it can't be that bad!” Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad. ❜ ❨580❩ ❛ Everything bad in the world already did happen. ❜ ❨581❩ ❛ You’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? ❜ ❨582❩ ❛ Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. ❜ ❨583❩ ❛ Homesick for a place I've never been. ❜ ❨584❩ ❛ Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. ❜ ❨585❩ ❛ It is always consoling to think of suicide. It's what gets one through many a bad night. ❜ ❨586❩ ❛ Do you understand this is serious? ❜ ❨587❩ ❛ Sometimes it feels good to fuck with something. Instead of always being fucked with. ❜ ❨588❩ ❛ How could you kill something you cared enough to name? ❜ ❨589❩ ❛ Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs. ❜ ❨590❩ ❛ We have the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia. ❜ ❨591❩ ❛ I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. ❜ ❨592❩ ❛ The phrase fuck you may not rest on the tip of my tongue, but it’s near. Midtongue. ❜ ❨593❩ ❛ Nothing to it but to do it. ❜ ❨594❩ ❛ There are a lot of people who deserve a lesson, deserve to really understand, that nothing comes easy, that most things are going to go sour. ❜ ❨595❩ ❛ If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas. ❜ ❨596❩ ❛ Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. ❜ ❨597❩ ❛ What does it do to a girl who knows her mother is a murderer? ❜ ❨598❩ ❛ That mean old bitch across the street bit it. ❜ ❨599❩ ❛ Survival is a talent. ❜ ❨600❩ ❛ Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. ❜ ❨601❩ ❛ Who has the courage to burn themselves? ❜ ❨602❩ ❛ Is insanity just a matter of dropping the act? ❜ ❨603❩ ❛ Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? ❜ ❨604❩ ❛ You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self-pity. ❜ ❨605❩ ❛ When I am supposed to be awake, I am asleep; when I am supposed to speak, I am silent. When a pleasure offers itself to me, I avoid it. ❜ ❨606❩ ❛ There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. ❜ ❨607❩ ❛ In a strange way we are free. We've reached the end of the line. We have nothing more to lose. ❜ ❨608❩ ❛ The world won’t stop because we aren’t in it anymore. ❜ ❨609❩ ❛ I can't answer the real question. All I can tell you is, it's easy. ❜ ❨610❩ ❛ I am lighter, airier than I’ve been in years. ❜ ❨611❩ ❛ I am not dead, yet something in me definitely is. ❜ ❨612❩ ❛ You meant that as an insult but I am taking it as a compliment. ❜ ❨613❩ ❛ What life can recover from that? ❜ ❨614❩ ❛ It's a fairly accurate portrait of me. It's accurate but it isn't profound. ❜ ❨615❩ ❛ Pull yourself together! There's nothing wrong with you. ❜ ❨616❩ ❛ It's quiet. It's like― I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff. ❜ ❨617❩ ❛ Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. ❜ ❨618❩ ❛ I lost him. I did it on purpose. ❜ ❨619❩ ❛ It’s a mean world. There’s nobody to take care of you out there. ❜ ❨620❩ ❛ Reality is getting too dense. ❜ ❨621❩ ❛ I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favourite word. ❜ ❨622❩ ❛ I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions you raise. ❜ ❨623❩ ❛ A spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. ❜ ❨624❩ ❛ Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner. ❜ ❨625❩ ❛ A thought is a hard thing to control. ❜ ❨626❩ ❛ Life demands skills I don’t have. ❜ ❨627❩ ❛ Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful. Most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them. ❜ ❨628❩ ❛ It never stops, even at night, it’s my lullaby. ❜ ❨629❩ ❛ Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. ❜ ❨630❩ ❛ This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes. ❜ ❨631❩ ❛ I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. ❜ ❨632❩ ❛ Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. ❜ ❨633❩ ❛ Hatred is easier. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love. ❜ ❨634❩ ❛ Potential has a shelf life. ❜ ❨635❩ ❛ Don’t move. Stay like that, let me have that. ❜ ❨636❩ ❛ I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. ❜ ❨637❩ ❛ Never pray for justice, because you might get some. ❜ ❨638❩ ❛ It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional. ❜ ❨639❩ ❛ We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. ❜ ❨640❩ ❛ This is what I miss, not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. ❜ ❨641❩ ❛ I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. ❜ ❨642❩ ❛ You are amazing. Amazing and agonising and almost lethal. ❜ ❨643❩ ❛ In my dreams of this city I am always lost. ❜ ❨644❩ ❛ I don't know where these feelings have come from, I don’t know what I've done. ❜ ❨645❩ ❛ I am not the centre of your story, you are.  ❜ ❨646❩ ❛ I’m mad because you’re an asshole. ❜ ❨647❩ ❛ It's enormously pleasing to me, walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will. ❜ ❨648❩ ❛ There is never only one of anyone. ❜ ❨649❩ ❛ I can't do this without feeling I'm acting. ❜ ❨650❩ ❛ I am prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence. ❜ ❨651❩ ❛ I’m losing my appetite for strangers. ❜ ❨652❩ ❛ You wear your cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. You want it all. ❜ ❨653❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people weakens you. You are forced to understand their reasons for doing things. ❜ ❨654❩ ❛ I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now. ❜ ❨655❩ ❛ Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. ❜ ❨656❩ ❛ Whoever cares the most will lose. ❜ ❨657❩ ❛ Young women need unfairness, it’s one of their few defences.  ❜ ❨658❩ ❛ Time has gone on without you. ❜ ❨659❩ ❛ Don't let the bastards grind you down. ❜ ❨660❩ ❛ Who can remember pain, once it’s over? Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ❜ ❨661�� ❛ Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some. ❜ ❨662❩ ❛ There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. ❜ ❨663❩ ❛ Remember that forgiveness too is a power. ❜ ❨664❩ ❛ I am not your justification for existence. ❜ ❨665❩ ❛ I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. ❜ ❨666❩ ❛ If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. ❜ ❨667❩ ❛ All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard. ❜ ❨668❩ ❛ Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ❜ ❨669❩ ❛ I want everything back, the way it was. ❜ ❨670❩ ❛ You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave. ❜ ❨671❩ ❛ Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. ❜ ❨672❩ ❛ To want is to have a weakness. ❜ ❨673❩ ❛ There isn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. ❜ ❨674❩ ❛ The past is a great darkness, filled with echoes. ❜ ❨675❩ ❛ Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. ❜ ❨676❩ ❛ I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a better light. ❜ ❨677❩ ❛ The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. ❜ ❨678❩ ❛ By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you. ❜ ❨679❩ ❛ Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard. ❜ ❨680❩ ❛ Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. ❜ ❨681❩ ❛ Keep the others safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. ❜ ❨682❩ ❛ The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. ❜ ❨683❩ ❛ The world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. ❜ ❨684❩ ❛ Nobody's heart is perfect. ❜ ❨685❩ ❛ One false move and I'm dead. ❜ ❨686❩ ❛ Watch out. I've got my eye on you. ❜ ❨687❩ ❛ Fear is a powerful stimulant. ❜ ❨688❩ ❛ I couldn't afford to lose you. ❜ ❨689❩ ❛ Name one hero who was happy. ---- You can’t. ❜ ❨690❩ ❛ I feel like I could eat the world raw. ❜ ❨691❩ ❛ We are like gods at the dawning of the world. ❜ ❨692❩ ❛ I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. ❜ ❨693❩ ❛ There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw. ❜ ❨694❩ ❛ You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature. ❜ ❨695❩ ❛ He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. ❜ ❨696❩ ❛ Some men gain glory after they die, others fade. ❜ ❨697❩ ❛ I am made of memories. ❜ ❨698❩ ❛ Will you come with me? ❜ ❨699❩ ❛ I wish I had let you all die. ❜ ❨700❩ ❛ It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after. ❜ ❨701❩ ❛ Bury us. Let us be free. ❜ ❨702❩ ❛ Go. He waits for you. ❜ ❨703❩ ❛ Nothing could eclipse the stain of this dirty, mortal mediocrity. ❜ ❨704❩ ❛ I know I have told you of this. ❜ ❨705❩ ❛ I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me. ❜ ❨706❩ ❛ Perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom. ❜ ❨707❩ ❛ I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest. ❜ ❨708❩ ❛ There is no honour in betraying your friends. ❜ ❨709❩ ❛ There is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong. ❜ ❨710❩ ❛ Divine blood flows differently. ❜ ❨711❩ ❛ How is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. ❜ ❨712❩ ❛ This is what I will miss, I think. I will kill myself rather than miss it. ❜ ❨713❩ ❛ How long do we have? ❜ ❨714❩ ❛ Do you think we fight hopeless wars? ❜ ❨715❩ ❛ There is no law that gods must be fair. ❜ ❨716❩ ❛ I do not fear ridicule. I never have. ❜ ❨717❩ ❛ You were always better with words than I. ❜ ❨718❩ ❛ Who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? ❜ ❨719❩ ❛ When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. ❜ ❨720❩ ❛ That's how the madness of the world tries to colonise you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality. ❜ ❨721❩ ❛ The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear. ❜ ❨722❩ ❛ Silence creates violence. ❜ ❨723❩ ❛ Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough. ❜ ❨724❩ ❛ There are certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of it inside you. ❜ ❨725❩ ❛ Nothing that ever lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth. ❜ ❨726❩ ❛ We all live in a kind of continuous dream. ❜ ❨727❩ ❛ You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you. ❜ ❨728❩ ❛ What can you do when your five senses are not enough? ❜ ❨729❩ ❛ We will neither be what we had been nor what we would become once we reach our destination. ❜ ❨730❩ ❛ Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable. ❜ ❨731❩ ❛ When you are too close to the centre of a mystery there is no way to pull back. ❜ ❨732❩ ❛ I long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. ❜ ❨733❩ ❛ I look not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I try to imagine what kind of life lives in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. ❜ ❨734❩ ❛ I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, I think. If so, it was a very small part. I ran. ❜ ❨735❩ ❛ I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. ❜ ❨736❩ ❛ All of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. ❜ ❨737❩ ❛ We don’t have real answers, because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. ❜ ❨738❩ ❛ This part I will do alone. Don’t follow. ❜ ❨739❩ ❛ People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control. ❜ ❨740❩ ❛ Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead? ❜ ❨741❩ ❛ I loved them, but I didn’t need them, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. ❜ ❨742❩ ❛ Places can impress themselves upon me, and I can become part of them with ease. ❜ ❨743❩ ❛ There is no one with me. I am all by myself. ❜ ❨744❩ ❛ Pretending often leads to becoming a reasonable facsimile of what you mimic. ❜ ❨745❩ ❛ I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they're very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. ❜ ❨746❩ ❛ What did you eat? You had rations for only two weeks. You were there for nearly four months. ❜ ❨747❩ ❛ Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool. ❜ ❨748❩ ❛ I need to know what’s inside. ❜ ❨749❩ ❛ These aren't decisions. They're impulses ❜ ❨750❩ ❛ What do you think I do when you’re away? Do you think I’m out in the garden pinning, looking up at the sky? ❜ ❨751❩ ❛ If I know what’s happened I can save their life. ❜ ❨752❩ ❛ They either went crazy or something in here killed them. ❜ ❨753❩ ❛ Something is coming through the fence! ❜ ❨754❩ ❛ Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny. ❜ ❨755❩ ❛ People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. ❜ ❨756❩ ❛ Happy endings are still endings. ❜ ❨757❩ ❛ We believe in all sorts of things that aren't true; -- we call it history. ❜ ❨758❩ ❛ Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? ❜ ❨759❩ ❛ In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realise it is far more common for men to turn into rats. ❜ ❨760❩ ❛ Girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise.  ❜ ❨761❩ ❛ Love makes hunters of us all. ❜ ❨762❩ ❛ There is much to hate in this world and way too much to love. ❜ ❨763❩ ❛ You confuse not speaking with not listening. ❜ ❨764❩ ❛ As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. ❜ ❨765❩ ❛ The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say. ❜ ❨766❩ ❛ Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. ❜ ❨767❩ ❛ We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. ❜ ❨768❩ ❛ The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness. ❜ ❨769❩ ❛ I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! ❜ ❨770❩ ❛ Even at the very worst - there is always choice. ❜ ❨771❩ ❛ Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ❜ ❨772❩ ❛ Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the entire universe is changed. ❜ ❨773❩ ❛ That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness. Life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same. ❜ ❨774❩ ❛ I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without. ❜ ❨775❩ ❛ It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new. ❜ ❨776❩ ❛ Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the godfather, never the god. ❜ ❨777❩ ❛ The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew. ❜ ❨778❩ ❛ Evil is an act, not an appetite. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal. ❜ ❨779❩ ❛ How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table?  ❜ ❨780❩ ❛ Even God used silence as a strategy. ❜ ❨781❩ ❛ I learned failure early and mastered it. ❜ ❨782❩ ❛ It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all. ❜ ❨783❩ ❛ This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is a very wicked distraction. ❜ ❨784❩ ❛ Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery. ❜ ❨785❩ ❛ Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience. ❜ ❨786❩ ❛ Such brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. ❜ ❨787❩ ❛ I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can. ❜ ❨788❩ ❛ Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go fuck myself, to piss off, go on, say it, but don’t tell me nothing’s wrong. ❜ ❨789❩ ❛ The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on. ❜ ❨790❩ ❛ One can't make peace with another by force. ❜ ❨791❩ ❛ I am a forgettable leaf on a tree. ❜ ❨792❩ ❛ That's all I want; --- to do no harm. ❜ ❨793❩ ❛ I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is. ❜ ❨794❩ ❛ Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ❜ ❨795❩ ❛ You’re too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to that we manage to endure the burden of the past. ❜ ❨796❩ ❛ Love, no matter what else it might be, is a natural talent. You are either born knowing how, or you never know. ❜ ❨797❩ ❛ Whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life. ❜ ❨798❩ ❛ There is no God worth worrying about. ❜ ❨799❩ ❛ The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love. ❜ ❨800❩ ❛ Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good. ❜ ❨801❩ ❛ Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the very end in itself. ❜ ❨802❩ ❛ Only God knows how much I love you. ❜ ❨803❩ ❛ There is no greater glory than to die for love. ❜ ❨804❩ ❛ Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies. ❜ ❨805❩ ❛ Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life. ❜ ❨806❩ ❛ Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion. ❜ ❨807❩ ❛ I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century. ❜ ❨808❩ ❛ I want to be myself again, to recover all that I was obliged to give up. ❜ ❨809❩ ❛ The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name. ❜ ❨810❩ ❛ This soup tastes like windows. ❜ ❨811❩ ❛ Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist? ❜ ❨812❩ ❛ One has to live a long time to know a man's true nature. ❜ ❨813❩ ❛ No, not rich, I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. ❜ ❨814❩ ❛ My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse. ❜ ❨815❩ ❛ That may be the reason he does so many things, so that he will not have to think. ❜ ❨816❩ ❛ Love if it exists, is something separate: another life. ❜ ❨817❩ ❛ Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you. ❜ ❨818❩ ❛ There are things you do only for love. ❜ ❨819❩ ❛ I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I die. ❜ ❨820❩ ❛ There is no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age. ❜ ❨821❩ ❛ You treat me as if I were just anybody. ❜ ❨822❩ ❛ The symptoms of love are the same as those of cholera. ❜ ❨823❩ ❛ There is no law, human or divine, that you have not ignored. ❜ ❨824❩ ❛ Why is it that I feel I've known you so many years? ❜ ❨825❩ ❛ Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. ❜ ❨826❩ ❛ It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. ❜ ❨827❩ ❛ We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? ❜ ❨828❩ ❛ There must be something, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. ❜ ❨829❩ ❛ If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. ❜ ❨830❩ ❛ If you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore. ❜ ❨831❩ ❛ You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. ❜ ❨832❩ ❛ It was a pleasure to burn. ❜ ❨833❩ ❛ I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? ❜ ❨834❩ ❛ Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? ❜ ❨835❩ ❛ Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays? ❜ ❨836❩ ❛ Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? ❜ ❨837❩ ❛ I don't talk things. I talk the meaning of things. ❜ ❨838❩ ❛ I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. ❜ ❨839❩ ❛ I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. ❜ ❨840❩ ❛ That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. ❜ ❨841❩ ❛ Someday we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up. ❜ ❨842❩ ❛ You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. ❜ ❨843❩ ❛ You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. ❜ ❨844❩ ❛ When they give you lined paper, write the other way. ❜ ❨845❩ ❛ The sun burnt every day. It burnt time. ❜ ❨846❩ ❛ We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing. ❜ ❨847❩ ❛ I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago. ❜ ❨848❩ ❛ I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last. Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. ❜ ❨849❩ ❛ Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! ❜ ❨850❩ ❛ How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you? ❜ ❨851❩ ❛ It must be right. It seems so right. ❜ ❨852❩ ❛ To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. ❜ ❨853❩ ❛ It's my game. And no one can help me. Not even you. ❜ ❨854❩ ❛ What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. ❜ ❨855❩ ❛ Death is a long process. Your body is just the first part of you that croaks. Beyond that, your dreams have to die. Then your expectations. Your anger and memories must die. Your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope. ❜ ❨856❩ ❛ Help me give up my addiction to hope. ❜ ❨857❩ ❛ Life is short, death is forever. ❜ ❨858❩ ❛ Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break. ❜ ❨859❩ ❛ If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes. ❜ ❨860❩ ❛ We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. ❜ ❨861❩ ❛ All the demons of hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. ❜ ❨862❩ ❛ I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful. ❜ ❨863❩ ❛ It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ❜ ❨864❩ ❛ You fucked up. Game over. So just relax. ❜ ❨865❩ ❛ The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul. ❜ ❨866❩ ❛ If killing you will end my existence as well, be it. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. ❜ ❨867❩ ❛ I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. ❜ ❨868❩ ❛ Dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. ❜ ❨869❩ ❛ Any concept of right versus wrong, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. ❜ ❨870❩ ❛ To prove that I exist I must kill you. ❜ ❨871❩ ❛ I'd say that my life has been a way-too-long case history of chasing rainbows. ❜ ❨872❩ ❛ The world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard. ❜ ❨873❩ ❛ Every garden looks beautiful in May. ❜ ❨874❩ ❛ When we neglect to fear such brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless. ❜ ❨875❩ ❛ My taste for power continues to grow, as does my ability to accrue it. ❜ ❨876❩ ❛ Such language! Why don't you just take a dump in my ears? ❜ ❨877❩ ❛ You’d be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. ❜ ❨878❩ ❛ Depending on her mood, she can be more frightening than any demon or devil you might ever run across. ❜ ❨879❩ ❛ Cross your fingers! Maybe death won't happen to you. ❜ ❨880❩ ❛ Do not die while wearing cheap shoes. ❜ ❨881❩ ❛ Old habits die hard. ❜ ❨882❩ ❛ It's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us. ❜ ❨883❩ ❛ What do I think I am? In a thousand words; I don't have a clue. ❨884❩ ❛ If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me. ❜ ❨885❩ ❛ All I wanted was to be loved for myself. ❜ ❨886❩ ❛ I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer. ❜ ❨887❩ ❛ Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? ❜ ❨888❩ ❛ You have a heart that can hold the entire empire of the world. ❜ ❨889❩ ❛ Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you. ❜ ❨890❩ ❛ Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. ❜ ❨891❩ ❛ You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! ❜ ❨892❩ ❛ Are people so unhappy when they love? --- Yes, when they love and are not sure of being loved. ❜ ❨893❩ ❛ Your soul is a beautiful thing. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. ❜ ❨894❩ ❛ Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! ❜ ❨895❩ ❛ Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a life like everybody else. ❜ ❨896❩ ❛ You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. ❜ ❨897❩ ❛ I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. ❜ ❨898❩ ❛ I am going to die of love, I am dying of love. That's how it is. I loved you so. I still love you so. ❜ ❨899❩ ❛ I am dying of love for her, I tell you! If only you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her. ❜ ❨900❩ ❛ He fills me with horror but I do not hate him. How can I hate him? ❜ ❨901❩ ❛ Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, my spirit longs with thee to rest. ❜ ❨902❩ ❛ Nothing is colder or more dead than my heart. ❜ ❨903❩ ❛ I had loved an angel and now I despise a woman. ❜ ❨904❩ ❛ Our lives are one masked ball. ❜ ❨905❩ ❛ Why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing? ❜ ❨906❩ ❛ He would commit murder for me. ❜ ❨907❩ ❛ If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug, she is lost. But I shall save her. ❜ ❨908❩ ❛ We will go from here together or die together. ❜ ❨909❩ ❛ Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. ❜ ❨910❩ ❛ Destiny has chained you to me forever. ❜ ❨911❩ ❛ You must never ask me that. ❜ ❨912❩ ❛ Are you afraid that you will change your mind? ❜ ❨913❩ ❛ You must come and fetch me in my dressing room at midnight exactly. ❜ ❨914❩ ❛ The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. ❜ ❨915❩ ❛ I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. ❜ ❨916❩ ❛ There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home. ❜ ❨917❩ ❛ I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head. ❜ ❨918❩ ❛ It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to even mourn for it. ❜ ❨919❩ ❛ There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion. ❜ ❨920❩ ❛ When did you become so weak? ❜ ❨921❩ ❛ I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. ❜ ❨922❩ ❛ Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers. ❜ ❨923❩ ❛ Sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. ❜ ❨924❩ ❛ I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. ❜ ❨925❩ ❛ I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away. ❜ ❨926❩ ❛ I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move. ❜ ❨927❩ ❛ Who was it that said following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. ❜ ❨928❩ ❛ It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. ❜ ❨929❩ ❛ Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches. ❜ ❨930❩ ❛ I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. ❜ ❨931❩ ❛ How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn? ❜ ❨932❩ ❛ Now look -- Now look what you made me do. ❜ ❨933❩ ❛ It’s okay, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. ❜ ❨934❩ ❛ They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be. ❜ ❨935❩ ❛ You broke me and I broke us. ❜ ❨936❩ ❛ I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you. ❜ ❨937❩ ❛ I’d never realised, not until now, how shameful it is to be pitied. ❜ ❨938❩ ❛ Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. ❜ ❨939❩ ❛ I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. ❜ ❨940❩ ❛ There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end. ❜ ❨941❩ ❛ Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point in denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ❜ ❨942❩ ❛ I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love. ❜ ❨943❩ ❛ You don’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with. ❜ ❨944❩ ❛ The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. ❜ ❨945❩ ❛ You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. It’s not the worst thing, is it? ❜ ❨946❩ ❛ I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it. ❜ ❨947❩ ❛ If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying, he’s got another thing coming. ❜ ❨948❩ ❛ I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away. ❜ ❨949❩ ❛ I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. ❜ ❨950❩ ❛ I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate it, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick. ❜ ❨951❩ ❛ Maybe the courage I need has nothing to do with telling the truth and everything to do with walking away. ❜ ❨952❩ ❛ I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless. ❜ ❨953❩ ❛ Failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under and I gave up hope. ❜ ❨954❩ ❛ It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time; I don’t feel bad enough. ❜ ❨955❩ ❛ Some battles aren’t worth fighting. ❜ ❨956❩ ❛ I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to. ❜ ❨957❩ ❛ I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? ❜ ❨958❩ ❛ What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard. ❜ ❨959❩ ❛ A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. ❜ ❨960❩ ❛ It isn’t only wickedness and scheming that make people unhappy, it is confusion and misunderstanding. ❜ ❨961❩ ❛ Falling in love can be achieved in a single word—a glance. ❜ ❨962❩ ❛ Though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you. ❜ ❨963❩ ❛ I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. ❜ ❨964❩ ❛ It might hurt, it is horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but it is what it is to be in love. ❜ ❨965❩ ❛ It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. ❜ ❨966❩ ❛ Come back, come back to me. ❜ ❨967❩ ❛ In my thoughts I make love to you all day long. ❜ ❨968❩ ❛ The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence and I don’t think I can blame the heat. ❜ ❨969❩ ❛ Beauty occupies a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, has infinite variation. ❜ ❨970❩ ❛ Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? ❜ ❨971❩ ❛ However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been. ❜ ❨972❩ ❛ Hate is a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. ❜ ❨973❩ ❛ I’m going mad. Let me not be mad. ❜ ❨974❩ ❛ Is everyone really as alive as I am? ❜ ❨975❩ ❛ Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone teaches you something about yourself. ❜ ❨976❩ ❛ Something has happened, hasn’t it? ❜ ❨977❩ ❛ I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. ❜ ❨978❩ ❛ Is it possible that I am, in the modern term, in denial? ❜ ❨979❩ ❛ How could anyone presume to know the world through the eyes of an insect? ❜ ❨980❩ ❛ Not everything has a cause. Some things are simply so. ❜ ❨981❩ ❛ I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your neck here and throwing you down the stairs. ❜ ❨982❩ ❛ How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? ❜ ❨983❩ ❛ It was never meant to be read. ❜ ❨984❩ ❛ If I fell in the river, would you save me? ❜ ❨985❩ ❛ That was an incredibly bloody stupid thing to do. ❜ ❨986❩ ❛ I want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll be eternally grateful to you. ❜ ❨987❩ ❛ I’m very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused. I’m very, very sorry. ❜ ❨988❩ ❛ Don’t call me that! – Please don’t call me that. ❜ ❨989❩ ❛ It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine. ❜ ❨990❩ ❛ Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. ❜ ❨991❩ ❛ No one ever really gets used to nightmares. ❜ ❨992❩ ❛ I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. ❜ ❨993❩ ❛ Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. ❜ ❨994❩ ❛ Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. ❜ ❨995❩ ❛ Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful. ❜ ❨996❩ ❛ The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours. ❜ ❨997❩ ❛ You will fulfil a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. ❜ ❨998❩ ❛ Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. ❜ ❨999❩ ❛ I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore. ❜ ❨1000❩ ❛ What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff. ❜ ❨1001❩ ❛ Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you? ❜ ❨1002❩ ❛ It’s just silent, no sound at all. It’s like something’s waiting. ❜ ❨1003❩ ❛ I guess I’m hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control. ❜ ❨1004❩ ❛ Oh and something else: – Fuck you. ❜ ❨1005❩ ❛ God I’ve never been afraid like this. ❜ ❨1006❩ ❛ I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived that you can’t call your own. ❜ ❨1007❩ ❛ I’m so tired. Sleep’s been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. ❜ ❨1008❩ ❛ Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the Hey-I’m-Bleeding part. ❜ ❨1009❩ ❛ These days fantasies flourish and die like summer flies. ❜ ❨1010❩ ❛ Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous. ❜ ❨1011❩ ❛ ‘Fuck’ and 'fall for’ have very different meanings. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do. ❜ ❨1012❩ ❛ It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. ❜ ❨1013❩ ❛ It’s, well…one thing in two words: fucked up…very fucked up. Okay three words, four words, who the hell cares…very very fucked up. ❜ ❨1014❩ ❛ Do you think I could spend the night at your place?  ❜ ❨1015❩ ❛ Any fool can pray. ❜ ❨1016❩ ❛ I feel like I haven’t slept in months. My neighbours are scared of me. ❜ ❨1017❩ ❛ I’ve lost my mind? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I’m just really drunk. ❜ ❨1018❩ ❛ Perhaps by cleaning out my system I’ll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace. ❜ ❨1019❩ ❛ I should be dead. Why am I still here? ❜ ❨1020❩ ❛ Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine. ❜ ❨1021❩ ❛ You are my flesh. You are my bones. I know you too well. I read you too perfectly. ❜ ❨1022❩ ❛ Not all complex problems have easy solutions. ❜ ❨1023❩ ❛ Do you believe in God? I don’t think I ever asked you that one. ❜ ❨1024❩ ❛ We all create stories to protect ourselves. ❜ ❨1025❩ ❛ Are you kidding me? This place is scary. ❜ ❨1026❩ ❛ These days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ❜ ❨1027❩ ❛ You like that crap because it reminds you of you. ❜ ❨1028❩ ❛ You may suddenly realise things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ❜ ❨1029❩ ❛ The two hardest tests are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. ❜ ❨1030❩ ❛ People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves. ❜ ❨1031❩ ❛ Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different. ❜ ❨1032❩ ❛ You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. ❜ ❨1033❩ ❛ God chose you to be different. ❜ ❨1034❩ ❛ Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude? ❜ ❨1035❩ ❛ You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you. ❜ ❨1036❩ ❛ Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to. ❜ ❨1037❩ ❛ Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death?  ❜ ❨1038❩ ❛ If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem. ❜ ❨1039❩ ❛ Nothing in this world happens by chance. ❜ ❨1040❩ ❛ I want to continue living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be. ❜ ❨1041❩ ❛ Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains. ❜ ❨1042❩ ❛ Collective madness is called sanity. ❜ ❨1043❩ ❛ Consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences. ❜ ❨1044❩ ❛ You say they create their own reality, but what is reality? ❜ ❨1045❩ ❛ Many people don't allow themselves to love because there are a lot of things at risk. A lot of future and a lot of past. ❜ ❨1046❩ ❛ Death frees from the fear of dying. ❜ ❨1047❩ ❛ The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort. ❜ ❨1048❩ ❛ The happier people can be, the unhappier they are. ❜ ❨1049❩ ❛ Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act. ❜ ❨1050❩ ❛ It's best to accept life as it really is and not as you imagined it to be. ❜ ❨1051❩ ❛ You don't seem mad at all. ❜ ❨1052❩ ❛ We’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroys us. ❜ ❨1053❩ ❛ You’re what you are, not what others make of you. ❜ ❨1054❩ ❛ Am I cured? ❜ ❨1055❩ ❛ Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself. ❜ ❨1056❩ ❛ A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. Is that it? ❜ ❨1057❩ ❛ They think they're normal, because they all do the same thing. ❜ ❨1058❩ ❛ I didn't know that other ‘me’s existed inside me, ‘Me’s that I could love. ❜ ❨1059❩ ❛ I have no idea what's awaiting me. ❜ ❨1060❩ ❛ What will happen when this all ends? ❜ ❨1061❩ ❛ I know that you are capable of great deeds. ❜ ❨1062❩ ❛ A loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ❜ ❨1063❩ ❛ The truth is that everyone is bored. ❜ ❨1064❩ ❛ I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. ❜ ❨1065❩ ❛ If there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. ❜ ❨1066❩ ❛ Who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for even a single moment's suffering? ❜ ❨1067❩ ❛ It's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. ❜ ❨1068❩ ❛ While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. ❜ ❨1069❩ ❛ People are more often bad than good. ❜ ❨1070❩ ❛ I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. ❜ ❨1071❩ ❛ What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. ❜ ❨1072❩ ❛ In fact, nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. ❜ ❨1073❩ ❛ Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves. ❜ ❨1074❩ ❛ Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ❜ ❨1075❩ ❛ There are more things to admire in men then to despise. ❜ ❨1076❩ ❛ It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. ❜ ❨1077❩ ❛ What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this? ❜ ❨1078❩ ❛ Your code of morals? What code, if I may ask? ❜ ❨1079❩ ❛ I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding anything. ❜ ❨1080❩ ❛ No doubt our love is still there, but quite simply it is unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. ❜ ❨1081❩ ❛ I’m not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start. ❜ ❨1082❩ ❛ I am incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that I am incapable of anything really worth while. ❜ ❨1083❩ ❛ I should have found the words to keep her with me. ❜ ❨1084❩ ❛ We can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. ❜ ❨1085❩ ❛ The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. ❜ ❨1086❩ ❛ There are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live. ❜ ❨1087❩ ❛ The best protection against anything is a good bottle of wine. ❜ ❨1088❩ ❛ There is no peace without hope. ❜ ❨1089❩ ❛ It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. ❜ ❨1090❩ ❛ There is always something left to love. ❜ ❨1091❩ ❛ A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can. ❜ ❨1092❩ ❛ Things have a life of their own. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls. ❜ ❨1093❩ ❛ Tell me something: why are you fighting? ❜ ❨1094❩ ❛ I've come to realise only just now that I'm fighting because of pride. ❜ ❨1095❩ ❛ One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship. ❜ ❨1096❩ ❛ It's better than not knowing why you're fighting. Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone. ❜ ❨1097❩ ❛ Holy Mother of God! ❜ ❨1098❩ ❛ A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground. ❜ ❨1099❩ ❛ I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1100❩ ❛ Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it. ❜ ❨1101❩ ❛ I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance. ❜ ❨1102❩ ❛ Get those bad thoughts out of your head. You're going to be happy. ❜ ❨1103❩ ❛ Children inherit their parents' madness. ❜ ❨1104❩ ❛ I'll turn to ashes in here but I won't give this miserable town the pleasure of seeing me weep. ❜ ❨1105❩ ❛ You would be good in a war. Where you put your eye, you put your bullet. ❜ ❨1106❩ ❛ Men demand much more than you think. ❜ ❨1107❩ ❛ Even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth. ❜ ❨1108❩ ❛ If we’re alone you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of. ❜ ❨1109❩ ❛ You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty. ❜ ❨1110❩ ❛ We have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect. ❜ ❨1111❩ ❛ What worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death. ❜ ❨1112❩ ❛ What worries me is that you've ended up as bad as they are. ❜ ❨1113❩ ❛ It is characteristic of men to deny hunger once their appetites are satisfied. ❜ ❨1114❩ ❛ Dying is much more difficult than one imagines. ❜ ❨1115❩ ❛ If you have to go crazy, please go crazy all by yourself! ❜ ❨1116❩ ❛ We have still not had a death. ❜ ❨1117❩ ❛ How awful, the way time passes. ❜ ❨1118❩ ❛ You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house. ❜ ❨1119❩ ❛ I missed you every hour. ❜ ❨1120❩ ❛ You know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. ❜ ❨1121❩ ❛ I’ve risked my life for you. ❜ ❨1122❩ ❛ The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak. ❜ ❨1123❩ ❛ I love you, even the part of you that loved him. ❜ ❨1124❩ ❛ I’m sorry it took me so long to see you. ❜ ❨1125❩ ❛ I never really belonged anywhere. ❜ ❨1126❩ ❛ Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable.  ❜ ❨1127❩ ❛ Thanks for finding me. ❜ ❨1128❩ ❛ You and I are going to change the world. ❜ ❨1129❩ ❛ I’ve been waiting for you a long time. ❜ ❨1130❩ ❛ I’m not used to people trying to kill me. ❜ ❨1131❩ ❛ You’re shaking. ❜ ❨1132❩ ❛ There's nothing wrong with being a lizard. Unless you were born to be a hawk. ❜ ❨1133❩ ❛ Make me your villain. ❜ ❨1134❩ ❛ Just you and me. It’s always just you and me. ❜ ❨1135❩ ❛ Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every dumb thing I’ve said? ❜ ❨1136❩ ❛ Well, if it gets too bad, give me a signal. ❜ ❨1137❩ ❛ Did you tell him what I showed you in the dark? ❜ ❨1138❩ ❛ Did you miss me when you were gone? ❜ ❨1139❩ ❛ What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men. ❜ ❨1140❩ ❛ You’re interfering with my plan. ❜ ❨1141❩ ❛ Too much champagne? ❜ ❨1142❩ ❛ I hope you don’t expect fairness from me. It isn’t one of my specialties. ❜ ❨1143❩ ❛ There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings. Faith. ❜ ❨1144❩ ❛ All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn’t say how. ❜ ❨1145❩ ❛ What is she? She’s everything, you dumb son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1146❩ ❛ She’s an ugly little thing. No child should look like that. Pale and sour, like a glass of milk that’s turned. ❜ ❨1147❩ ❛ I wouldn’t make that mistake again. ❜ ❨1148❩ ❛ It’s a great honor, to save a life. You saved many. ❜ ❨1149❩ ❛ In this world, there are things you can only do alone. ❜ ❨1150❩ ❛ What seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. ❜ ❨1151❩ ❛ If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. ❜ ❨1152❩ ❛ Why should you be interested in me? ❜ ❨1153❩ ❛ I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times. ❜ ❨1154❩ ❛ It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. ❜ ❨1155❩ ❛ I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel. ❜ ❨1156❩ ❛ The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish. ❜ ❨1157❩ ❛ The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.  ❜ ❨1158❩ ❛ So once you're dead there's just nothing? ❜ ❨1159❩ ❛ If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality. ❜ ❨1160❩ ❛ Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? ❜ ❨1161❩ ❛ Nobody can shake off their own shadow. ❜ ❨1162❩ ❛ The silence is so deep it hurts. ❜ ❨1163❩ ❛ I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. ❜ ❨1164❩ ❛ Killing time is one of my specialities. ❜ ❨1165❩ ❛ You can't fight it. ❜ ❨1166❩ ❛ Tell me something,—do you believe in reincarnation? ❜ ❨1167❩ ❛ I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it. ❜ ❨1168❩ ❛ I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner.  ❜ ❨1169❩ ❛ I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. ❜ ❨1170❩ ❛ I can't take it any more, I can't go on any more. ❜ ❨1171❩ ❛ You don't really have it together. ❜ ❨1172❩ ❛ Is it against the law for me to know it? ❜ ❨1173❩ ❛ I keep having the same dream. ❜ ❨1174❩ ❛ Are you asking because you really want an answer? ❜ ❨1175❩ ❛ I hate this! I don't want to be changed this way! ❜ ❨1176❩ ❛ No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas. ❜ ❨1177❩ ❛ Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop. ❜ ❨1178❩ ❛ If I didn’t have these memories inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. ❜ ❨1179❩ ❛ I don’t know what you’re feeling. I won’t even pretend. ❜ ❨1180❩ ❛ What are you doing here, honey? ❜ ❨1181❩ ❛ You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. ❜ ❨1182❩ ❛ You don't understand me. ❜ ❨1183❩ ❛ All wisdom ends in paradox. ❜ ❨1184❩ ❛ It is love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. ❜ ❨1185❩ ❛ I have lost my gift. ❜ ❨1186❩ ❛ Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair. ❜ ❨1187❩ ❛ The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us. ❜ ❨1188❩ ❛ They're just memories now. It’s time to forget. ❜ ❨1189❩ ❛ The time has to be right and the heart willing. ❜ ❨1190❩ ❛ The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season. ❜ ❨1191❩ ❛ Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy. ❜ ❨1192❩ ❛ Grief is natural, overcoming it is a matter of choice. ❜ ❨1193❩ ❛ I want out of that decorating scheme. ❜ ❨1194❩ ❛ With most people suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. ❜ ❨1195❩ ❛ You never get over it but you get where it doesn't bother you so much. ❜ ❨1196❩ ❛ Don't waste your time on life. ❜ ❨1197❩ ❛ I'm a teenager. I've got problems! ❜ ❨1198❩ ❛ Adolescents tend to seek love where they can find it. ❜ ❨1199❩ ❛ Obviously, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl. ❜ ❨1200❩ ❛ It was a mistake. ❜ ❨1201❩ ❛ It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever. ❜ ❨1202❩ ❛ Buffeted but not broken. ❜ ❨1203❩ ❛ Shit. What have kids got to be worried about now? ❜ ❨1204❩ ❛ If they want trouble, they should go live in Bangladesh. ❜ ❨1205❩ ❛ I can't wait until I get out of here. ❜ ❨1206❩ ❛ When she jumped she probably thought she’d fly. ❜ ❨1207❩ ❛ I do not think the patient truly meant to end her life. Her act was a cry for help. ❜ ❨1208❩ ❛ You're a stone fox. ❜ ❨1209❩ ❛ It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. ❜ ❨1210❩ ❛ Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. ❜ ❨1211❩ ❛ He broke my heart. You merely broke my life. ❜ ❨1212❩ ❛ I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. ❜ ❨1213❩ ❛ Words without experience are meaningless. ❜ ❨1214❩ ❛ I loved you. I was a monster, but I loved you. ❜ ❨1215❩ ❛ Come just as you are. ❜ ❨1216❩ ❛ If a violin string could ache, i would be that string. ❜ ❨1217❩ ❛ Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again. ❜ ❨1218❩ ❛ What's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own. ❜ ❨1219❩ ❛ Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me. ❜ ❨1220❩ ❛ You took advantage of my disadvantage. ❜ ❨1221❩ ❛ I walk in a maze I cannot get out of. ❜ ❨1222❩ ❛ Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. ❜ ❨1223❩ ❛ Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me. ❜ ❨1224❩ ❛ There is no harm in smiling. ❜ ❨1225❩ ❛ There is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere. ❜ ❨1226❩ ❛ There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. ❜ ❨1227❩ ❛ I am so tired of being cynical. ❜ ❨1228❩ ❛ Come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me. ❜ ❨1229❩ ❛ This is the only immortality that you and I may share. ❜ ❨1230❩ ❛ I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. ❜ ❨1231❩ ❛ I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! ❜ ❨1232❩ ❛ Years of secret suffering has taught me superhuman self-control. ❜ ❨1233❩ ❛ Solitude is corrupting me. I need company and care. ❜ ❨1234❩ ❛ I've missed you terribly. ❜ ❨1235❩ ❛ I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. ❜ ❨1236❩ ❛ It doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway. ❜ ❨1237❩ ❛ What makes you say I've stopped caring for you? ❜ ❨1238❩ ❛ Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. ❜ ❨1239❩ ❛ The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. ❜ ❨1240❩ ❛ Tell me, have you ever thought of killing me? ❜ ❨1241❩ ❛ I can not believe you are the same human being. ❜ ❨1242❩ ❛ Just how urgent is it? ❜ ❨1243❩ ❛ It is time for you to be going. ❜ ❨1244❩ ❛ How is it you know something like that? ❜ ❨1245❩ ❛ I don’t mind. Your mess is my mess. ❜ ❨1246❩ ❛ Everybody has one thing they do not want to lose. ❜ ❨1247❩ ❛ I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up for me. ❜ ❨1248❩ ❛ Nothing I’ve tried to do by myself has ever come off. ❜ ❨1249❩ ❛ I am not catching you in the middle of anything important, am I? ❜ ❨1250❩ ❛ Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. ❜ ❨1251❩ ❛ My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. ❜ ❨1252❩ ❛ To get irritated is to lose our way in life. ❜ ❨1253❩ ❛ A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. ❜ ❨1254❩ ❛ I don't really know if it's the right thing to do. ❜ ❨1255❩ ❛ Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? ❜ ❨1256❩ ❛ Most of everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. ❜ ❨1257❩ ❛ Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. ❜ ❨1258❩ ❛ You’re loads better than you think you are. ❜ ❨1259❩ ❛ You’re only half-living, the other half is still untapped somewhere. ❜ ❨1260❩ ❛ The song is over. But the melody lingers on. ❜ ❨1261❩ ❛ You are extraordinary. ❜ ❨1262❩ ❛ We tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on. ❜ ❨1263❩ ❛ It could be five years or ten years or one month. It's all the same. ❜ ❨1264❩ ❛ I’m forever realising things too late. ❜ ❨1265❩ ❛ I’m not complaining when I say my life is boring. ❜ ❨1266❩ ❛ Weakness is something that rots in the body. ❜ ❨1267❩ ❛ Coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them. ❜ ❨1268❩ ❛ You can't expect something unreal to last anyway, can you? ❜ ❨1269❩ ❛ A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat. ❜ ❨1270❩ ❛ So, kill me. Tell the others I attacked you so you killed me. ❜ ❨1271❩ ❛ Should never have come here. ❜ ❨1272❩ ❛ Hard to guess my tastes. ❜ ❨1273❩ ❛ Can’t it wait until the morning? ❜ ❨1274❩ ❛ You’ll find temper tantrums won’t help you here. ❜ ❨1275❩ ❛ It must have taken courage to return. ❜ ❨1276❩ ❛ It all sounds grimly dystopian. ❜ ❨1277❩ ❛ I am not afraid of you! ❜ ❨1278❩ ❛ All this could be avoided! ❜ ❨1279❩ ❛ You consider me a murderer? ❜ ❨1280❩ ❛ Gross way to die. ❜ ❨1281❩ ❛ What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. ❜ ❨1282❩ ❛ My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops? ❜ ❨1283❩ ❛ Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others. ❜ ❨1284❩ ❛ I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. ❜ ❨1285❩ ❛ You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human. ❜ ❨1286❩ ❛ Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible. ❜ ❨1287❩ ❛ Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. ❜ ❨1288❩ ❛ Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. ❜ ❨1289❩ ❛ Dreams are all I have ever truly owned. ❜ ❨1290❩ ❛ Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. ❜ ❨1291❩ ❛ I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. ❜ ❨1292❩ ❛ By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. ❜ ❨1293❩ ❛ The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken. ❜ ❨1294❩ ❛ Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right. ❜ ❨1295❩ ❛ The weak are meat the strong do eat. ❜ ❨1296❩ ❛ Do whatever you can't not do. ❜ ❨1297❩ ❛ What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. ❜ ❨1298❩ ❛ I remain thankful to God for all his mercies. ❜ ❨1299❩ ❛ You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power. ❜ ❨1300❩ ❛ Power. The ability to determine another man's luck. ❜ ❨1301❩ ❛ Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong. ❜ ❨1302❩ ❛ Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. ❜ ❨1303❩ ❛ Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions? ❜ ❨1304❩ ❛ You can’t lie to your soul. ❜ ❨1305❩ ❛ Why would I want to do a thing like that? ❜ ❨1306❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. ❜ ❨1307❩ ❛ Better to make life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨1308❩ ❛ I’m not running away, I’m moving on. ❜ ❨1309❩ ❛ The reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨1310❩ ❛ Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them. ❜ ❨1311❩ ❛ Love does not exist. ❜ ❨1312❩ ❛ Fuck that ‘regrets’ bullshit. ❜ ❨1313❩ ❛ How does it make you feel? ❜ ❨1314❩ ❛ It’s horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ❜ ❨1315❩ ❛ Choose us. Choose life. ❜ ❨1316❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨1317❩ ❛ I’m more of a warrior than you’ll ever be. ❜ ❨1318❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. ❜ ❨1319❩ ❛ You don’t have to run away.  ❜ ❨1320❩ ❛ I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn’t. ❜ ❨1321❩ ❛ I’m not going to get crushed. ❜ ❨1322❩ ❛ I love doubt in a woman. It’s nearly as sexy as determination. ❜ ❨1323❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty. ❜ ❨1324❩ ❛ You’re a mess. ❜ ❨1325❩ ❛ I know that it’s never left you alone. ❜ ❨1326❩ ❛ Are you asking me or telling me? ❜ ❨1327❩ ❛ You just get used to all the shit. ❜ ❨1328❩ ❛ You can’t afford a conscience in this life. ❜ ❨1329❩ ❛ None of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy. ❜ ❨1330❩ ❛ Doing things doesn’t hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them. ❜ ❨1331❩ ❛ What was that? ❜ ❨1332❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨1333❩ ❛ You can’t love yourself if you want to hurt things like that. ❜ ❨1334❩ ❛ What happens when people open their hearts? ❜ ❨1335❩ ❛ Nobody likes being alone that much. ❜ ❨1336❩ ❛ I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.” ❨1337❩ ❛ Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. ❜ ❨1338❩ ❛ You need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. ❜ ❨1339❩ ❛ I want you always to remember me. ❜ ❨1340❩ ❛ Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. ❜ ❨1341❩ ❛ What stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. ❜ ❨1342❩ ❛ All I want in this world is you. ❜ ❨1343❩ ❛ I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. ❜ ❨1344❩ ❛ No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. ❜ ❨1345❩ ❛ What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. ❜ ❨1346❩ ❛ If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark. ❜ ❨1347❩ ❛ I’ve had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy. ❜ ❨1348❩ ❛ People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. ❜ ❨1349❩ ❛ Stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. ❜ ❨1350❩ ❛ When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble. ❜ ❨1351❩ ❛ When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. ❜ ❨1352❩ ❛ If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. ❜ ❨1353❩ ❛ Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven’t answered me. ❜ ❨1354❩ ❛ People are strange when you’re a stranger. ❜ ❨1355❩ ❛ The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. ❜ ❨1356❩ ❛ You don’t get it, do you? ❜ ❨1357❩ ❛ I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you ❨1358❩ realise. ❜ ❨1359❩ ❛ At least let me know whether or not I hurt you. ❜ ❨1360❩ ❛ All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. ❜ ❨1361❩ ❛ I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die. ❜ ❨1362❩ ❛ So I’m not crazy after all! ❜ ❨1363❩ ❛ I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. ❜ ❨1364❩ ❛ Will you wait for me forever? ❜ ❨1365❩ ❛ I don’t want our relationship to end like this. ❜ ❨1366❩ ❛ When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least. ❜ ❨1367❩ ❛ It hurts not being able to see you. ❜ ❨1368❩ ❛ I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. ❜ ❨1369❩ ❛ The world is an inherently unfair place. ❜ ❨1370❩ ❛ Life frightens me sometimes. I don’t happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. ❜ ❨1371❩ ❛ I’m a real bargain, don’t you think? If you don’t take me, I’ll end up going somewhere else. ❜ ❨1372❩ ❛ We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning. ❜ ❨1373❩ ❛ Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don’t know a soul? ❜ ❨1374❩ ❛ You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ❜ ❨1375❩ ❛ He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. ❜ ❨1376❩ ❛ If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. ❜ ❨1377❩ ❛ We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. ❜ ❨1378❩ ❛ Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ❜ ❨1379❩ ❛ Power is not a means; it is an end. ❜ ❨1380❩ ❛ They are not interested in the good of others; they are interested solely in power, pure power. ❜ ❨1381❩ ❛ Now you begin to understand me. ❜ ❨1382❩ ❛ In the face of pain there are no heroes. ❜ ❨1383❩ ❛ Big Brother is watching you. ❜ ❨1384❩ ❛ Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. ❜ ❨1385❩ ❛ It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. ❜ ❨1386❩ ❛ The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. ❜ ❨1387❩ ❛ Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind. ❜ ❨1388❩ ❛ Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. ❜ ❨1389❩ ❛ We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them. ❜ ❨1390❩ ❛ How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? ❜ ❨1391❩ ❛ You must try harder. ❜ ❨1392❩ ❛ Confession is not betrayal. ❜ ❨1393❩ ❛ What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. ❜ ❨1394❩ ❛ If they could make me stop loving you —- that would be the real betrayal. ❜ ❨1395❩ ❛ Of pain you can wish only one thing: that it should stop. ❜ ❨1396❩ ❛ To die hating them, that will be freedom. ❜ ❨1397❩ ❛ No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. ❜ ❨1398❩ ❛ What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself? ❜ ❨1399❩ ❛ To keep them in control is not difficult. ❜ ❨1400❩ ❛ So long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. ❜ ❨1401❩ ❛ The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. ❜ ❨1402❩ ❛ The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. ❜ ❨1403❩ ❛ Stupidity is as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. ❜ ❨1404❩ ❛ I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones. ❜ ❨1405❩ ❛ The past is dead, the future is unimaginable. ❜ ❨1406❩ ❛ You know the answer already. Everyone knows it. ❜ ❨1407❩ ❛ You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. ❜ ❨1408❩ ❛ It is not easy to become sane. ❜ ❨1409❩ ❛ No emotion is pure anymore, because everything is mixed up with fear and hatred. ❜ ❨1410❩ ❛ They say that time heals all things —- they say you can always forget. ❜ ❨1411❩ ❛ The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. ❜ ❨1412❩ ❛ I sold you and you sold me. ❜ ❨1413❩ ❛ You do not exist. ❜ ❨1414❩ ❛ How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. ❜ ❨1415❩ ❛ Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? ❜ ❨1416❩ ❛ Everything else we shall destroy – everything. ❜ ❨1417❩ ❛ Two and two makes five. ❜ ❨1418❩ ❛ Facts, at any rate, can not be kept hidden. ❜ ❨1419❩ ❛ The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. ❜ ❨1420❩ ❛ So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing. ❜ ❨1421❩ ❛ If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ❜ ❨1422❩ ❛ The lie became the truth. ❜ ❨1423❩ ❛ It is like swimming against a current that sweeps you backwards however hard you struggle. ❜ ❨1424❩ ❛ Turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. ❜ ❨1425❩ ❛ It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. ❜ ❨1426❩ ❛ I don’t want to die without any scars. ❜ ❨1427❩ ❛ This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time. ❜ ❨1428❩ ❛ You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways. ❜ ❨1429❩ ❛ You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. ❜ ❨1430❩ ❛ You are not special. ❜ ❨1431❩ ❛ You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. ❜ ❨1432❩ ❛ The things you used to own, now they own you. ❜ ❨1433❩ ❛ Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you. ❜ ❨1434❩ ❛ Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. ❜ ❨1435❩ ❛ Only after disaster can we be resurrected. ❜ ❨1436❩ ❛ Everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. ❜ ❨1437❩ ❛ We’ve all been raised believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. ❜ ❨1438❩ ❛ Don’t you have other things to do? ❜ ❨1439❩ ❛ Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. ❜ ❨1440❩ ❛ You have been warned. ❜ ❨1441❩ ❛ If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t. ❜ ❨1442❩ ❛ It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too. ❜ ❨1443❩ ❛ If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? ❜ ❨1444❩ ❛ Why did I cause so much pain? ❜ ❨1445❩ ❛ The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. ❜ ❨1446❩ ❛ Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer. ❜ ❨1447❩ ❛ May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. ❜ ❨1448❩ ❛ Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head. ❜ ❨1449❩ ❛ We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. ❜ ❨1450❩ ❛ The girl is infectious human waste. ❜ ❨1451❩ ❛ I want to destroy everything beautiful I’ll never have. ❜ ❨1452❩ ❛ On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ❜ ❨1453❩ ❛ If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ❜ ❨1454❩ ❛ It is like you’re never really awake; but you’re never really asleep. ❜ ❨1455❩ ❛ Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave. ❜ ❨1456❩ ❛ A moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. ❜ ❨1457❩ ❛ The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. ❜ ❨1458❩ ❛ You have to give up! ❜ ❨1459❩ ❛ Reject the basic assumptions of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions. ❜ ❨1460❩ ❛ Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. ❜ ❨1461❩ ❛ You have to realise that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless. ❜ ❨1462❩ ❛ A tiger can smile. A snake will say it loves you. ❜ ❨1463❩ ❛ Lies make us evil. ❜ ❨1464❩ ❛ If you died right now, how would you feel about your life? ❜ ❨1465❩ ❛ You always kill the one you love. ❜ ❨1466❩ ❛ Maybe we should always assume the worst. ❜ ❨1467❩ ❛ Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. ❜ ❨1468❩ ❛ Which is worse? Hell or nothing? ❜ ❨1469❩ ❛ A minute of perfection is worth the effort. ❜ ❨1470❩ ❛ You’re going to die, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. ❜ ❨1471❩ ❛ Lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. ❜ ❨1472❩ ❛ I don’t give a shit. I have a gun. ❜ ❨1473❩ ❛ I know who you are. I know where you live. ❜ ❨1474❩ ❛ Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life. ❜ ❨1475❩ ❛ My philosophy of life is that I can die at any moment. And the tragedy of my life is that I do not. ❜ ❨1476❩ ❛ Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you. ❜ ❨1477❩ ❛ There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love. ❜ ❨1478❩ ❛ We just had a near-life experience. ❜ ❨1479❩ ❛ If people think you are dying, they give you their full attention. They listen instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. ❜ ❨1480❩ ❛ I am nothing, and not even that. ❜ ❨1481❩ ❛ This isn’t really death. —- We’ll be legends. We won’t grow old. ❜ ❨1482❩ ❛ Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go. ❜ ❨1483❩ ❛ The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object. ❜ ❨1484❩ ❛ Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved. ❜ ❨1485❩ ❛ I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one. ❜ ❨1486❩ ❛ Dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't. ❜ ❨1487❩ ❛ Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. ❜ ❨1488❩ ❛ A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger. ❜ ❨1489❩ ❛ A leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own. ❜ ❨1490❩ ❛ In the end, we are alone. ❜ ❨1491❩ ❛ It is like a piece of my soul is lost, empty. ❜ ❨1492❩ ❛ If my life on Earth must end, let it end with a promise. Let it end with hope. ❜ ❨1493❩ ❛ Sorry? Sorry isn't enough. ❜ ❨1494❩ ❛ Every single thing I ever loved is beyond my reach now. Everything I ever wanted. Everything I ever was. ❜ ❨1495❩ ❛ Will you stay with me? ❜ ❨1496❩ ❛ A leader doesn't make pawns - he makes people. ❜ ❨1497❩ ❛ Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. ❜ ❨1498❩ ❛ It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. ❜ ❨1499❩ ❛ There is nothing between us but rain. There is nothing between us at all. ❜ ❨1500❩ ❛ I like a little chaos. ❜

#sentence starters #generate sentence prompts #rp meme #roleplay prompt #roleplay meme #prompt for writing #rp prompt #send emoji meme #long tw

[nataliedanovelist]

GF - The Sapling of His Labors

A Drifting Stars AU one-shot, in collaboration with @clownwry.

1st, 2nd, 4th.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ford hummed an old tune to himself as he worked on dinner. Rather than sitting in front of a fire-pit in the middle of nature, butchering food to make it edible, he was blessed to be standing in a humble kitchen with a stove, cabinets, counters, and everything. The only thing he didn’t have was a fridge or freezer, but that was okay. Ford worked calmly and at his own pace as he chopped up the onion, blinking the burning feeling away, and he used his knife to scoop the diced pieces of onion into the hot skillet, and it sizzled and immediately smelled good.

Ford smiled as he added the green bell pepper, and other delicious things from the garden, and then he gave the veggies and herbs a stir with his hand-carved wooden spoon. Estimating that dinner would be ready soon, he walked across the kitchen, through the living room with a fireplace, two rocking chairs, and a large homemade three-way desk with two chairs, and to the front door. 

The top half of the dutch door was already open, so he leaned against the bottom half of the door to watch his little girl run around with other kids her age, playing tag. “Mabel, honey, dinner!” He called. “Will you please bring some water when you come?”

“Okay!” Mabel called back cheerfully, and Ford trusted her to end the game soon and say goodnight to her friends as he went back to dinner.

The veggies were cooking well, so Ford threw some of Mabel’s special homemade butter into another pan, let it melt, and then he carefully laid two filleted fish down to cook.

The bottom half of the dutch door opened and Mabel came in with a bucket of water from their well. She grinned at the sight of him and sat the bucket down to use a ladle to pour some water into wooden cups. “Ms. Mahogany asked about you again.”

“Oh?” Ford raised an eyebrow at her, his smile still present.

“Yeah, I told her how just last night you told me you were lonely and only wanted someone to hold at night…”

Ford barked a laugh that Mabel joined in with, but she continued as she set the table. “Then she said her son is still single if…”

“Mabel, please!” Ford guffawed with rosy cheeks as he flipped the fish. “I wish you would stop trying to set me up with everyone in town.”

“But I’m a great matchmaker!”

“I know you are. Why not focus on someone else’s love-life?” Ford suggested as he began to plate the veggies.

“I don’t really care about everyone else’s love-life.” Mabel said with a shrug as she sat.

Ford snorted as he platted the fish on top of the veggies, one plate slightly smaller than the other.

“Well, not nearly as much as I care about you.” Mabel elaborated, and smiled sweetly at her uncle as he turned to set the food at the table. “I just want you to be happy, Grunkle Ford.”

The old man was a bit surprised by this, but he smiled softly and said, “I am happy, darling.” He sat the plates and himself down where they belonged, then patted his lap. “Come here.”

The girl didn’t hesitate to crawl into his lap and let him hug her. “I’ve got you.”

“Yeah, but imagine how much happier you’d be if you had me and a partner!” Mabel said optimistically.

Ford chuckled and brushed her shoulder-length hair with his six fingers. “Sweetie, I’m much happier now than I ever thought I would be.”

Mabel grinned at him and hugged him around the neck, allowing Ford to squeeze her gently and hug her back.

A little while later they sat by the fireplace, Ford in his rocking chair, and Mabel by his socked feet, propping her back against his leg as she knitted away. Ford used to tease her and wonder why he even built her a rocking chair, but once she explained she felt more comfortable against him, he let it go. Maybe next time they go to the store, he should trade fish for fabric so he can build a couch.

The eldest read a book out-loud while Mabel knitted, their favorite thing to do in the evening, when all they had for light was the fireplace and lanterns and the stars, but there were no stars tonight. Rain peacefully trickled down outside. They left the dutch door open to enjoy the smells and sounds and cool air, not a hint of a storm in sight.

Ford was enjoying the book, but not nearly as much as he enjoyed looking down at his beautiful girl. The sounds of her needles clicking as she worked, the way her brown eyes twinkled, the blush on her round cheeks, the shine in her hair. Ford had no idea what in the Multiverse he did to deserve her… No, he didn’t deserve her, but he was still grateful for her, and beyond happy he somehow managed to give her a happy life.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ford was very excited, too excited to let his little girl sleep in too much. True that he purposely got up early to get the eggs, milk the cow, and let the sheep out for her, but he decided to surprise her earlier rather than later, so he made her some pancakes and eggs, squeezed her some fresh orange juice, put a pretty flower on the tray for decoration, and tucked the present wrapped in parchment and card under his arm.

A soft knock alerted Mabel of company, and her door opening and a warm voice fully woke her up. “Mabel, honey,”

She grinned and sat up in her bed. Ford had no regrets. All his hard work was worth it for that smile. “Happy Birthday.”

Mabel was absolutely delighted by the sweet surprise, but a bit disheartened when she saw no plate for her uncle. She raised an eyebrow suspiciously at him, still too used to his bad habit of skipping meals so she could eat. Well, he didn’t have to do that anymore. “Grunkle Ford, where’s your breakfast?”

Ford smiled and chuckled. “Don’t worry, it’s all fixed and downstairs waiting for me.”

Mabel smiled again and said, “Why don’t you eat up here with me? Then I’ll open my present!”

Ford nodded. That seemed like an even better idea than eating separately. So Ford retrieved his mug of coffee and pancakes, and when he sat at the foot of Mabel’s bed, she opened the card. There was no glitter to decorate it with and the card wasn’t nearly as colorful as Mabel would have made it, but Ford still drew plenty of pretty pictures for her and wrote plenty of kind words, and more importantly, he made it just for her.

Mabel grinned and thanked him for the card, sitting by her nightstand and candle so she could see it every day, and then she tore into her present. She gasped happily and squealed at the gift. Mabel had seen Ford sew here and there, but she didn’t know this was what he was working on.

It was a large quilt. It had many different patches, some with colors, some with pictures of animals, one with a shooting star and one with a six-fingered hand. There were so many different patches that Mabel felt she could look and look without seeing every detail.

Ford rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “I asked everyone in town if they had scraps of cloth. I wasn’t sure what to get you, but you deserve something nice, and…”

“Grunkle Ford, I love it!” And Mabel let her new quilt fall on her lap so she could hug him tightly around the waist. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ll use it forever! I love you, thank you!”

Ford chuckled and hugged her back tightly. “Y-You’re welcome.”

It wasn’t much, but it was better than what he could have done for her before.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ford ran as fast as he could. He didn’t care how sharply branches pricked his face or how many times he stubbed his toe on a rock or tree root. The screaming rang in his ears. Mabel needed him.

He was grateful to find Mabel up in a tree, safe, but not for long. At the base of the tree was a giant black bear, roaring and growling and scratching the tree. It wouldn’t be long until the bear decided to try to climb. Ford gritted his teeth and allowed instincts to take over, animal vs animal.

Ford threw a rock and it hit the bear on the neck, making it forget the human cub in the tree and turn to the adult to roar warningly. Then Ford shot his crossbow and it hit the bear right in the shoulder, close to the chest, but not quite enough to kill it, only to anger it. Mabel screamed for Ford to run away, to get away, but Ford stood his ground as the bear charged at him and he rolled out of the way just in time, then shot the bear again, this time hitting it’s back.

The bear turned and roared at Ford, and he was prepared to pull the knife out of his boot and do some real damage, tired of giving warnings that the bear wasn’t hearring. But then something made everyone freeze. A small wheezing roar. A squeak from a cub. The little baby black bear ran out from the bushes and to its mother, who nuzzled the cub with her nose and stood protectively. Ford lowered his crossbow and nodded. Mabel must have accidentally stumbled across the cub, must have gotten too close, and the mother was being overprotective.

The mother roared once more at the humans and ran off into the woods with her cub, taking the arrows lodge in her with her. Well, good. That’s what she gets for going near Ford’s niece. Speaking of…

Ford turned to the tree and looked up at the frightened girl. “Mabel, are you hurt?”

“N-No. I’m okay.” Mabel looked at the spot where the bears disappeared and bit her lip. “I… I didn’t even see the baby one…”

Ford smiled and nodded. “It’s alright. You’ll find parents are quite protective of their kids. Can you climb down?”

Mabel nodded and carefully made her way down the tree. When she was about halfway down, she leaped into Ford’s arms and they hugged each other tightly, the crossbow still in Ford’s hand.

“Oh, Mabel, I was so worried…”

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry…”

“Shh, hey, it’s alright. I’m not mad.”

“I thought you… I thought…” Mabel mumbled into his shoulder, her grip on his coat extremely tight.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. I’ve got you.” Ford muttered to her as he walked them home. “I’ve got you.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Ford walked home from the ocean, smiling with the large net filled with fish on his back. Mabel was with the sheep, as usual, and smiled and waved when she saw his safe return. The leaves were changing colors and the air was getting more comfortable and crisp. Soon winter would be with them, and rather than fish for money, Ford planned to build music boxes and carve toys, a brilliant idea Mabel had when she noticed how he missed tinkering and building. He enjoyed fishing, but it wasn’t like the old lab work that made him proud.

The next day, like always, Ford walked home and saw Mabel among the sheep, but this time she was chatting with a boy her age. Ford had seen the boy before, Mabel labeling him as a friend, but the old man couldn’t help but wonder if he should be putting money away for a small wedding, a thought that made his blood boil and his heart swell at the same time.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ford gave the soup another stir before ladling it into a bowl. Poor Mabel sat on the newly built couch, wrapped in her quilt, close to the fire, her cheeks and nose cherry red and dark circles under her eyes as she sneezed and coughed. Ford wasn’t as worried for her as he normally would be; it was just a bad cold. She would be alright. 

Weirdly enough, Mabel’s brain had decided to call it quits and she was nothing more than a rag doll, barely interactive and aware of her surroundings, which was fine by Ford. He could take care of her and the house just fine. He smiled softly and sat next to her, holding out a spoonful of warm soup for her. “Here you are, my dear. This will make you feel better.”

Shakily Mabel ate the bite she was given, but it burned and made her cough roughly. Ford rubbed her back and stirred the soup to cool it down a little. “That's it, easy does it. There we go, I’m sorry, sweetie.”

The second time was the charm; Mabel was able to swallow a second spoonful of warm soup no problem. She actually made a weak smile, then muttered to Ford, “Thanks Daddy,” and coughed roughly into her quilt. She patiently waited for her next spoonful, unaware of what she had done to Ford.

She had said it so innocently, so quietly… Was it possible, that in her weakened state, Mabel thought she was back home with her father? Even though she seemed out of it, she did seem aware of where they were; a few minutes ago, when Ford was making the soup, she had asked if the sheep were put away. And she had thanked Ford for making the soup when he first started on dinner. So, maybe, there was a small possibility that Mabel knew exactly who she was talking to, and she articulated with a title that felt fitting to her.

Ford smiled with a bit lip and held out the spoon filled with soup for her. “Y-You’re welcome.”

He smiled sympathetically as she sniffed again, her poor sinuses turned against her. But then she sniffed again, louder, and Ford began to notice it sounded different…

He also began to notice he was sore. And lying down. And wrapped up, like he was tucked in for bed.

Ford was pulled from his dreams and was sluggishly half-awake, his eyes still closed, and he bought his body some time to gather some strength by paying attention to his blind surroundings.

He could hear and feel a fire going. He was lying in a sleeping bag on the ground, and he could tell there were other things keeping him warm and wrapped up. Some damp cloth was on his forehead. And he could hear crying.

Ford forced his eyes open slowly and he discovered someone had taken his glasses off. He forced himself to work with his blurry vision and he sat up a little, leaning on his arm for support in search of his niece. She sat a few feet away, in a tight bundle. If Ford had to guess, she was hugging her knees and hiding her face in her arms and knees. “Mabel…”

She lifted her head up quickly, but then hid her face again, looking away from him and wiping her face dry with the sleeves of her coat. 

“Hey, no,” Ford said softly, taking the damp cloth off his forehead. “None of that, you don’t ever have to hide anything from me. What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

“N-No,” Mabel cleared her throat and finally turned to look at him; he was a little disheartened to see her trying to smile and still hide what was bothering her. “I’m okay. H-How do you feel? Tea is almost ready.” And she scooted closer to the fire on her knees to check on the teapot.

Ford sighed tiredly, his lips tight to try to keep her from hearing it. “Mabel…”

“Oh, here!” Mabel reached into a pocket of her uncle’s backpack and pulled out his glasses for him. “I thought I’d better take them off you so your face wouldn’t hurt.”

Ford smiled and accepted the visual aid. “Ah, thank you.” He slipped his glasses on and more clues came to his senses.

They were in the middle of the desert. Well, not entirely in the middle, it looked like there was a jungle a few yards behind them. Ford had also been blanketed with sweaters for extra warmth in the cold desert night. Everything seemed well in order and normal, except when Ford looked at his poor little girl. Her hair was a mess, frizzled and… Ford recognized that hairstyle. His hair often looked like that after he grabbed at it too roughly and tried to pull his hair out. There were dark circles under her eyes, eyes that didn’t sparkle. That legitimately scared Ford.

“Mabel…”

“Good! Tea is ready.” Mabel turned away from him again, refusing to look at him as she pulled out a cup for her uncle and poured him some hot drink. “Here, it’ll make you feel better.”

Ford accepted the drink and sat up fully. “Thank you.” He sipped it and watched Mabel carefully. She didn’t pour herself a cup. Or bring out the water canteen for something else to drink. Instead she held her knees and watched the fire dance. He opened his mouth to ask her if she was alright, but she beat him to it.

“How are you feeling? Does anything hurt? H-How’s your neck?”

“My neck?” Ford touched his throat, a bit confused, and answered, “I feel fine. Nothing hurts. Why?”

“We were ambushed. You got shot. You… You had a bad fever and wouldn’t wake up.” Mabel, still refusing to look at him, held out a dart to him that had been lying on the sand. “Here. I thought you might wanna study it.”

Ford adjusted his glasses and held the dart. It was quite long, but very skinny, and it had a red bull point at the top, like a sewing needle, but Ford recognized the dart. “Interesting. These are Hummie darts. They’re sold through the dimensions, they’re very useful for bounty hunting. See, the top here is filled with poison, just enough to render the body useless and to also hypnotize the target in a deep, dream-filled sleep. Oftentimes the dreams are the victim’s happiest memories or goals, so they won’t try to wake up. It’s also very fascinating because the side-effects are next to none, this makes these darts ideal if you want to bring someone in for questioning or for next-to-perfect condition.”

But Mabel wasn’t listening. Her eyes were still on the fire, she was still holding her knees, but her mind was elsewhere. Ford watched her mournfully and tried to remember what had happened.

Oh. Right.

They were in a different dimension than this one. They had been laughing and playing in the woods, unaware of who they were attracting. By the time Ford hoisted a laughing girl on his shoulders, a dart barely missed him and it hit a tree, causing him to run while Mabel shot pop-rocks with her slingshot. Ford can now remember feeling a tiny prick by his neck. He had hoped Mabel had accidentally pinched or pulled some skin on his neck, but she was horrified to have let a dart get past her. Ford managed to stop running and put Mabel down safely, shaking his head and even slapping himself to try to stay awake and attentive, but just as he was sharing a plan with her, he fell on his knees and collapsed into the grass, the last thing he heard was Mabel’s desperate please to be okay. Not to stay awake, not to help, but to be okay.

Ford put the dart and his tea down on the ground. “Oh, Mabel… You were amazing. Absolutely amazing! You saved us. You saved my life.”

“M-Maybe if I hadn’t asked you to play with me…”

“They were relentless. I’m glad we had fun and played.”

Mabel held herself tighter and turned her head away so it was out of sight. That broke Ford’s heart. What he wouldn’t give for her to just look at him. Had he done something? Had he scared her? He had heard that while under the influence of the Hammie darts, the body is as useless as a ragdoll, but… Oh. Maybe that had scared her. Mabel had no way of knowing what the darts did, she had no idea what kind of poison they were filled with. Did she refuse to look at Ford because when she did all she saw was the shadow of a dead man?

“Mabel,” Ford croaked longingly, and he opened his arms. “Please come here.”

Mabel was trembling. She sniffed again and swallowed a sob down.

She was a Pines, after all. She was going to be stubborn. So Ford scooted himself and the sleeping bag and pile of sweaters. He carefully began to scoop her up, but she finally broke and turned and hugged him around the neck, sobbing into his shoulder and allowing him to hold her close and burrow her in his arms and sweaters and sleeping bag.

“Shh, shh, it’s alright now.” Ford petted her hair and closed his eyes, giving everything he had into making her feel better. “I’m okay, I swear. You did an incredible job.”

“I thought… I thought…” Mabel croaked and swallowed to try to communicate better. “Y-Your eyes… they rolled! Into… y-y-you looked d…” And she choked and sobbed and held him so tightly her fingers ached, but she didn’t care.

Now Ford had never heard of that side-effect before. “Oh, Mabel, honey…”

“I k-k-know you’re okay now… I know… but I th-th-thought I was g-gonna lose you!” Mabel cried out, her throat sounding like it was going to tear in half. 

“I’m sorry…” Ford cooed to her and adjusted her so she laid by his heart and he felt her hands. Holy Moses, she was so cold. “I’m so sorry. I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I love my little starshine too much to be anywhere else.”

Mable hiccuped a weak giggle and she nuzzled her cheek against his chest. “I love you, too, D-Grunkle Ford.”

Yup. Ford wasn’t shedding tears alongside her. No. A raindrop must have fallen on his cheek. On a cloudless night. Yeah, that was it.

#GF #gravity falls #gravity falls au #drifting stars au #fanfiction #MORE SWEATER-TWINS BONDING #clownwry #gift

[ariel-seagull-wings]

The Tsarevna Frog

@superkingofpriderock @sunlit-music @mademoiselle-princesse @amalthea9 @princesssarisa @astrangechoiceoffavourites

(Russian Tale)

In old, old Russian tsarstvo, I do not know when, there lived a sovereign prince with the princess his wife. They had three sons, all of them young, and such brave fellows that no pen could describe them. The youngest had the name of Ivan Tsarevitch.

One day their father said to his sons: ''My dear boys, take each of you an arrow, draw your strong bow and let your arrow fly; in whatever court it falls, in that court there will be a wife for you."

The arrow of the oldest Tsarevitch fell on a boyar-house just in front of the terem where women live; the arrow of the second Tsarevitch flew to the red porch of a rich merchant, and on the porch there stood a sweet girl, the merchant's daughter. The youngest, the brave Tsarevitch Ivan, had the ill luck to send his arrow into the midst of a swamp, where it was caught by a croaking frog.

Ivan Tsarevitch came to his father: "How can I marry the frog?" complained the son. "Is she my equal? Certainly she is not."

"Never mind, "replied his father. "You have to marry the frog, for such is evidently your destiny."

Thus the brothers were married: the oldest to a young boyarishnia, a nobleman's child; the second to the merchant's beautiful daughter, and the youngest, Tsarevitch Ivan, to a croaking frog.

After a while the sovereign prince called his three sons and said to them: "Have each of your wives bake a loaf of bread by tomorrow morning."

Ivan returned home. There was no smile on his face, and his brow was clouded.

"C-r-o-a-k! C-r-o-a-k! Dear husband of mine, Tsarevitch Ivan, why so sad?" gently asked the frog. ''Was there anything disagreeable in the palace?"

"Disagreeable indeed," answered Ivan Tsarevitch; "the Tsar, my father, wants you to bake a loaf of white bread by tomorrow."

"Do not worry, Tsarevitch. Go to bed; the morning hour is a better adviser than the dark evening."

The Tsarevitch, taking his wife's advice, went to sleep. Then the frog threw off her frog skin and turned into a beautiful, sweet girl, Vassilissa by name. She now stepped out on the porch and called aloud: "Nurses and waitresses, come to me at once and prepare a loaf of white bread for tomorrow morning, a loaf exactly like those I used to eat in my royal father's palace."

In the morning Tsarevitch Ivan awoke with the crowing cocks, and you know the cocks and chickens are never late.

Yet the loaf was already made, and so fine it was that nobody could even describe it, for only in fairyland one finds such marvelous loaves. It was adorned all about with pretty figures, with towns and fortresses on each side, and within it was white as snow and light as a feather.

The Tsar father was pleased and the Tsarevitch received his special thanks.

"Now there is another task," said the Tsar smilingly. "Have each of your wives weave a rug by tomorrow."

Tsarevitch Ivan came back to his home. There was no smile on his face and his brow was clouded.

"C-r-o-a-k! C-r-o-a-k! Dear Tsarevitch Ivan, my husband and master, why so troubled again? Was not father pleased?"

''How can I be otherwise? The Tsar, my father, has ordered a rug by tomorrow."

"Do not worry, Tsarevitch. Go to bed; go to sleep. The morning hour will bring help."

Again the frog turned into Vassilissa, the wise maiden, and again she called aloud: "Dear nurses and faithful waitresses, come to me for new work. Weave a silk rug like the one I used to sit upon in the palace of the king, my father."

Once said, quickly done. When the cocks began their early "cock-a-doodle-doo," Tsarevitch Ivan awoke, and lo! there lay the most beautiful silk rug before him, a rug that no one could begin to describe. Threads of silver and gold were interwoven among bright-colored silken ones, and the rug was too beautiful for anything but to admire.

The Tsar father was pleased, thanked his son Ivan, and issued a new order. He now wished to see the three wives of his handsome sons, and they were to present their brides on the next day.

The Tsarevitch Ivan returned home. Cloudy was his brow, more cloudy than before.

"C-r-o-a-k! C-r-o-a-k! Tsarevitch, my dear husband and master, why so sad ? Hast thou heard anything unpleasant at the palace?"

"Unpleasant enough, indeed! My father, the Tsar, ordered all of us to present our wives to him. Now tell me, how could I dare go with thee?"

"It is not so bad after all, and could be much worse," answered the frog, gently croaking. "Thou shalt go alone and I will follow thee. When thou hearest a noise, a great noise, do not be afraid; simply say: 'There is my miserable froggy coming in her miserable box.'"

The two elder brothers arrived first with their wives, beautiful, bright, and cheerful, and dressed in rich garments. Both the happy bridegrooms made fun of the Tsarevitch Ivan.

"Why alone, brother?" they laughingly said to him. "Why didst thou not bring thy wife along with thee? Was there no rag to cover her? Where couldst thou have gotten such a beauty? We are ready to wager that in all the swamps in the dominion of our father it would be hard to find another one like her." And they laughed and laughed.

Lo! what a noise! The palace trembled, the guests were all frightened. Tsarevitch Ivan alone remained quiet and said: ''No danger; it is my froggy coming in her box."

To the red porch came flying a golden carriage drawn by six splendid white horses, and Vassilissa, beautiful beyond all description, gently reached her hand to her husband. He led her with him to the heavy oak tables, which were covered with snow-white linen and loaded with many wonderful dishes such as are known and eaten only in the land of fairies and never anywhere else. The guests were eating and chatting gaily.

Vassilissa drank some wine, and what was left in the tumbler she poured into her left sleeve. She ate some of the fried swan, and the bones she threw into her right sleeve. The wives of the two elder brothers watched her and did exactly the same.

When the long, hearty dinner was over, the guests began dancing and singing. The beautiful Vassilissa came forward, as bright as a star, bowed to her sovereign, bowed to the honorable guests and danced with her husband, the happy Tsarevitch Ivan.

While dancing, Vassilissa waved her left sleeve and a pretty lake appeared in the midst of the hall and cooled the air. She waved her right sleeve and white swans swam on the water. The Tsar, the guests, the servants, even the gray cat sitting in the corner, all were amazed and wondered at the beautiful Vassilissa. Her two sisters-in-law alone envied her. When their turn came to dance, they also waved their left sleeves as Vassilissa had done, and, oh, wonder! they sprinkled wine all around. They waved their right sleeves, and instead of swans the bones flew in the face of the Tsar father. The Tsar grew very angry and bade them leave the palace. In the meantime Ivan Tsarevitch watched a moment to slip away unseen. He ran home, found the frog skin, and burned it in the fire.

Vassilissa, when she came back, searched for the skin, and when she could not find it her beautiful face grew sad and her bright eyes filled with tears.

She said to Tsarevitch Ivan, her husband: ''Oh, dear Tsarevitch, what hast thou done? There was but a short time left for me to wear the ugly frog skin. The moment was near when we could have been happy together forever. Now I must bid thee goodbye. Look for me in a faraway country to which no one knows the roads, at the palace of Kostshei the Deathless;" and Vassilissa turned into a white swan and flew away through the window.

Tsarevitch Ivan wept bitterly. Then he prayed to the almighty God, and making the sign of the cross northward, southward, eastward, and westward, he went on a mysterious journey.

No one knows how long his journey was, but one day he met an old, old man. He bowed to the old man, who said: "Good-day, brave fellow. What art thou searching for, and whither art thou going?"

Tsarevitch Ivan answered sincerely, telling all about his misfortune without hiding anything.

''And why didst thou burn the frog skin? It was wrong to do so. Listen now to me. Vassilissa was born wiser than her own father, and as he envied his daughter's wisdom he condemned her to be a frog for three long years. But I pity thee and want to help thee. Here is a magic ball. In whatever direction this ball rolls, follow without fear."

Ivan Tsarevitch thanked the good old man, and followed his new guide, the ball. Long, very long, was his road. One day in a wide, flowery field he met a bear, a big Russian bear. Ivan Tsarevitch took his bow and was ready to shoot the bear.

"Do not kill me, kind Tsarevitch," said the bear. "Who knows but that I maybe useful to thee?" And Ivan did not shoot the bear.

Above in the sunny air there flew a duck, a lovely white duck. Again the Tsarevitch drew his bow to shoot it. But the duck said to him: "Do not kill me, good Tsarevitch. I certainly shall be useful to thee some day."

And this time he obeyed the command of the duck and passed by. Continuing his way he saw a blinking hare. The Tsarevitch prepared an arrow to shoot it, but the gray, blinking hare said: "Do not kill me, brave Tsarevitch. I shall prove myself grateful to thee in a very short time."

The Tsarevitch did not shoot the hare, but passed by. He walked farther and farther after the rolling ball, and came to the deep blue sea. On the sand there lay a fish. I do not remember the name of the fish, but it was a big fish, almost dying on the dry sand.

" O Tsarevitch Ivan!" prayed the fish, "have mercy upon me and push me back into the cool sea."

The Tsarevitch did so, and walked along the shore. The ball, rolling all the time, brought Ivan to a hut, a queer, tiny hut standing on tiny hen's feet.

"Izboushka! Izboushka!" -- for so in Russia do they name small huts -- "Izboushka, I want thee to turn thy front to me," cried Ivan, and lo! the tiny hut turned its front at once. Ivan stepped in and saw a witch, one of the ugliest witches he could imagine.

"Ho! Ivan Tsarevitch! What brings thee here?" was his greeting from the witch.

"O, thou old mischief!" shouted Ivan with anger. "Is it the way in holy Russia to ask questions before the tired guest gets something to eat, something to drink, and some hot water to wash the dust off?"

Baba Yaga, the witch, gave the Tsarevitch plenty to eat and drink, besides hot water to wash the dust off. Tsarevitch Ivan felt refreshed. Soon he became talkative, and related the wonderful story of his marriage. He told how he had lost his dear wife, and that his only desire was to find her.

"I know all about it," answered the witch. "She is now at the palace of Kostshei the Deathless, and thou must understand that Kostshei is terrible. He watches her day and night and no one can ever conquer him. His death depends on a magic needle. That needle is within a hare; that hare is within a large trunk; that trunk is hidden in the branches of an old oak tree; and that oak tree is watched by Kostshei as closely as Vassilissa herself, which means closer than any treasure he has."

Then the witch told Ivan Tsarevitch how and where to find the oak tree. Ivan hastily went to the place. But when he perceived the oak tree he was much discouraged, not knowing what to do or how to begin the work. Lo and behold! that old acquaintance of his, the Russian bear, came running along, approached the tree, uprooted it, and the trunk fell and broke. A hare jumped out of the trunk and began to run fast; but another hare, Ivan's friend, came running after, caught it and tore it to pieces. Out of the hare there flew a duck, a gray one which flew very high and was almost invisible, but the beautiful white duck followed the bird and struck its gray enemy, which lost an egg. That egg fell into the deep sea. Ivan meanwhile was anxiously watching his faithful friends helping him. But when the egg disappeared in the blue waters he could not help weeping. All of a sudden a big fish came swimming up, the same fish he had saved, and brought the egg in his mouth. How happy Ivan was when he took it! He broke it and found the needle inside, the magic needle upon which everything depended.

At the same moment Kostshei lost his strength and power forever. Ivan Tsarevitch entered his vast dominions, killed him with the magic needle, and in one of the palaces found his own dear wife, his beautiful Vassilissa. He took her home and they were very happy ever after.

#fairy tales #folklore #folk tales #mithology #literature #genre fiction #musings #fandom musings #fantasy #pop culture

[needs-to-stop-looking-at-yigas]

Ooooooh I’ve got a great idea, sooga goes to rito village to confront revali, the only other asshole (he’s a much better bitch than CIL) he knows, and tells him about the cil bullying situation, and no rito could possibly resist helping sooga, and revali can be the ONLY asshole in his group of friends so he ain’t having none of it... bassically I want revali to beat cils ass. hope your enjoying your day!

Oooh? An asshole with an asshole. I'm in, let's fucking go.

"Sooga’s here, Sooga’s here!!"

The rito women immediately started to preen themselves, so excited. Revali couldn't help but give himself a look over as well. Sooga was showing up, unannounced? And apparently without Kohga? Either it was business, or pleasure. Either way, Revali stepped out of his house, being met with the sight of the blade master. Big, strong, he was a real heart breaker amongst the rito.

"Sooga! We haven't seen you in such a long time!"

"Oh you've been keeping up the work out routine, haven't you?"

Sooga, as usual, was swimming in rito women. They surrounded him like feral dogs, clearly wanting his attention. Sooga HATED it, Revali could tell, but it was a sight to see. Sooga looked more uncomfortable than usual however, so Revali decided to be a peach, and break it up.

"Ladies, why don't you let the poor thing breathe?"

"But Revali!!!"

They whined, a few clasping onto his arm. Revali shooed them off, shaking his head.

"Quit being harpies, all of you. Why don't you all fetch him a snack instead, maybe something with fish. You like fish, right Sooga?"

Sooga nodded, trying his best to keep polite.

"I do enjoy fish. If it wouldn’t trouble you ladies-"

"Oh not at all! KRISSI YOU BITCH MOVE!"

They damn near trampled each other on their way to their respective cooking pots. Revali chuckled, opening his front door.

"They like you. You should be flattered, rito men would LOVE to have them flocking the way you do."

"I swear they were about to pick me clean, like vultures…"

He stepped inside Revali's abode, allowing himself to sit down and be served a cup of tea. Never snacks. Revali knew he hated eating, especially away from Kohga. Revali took a seat across from him, getting comfy.

"So. You show up here, unannounced. And without Kohga. For what reason?"

"I actually wanted to come see you. It's...something Kohga can't know about."

Revali was listening. Maybe he wasn't too far off in his assumptions. A little secret between  them, away from Kohga. With muscles like that, who could refuse? He nodded, taking a sip of his own drink.

"But of course, Sooga. Just ask for it."

Sooga took a sip, stalling. He wanted those stupid lips, and he wanted them now.

"I'm...not sure how to."

"Sooga, the shyness is endearing, but my time is VERY valuable. So...ask me."

Revali leaned in closer. He smelled mildly of sweat, and holy SHIT he wanted to jump on him right fucking now. Sooga nodded.

"Apologies. You're right. So, I will say it. I'm...struggling with a blade master. Cil. He keeps trying to take MY Kohga from me, keeps making me doubt my relationship with him. I feel as though it's...separating us, and he's...proud like you. I don't detest you as I do him, but I just thought you'd know how to...handle it. In a way."

Not where Revali thought this was going, at ALL. He sat back in his chair, trying to tell his body that his ever increasing boner wasn't needed.

"Are you. Are you saying you're being bullied?"

"It...sounds childish when you put it that way. No, it's...more like, he makes me doubt my work and my love for Kohga. I'm dutiful, and I love my Master, but Cil….gets in my head. I feel like I should...end things with Kohga, if I'm so weak to simple words."

Revali could totally abuse this. Agree with this Cil person, and be Sooga’s shoulder to cry on. But Revali didn't bully for spite. He bullied for the benefit of other’s. Link demanded the most trust from him, and in the process, became a trusted friend in arms. So, despite how much Revali REALLY wanted to suck off Sooga, he did what was right for Sooga.

"Don't be an idiot. Somehow you and Kohga love each other. And this Cil fellow- he's abusing the mushy parts about you to get what he wants. YOU need to remember that Cil isn't some all knowing being-he's manipulative. I want you to go home after this, pick up something special for Kohga, and remember what I told you. Do you understand?"

"....I do. That's, oddly kind of you, Revali."

"Yes yes, I know, I'm a saint really. Don't go telling Link, he'll expect the same treatment."

"If you stop bullying Link, I'll end up bullying YOU."

They both shared a chuckle at that. Them talking shit about Link was one of the things they bonded over. Revali was about to say something specific about Link, when Sooga reached over to hold his hand. Revali felt his feathers fluff up (how embarrassing), just melting under such a big, strong hand.

"Sooga-"

"I just. Thank you. It's...not something that's easy to talk about with other's. They're so kind and they don't understand. It makes the whole situation-"

"Asinine?"

Another chuckle at that. Revali REALLY liked that chuckle of his. He was going to push his luck, maybe try touching something else, when his house was promptly invaded. By eager, loud, rito women, each holding a plate of food.

"Sooga! I'm so sorry I kept you waiting! I brought my seafood curry!"

"Oh don't poison the poor man! Here, try my fish pie!"

"He might as well eat sawdust! Sooga, here, try some clam chowder!"

Sooga sighed, while Revali sat there, chuckling. Sooga didn't deserve all the pestering he got. The women's attention, Revali couldn't help. But he knew one thing he COULD do.

--------------------------

"Have a good one Cil! Try not to glare some poor soul to death!"

"And you, try not to catch a disease."

Von laughed at the retort, pulling his fellow blade master aside for a steamy, drunken, sloppy make out session. Cil had made the mistake of joining Von for drinks, and had a pretty awful time. Drinks were shitty, expensive, and all Von did the whole time was stick his hand in between several pairs of legs. Cil decided a walk home in the cold night air would do him some good.

"So YOU’RE Cil."

Cil stood still upon hearing the voice, as well as the crunch of leaves, slowly growing louder and louder. He slowly turned, just in time to see his sudden visitor. Revali, champion of the rito. Arguably the best archer of his kind. Had to be, to make up for that short stature.

"Take it you've been looking for me?"

"Yes, actually. You see, to put it bluntly, I hate how you've been treating a friend of mine."

"You wouldn't be the first. I also don't care."

Cil was already bored. He tried to turn around and walk off, when he stopped, feeling something breeze past his head. An arrow, now buried into the tree in front of him. He turned around, looking at that angry face, and the now drawn bow.

"I think it's time you start caring. I want you to stop it. And I'm being nice, asking you politely. Don't make me act uncouth."

"Unfortunate. Us Yiga don't care for manners, not towards our assailants."

They stared each other down for a moment, before Cil rushed him, blade drawn. Revali dodged, barely able to avoid being sliced, unlike the tree next to him. Revali fired, only to be forced to hide behind another tree, Cil somehow deflecting it with his drawn blade. Cil cracked his neck, slowly approaching Revali's hiding spot. This was way better than just some walk.

"Come now, little birdy. I'll clip your wings quickly if you come out now, rather than later. If you make me wait...I'll make these woods sing with your screams."

Revali turned quickly, firing his arrow. He aimed not for his shoulder or even his head. Instead, he aimed for his hands. The weapon fell as the arrow struck, but before Cil could reach for his weapon, Revali pointed the tip of the arrow at his forehead.

"You can save yourself the trouble. Leave. Sooga. Alone."

"Ah...he's your little buddy, huh? He's not even asking you to do this,"

Cil lifted his hands up in defeat, slowly walking backwards as Revali kept stepping forward, right until his back was against a tree.

"How both you AND Master Kohga care for him so much...I'll never know. But I DO know...that it is a mistake you will both pay for."

He quickly grabbed the arrow from the tree behind him, and jabbed it into Revali's shoulder. Revali was about to just bear it and retaliate, before Cil used his body to push him to the ground. It knocked the bow out of his hands, and Revali was on the forest floor, with Cil wrapping his hands around his throat, and squeezing. Revali flailed, trying to do ANYTHING to be free. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.

"I'm sorry Sooga was your demise. I pity you. I-"

He didn't get to finish as Revali managed to lift himself up a hit, and swipe his talons at him. It hit right at his face, not just scratching his features, but peeling off his mask. Revali leapt up, grabbing the mask and holding it tightly to his chest. Cil sat there, covering his bleeding face with both of his hands.

"GIVE IT BACK. YOU DO N O T DESERVE TO SEE MY FACE!"

Revali glared at him, meeting his eyes through his fingers.

"If you'll back off Sooga, I'll give it back."

"He is a MUTT-"

"I'll tell EVERYONE I saw your face."

"They won't believe you."

"Rumors are powerful. Many would LOVE to make people think its real, just to humiliate you. Care to risk it?"

Cil hesitated. But when Revali's claws started to glide down the wood, he was convinced.

"OKAY OKAY! JUST. GIVE ME THE MASK, AND WE'LL CALL IT TRUCE."

Revali had no idea these masks were such a huge fucking deal. Whatever. He tossed the mask in his direction, watching Cil frantically put it back on, smearing the blood on his mask. Revali picked his bow off the floor, putting it back into its holster.

"You yigas better keep your word."

Revali was in the skies in just a second, headed right for Zora's domain. He stopped at Mipha’s window, giving it a knock. She opened her window, immediately looking worried as she saw the state he was in.

"Revali! What happened, you poor thing?!"

"I was...helping a friend. Suppose you don't mind doing the same for me?"

Was this a stupid decision? Yes. Like Link level stupid. But...Revali didn't at all regret it. Not for Sooga.

#asks #Revali #Sooga #Cil #this was SO fun to do??? #I loved getting some fight scenes #loved Revali and sooga being tender #and in case you're wondering this DID work #cil pulled back a LOT #and hes got a big nasty scar on his face that he hates #and hes too ashamed to tell anyone what happened #also headcanon; instead of blushing #rito feathers get all fluffy

[eyelinerda3euro]

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

In the temperate and tropical regions where it appears that hominids evolved into human beings, the principal food of the species was vegetable. Sixty-five to eighty percent of what human beings ate in those regions in Paleolithic, Neolithic, and prehistoric times was gathered; only in the extreme Arctic was meat the staple food. The mammoth hunters spectacularly occupy the cave wall and the mind, but what we actually did to stay alive and fat was gather seeds, roots, sprouts, shoots, leaves, nuts, berries, fruits, and grains, adding bugs and mollusks and netting or snaring birds, fish, rats, rabbits, and other tuskless small fry to up the protein. And we didn’t even work hard at it — much less hard than peasants slaving in somebody else’s field after agriculture was invented, much less hard than paid workers since civilization was invented. The average prehistoric person could make a nice living in about a fifteen-hour work week.

Fifteen hours a week for subsistence leaves a lot of time for other things. So much time that maybe the restless ones who didn’t have a baby around to enliven their life, or skill in making or cooking or singing, or very interesting thoughts to think, decided to slope off and hunt mammoths. The skillful hunters would come staggering back with a load of meat, a lot of ivory, and a story. It wasn’t the meat that made the difference. It was the story.

It is hard to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrestled a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats.... No, it does not compare, it cannot compete with how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank while Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood sprouted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain.

That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the men and women in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn’t their story. It’s his.

When she was planning the book that ended up as Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf wrote a heading in her notebook, “Glossary”; she had thought of reinventing English according to her new plan, in order to tell a different story. One of the entries in this glossary is heroism, defined as “botulism.” And hero, in Woolf’s dictionary, is “bottle.” The hero as bottle, a stringent reevaluation. I now propose the bottle as hero.

Not just the bottle of gin or wine, but bottle in its older sense of container in general, a thing that holds something else.

If you haven’t got something to put it in, food will escape you — even something as uncombative and unresourceful as an oat. You put as many as you can into your stomach while they are handy, that being the primary container; but what about tomorrow morning when you wake up and it’s cold and raining and wouldn’t it be good to have just a few handfuls of oats to chew on and give little Oom to make her shut up, but how do you get more than one stomachful and one handful home? So you get up and go to the damned soggy oat patch in the rain, and wouldn’t it be a good thing if you had something to put Baby Oo Oo in so that you could pick the oats with both hands? A leaf a gourd shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.

The first cultural device was probably a recipient.... Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.

So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women’s Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky, and whirling there it became a space ship thrusting its way into the cosmos to fertilize it and produce at the end of the movie a lovely fetus, a boy of course, drifting around the Milky Way without (oddly enough) any womb, any matrix at all? I don’t know. I don’t even care. I’m not telling that story. We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.

And yet old. Before — once you think about it, surely long before — the weapon, a late, luxurious, superfluous tool; long before the useful knife and ax; right along with the indispensable whacker, grinder, and digger — for what’s the use of digging up a lot of potatoes if you have nothing to lug the ones you can’t eat home in — with or before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home. It makes sense to me. I am an adherent of what Fisher calls the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution.

This theory not only explains large areas of theoretical obscurity and avoids large areas of theoretical nonsense (inhabited largely by tigers, foxes, and other highly territorial mammals); it also grounds me, personally, in human culture in a way I never felt grounded before. So long as culture was explained as originating from and elaborating upon the use of long, hard objects for sticking, bashing, and killing, I never thought that I had, or wanted, any particular share in it. (“What Freud mistook for her lack of civilization is woman’s lack of loyalty to civilization,” Lillian Smith observed.) The society, the civilization they were talking about, these theoreticians, was evidently theirs; they owned it, they liked it; they were human, fully human, bashing, sticking, thrusting, killing. Wanting to be human too, I sought for evidence that I was; but if that’s what it took, to make a weapon and kill with it, then evidently I was either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all.

That’s right, they said. What you are is a woman. Possibly not human at all, certainly defective. Now be quiet while we go on telling the Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero.

Go on, say I, wandering off towards the wild oats, with Oo Oo in the sling and little Oom carrying the basket. You just go on telling how the mammoth fell on Boob and how Cain fell on Abel and how the bomb fell on Nagasaki and how the burning jelly fell on the villagers and how the missiles will fall on the Evil Empire, and all the other steps in the Ascent of Man.

If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again — if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.

Not, let it be said at once, an unaggressive or uncombative human being. I am an aging, angry woman laying mightily about me with my handbag, fighting hoodlums off. However I don’t, nor does anybody else, consider myself heroic for doing so. It’s just one of those damned things you have to do in order to be able to go on gathering wild oats and telling stories.

It is the story that makes the difference. It is the story that hid my humanity from me, the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing, about the Hero. The wonderful, poisonous story of Botulism. The killer story.

It sometimes seems that the story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we’d better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one’s finished. Maybe. The trouble is, we’ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.

It’s unfamiliar, it doesn’t come easily, thoughtlessly, to the lips as the killer story does; but still, “untold” was an exaggeration. People have been telling the life story for ages, in all sorts of words and ways. Myths of creation and transformation, trickster stories, folktales, jokes, novels....

The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn’t any good if he isn’t in it.

I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

One relationship among elements in the novel may well be that of conflict, but the reduction of narrative to conflict is absurd. (I have read a how-to-write manual that said, “A story should be seen as a battle,” and went on about strategies, attacks, victory, etc.) Conflict, competition, stress, struggle, etc., within the narrative conceived as carrier bag/belly/box/house/medicine bundle, may be seen as necessary elements of a whole which itself cannot be characterized either as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process.

Finally, it’s clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato.

That is why I like novels: instead of heroes they have people in them.

So, when I came to write science-fiction novels, I came lugging this great heavy sack of stuff, my carrier bag full of wimps and klutzes, and tiny grains of things smaller than a mustard seed, and intricately woven nets which when laboriously unknotted are seen to contain one blue pebble, an imperturbably functioning chronometer telling the time on another world, and a mouse’s skull; full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don’t understand. I said it was hard to make a gripping tale of how we wrested the wild oats from their husks, I didn’t say it was impossible. Who ever said writing a novel was easy?

If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic. “Technology,” or “modern science” (using the words as they are usually used, in an unexamined shorthand standing for the “hard” sciences and high technology founded upon continuous economic growth), is a heroic undertaking, Herculean, Promethean, conceived as triumph, hence ultimately as tragedy. The fiction embodying this myth will be, and has been, triumphant (Man conquers earth, space, aliens, death, the future, etc.) and tragic (apocalypse, holocaust, then or now).

If, however, one avoids the linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic, and redefines technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination, one pleasant side effect is that science fiction can be seen as a far less rigid, narrow field, not necessarily Promethean or apocalyptic at all, and in fact less a mythological genre than a realistic one.

It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.

Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast stack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool’s joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn’t over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars. by Ursula K. Le Guin

#ursula k leguin

[mushroommushy]

Tw: Gore

This will be a twist on the episode from season 4 of Octonauts, "Tiger Shark". What might've happened had things gone differently.

————————————————————

Tweak made a small sigh as she finally managed to fasten the 'Sandy Cam' as she had nicknamed it to the hard shell of her sea-dwelling friend. "There we go! The cam is on Sandy!" She said, wiping her forehead to push the strands of long hair that had fallen into her face. Grabbing a fresh carrot from the fin of the vegimal beside her, she took a quick bite, the familiar crunch of the vegetable erupting in her mouth. From the corner of her vision, she caught Barrot hiding behind a cart. A slight chuckle escaped her mouth. 'Poor thing still thinks I'm gonna eat him..'

Turning her attention back to the turtle in front of her, she gave a tug to the harness holding the camera in place. "All secure, Sandy!" She confirmed with another bite of her snack. "Dashi, open the octohatch for her!" She requested, casting a sideways glance at the fellow crewmate. The dog gave her a smile. "Already on it, Tweak!" A pull on the red labeled lever and a bit of bubbles rose from the bottom of the launch bay and her friend sunk under the water. "Bye Sandy!" She called, waving with her green-furred paw.

The large turtle gave a little wave of a flipper before gliding through the hatch to exit the mechanical ship. As she entered the water it gave her a little shiver of happiness to be back out in the open water before heading off in the direction of the reef, her flippers propelling her forward hastily.

Back inside the octonaut, Dashi pushed on a button and the screen flickered to life, showing a live feed of Sandy's surroundings. "We should get Shellington down here to look at this." Dashi spoke softly. The rabbit beside her shifted the pink ribbon tied around her head. "I have a better idea."

Soon, the three of them were settled down in the game pod, snuggled into the comfy bean bags and sipping cool smoothies as the cam showed the colorful reef surrounding Sandy. Fish of millions of colors were blurs as the turtle sped ahead, heading through tunnels and under ledges of coral. A smile spread across Tweak's face. "Whoever says Turtles are slow has never seen Sandy swim." Shellington was listing off the species of fish swimming past the cam as if it was counting the alphabet. No matter how long she could practice, she doubted she could ever do that. Even when she was raised in the Everglades with her father she had struggled to remember names of the species of creatures in her home area.

A pod of bottlenose dolphins darted past, fearful looks in their eyes and ushering the young ones in front of them with their snouts. In a panic one of them swam over Sandy, his tail smacking the cam in a circle before it stopped facing behind Sandy. A sharp gasp escaped Shellington's mouth, leaning forward. The shape of the large shark was recognizable even to tweak. "A tiger shark!" He cried out. "Sandy move!" Even before he said it, the turtle was moving. The reef became even more hazy as she moved forward at high speeds. "Did she escape?" Tweak asked nervously, not realizing she had stood up, her ears twitching anxiously.

Dashi rotated the joystick on the remote controlling the Sandy Cam. "No." The shark opened its mouth, the teeth glinting as the water refracted light. The teeth closed down and the camera flickered out to black. Tweak's feet moved on her own, throwing her carrot down and sprinting to the hatch and jumping through, soaring through the tubes and landing neatly on her feet on the familiar steel floor of her workshop. Her eyes scanned the gups before they landed on Gup-B. 'It's the fastest.' The thought flashed through her mind like an arrow before she hopped into it. Her dog friend jumped out of the hatch as the glass covering closed over her. "Dashi, open the octohatch." Her voice was cold and worry filled as she sunk down under the water.

The hatch opened as she sped through it, racing to the reef. She barely acknowledged the Gup-A in the distance, holding a returning Captain, Medic and Lieutenant of the Octonauts.

The Polar Bear gave a happy sigh. "We've officially explored the entire reef. I can't wait to go home and rest up for awhile." The two beside him made noises of agreement before snapping to attention as an orange blur raced past. Peso blinked a couple times before pressing his feathered face against the glass. "Was that..Tweak?" Kwazii had a look of pure confusion written across his face. "What's she doing in the Gup-B." Just as he said that, the radio made a static sound before Dashi's voice came through.

"Captain, the camera we put on Sandy showed a Tiger Shark chasing her. Tweak is-." The Captain cut her off. "We know, and we're right behind her." He maneuvered the Gup around and followed the stream of bubbles left behind by Tweak's driving.

Tweak slowed down where the camera last showed Sandy to be. By now, after not seeing her friend nearby and safe she was pushing down the tears threatening to well up in her eyes. "Sandy!" She called out. "Where are you?!" You could hear the desperation and fear in her voice. The Gup-A pulled up beside her. "Any sign of her Tweak?" The Bear asked, concern written across his face. The green rabbit shook her head, her ears moving constantly to pick up even the slightest sound of her friend. "N-No." She mentally scolded herself for stuttering before a rubbery band of gray slapped into her helmet. She pulled it down into her hands and examined it.

"This was the harness that held the camera on Sandy's shell.." She mumbled bleakly, her voice cracking. Kwazii's voice cut in. "It's a'ight matey, we'll find her. Promise." But even with his reassurance, it didn't help to ease her nerves. She got back into the shark-like gup. Even seeing a shape such as a shark sent a wave of determination and rage through her and she disappeared into the depths. The three left behind looked at eachother before looking at the tracker. An icon of the shark gup showed. Kwazii tuned into the radio. "See anything matey?"

Tweak's voice crackled through. "Not ye- Ah!" She swerved down as a striped shark came at her head on. "Now I do!" She yelped, speeding through the reef, the shark behind her snapping it's teeth at the gup.

Barnacles let out a growl and contacted the octopod. "Shellington! What can you tell us about Tiger Sharks?" The otter moved his hand to his chin, his eyes casted downward. "They are known as the waste baskets as the sea. They will eat anything they can fit in their mouths. They are fast and strong, making them amazing hunters, Captain." Tweak let out a noise of frustration, pressing on the wheel hard and wishing she had a carrot to chew on. She was biting her lip so hard she could taste blood. But she wasn't focused on that. She was focused on evading this shark and finding Sandy. She pressed a button and ducked behind a clearing in the coral. Dark stripes appeared on the orange metal shark, "Glad I added this Tiger Shark camouflage.." She whispered.

She lowered her head so her green head was less visible to the shark, praying she was safe. The shark swam around into the clearing and looked at her, as if debating wether to eat her first or tear her to shreds. Tweak took a deep breath, before yelling in surprise as the shark butted the gup, accidentally making her slam herself into the control panel and hit the turbo button. She yelped, the metal machine accelerating at insane speeds.

Tweak just barely lifted it up high enough to avoid the coral and crashing. Her eyes were wide, staring at the controls. She was too focused on that to notice the giant rocky reef she was heading towards.

Peso, from the Gup-A gasped and radio contacted his mechanic friend. "Tweak! Watch out! Reef ahead!"

Tweak looked up just in time and swerved around, ducking into a cave in one of the towering pillars of rock. She wasn't able to pull the gup back in time to stop it from smashing into the dead end and denting the front of the gup and shattering the glass covering. Tweak blew bubbles from her mouth, putting on her helmet and hiding behind the gup. She pressed the radio on her collar. "T-Tweak to octopod. I-..I need backup." She said desperately. She received no response. "Crap..it's broken.." She whispered.

But she went deadly still as she heard fins swimming down the tunnel, her ears lowering as she curled herself into a ball. The shark nudged the gup aside, staring hungrily at the rabbit.

Meanwhile, in the Gup-A Captain Barnacles was searching all over the reef, panicking at this point for her safety. "Tweak? Where are you?" Peso gulped nervously. "Flappity Flippers..she could be anywhere in this huge place.." Kwazii's tail lashed in anger. "Aye matey, we need to find her fast before that shark turns her into a snack!"

The Captain nodded. He wasn't showing it much on the outside, but he was worried sick. He cared for each of the crew like they were his Cubs. He didn't treat them as if they were young, but he would damn well throw himself in danger to keep any one of them safe. "Her radio isn't working. The gup tracker isn't either. We'll have to find her ourselves. Let's just hope we find her first." He huffed, eyes narrowed.

Back inside the cave, Tweak was backing herself up slowly. "Nice..shark.." She murmured. She was forcing herself not to shake, worried it might trigger the shark to attack her with brute force and sharp teeth. The shark swam forward, going around her several times before sniffing her cut arm. Tweak stiffened up completely, praying. 'Oh me, oh my..' The shark maneuvered around her again before sinking its teeth into her right arm. The rabbit cried out in pain, sucking air through her teeth. Blood rose out, swirling in the water. She raised her free hand, punching the shark in the nose to get it off before falling to the floor once it released. Soft cries of pain escaped her, holding her arm to her chest.

The shark went in for more, now attacking her leg and ripping fur off her skin and shredding the flesh. Tweak let out a screech of pain, trying to kick the animal away.

Sandy, who was surfing around the reef now, managed to hear her friend's screams and froze, going still in the water before propelling forward as fast as she could. "TWEAK?" She called out in anguish. She tried to follow the sounds of her rabbit friend, swimming around in a hurry.

By now, Tweak was screaming, the shark now biting into her stomach and thrashing her around like a rag doll. She could taste the blood in her mouth as it dribbled out, standing her fur red and clouds of blood rising into the water. Her blood. She was starting to go faint from bloodloss, the edges of her vision fading to black. 'Sorry everyone..don't think I'm gonna make it out of this one..' She thought solemnly.

Just then, a hard shell crashed into the shark, causing the now torn up octonaut to slam into the wall out of the momentum. At least she was free from the jaws of the shark. Bad news. Water was now leaking into her helmet from a crack in the glass. She wouldn't be able to breath for long.

Thankfully, a familiar voice snapped her to attention. "Tweak!? Tweak get up! Are you alive?" The hazy shape of a turtle appeared in her vision. "O-Oh no..your helmet..you're wounded badly..I-I need to get you to the surface. She nudged the limp rabbit onto her shell, before speeding out of the cave and making a race for the surface.

Tweak put her helmet down as they got there, all the water flooding out. Blood was still dripping from her mouth and forehead. "I-It h..urts.." She had to stop in the middle of her sentence to cough, blood leaving her mouth even more when she did.

Sandy let out a noise of distress. "Let me try to see if any of your crew is nearby from up here." She ducked her head into the water, looking down for any sign of them. She sighed in relief as she spotted the familiar Gup-A. "CAPTAIN BARNACLES." She yelled as loud as she could. "Up here!"

Captain Barnacles was slightly startled, but did go up. "Sandy? Are you-..." He had reached the surface now, seeing the mangled body of Tweak. Her usual fluffy green fur now matted down and stained with her own blood. Kwazii stared at her for a moment. "I- I'm gonna.." he turned around and threw up, tears running down his face. "Oh my lord.." Peso whispered. "I-I-..Is she alive..?"

Sandy looked at him anxiously. "Barely. We need to get her to the octopod. Her helmets broken. The Captain nodded. "Get her in here, Sandy." He put on his own helmet and jumped out of the gup, swimming over to the turtle and carefully lifting the mechanic from her shell. "Alright, Tweak..your safe now.." He went back under for a few moments and came back inside the octopod. "We have a lot of work to do to keep her alive.." He mumbled.

————————————————————

Alright, that's it everyone! I hope you enjoyed!

#writing #octonauts

[zenosungs]

laughable/lachrymose

Danganronpa V3 | Kokichi/Shuichi | Rated T

Toast is easy to make, right? Easy to make. You put the bread in the toaster and you wait and you spread honey on it when it’s done. Shuichi likes toast with honey. It’s easy. Kokichi needs easy. He can do this.

Ignoring the voices that have started screaming at him again he fumbles with the bag of bread, barely managing to fish a slice out, hands latching onto it in a seizing grasp so tight it almost crumbles in his hand. Flashes of hot and cold ravaging his body, he practically shoves it in the toaster, aching, hurting, shattering.

(OR: a fragmented road to recovery)

note:

drv3 spoilers!!

tw // suicidal thoughts tw // kokichi's death, miu's death, gonta's death (not directly stated but vague details) tw // unhealthy coping mechanisms

this entire thing is a bit heavy in general so please proceed with caution. it's not so shippy because my goal isn't to romanticize any of this, shuichi isn't a magical being who can heal kokichi with his words and touch, and he's also on the path of recovery as well

this was all written as a word vomit vent thing in one sitting so just lmk if you spot mistakes

i care about you, please reach out to someone when you need to

READ ON AO3! 

--

He should be asleep.

Kokichi should, but then again, there are a lot of things he should be doing—healing, resting, blocking all memories out—though night terrors and bubbling trepidation and the inability to close his eyes without feeling the cold metal beneath him has proved to be a hindrance. He stays awake more often than he doesn’t, which is something entirely beyond his control; no matter the soothing words Shuichi mumbles in the dead of night, or the way he always keeps Kokichi close by in a loose yet comforting hold, he can’t sleep.

He doesn’t anymore. He’s stopped trying, anyway.

(It goes deeper beyond the label he hides behind as just insomnia. If insomnia can be defined as “persistent problems falling and/or staying asleep,” can it really be just insomnia if he’s the one who’s forcing himself to stay awake? If he only faces more sickening memories when his eyes are closed, what’s the point? Or maybe, just maybe, he’s lying to himself again, something like youdon’twantanyofthoseoptionsyouwanttodisappear—but as he always does, he lets the lie bleed into him until it is him. Until there’s nothing left to call a lie.)

He could be a zombie now, he’s sure of it. With the way he’s roaming around the apartment at—a glance at the clock—4 in the morning, and the way he certainly feels undead, calling himself a zombie doesn’t seem too far off. Shuichi’s grip on him, however loose it may have been, was getting too suffocating anyway.

He sits on the couch. Stares at a TV that’s playing nothing.

Deep breath in—

(...shut up, you asshole! the whizzing of an arrow through heavy air—kaito, can you hear me, please drink this antidote sorry, but i can’t die here… since i’m the mastermind of this killing game—redwhitehotsearingmetalcold—)

He scrambles to turn the TV on.

It’s so funny. The way they never stop fucking talking like a mixtape of voices ringing in his head even though everything is over and done with, oh god, he shouldn’t be dragging this out like he is, because none of it even happened. If none of it happened, why does he always feel the phantom pain of arrows digging into his flesh, or the descension of metal onto someone so petite—it all certainly felt so real, still feels so real—

—It’s not, and he knows that. He woke up from the simulation. Fought until there was no fight in him left. Until his lungs turned to ashes and pretty amethyst hair was yanked out of his scalp (by his doing, everything bad is always by his doing, so it seems) and so many eyes came to check in on him each day he spent recovering slowly in the hospital.

Is he supposed to feel relieved?

Happy? Glad that he’s awake from all of that? It’s alarming, really, that he feels nothing of the sort. What is he supposed to feel? Even if Saihara-chan had told him that any of his feelings were valid—anger, bitterness, resentment and horror—why does he still feel like nothing? Not numbness, but akin to it, certainly, because numbness is where you feel nothing, but simultaneously he feels like nothing. Like everything. Like death. Like life he doesn’t want breathed into him.

The TV drones on, white noise in the back of his head. He could make this work. That’s right. He’s adapted before. He can make himself feel okay again, or lie himself into thinking so, because that’s how it always ends, doesn’t it?

On shaky legs, he blocks out the voices; abhorrent Maki’s, strained Kaito’s, harsh Shuichi’s, tearful Gonta’s, desperate Miu’s, all of them cherry-picked from every single corner of his mind that he can’t ever find a way to escape anymore.

He stumbles, wandering without a purpose over to the bathroom, a trembling hand pushing open the door and flicking on the light. Headache-inducing fluorescent light flickers overhead, until it floods the capacity of the room, bearing enough light for him to be able to survey himself in the mirror.

He looks dead. Or, more so, like he could die. Right now, and maybe put an end to everything. An end to nothing. How does he fucking escape? How can he live like this? Or with this, the knowledge of everything he did in the killing game, his sacrifice, the hatred in everyone’s voices that he doubtlessly deserved?

Kokichi giggles, low and empty, as he turns the faucet on with a squeak and splashes cold water on his face. He could totally die right now. The way that brings more relief to him than anything else ever since the simulation is so laughable.

I could die. Right now. It’s as simple as using the sink or smashing my head against the bathtub. How hilarious.

Giving one final splash of frigid water onto a pale face, he turns the sink off, and allows himself a small moment of breathing. He’s been so bad at that lately, both him and Saihara. Everyone, really. No one is near being the textbook definition of okay, but they all didn’t expect to be either, although the one stark difference between them and him is that they’ve accepted that they’re going to recover slowly and reach okayness once again.

So why does he feel so stuck? Whenever he runs away from the echoing whirr of the hydraulic press it clutches him in its grasp again, and whenever he embraces it it makes him relive the entire scene over and over and over again in ways so sickening he feels like he just gets worse with each damn passing night—gasping for air even when he doesn’t sleep, awakening in cold sweat if he does manage to doze—maybe there’s nothing for him left here, fuck, why didn’t they just let him stay dead—

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. He could do the anxiety coping technique, or he could listen to music as a distraction, or he could go back to bed and pretend none of this is happening, or he could do the breathing method (in for four, hold for seven, out for eight), anything.

He could eat something. He could do that.

Shuichi’s been reprimanding him for his neglect of food anyway (even though the bluenette isn’t all that better at it) so in a way, this could serve as an apology for his inability to be a good person, boyfriend, living human being, all of that. For causing him so much trouble. For interfering with Shuichi’s own recovery process, even though it’s the last thing Kokichi wants to do. Unfortunately, the universe has a lovely addiction to just screwing him over.

Swallowing past a gag, because all of this thinking is so overwhelmingly nauseating, Kokichi stumbles out of the bathroom, not bothering to turn the light off. Everything is always so loud at night, everything is doused in so much more clarity, to the point where he can see them clearly. Miu’s face, terrified and contorted, even though it was just her avatar he still recalls so clearly the look of utter anguish on her actual corpse. Gonta’s baffled and horrified look when Kokichi wouldn’t stop yelling and yelling and yelling (“I’m sick of hearing you say you don’t know! God, why are you so dumb?”). They haunt him in ways unexplainable, although both of them had already made clear they’re on the path of forgiving him, but why does he need to be given undeserved forgiveness—

He finds himself in the kitchen, hands so shaky and cold he’s barely able to even turn on the light, panic emanating for no fucking reason, because he’s all messed up and gross and mutilated in ways that can’t be seen with the naked eye. He can’t cope. Everything fails when he tries. He laughs again, choked and nervous, opening the pantry and letting his eyes mindlessly glance over the food on the shelves; he reaches with invisibly scarred arms and takes out the glass jar of honey.

Toast is easy to make, right? Easy to make. You put the bread in the toaster and you wait and you spread honey on it when it’s done. Shuichi likes toast with honey. It’s easy. Kokichi needs easy. He can do this.

Ignoring the voices that have started screaming at him again he fumbles with the bag of bread, barely managing to fish a slice out, hands latching onto it in a seizing grasp so tight it almost crumbles in his hand. Flashes of hot and cold ravaging his body, he practically shoves it in the toaster, aching, hurting, shattering.

why are you like this it’s so easy to live why are you having so much trouble with it? is it because you can’t stop hearing iruma’s pleas or maki’s harsh words or kaito’s yells or saihara-chan’s confusion whenever you hung out and played games? is it because it would’ve been easier to stay dead, easier to be crushed and leave it at that, all cracked bones under unforgiving metal? or maybe it’s because—

Stop, fuck, just—

He’s crying—why is he crying?—by the time the toast pops out, golden and hot but he picks it up anyway, he’s been burned worse before, by words and by poison, so he holds it and puts it on a plate on the counter that they must have forgotten to put away.

With a strangled sob he clumsily takes the jar of honey again, tremulous fingers barely letting him even keep his hands on it, glass smooth and cold against calloused skin, worn and too ruined and bitten to be attached to someone as youthful as he is. He can do this, he has to do this, because he doesn’t feel like he’s getting anywhere near better but if he sticks to routine and does everyday things he should be doing easily—he could trick his mind into thinking so. It works, it always works, please work this time…

(Why is something as simple as this so goddamn hard, why is it all so hard, why was dying easier than all of this, why is existing so easy but settling down so difficult, why is waking up so simple but finding reasons to let it stay that way so unbearable, why, why why why—)

He bites his tongue and curses brokenly when the glass jar slips from his hands, falling to the floor without an ounce of grace, fracturing into uncountable glass shards at his feet.

Immediately he steps back, before sinking to his knees with a pathetic sob, the same sinful hands reaching out, hovering and unsure of what to do. Broom—yeah, the broom, he can sweep this up, he can fix it, he can fix all of this, he can fix himself, he can live, he can make himself feel okay, he can exist, he can do this, he can breathe, he can—

In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. His lungs quiver and shrivel up and cease to work whenever he tries sucking in air, body failing him, mind overrun as his vision blurs. If he could just get up and get a broom or something, he could get this all over and done with, or he could stop thinking of the worst possible ways to end this, end him.

Arms wrap around him gently before he can even try to stand up. Kokichi trembles, clawing at the hands of the person as he blubbers and cries and bows his head, unraveling again just as he always does, sick to his stomach and wondering why he’s subjected to this form of torture that he’s incapable of enduring for any longer.

The person gently turns him around in their arms, cups his cheek. The hand is cold. Shaking, too.

He wants to laugh again, but all that leaves him is another mangled cry, idly pressing his forehead against Shuichi’s chest, ringing in his ears so loud he can’t hear whatever the other boy is trying to tell him. Kokichi’s fingers dig into his back, into his soft sleeping shirt, moments away from tearing the fabric. He could throw up. He could die.

A kiss is pressed to the top of his head, and Shuichi is too nice for someone who had found his very pathetic boyfriend sobbing on the kitchen floor with forgotten toast on the counter and a shattered glass jar with honey pooling at his feet. This time, Kokichi does laugh, the noise interrupted by hiccuping sobs but near-hysterical at the exact same time, the sound oddly resembling the way he had laughed in the killing game, though lacking the malice it had at the time. Tired this time around.

He laughs until it gives way to screaming sobs, Shuichi trying his best to stop his own disturbed trembling, merely speaking softly and low into the shell of Kokichi’s ear, no doubt trying to reassure him. Or get him to cope (and fail). Or help him breathe.

why is this happening why am i like this why are you doing this to me, shuichi, it just hurts more whenever you try and i’m trying so hard to feel okay again and make things easier but it just gets harder every single day and—

—Kokichi giggles softly.

Shuichi shushes him gently, but Kokichi basks in the ridiculousness of this all. He switches between laughing and crying, screaming and chuckling, breaking down. Perhaps he’ll never get back from this. Shuichi had told him that all his emotions are valid, but how can he describe how he’s feeling into words? Crying is supposed to help. How amusing.

(Is he supposed to feel better? Relieved? He stifles a noise halfway between a sob and a chortle. It’s uproarious, he decides, that he feels anything but.)

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #danganronpa fandom #danganronpa fic #danganronpa fanfic #saiouma #oumasai #danganronpa angst #trigger warning #triggering content #saihara shuichi #ouma kokichi #kokichi ouma #shuichi saihara

[the-awkward-outlaw]

Hey there! Can you write Arthur teaching reader how to hunt, shoot a gun like he taught Charlotte? ( I ship them too btw.) First encounter, they obvious meet. Second encounter, reader's excitement takes the best of her after shooting a bottle that she and Arthur accidentally kiss and she quickly apologizes and feels embarrassed that she runs back inside. The third encounter, they both fall in love, can't stop thinking about each other and he asks her to be gf when paying her a visit again.

Ah, I adore Charlotte! I also love writing a scenario very similar to that in which a happy ending is suggested since TB ain’t a thing here! 

Read all my works on AO3 here!

Hungry. So hungry. Of course, this has become the standard for you. For the past few days, you’ve been nothing but hungry. You’re at the cabin near Cattail Pond, one of the few cabins your brother could find that was just far enough from a town he couldn’t be found and that wasn’t already occupied. He’s dead now though, leaving you in the mess he created. 

You and your brother used to live in San Francisco and had a comfortable life as your parents left enough money for you both before they died. Your brother, the fool that he was, ended up spending almost all both your and his money gambling or on useless ventures. Then he borrowed money, built up an impressive debt, and had no way to pay it back. You had a job making clothes in a factory and he had one working as a fisherman, but they didn’t make enough money to pay off his debts. Eventually he grabbed you and the two of you fled, but the debts seemed to follow him no matter where he went. That was why he picked this cabin: it’s secluded enough from a town that he’d be harder to find. 

Things were going okay for the first couple of weeks, but food was running low and neither of you knew the first thing about hunting. Picking herbs was easy enough as there was an abundance in the surrounding areas, but you both needed meat. Your brother tried using his one firearm, an old pistol, to hunt but he wasn’t good. You didn’t even know how to shoot a gun, so you weren’t any help either. 

Things took another bad turn when your one horse, the one who brought you both here in a small wagon, got mauled by a grizzly bear. Life became even harder as now neither of you could travel to Valentine to buy goods as it was a solid day’s walk on foot. You didn’t have the money either to go to Valentine and buy another horse as your brother spent a good amount of the little you had on a poker game. You’d screamed and cried at him when you found out, furious that he was still doing the things that wrecked both your lives. 

Then one day, your brother stopped being your burden, though you felt horrible for seeing him that way. He’d been trying to hunt a ram from the nearby pond, but he knew so little about guns that when he was fumbling with his pistol, he’d accidentally shot himself in the head. You found him a few hours later and buried him. It was a relief to no longer be tethered to him but his damage was too great to end at his death. His debts now settled on your shoulders, preventing you from returning to your home. 

That’s why you’re still here at this tiny cabin with almost nothing to eat except a few herbs, wild vegetables and roots. You want to learn how to use your brother’s gun, but you’re scared you’ll make his mistake and shoot yourself. Still, the need for food is starting to push out and you’re becoming more tempted to at least try. 

You’re sitting on the porch of your cabin as the sun’s getting lower in the sky. You’ve never felt so desperate and alone. Not only are you days from starving, you haven’t had contact with another person since your brother died. What you wouldn’t give to see someone else’s face, say something as simple as hello. 

Your stomach rumbles again, reminding you of its need. Your storage of edible plants is getting low; you’ll need to go gathering again. This has its own challenges, as you aren’t entirely sure what’s around that’s safe to eat. You’ve only picked the food you recognize, like the wild carrots, oregano, mint and raspberries. You go up to the trail and head over to the pond, looking for what food you can find. 

Your presence over the past few weeks has another set back: most of the wild plants you can pick haven’t been able to regrow quickly enough to sustain you and you’re too nervous to venture into new places to look. This is obviously bear territory and you can’t be sure if there’s other predators, such as wolves or cougars. The pond itself can be frightening enough since that’s where your horse was mauled. 

As the pond comes into view, you curse your brother for the fourth time today. He was a fisherman in the city, but being the idiot he was, he neglected to grab his fishing gear when he’d grabbed you and fled. You knew how to fish, you could easily have gotten meat from this pond. You’ve seen the fish basking in the shallows, and some are a decent size. Yet you’ve no way to get them. 

You bend down on the shore of the pond, pulling a tiny carrot from the ground. It’s the last one in this area, another blow. You see purple flowers around that seem to be attached to some kind of root, but you’ve no idea if they’re safe to eat or not. You go a little further away from the pond, looking for anything to eat. 

You sit down on a rock after a short while, feeling desperate and hungry. Perhaps it’s time for you to take that day’s walk to Valentine, get a job there. You know the only jobs they offer women are saloon girls or hotel workers. Still, you’d be able to at least get a decent meal. The only thing stopping you is where you’ll shelter yourself when not working. It’ll take some time to afford a horse, but maybe sleeping on the street would be the best option until you could afford one. However, being in a town has its risks: the debt collectors could very well find you there. That was why your brother chose this cabin, after all. 

Just as you’re contemplating the weight of your options, you hear footsteps. You turn and see a man, standing not too far away. He has a bow and arrow in his hand, the arrow pointed at the ground. 

“Hello, ma’am,” he says. 

You shoot up to your feet. You can’t tell if he’s real or not. Maybe you’re hallucinating him, your hunger making you go crazy, but you don’t care. You’re so relieved to see another person finally. 

“Sir!” you say. 

He tilts his head a bit. It’s then you realize you’re filthy, as you haven’t had the energy to heat enough water to bathe in during the last couple of days. 

“You a’right?” he asks. 

You smile, but it falters. “Well… since you ask, no not really.” You look away, feeling a sudden urge to cry. You’ve never felt so weak and pathetic and he’s a tall, broad man. Guessing from his stance, he has some experience hunting. You feel even more foolish in the realization that you’ve no business living in the wilderness like this when you don’t know the first thing about keeping yourself alive. 

“You mind me askin’ what happened to ya?” he asks as a tear slides down your cheek. 

You start wringing your hands and tell him a brief version of your story, about your damn brother who started your problems. 

“We didn’t know the first thing about hunting when he decided to live here,” you say. “He tried using his gun to hunt and ended up shooting himself. I buried him about a week ago.” 

“Ah, I’m real sorry, ma’am,” the man says. 

You nod in thanks. You want nothing more than to ask him for his help but you’re not sure how to do it. You’ve already noticed how handsome he is and it was obvious when you first saw him he was tracking something. You’ve already delayed him enough, he’s probably lost the trail. You sit down on the rock again, not wanting to keep him further. 

He takes a small step closer to you. “Ma’am, is there anywhere I could take you? A train maybe?” 

“No, I… I can’t afford a ticket. Besides, my… my brother had a lot of debt and it’s fallen on me now to repay it. I’m afraid they’ll find me in town and he didn’t leave enough money for me to repay it. I can’t even afford a sick, old mule.” 

You turn away from him again, feeling even more pathetic. You suddenly wish this man would just leave. You can just feel his judging eyes on your back. 

“You, uh, you have anything to eat out here?” he asks, pulling you from your thoughts. 

You look up at him. “Nothing. Neither of us knew the first thing about hunting, hell we barely knew enough about foraging to keep us going. In fact, not enough as it turns out. I hardly know what’s around me that’s safe to eat.” 

He sighs and gets a bit closer. “Well you ain’t gonna last much longer out here like this. Come on.” You look up at him again, unaware of the pleading look in your eyes. “I’ll show ya how to hunt somethin’, give you a few days’s food anyways.” 

You stand up, brushing your hands off on your jeans. “O-okay. Like I said though, I don’t know the first thing.” 

“We’ll start with somethin’ small. Rabbit or a turkey. I’ll shoot, you skin, sound fair?” 

“But I don’t even have a knife.” 

“You won’t need one. I’ll help ya. Now let’s find somethin’.” 

He looks around, but you’re sure he’s seeing a lot more than you are. He beckons you to follow him down a little ways from the pond and you do so, trying to keep your footing quiet. 

“Ah, there’s one,” he whispers, stopping suddenly. 

“There’s what? I don’t see anything.” 

“Focus. You see there by that bush?” he points straight ahead. 

You narrow your eyes a bit and then something small moves beside it. A rabbit’s nibbling on a long blade of grass. The man takes his bow and an arrow from his back. He notches it, pulls the string and then, after a few seconds, lets go. The rabbit lets out a small squeak, the arrow going through its body. 

“Good shot!” you say, despite yourself. He smiles at you, making your heart skip a beat and then leads you over to it. 

“A’right, go ahead and skin it.” 

“But I… I mean, how do I do it?” 

The man tells you how to hold the rabbit and to just pull the flesh from the body. You pick up the rabbit by the back legs and start to yank on the skin, but it holds firm. 

“Pull hard,” the man says. 

You readjust your grip and then yank again. Still the skin doesn’t move from the body. You can feel the man smiling, but you’re determined not to have him show you how to do this. You yank as hard as you can and finally the flesh tears and pulls away from the body. 

“It worked!” you say. 

The man chuckles. “Well there ya go. I’m, uh, guessin’ you know how to cook it?” 

You smile and nod. “Yes, I do actually know how to do that. Thank you so much for catching this.” 

You stuff the skin into your satchel and then start carrying the carcass to your cabin. You expect the man will just wish you luck and go back to tracking his original target. Instead he accompanies you to your cabin. 

“Well, this should keep you fed a few days at least,” he says. 

“Yes, definitely,” you say. “I just hope I can make it afterwards.” 

“I’d recommend you learn how to use your brother’s gun.”

“Yes, I think that’s really my only option at this point. Whether or not I’ll end up being as stupid as my brother is yet to be seen.” 

“I’m sure you’ll be just fine. Just don’t ever point the barrel at yourself and you’ll be okay.” 

You chuckle, despite yourself. When you get to the porch, you turn to the man. “Thank you, sir. You know, you’re the first person who’s done anything good for me since I left the city. My brother wasn’t just an idiot, he was demeaning and… just not a nice man. You’ve already done more for me than he’s done in the past five years.” 

The man smiles. “I’m just glad to be of service, ma’am. Here, why don’t ya take this? You probably need this more than I will.” 

He hands you a book about North American plants. Flipping through it, you can see it’s highly illustrated and each description comes with a section on if the plant’s edible. 

“Are you sure?” you ask, not daring to hope. 

“Of course. I know most plants I come across already, I don’t need that. It’ll just be takin’ up space for me. You, though, can actually put it to good use.” 

You smile. “Sir, I can’t repay your kindness.” 

“Just get some rest and a good meal. You have a good evenin’, ma’am.” He tips his hat and heads back up the way you’d come down. You watch him, smiling. For the first time since you came to this place, you feel a bubble of hope in your chest. 

************************

Three days have gone by since the man undeniably saved your life. After you chopped up the rabbit he’d caught and cooked up some, you’d gone to sleep with a satisfied stomach for the first time in days. You’d spent the next two days looking through the book he’d given you and foraging some of the plants you’ve seen around the pond and just didn’t know was safe to eat. The purple flowers turn out to be Burdock root. 

You came back last night with your satchel on the brink of overflowing with plants and ended up going to sleep last night with a full stomach. You haven’t tried shooting your brother’s pistol yet, still a bit nervous about it, but you’ll have to try today since the rabbit is nearly gone. You inspect the gun and study how it works. You arrange a variety of bottles near the pond on a few different boulders to shoot at. 

You aim at the bottles and for the next hour try to shoot, with no success. The gun has a fierce kickback, which you just can’t get used to. You hold your breath every time you shoot too, believing it’ll help you aim better. 

At the end of the hour, you shoot again but miss yet again. “Damn it!” you say. 

“Glad to see you’re at least not pointing it at your face,” you hear a familiar voice. You turn and see the man.

“Yes, I’ve at least figured out that much,” you say, smiling. “Now figuring out how to actually hit something with it is a different matter.” 

He chuckles and pulls out his revolver. “Here, I’ll show ya a few things.” He aims the gun and shoots it, striking a bottle. You try not to admire his form, the shape of his chest and sides. God, you need to see more people. The first man you see and you’re already getting a crush. You blush and smile when he smirks at you. 

“How did you do that?” 

“Take a stance like mine and I’ll help ya.” You copy his pose and he walks up behind you, putting his hands on your shoulders. You try to ignore how big and warm they are. “Okay, loosen your upper arm. You’re too tense. Take in a breath. Aim. Let out your breath and fire.” 

You try ignoring how close he is and how good his hands feel on your shoulder, focus on what he’s saying. You do as he says and shoot. A part of the boulder beneath the bottle you’d been aiming for explodes in a small cloud of dust, leaving behind a sizable dent. 

“That’s the closest I’ve gotten since I started!” you exclaim. 

He chuckles and pats your shoulder. “Good work. My turn.” 

He doesn’t take a step back and you get the feeling he likes the closeness just as much as much as you do. He aims his revolver again and you take the opportunity to look back at him and study his face. He’s goddamn handsome, his neck thick and gleaming from the slight amount of sweat. He pulls the hammer and then shoots, another bottle exploding. 

“Showoff,” you say. 

He chuckles. “Take your turn now. Focus on the exhale.” 

You take your stance again and breathe out slowly. You shoot and the bottle explodes. 

“I hit it!” you say excitedly. “I hit it!” You turn and grin at him. “Did you see that? I hit it!” 

He laughs and pats your arm. “That ya did. You want to go some more or are ya done?”

Your wrist is starting to cramp up from the kickback. “Maybe I’ll just try and catch something, then I’ll be done. Could… I mean, would you have the time to help me if I need it?” 

He nods. “Of course. You take the lead though.” 

You grin and head off away from the pond, looking for any sign of movement. It doesn’t take long before you find a small group of wild turkeys picking through the grass. The man hunkers down right behind you; he’s so close you can almost feel his breath on the back of your neck. You ignore the goosebumps and aim your pistol. You focus on your breathing, relax your arm and then shoot. The bullet strikes the turkey’s neck and it falls without making a sound, already dead. 

“I hit it!” you shoot up, making the man laugh again. “I hit the turkey!” 

The man laughs and pats your shoulder. “Sure.” 

You turn and smile at him. “This is all in thanks to you! I never would’ve gotten this far without your help.” 

“Oh I’m sure you would’ve figured it out on your own.” 

“No,” you say softly. “I wouldn’t have. Listen, I’d love to repay you in some way. Would you at least join me for a meal? I still have some of that rabbit.” 

He smiles and takes your offer. You lead him to your cabin with the turkey carcass slung over your shoulder, aware that he’s not even three feet from you. 

You show him into your cabin, which consists of nothing more than a large room with your bed in the corner. When your brother was alive, you were forced to sleep on the floor in a bedroll since your brother claimed he needed a soft bed to help alleviate the stress. When he died, you cleaned it and took over it yourself. 

You tell the man to have a seat and he takes it as you dish out the last of the rabbit, having cooked it this morning. You also scoop out some boiled roots and raspberries. 

“Help yourself,” you say. “You helped me create this meal anyways.” 

You sit down across from him with your own plate. The man smiles and takes a bite. “Hmm, how’d you season this?” 

“I found some thyme and oregano weeks ago, been drying it ever since. I may not be skilled in catching my own food, but my mother taught me how to make it taste good.” 

The man grins. “Well, this is certainly some of the best I’ve had in awhile.” 

You blush. “I’m so sorry, sir. I don’t even know your name. You’ve helped me so much, I’d love to put a name to your face.” 

“Arthur. Arthur Morgan. And may I ask yours?” 

You tell him. Over the meal, you start talking more and more about your lives, telling him more details about your brother. You talk about your life of luxury before your parents died and your brother squandered your inheritances. 

“No offense, but that life sounds awful,” he says at the end of your story. “I could never handle livin’ in a city like that. Seems… meaningless.” 

“Oh it was,” you say. “Truly meaningless and empty. In the city, you simply exist whereas out here, you have to earn your survival.” 

Arthur grins at you across the table. He really is a handsome and sweet man. You blush a bit and return to your food. “So tell me, Mr. Morgan, about your life. You certainly look like a man who's been to many places.” 

He chuckles a bit. “Well, that I have. But if you’re thinkin’ that I’m just a hunter or an adventurer, you’d be wrong. I’m…” he hesitates for a few seconds and you can tell he’s contemplating. You wait patiently. “I’m an outlaw.” 

“An outlaw?” you repeat, your voice showing no sign of accusation nor do you feel any. He’s already proven to possess a kind heart and he likely just made some mistakes along the way. “Well that certainly sounds exciting. Much more so than my empty existence.” 

“Awe, ma’am, I’ll think you’ll find you’re worth much more than you think.” 

You blush again. Arthur clears his throat and looks at his empty plate, then he glances out the window to where the sky’s growing dark. “Well thank ya for the meal, ma’am, but I better head out. Got some things I need to take care of before the day’s done.” 

“Of course, and please call me Y/N.” 

He grins and stands up. You follow him out to the porch. He turns around to thank you and you respond by reaching up on your toes to kiss his cheek. Little did you know he bent down at the same time to kiss yours and your lips accidentally touch. He shoots away from you as though he’d been electrocuted. 

“Oh my God, Mr. Morgan, I am so sorry! That was my fault!” 

“No it was mine,” he says quickly, though he hides his eyes beneath his hat. It’s clear he’s trying to be kind when he must be disgusted. 

“Well, thank you again. For everything. And sorry for… that. I certainly didn’t mean… I mean, you… you’re a good man for helping me… well, I guess you gotta go, so I’ll say good night. Good night!” 

Your face burning, you dash back inside and close the door gently. You peak out the window and see him turning away and going down to his horse. You see his arm bend and it looks as though he’s rubbing his lips. You can’t say you blame him, he’s probably beyond just disappointed and disgusted. You don’t know that he’s brushing his lips, recalling the feeling of yours on them just as you’re doing the same. 

***********************

It’s been almost a week since the accidental kiss and you’ve seen and heard nothing from Arthur. You’re not surprised, he’s obviously not wanting to see you again, probably afraid you might kiss him again. Not that you would, of course. Sure, he’s handsome and you find yourself thinking about him more often than not, especially how his lips felt against yours, but you certainly wouldn’t try to kiss him if he decided to visit. 

You sit on your porch, stitching together two rabbit pelts. One was from the time Arthur shot the first one and the other is from yesterday when you’d caught a second one. You’ve been practicing with the pistol everyday just like Arthur showed you and you’ve improved significantly. You spend a solid three hours everyday on the porch just in case Arthur shows up again, though you’re doubtful. Honestly, if you were him, you wouldn’t come calling again either. 

You’re just about to call it a day and grab your gear in order to go foraging again as the sun reaches the middle of the sky. You set down the pelts and stand up but then you hear something. You look over and see Arthur approaching, a slight pink tinge to his cheeks. 

“Arthur!” you say. You smile and clasp your hands. 

“Hello, Y/N. Just… thought I’d come see how you’re managing.” 

You blush and look down. “Oh I’m getting by just fine, thanks to you. You know, you’re… you’re the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in a long time.” 

He smiles and walks up the two steps to the porch. He’s much closer than you would’ve thought he’d be, considered what happened last time. You take a step back, not wanting to make him feel pressured. 

“Well, Y/N, it’s been a real plessure knowin’ ya. I… I wanted to ask ya somethin’. Maybe we can call it a repayment.” He blushes again and looks down, hiding his eyes again. 

“Yes, Mr. Morgan? What is it?” 

He sighs and rubs his neck. “Perhaps could we… try that kiss again? Only properly this time. I won’t move this time.” 

You smile and walk up to him. You reach up to press a kiss to his cheek, but he turns his head just before you do and your lips meet his again. You don’t pull away and neither does he. You open your mouth a little and he does too, then you feel his arms wrap around you, pulling you even closer. One of your arms goes behind him and settles on his back while you press the other hand to his neck, your thumb tracing his jaw. He deepens the kiss, his hot breath washing over your face. You can taste the subtle hint of coffee and tobacco with a minty end. 

Arthur pulls away slightly, his face flushed. “Sorry, hope you don’t think I was takin’ advantage, he says in a deep, rough voice. 

“Trust me, Mr. Morgan, that was the last thing I was thinking.” 

He smiles. “Well in that case, may I ask a favor? Can you stop callin’ me Mr. Morgan and could I call ya… my girl maybe?” 

“Arthur, are you asking to date me?” you grin. 

He huffs a soft laugh. “Guess I am.” 

You respond by kissing him again. He sighs into it and you can feel him smiling. Finally your life has taken an interesting turn. For so long, you’ve merely lived each day with feeling no excitement, no desire to satisfy your curiosities. Now a new door seems to be opening up and Arthur was the one who showed you it was even there. You wonder, as you stand there and kiss him, what other doors he’ll help you open.

#rdr2 fanfic #red dead fanfic #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #awkward asks

[mamabearcatfanfics]

The Ronin - Chapter 5

Eep. I know it’s been a while. And you know when I said this was definitely going to be the last chapter? Well, uh, there’s one more to go. Which is 90% done and that I should be posting tomorrow. Please don’t hate me when you get to the end of the chapter - kthxbye!

“But I wanna go too!” Shippou whined, rubbing his eyes tiredly as they stood in the cool morning air in front of Kaede’s hut. “I promise I won’t get in the way!”

The sun had just peeked over the horizon, making Shippou’s fluffy hair appear even more flame coloured than usual. Kagome bent down to pick him up and squeezed him tight, ruffling his fringe affectionately.

“Not this time Shippou. We should be back tomorrow at the latest.”

It had been Inuyasha’s decision that the kit stay behind, and Kagome agreed with it, but not for entirely the same reasons. Inuyasha was just concerned that Shippou might get himself into trouble, and he would be one more thing to worry about when they were heading into an uncertain situation. Kagome just didn’t want him to know the whole story of how she’d been injured.

Sango knew what had happened, and she was pretty sure that Miroku had some idea, based on his concerned glances towards her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking, and the way he had completely dialed back his usual flirty manner with both herself and Sango. But Shippou didn’t. She knew he was a lot more worldly than a human eight year old, but she didn’t want to see the look in his eyes if either the ronin or that woman said something. She just couldn’t bear it.

“Everything’s gonna be okay, right Kagome?”said Shippou in a small voice, nuzzling into her hand. She hoisted a smile onto her face, not wanting him to worry in their absence.

“I’m sure it will be Shippou”, she soothed, quick to reassure him, squeezing him in a hug which was just as much for her as it was for him. “Do you know what would be really helpful? We’ll probably be really hungry when we get back, and I know you’ve been practicing your hunting skills with the village boys. Do you think you could catch some fish or rabbits for a stew to help out Kaede?”

He stared at her uncertainly for a moment, then nodded.

“Sure, I can do that.”

Kagome glanced at Kaede, and the old miko nodded, confirming that she would do her best to keep the kit out of trouble.

“Travel safely, all of ye”, Kaede said, looking warmly at them. Kirara jumped down from Sango’s shoulder and transformed into her larger nekomata form, allowing Sango and Miroku to climb onto her back. Kagome took a deep cleansing breath of the crisp morning air, then climbed onto Inuyasha’s back as he bent down a little.

“Alright, I’m ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go.”

 The sun was well above the horizon when they began to approach the forest not far from their destination. The mist had all burnt away an hour or so ago, although the air was still chilled. Miroku and Sango flew above on Kirara and Kagome snuggled in tightly on Inuyasha’s back, thankful for his warmth. She yawned, wishing she’d managed to get more sleep. She’d been too keyed up to doze off, her mind racing. So much to think about. And not only about their mission. About her and Inuyasha.

She replayed their conversation at the hot spring over and over in her head. She’d told him she loved him. And even though he didn’t say the words back, everything in his expression, his body language, his tenderness told her he felt the same. In the months since Kikyou’s passing, he’d begun to return those little touches and looks in response to her own, as if he were now free to do so. Words had always seemed to trip Inuyasha up, but when you paid attention to what he wasn’t saying, he could speak so eloquently.

When she’d finally managed to get to sleep, she’d been woken by a nightmare. And he’d been there almost before she’d been able to get her eyes open, picking her up, still cocooned in her sleeping bag, and carrying her back over to his usual position against the wall of Kaede’s hut. She’d spent the rest of the night cradled against his chest, that soothing rumble of his allowing her to get back to sleep for a few hours at least.

The weight of her father’s backpack on her shoulders was comforting. He had often walked mountain trails with friends, and his bag was just as he’d left it. For the first time in a while, she felt closer to him, almost like he was hugging her close. She had felt almost naked without her bow and quiver, but having her father’s backpack helped a little. Kaede had offered hers, but Kagome worried that might leave the village defenseless against a random youkai attack.

“Don’t do anythin’ stupid today Kagome, do ya hear me?” Inyuasha rumbled, his voice barely affected by the ground eating pace he’d been setting. They were getting closer now, the large trees of the forest surrounding the village slowing Inuyasha’s pace and forcing Kirara to fly above with Sango and Miroku.

“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” she replied in a teasing tone.

“I mean it wench! I got that feeling in my gut and it ain’t good.”

Kagome sobered immediately. They’d all grown to trust Inuyasha’s ‘feelings’ – he seemed to have an innate sense of when trouble was headed their way; it was probably what had kept him alive so long.

She leaned forward and dropped a light kiss on the side of his neck, sniggering a little as Inuyasha almost missed a step.

“I’ll be careful, but that goes for you too, okay? Don’t underestimate him just because he’s human – we don’t know very much about how many people he’s got working for him. Most of the villagers I saw seemed terrified, but he wouldn’t have so much power over them if he were working alone. He obviously has help.”

Her thoughts drifted to that woman, her expression ice-cold as she’d slapped her, demanding submission, and the probing feel of her fingers as she was held down, the first time anyone else had ever touched her there. She couldn’t help but shiver. She didn’t know what she feared more, the violence of the ronin or the emptiness of that woman’s expression, totally devoid of feeling, like she’d abandoned every ounce of empathy and compassion long before.

Inuyasha’s rumbling purr vibrated against her chest through his back, bringing her out of her thoughts.

“Don’t think about it Kagome”, he said quietly, his thumbs caressing the sides of her thighs.

“How did you know I..”

“Your heart’s beatin’ like a scared rabbit’s, your fingers are pinching my shoulders and you smell of fear” he said gently. He slowed his pace to a halt. “I ain’t gonna let anythin’ happen to you okay?”

Kagome sighed, loosening her grip, and she rested her forehead on his shoulder, sliding down off his back. “That doesn’t seem entirely fair you know”, she smiled, “you being able to work out how I’m feeling without me telling you.” He turned to hold her close, tucking her head under his chin to rub his cheek against her hair.

“Well, I don’t think it’s fair that you smell so damn good. It’s distracting, but you don’t see me holdin’ that against you now, do you?” he replied.

Kagome snorted, not being able to help the blush that tinted her cheeks. This was obviously Inuyasha’s version of flirting.

“Well, I guess we’re even then, because…” Her reply was cut short as Inuyasha suddenly grabbed her around the waist and juked to the right, an arrow passing by his shoulder.

He shoved her behind him snarling, his ears twitching and nose working to find out where their attacker was. He could smell a few men in the area, but it was hard to pinpoint their exact location in the trees above. They watched Kirara swoop down, and there was a startled yelp from a branch not too far away. The nekomata dropped an older man at Inuyasha’s feet, purring at Sango’s praise as she scratched the feline behind her pointed ears.

“Please, don’t kill me, I missed on purpose. I didn’t want to attack you!” The old man sunk to his knees, his bow clattering to the ground. “None of us want this but he has all of them, women and children, locked up in the head man’s house. He’s threatened to burn them alive if we don’t bring you back. Please, have mercy!”

Miroku and Sango approached with Kirara riding on Sango’s shoulder in her tiny kitten form as Kagome turned her horrified gaze to Inuyasha.

“Still want me to go easy on this asshole when we get there Kagome?” he snarled. The man shrunk back a little at the sound of Inuyasha’s snarl, and Kagome squatted down to the older man’s level.

“Be at ease”, she said gently. “We came back to offer our help.” The older man gazed into her smiling face, the bruising still vibrant against her naturally pale skin.

‘Thank the Kami”, he breathed. “They must have brought you to us. Nothing has gone right in our village since we took in this man. Truly you are heaven sent.” He dropped his forehead to the ground, which had Kagome flushing furiously in embarrassment.

“Please, don’t” she murmured, waving her hands in front of her. “It’s just the right thing to do. I could just see how frightened everyone was.”

Miroku stepped forward. “Perhaps you could explain what has been happening in your village, so we know how best to proceed?” he asked.

The man sighed, still looking uncertainly at Inuyasha’s angry expression, then sat up. The three humans sat down near him to listen, Inuyasha choosing to remain standing. Kirara dozed off in Sango’s lap.

“My name is Kenta. Last year, just before the first snow, a man came out of the forest. My wife Haruna found him laying near the stream when she went to do the washing. He was wandering in his wits – he had a head wound that was healing badly and infected. She took pity on him and brought him into our home.

It was clear to me that he was a samurai; he wore silk, and had two swords and armour. But the insignia on his equipment was not that of this land’s daimyo, and we had no idea of how far he had travelled with his injury. The village council decided we should help him. We did not think he would survive, truly there was a night where his fever raged so badly we began making preparations for his burial.

But then the fever passed and he began to regain strength. My wife nursed him back to health. He was a man of few words, but he told us his name was Eto Shinpei, that he was a samurai of a lord far to the north. He said there had been a skirmish with no survivors other than himself - he had been injured and left for dead, and then lost his way. We expected that he would leave to rejoin his lord as soon as he was able. But he made no move to leave the village. Perhaps that should have alerted us as to what was to come.”

The man hung his head and sighed. “I am not sure where he got the money from, but he moved out of our home as soon as he was able and took a room at the local inn. He began inviting men to his room, handing out sake like it was water, drawing followers to his side. He said he would train them before returning to his lord, in thanks for his rescue. Some believed it was a good thing, that he would be able to protect us from the bandits that had roamed the area the previous year, but others were not so sure.

 It became apparent soon enough what sort of man he was. Previously our village had been quiet and peaceful, but he began recruiting outsiders, men with an evil reputation. Fights began to break out, and it was not safe for our women to be out after dark. One of the younger village lads, who had initially joined eager to be part of the militia and learn the skills to defend his home, overheard a conversation and went to warn the headman. He had learned that Eto was planning to set himself up in a position of power in the area, and that he planned on never leaving.”

Miroku interrupted. “Could you not have sent someone to alert your lord of this man’s transgressions? Surely he would want to defend such an attack on his land and people?”

Kenta shook his head. “I am a member of our village council. Our daimyo has long been focused on major conflicts to the east, and allows his villages to self govern, as long as we supply him with his dues at tax time. It seems Eto had figured this out, and decided to take a chance to elevate himself. It is clear to me now that he had disgraced himself in some fashion and been exiled, had become a ronin. We may never truly know what happened.”

Miroku nodded. “My apologies for the interruption, please continue.”

“The headman invited Eto to his home, wanting to get to the bottom of things. Before we knew it, Eto had slaughtered the head man and his sons. The boy who had warned the head man was also hunted down and killed by Eto’s men. The women in the head man’s family were kept in the compound, no one has seen them, even though we have tried to approach. Anyone who tried to stand up to Eto was beaten, with threats made against their family.”

His fists clenched tightly. “The members of the council met in secret, and we decided to oust this man and the outsiders he brought into our village. There was a skirmish, but not everyone has weapons. My sons…” his voice caught, and he took a deep breath before continuing. “My family are confident using archery, but we are a farming village – many men had only their farm tools. It was over quickly. Eldest sons from any family that had participated were executed.”

He looked up at Kagome’s anguished gasp, his gaze bleak. “My eldest son. My Daitaro. He was one of the men killed. Nine men in all. All of them good, strong boys, who did not deserve such a fate. My daughter-in-law a young widow, with two even younger mouths to feed. So much pain and suffering as a reward for saving this man. I wish my wife had never found him.” His head bowed lower, his fists clenching on his knees.

“You said he had the women and children?” Miroku prompted. He sighed and nodded.

“All the women and children are there in the head man’s compound where Eto has taken up residence – he and his men ambushed our homes and took them by force during the night. My wife, my daughters-in-law, my grandchildren. Eto was raving, demanding that he would not allow you to escape, not at any cost. I fear the head wound he received has made him unstable, although I do not know for sure, not knowing what he was like previously. But he is a violent, unscrupulous man, who has decided his word is law. We were told that we needed to find you and bring you back, or they would be burned.”

“Even though your Lord is too far away to assist you, could you not request help from a nearby village?” asked Sango. The old man shook his head.

“He has a foothold there too. No one has been able to get far enough away to ask for help, without Eto’s men hunting us down.”

“Don’t worry”, Inuyasha snarled, “it will be my pleasure to help you clean up the filth in this village.” His voice had taken on a deeper tone, and Kagome could feel his youki pulsing. She stood, standing close by and he wrapped his hand around Tessaiga while the other drew her back against his chest. She rubbed the fist clenched around Tessaiga’s hilt soothingly.

“If he has the village men out looking for us, where are his men?” asked Kagome.

“Most are out here in the forest, and some are there guarding the compound, at least five. I’m not exactly sure how many there are,” said the old man apologetically, gazing at Kagome and Inuyasha in wonderment.

Sango nodded. “It sounds like we need to split up. Miroku and I haven’t been seen previously. We could head through the forest and gradually alert the village men and take out the outsiders, and then work our way back to the village. Inuyasha and Kagome can head to the compound so Kagome can get the women to safety while Inuyasha deals with the rest. We just need to figure out how to assure the village men that we are on their side.”

The man let out a low warbling whistle, that sounded similar to one of the many small birds that lived in the Japanese countryside. A tall burly man carrying his own bow dropped out of a tree nearby and jogged over to them. Inuyasha gave a rumbling growl, and Kagome squeezed his arm. He huffed and rolled his eyes, but ceased the growling.

“Did you hear everything Chojiro?” the old man asked.

“Yes Otousan – I will help the monk and the taijiya alert the men loyal to the village, and then we will double back to oust the outsiders”, he said, bowing low to Miroku and Sango.

“What about us?” asked Kagome. “What if we pretend that you caught us – wouldn’t that get us straight into the compound? Then we could easily capture Eto and…”

“No.”

“But Inuyasha, it would…”

“I said no Kagome. I will find a way to get you inside to help the trapped women and children and then guard your escape. You will not be getting within inches of this fucker, do you hear me?” She looked up at his face, and was a little dismayed to see the pale lavender of his youkai markings on his cheekbones, so faint that if someone was not familiar with his usual appearance they would not notice them. She sighed, then nodded her agreement.

“Alright then, let’s go.”

The walked together with the old man through the forest. Occasionally they would hear a low whistle, which Kenta would reply to, and a villager would appear out of the trees approaching cautiously. Kenta would explain the situation, sending them off to find Miroku and Sango. He led them around the periphery of the village, staying out of sight under the shadow of the trees, until they reached the back of the headman’s compound which backed onto the river.

“We’ll take it from here”, Inuyasha grunted. The old man looked at him beseechingly, and he softened his expression. “Don’t worry old man, we’ll get them all out.” Kenta bowed, then disappeared off through the trees.

“I still got that bad feeling Kagome, so don’t do anythin’ ridiculous, okay?” whispered Inuyasha. She smiled at him, reaching up to place her palms on his cheeks then drawing him down for a soft kiss.

“I’ll be good.”

She moved to pull back, but his mouth followed hers, his kiss insistent. He backed her up until they were underneath the cover of the trees again, his clawed fingers cupping the back of her head, his tongue lapping at her lower lip, taking away the faint swelling that remained from her cuts, then nibbling gently with his teeth.

“I mean it Kagome”, he groaned, his mouth dropping to press against the soft skin underneath her ear, taking in deep breaths of her scent. “I’m only just hangin’ on here. I need you safe, and I won’t be able to hold back if he touches you again.”

“Inuyasha, please”, she whined softly as he nibbled at her throat, her hands clutching at his collars as her head fell back against the rough bark of the tree. The rumbling in his chest increased at the sound of her voice, and his tongue lapped at the soft column of her neck. How could him touching her there feel so good? It was just her neck. What would it feel like when they finally ventured into touching other places? She wanted nothing more than to push herself up against him, to kiss him, to explore these new feelings. But now was not the time. “I don’t want to stop this, I really don’t, but we need to go.”

“Just gimme one more minute. I need this.” He eased the collar of her shirt to one side, biting down gently on the corded muscle between her neck and shoulder, fangs pressing gently. This obviously meant something to him, but what? She let her head fall to the side, letting him do what he wanted, and the rumbling purr increased.”

“My Kagome.” Inuyasha released his hold on her, standing up straight, and cradled her face in his hands. “Saiai, please be safe.” He kissed her one last time, his focused gaze burning amber, then turned to squat down in front of her so that she could climb on his back.

He leapt up to the top of the nearest tree, then went from rooftop to rooftop, landing almost soundlessly on light feet, until they were on the roof of the main building in the compound. No one looked up.

“Idiots. There’s no one guarding the back”, Inuyasha snorted softly.

“Maybe because they don’t think anyone will be able to get across the river?” suggested Kagome, keeping her voice to a low whisper.

“Feh. There’s bound to be guards in the room where they’re holding them, so I want you to let me handle it, okay?” Kagome nodded, squeezing his shoulder to show her agreement.

Inuyasha leaped down from the roof, landing almost silently in a small landscaped garden near a covered walkway. Kagome slid off his back, standing up to take in their surroundings. Almost immediately there was the sound of running footsteps, and Inuyasha spun to backhand the man moving to attack them so hard that he flew back against the wall with a crash, his unconscious form crumpling on to the ground.

“Oops?” he chuckled as Kagome glared at him. Another guard appeared, and Inuyasha punched him too. He toppled like a felled tree, and Inuyasha stepped over him to guide her over to the covered walkway.

“A little overkill, don’t you think?” she muttered, as they walked quietly, her attention focused ahead of them.

“Nope.”

She rolled her eyes, poking him in the ribs and ignoring his almost silent snigger. At least punching a few people had improved his temper a little.

“Which way?” she asked, when they came to the end of the path. He placed his hand on the small of her back, guiding her to the left.

“I can hear little kids cryin’ over this way.”

Her heart in her mouth, Kagome walked with him, doing her best to walk as silently as possible. She wished she had her bow – that always made her feel braver. She knew she would never be a physical close range fighter like Sango, but at least with her bow she could protect people she cared about, and fight back. When they reached the corner, Inuyasha motioned for her to stop, then disappeared. There were a couple of thumps, and then he reappeared, his smile wide, holding up two things she recognised instantly.

‘Look what I just found.”

Kagome almost squealed out loud, covering her mouth to stop the sound coming out. “My bow! Where did you find it?”

“One of the goons at the door had it. Don’t look like he used it yet.”

With a beaming smile Kagome took her quiver from him and shrugged it over her shoulder, then grabbed her bow and knocked an arrow in readiness.

“Better?” he asked, a small crooked smile lifting one corner of his mouth.

“Much”, she agreed, taking a deep breath.

They stepped over the two unconscious men, and Inuyasha opened the door. A burly man with a sword swung at him from the side, but Inuyasha had him disarmed and unconscious in moments. Kagome breathed a sigh of relief, and placed her arrow back in her quiver. She padded quickly over to the group of huddled women and crying children, who were looking at Inuyasha in alarm.

“Is there a Haruna here?” she asked quietly. An older woman looked up, surprised to hear her name mentioned. Kagome smiled. “Kenta sent us. He and your son, Cho… Chojiro was it?” The woman nodded, tears coming to her eyes as she heard the names of her husband and son. “He and Chojiro are working with friends of ours to disarm the outsiders. If you come with me, Inuyasha and I will guard your escape. We need to take you a little way from the village, until it is all safe again. Is there a hill or a clearing nearby that would be a good place?”

Another woman spoke, cuddling a baby tightly to her, while a toddler huddled into her lap. “I know of a place. There is a clearing not too far from the river, where Daitaro…”, her voice cracked a little, and then she continued, “where Daitaro used to practice his archery.” The arm of the older woman went around her shoulders, and they shared a look, both blinking back sudden tears.

“C’mon, we gotta move, this ain’t no picnic”, muttered Inuyasha. The group of women rose cautiously, gathering their children and making shushing noises when the children began asking questions. Kagome scooped up the toddler of the woman who spoke, so that she only had her baby to carry, and Inuyasha stooped down to pick up two little boys, who looked at him with wide eyes and then back at their mother. She hovered anxiously for a moment, then nodded, her arms already full of two smaller children. He led them out into the vegetable garden at the back of the compound, halting them for a moment to sniff the breeze, then gesturing them to follow along the river bank. The little girl Kagome was carrying tugged on her shirt.

“Why does he have puppy ears?” she whispered around the thumb in her mouth. Kagome looked down at the small child in her arms. She guessed she was three or four at the most, her dark eyes round with wonder as she gazed at Inuyasha's ears, hair pulled back in small pig tails, and chubby pink cheeks streaked with dried tears. Kagome glanced up at Inuyasha too and almost giggled when the ears in question swiveled back towards them, obviously listening.

“They help him hear better”, she whispered back with a smile, shifting the toddler onto her hip.

“Will he hear the bad men that killed Papa?” A faint rumble was heard coming from the hanyou in front of her, and Kagome swallowed before answering, her throat constricting.

“Yes. That’s why we’re here to help.”

“Good.” The small child snuggled in tightly against her, her eyes leaving Inuyasha to focus on the woman walking beside Kagome. “Mama?”, she asked sleepily.

“I’m here Akiko”, the woman said quietly. She hesitated for a moment, then spoke to Kagome. “I am sorry I could not help you the day he brought you to the village.” Kagome’s eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement, and the woman continued. “Eto was dragging you along the street. You looked at me and asked for help and I turned my back on you.” She bit her lip. "I am ashamed", she whispered.

Kagome suddenly remembered the terrified woman standing in front of her home with a child, who ducked behind the door covering.

“It’s alright,” she replied, giving the woman a small smile. “There is no need for shame. You are a mother – your children should always come first.”

“Thank you for understanding”, she whispered. “If Daitaro had been there, maybe… maybe…” She closed her eyes, pressing her lips tightly together, unable to stop her bottom lip trembling.

Kagome’s breath caught in her throat. She had been going to say ‘everything will be okay’, but for this family, it wouldn’t be. Things would never go back to the way they had before. She took another deep breath.

“When my father was killed, my mother was sad for a very long time”, she began hesitantly, keeping her voice to a whisper. “But Mama said talking about him helped. Talking about all the silly things he did and said, all the things we loved about him, kept him alive in here”, she said, gesturing towards her heart. “I only have a few clear memories of my father, because I wasn’t much older than Akiko, but those precious memories I do have survived because even though Papa was gone, we still talked about him all the time.”

Kagome focused her gaze on Inuyasha’s strong back and the pointed white ears twitching on his head, trying to give the woman as much privacy as she could. Even now they were under the shadows of the trees as they approached the clearing, the tears trickling down the woman’s face were clearly visible. “I am so sorry this has happened to your family”, she said, her voice determined, “but we will do our best to make things as right as we can.”

They entered the clearing, and the women sat down, gathering in a circle with their children in the centre. Inuyasha was pacing nervously and she moved towards him.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. She almost giggled when he sneezed violently, but then she caught his expression. “What’s wrong?”

“I can smell somethin’ – it ain’t a smell I know, but I don't like it. We need to be ready.” Kagome was about to put Akiko down and let her toddle back over to her mother, when Inuyasha suddenly snarled.

“Kagome, get back, he’s here!” He pushed her backwards, away from him, and she only just managed to keep her footing with the added weight of Akiko in her arms.

A small clay pot flew through the air, smashing in front of Inuyasha, and dark yellow smoke billowed out, the stench making him stagger back.

Kagome coughed, doing her best to tuck Akiko’s face into her chest closely to shield her. “Everyone cover their face and try not to breathe in the smoke! If you have a scarf, wrap it around your child’s mouth and nose!”

Inuyasha dropped to the ground, retching suddenly, and with horror, Kagome realised that whatever had been thrown at them was probably targeted to him. Sango carried powdered youkai poisons which she burned to immobilise youkai. Many only stunned but a few were deadly - what had been thrown?

She squinted into the smoke, coughing as it irritated her own throat. Putting Akiko down so she could knock an arrow, she aimed desperately from one point to another, trying to find a target, but it was impossible. She could hear the frightened wails of small children behind her, feel the frightened grip that Akiko had on her leg. Her mother was calling to her frantically, but it appeared the small child was too frightened to move. Inuyasha retched again and Kagome knew they needed to end this fast, so they could find Sango and hopefully administer an antidote.

“Show yourself, you coward!” she screamed, her bowstring pulled taut and ready for release, her weeping eyes focused on the direction of where the clay pot had come from. There was a startled scream from Akiko, and the small child was wrenched away from Kagome’s side making her stagger.

The wind shifted, blowing some of the smoke away, and Kagome blinked in terror. He was there, the ronin, and he had Akiko, one arm wrapped around her waist, and the other holding a short tanto blade against the girl’s neck, the cold metal glinting in the sunlight.

“I’ll cut her throat”, he snarled, shaking the small girl like a kitten as she struggled to get free. At the touch of cold metal on her neck the child froze, her wide eyed stare frozen on Kagome’s face. Kagome could hear the stifled wail of a woman behind her, and the little girl whimpered, slow tears streaking down her face.

“Mama.”

The word was faint, like a whispered prayer, hardly audible over the coughing growl of Inuyasha as he struggled to clear the putrid smelling smoke from his lungs. If her nose and eyes were streaming, he must be in agony. She hoped with all her might that the others might have seen the sudden plume of smoke and would come to investigate. As far as she knew, Sango, Miroku and Kirara were still leading the villagers in an attack against the ronin's mercenaries. Kagome focused on the man and child in front of her, blocking out the sound of Inuyasha’s coughing snarls and the frightened women and children behind her.

She slid her quiver slowly off her shoulder, freezing as the burly man pressed the short blade closer to the child’s neck. A thin rivulet of blood trickled down her pale throat, and she heard the mother moan behind her.

“A child makes a very poor hostage”, Kagome said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“You offering to take her place woman?” he leered. “You very rudely left before we could start anything fun. You coming back for more?”

Kagome’s back stiffened as she heard the frenzied growling from behind her. Inuyasha was obviously trying to stagger to his feet, but then fell again, hard. She had no idea what it was that had been thrown at him, whether it was meant to poison him or just slow him down. She wanted more than anything to turn to him, make sure he was okay. But a child’s life was at stake here. Maybe if she could keep Eto talking…

“What if I did agree to go with you. Would you let the child go? You know she’ll only slow you down.”

She dropped her bow on the ground, and stepped forward, holding her hands up in a gesture of surrender. Her heart was beating so fast she could practically feel it like a hard ball of muscle bouncing in her chest. The little girl blinked at her with wide frightened eyes; she’d stopped moving as if knowing it was useless to fight against the strong grip that held her. Kagome strengthened her resolve. This was the right thing to do. She could not stand by and see a child injured when she could do something about it.

“I promise, I’ll let you take me without a fight. Just let the girl go.”

In a movement that was so fast she hardly had time to gasp, the girl was thrown aside, and the ronin had hold of her, one fist wrapped around her hair, extending her neck so that her face tilted upwards, the other pressing his tanto close to her throat. She could feel the cool sting of the metal against her skin and she froze.

“See that dog? You’ve lost.” The ronin yanked back on her hair so her face was tilted skyward, and she had to struggle to keep Inuyasha in view. “My men are scattered. I will have start over again at another village. You might have destroyed everything I’ve worked for, but you’re going to be the loser. Because I’m going to take this girl of yours and ruin her beyond recognition. That poison should paralyze you for an hour or so, and my men will keep the other two busy while I make my escape. By the time you find her, there’s not going to be much left.”

Kagome’s eyes widened when she saw the pure fury on Inuyasha’s face. He tried to stand, and dropped again, his claws scrabbling convulsively in the earth. Drool dripped from his mouth as he snarled out her name.

“Inu…”, she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

She hissed as the ronin yanked on her hair again. “Not as sorry as you’re gonna be, bitch. Time to leave - you and I are going to get much better acquainted”.

The ronin laughed as he backed them into the trees, away from the clearing. Tears slipped down Kagome’s face as she watched as Inuyasha kept struggling to stand, his frenzied howling of her name growing louder. She tried her best to keep her eyes on him, wanting to convey to him her sorrow that she had been unable to follow his plea that she keep herself safe. The ronin sheathed his blade, then wrapped his fist around her wrist, dragging her off into the shadow of the trees.

#mamabearcat fanfics #the ronin #inukag fanfic #inukag #canon inukag

[fericita-s]

Lessons

This Agduna story takes place in the All is Found series , a roleswap AU idea that @agdunaavenger​  came up with and that @the-spaztic-fantastic​ and I wrote.  Iduna and Agnarr are enjoying being married and alone in the forest. She tries to teach him how to fight with a wooden staff, and they both win.  You can thank @the-spaztic-fantastic​ for this one; it is purely through her encouragement and beta-ing and influence this became a finished product instead of something we just messaged about forever. Also blaming @thegeekogecko​ because she tagged me on some swordplay stuff that I couldn’t get out of my head, so here is my contribution to some sexy fighting with weapons that could kill you. So tag you’re it for the next sexy fighting story, @thegeekogecko​!

“Are those apples? I didn’t know there were apple trees in this forest!” Agnarr reached to pick one but drew back, looking to Iduna to be certain it was actually an apple and edible, and not one of the many plants that she assured him could kill on contact.

Shortly after their boska harvesting, he had picked some wolfsbane for its bright purple flowers, thinking to decorate their bleak cave with something beautiful.  But she had kicked it from his hands and then made him wash in the river even though it was already frigidly cold, all the while explaining with increasingly frantic speech that it was only to be touched while wearing gloves. Its only purpose was for a coating on arrow tips meant for wolves.  Not animals they could hunt and eat.  The poison would kill anyone who tried to eat game felled by a wolfsbane arrow.  

He then spent the rest of the evening feeling his face for drool and his hands for numbness, imagining it there, and feeling the need to vomit even though it was surely from nerves and not his brief contact with the plant.  

It was not a fond memory.

Iduna nodded to him and he pulled two off of a low-hanging branch.  “Yes, some English monks planted them generations ago.  They told some confusing stories about bearing fruit for a god that no one could make sense of, but we appreciate the fruit all the same.  There are sweet pears somewhere too.”

He tossed an apple to her and they bit into them, Agnarr watching as some of the juice dribbled down her chin and she swiped at it with a finger and brought it to her lips to taste the sweetness.  He loved being able to look at her this way, admiring her openly without worrying she would catch him at it. Since the winter, their closeness was intimate in a way that brought him much satisfaction. 

And just like he had made a study of the forest and the ways to survive in it, he had made a study of his wife and what gave her satisfaction.  The sigh she made when he ran his hands from her ankles to her hips, the way she pushed at her leggings, annoyed, when fabric separated her from him as they pressed against each other at night.  And best of all, how she would move against him and then stop for a moment, her eyes fixed on his and her mouth open with a silent plea that he answered with a caress and a movement of his own that led to his favorite sound yet.

He took another bite of the apple and watched as she continued to eat hers in a perfect line around the middle of the fruit, her even bites marking a white trail. “I’ll make a ladder so we can get the ones high up.”

“No need, I can climb and get those.”  She tilted her head looking up. “Though, I haven’t climbed much without the wind to help.  A ladder might be wise.”

Agnarr smiled, pleased to have a useful idea, pleased that the forest which had been so starkly bare during the winter was now blooming again.  Sometime over the course of the winter, loving his wife had begun to feel like an act of hope instead of an act of desperation.  And now the blooms of spring were proof that hope was justified. 

He took another bite.

***

Iduna watched as Agnarr used the knife to peel a layer of bark off of a tree branch. He had a pile of evenly cut pieces of wood that he promised would soon be a ladder, but this branch was thicker than the others.  He frowned, turning the branch over in his hands.  

She enjoyed watching him work.  He was so serious about it, yet somehow still playful.

Even in their first few weeks, he had worked hard to learn how to hunt and trap and build, yielding to her expertise and offering up silly stories of cotillions and tea parties and festivals that made them both laugh.

She smiled, remembering how awkward he was the first time she showed him how to fly on the wind. Nervous, but willing to follow her lead, trusting her to teach him and keep him from plummeting to the ground.  He’d been scraped and bruised a bit, but exhilarated.  The joy in his face when he first flew above the canopy, the way he reached out his hand to hold hers, it had given her heart a lightness that she carried even now. If he had started like a drunken duck, he had finished their lesson like a reindeer calf.  Perhaps unsteady on his legs but carrying the promise of future usefulness.

There was a litheness to his body and an eagerness to learn that had made their nights a delightful exploration.  And mornings.  And afternoons.  What had begun with awkward and eager fumblings, with whispered questions and breathless assurances, had become practiced and adept. Now when his hands moved to her hips and he pressed against her, it was heat and desire, their laughter for the joy of the act and not to cover embarrassment.

Yes, she was glad to have a husband who learned so well. And though he was more skilled in the pursuit of their shared pleasures than he had become at spear fishing or assembling the wooden slats into their kota, she supposed some endeavours were more rewarding in their accomplishment.

She might have blushed at the thought if anyone had been around to see, but it was just the two of them in this part of the woods. So instead, she walked over to him and took the branch out of his hand and ran her hand up the length of it.

He motioned to it. “This one’s thicker to start with.  Should I peel more layers away or look for a different branch?”

She shook her head. “It’s too thick for your ladder.  But perfect for a staff. For fighting.”  She handed it back and sat next to him.

“You’ll have to show me how.  I only know how to fence and wrestle.  Some of that might be helpful, but what I saw the day of the battle…” He shook his head and covered his hand with hers.  “I don’t know how to do that.  But perhaps I should learn to help keep us safe.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder and he stuck the knife he had been using in the ground. Then he brought that hand up to cradle her cheek, running his thumb up and down her cheekbone as they breathed in and out. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

“I know.  We have nothing to fear from my people now, as long as we stay away. But I think it’d be good for you to learn.” She sat up smiling, pushing away the darker thoughts that would take hold if she let herself think for too long about what their banishment was intended to do to them. “It will be fun.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. You’ve told me all about fencing.  This isn’t so different.”

***

“This is very different,” Agnarr groaned as Iduna pointed the pointy end of the fishing spear toward his neck, her foot on his bare stomach and his body splayed in the dirt.  “And why do you get the pointy one?”

“Because you didn’t want to make two staffs and I’m improvising.  Which you should do more of, stop thinking about the foot patterns from fencing.  Look at your terrain and your environment.  Use it.”  Iduna removed her foot and offered a hand to Agnarr, who instead of using it to pull himself up, pulled her down so she was lying on top of him, the bare skin of his chest warm and wet with sweat through the borrowed shirt of his she was wearing. She lost her grip on her spear in the sudden movement and sensation and shrieked.

“That’s not fair! I was offering mercy!”

“Well, I am a Southern bastard.”  He laughed as he held her tight against him and winked.  “You should have listened to your brother’s warnings.” His old shirt billowed away from her leggings in the breeze and his hand moved from her hip to her exposed back.  He ran his hand up and down her spine and felt her shiver under his touch before gripping his arm around her waist and flipping them so that she was the one with her back against the earth. He raised himself to his knees and smiled at her triumphantly. “Improvising.  I rather like it.”

Iduna slid her hands from where they were pinned under his legs and moved them slowly up his thighs, smiling at him. “Very good. And what else do you like?” One hand continued its climb towards his hip while she used the other to lightly scrape her fingernails on the underside of his arm.  Her smile grew wider as her hand reached the wooden staff now loosely held in his hand and she pulled it from his grasp, knocking him on the side of the head and scrambling out from under him as he brought both hands to cradle his temple and groaned. 

“Now who’s not playing fair?”

She stood, bending her knees a bit to brace for a new attack as he reached for the fishing spear and twirled it about his head in the way she had demonstrated at the start of their lesson. “I think I like the pointy one better.  It’s quicker.  Deadlier.”

Iduna lifted her staff in swift motion, knocking at the spear and succeeding in making Agnarr fumble it so it landed in the dirt.  She stood her staff in the ground and leaned against it. “I think we’ve learned that I’m the quick and deadly one.  Not the weapon.”

Instead of leaning down for the spear, Agnarr lunged toward her and kicked at the staff. Iduna dodged his foot by rolling into a patch of grass. She tucked herself so her arm didn’t take weight in the fall and jumped back up. As she rose, she saw that Agnarr had the spear in hand again and was holding it in front of himself like a shield.  She advanced on him, knocking at his slender piece of wood with her heavier staff, and they traded blows only twice before his spear snapped in half and he looked at the two pieces splintered in his hands, laughing. He threw them at her one at a time and she knocked them away with the staff. 

“What now?”  She grinned.  “Are you ready to call mercy?”

Agnarr dropped to his knees in front of her. “I’m always at your mercy.  And do not regret it at all.”

Iduna raised the staff above her head. “Victory! Let the spirits witness it!” She lowered it again and then let it fall in the dirt, as Agnarr’s mouth found the skin on her stomach, his bearded face tickling her as he burrowed under the voluminous shirt.  His hands moved to clasp her backside and she lifted the sweaty shirt off of her head, the warm spring sun welcome against her exposed skin. He took the shirt from her and placed it like a pillow on the grass and as Iduna laid against the soft earth, she asked “Best of three?”

He pressed against her and laughed. “Let’s do what we do best instead.”

Iduna pulled him down so he lay on top of her, the heat of their skin so alive against each other she thought it might be their bodies that were calling Spring into life. His face was an inch from hers, his breath was the same as hers, and before he covered her with his lips and tongue and feverish fingers, she nodded.  “Yes, let’s.”

He kissed her neck and traced a line from her collarbone to her neck before his final words for a while. “It’s my turn to make you demand mercy.”

She laughed and then gasped, grateful again that he was so determined to get this right.

#agduna #All Is Found #AIF #Frozen #fan fic #sexy married times #fighting with a wooden staff #both literally and figuratively happens #in a consenual way

[nerdy-bookworm-1998]

A Dinner to Die For

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader x Bucky Barnes Words: 1,110 Summary: No one goes after y/n family and gets away with it, no one. Warnings: Poisoning, fluff, allusions to sexy times. A/N: If you liked this please leave feedback/reblogs and consider donating to my Ko-Fi and/or Patreon, links are in my bio. If you want to be tagged in future works please send me an ask.

It's a mild evening in the middle of June. In a modest house in Brooklyn wafts the mouthwatering smell of chicken parmesan, garlic bread, and homemade peach iced tea. In the main bedroom, y/n stands admiring her appearance one final time, from her perfectly styled hair and make-up designed to make her eyes appear large and doe-like to the pink sundress clinging in all the right places, she is the picture of innocence. A ring of the front doorbell has her putting away the lip stain and rushing downstairs to greet her guest.

Standing on the other side of the door is a young man with blond hair and a charming smile, but with cold and calculating blue eyes, dressed in black slacks, a crisp white shirt, and a black suit jacket, holding a bouquet of red roses. "Good evening, my sweet. These are for you" he greets her as he hands over the flowers.

"Good evening, Alex. They're gorgeous, thank you," she smiles as she takes the flowers and invites Alex inside before going in search of a vase. "Dinner is almost ready. Would you pour us a drink while I get everything plated up?" y/n calls from the kitchen where she has just finished putting the flowers in a vase filled with water.

"It would be my pleasure," he calls back, already reaching for the chilled bottle of iced tea and two glasses.

In the kitchen, y/n quickly plates up the food before sprinkling some special seasoning over Alex's plate and carrying both to the table. "Thank you," she says with a light blush as she takes the offered glass and sits down on her chair.

"Here's to us," Alex toasts before lightly clinking their glasses together and taking a long sip. "This is delicious, did you brew it yourself?" he complements her with a wolfish smile.

"As a matter of fact, I did and I'm glad you like it," she smiles at him before digging into her food, watching with a hidden smirk as he follows suit.

After a few bites of the chicken, Alex starts coughing, thumping at his chest and chugging down the rest of his drink while y/n watches on with a growing smirk. "What's wrong, Alexander? Don't you like the poison I put in your food?" she asks with faux innocence.

"Why?" he hacks out between his struggles to draw breath into his lungs.

"It's simple, really. You made the mistake after coming for my family, and I could not let that stand. No one harms a hair on their heads without facing the consequences," she explains as she delicately wipes her mouth with her napkin.

"You'll...pay...for...this!" he hisses, which only serves to amuse her even more as she lets out a light laugh.

"The only one that will be paying tonight is you, Alexander. Give my regards to your father," she smirks as he gives one last ragged breath before slumping over in his chair, face landing on his plate.

Y/n stands from her seat and walks out of the room. She takes her black peacoat from the coat closet and steps out into the mild summer air. Locking the door behind her, she makes for her car, parked across the street. Once inside, she fishes her phone from her pocket and hits the call button. The phone is picked up after only two rings. "Hello?" says the calm female voice on the other side of the line.

"It's done. Tell Coulson he can come to pick up the trash," she says before ending the call and starting up the car.

An hour later she stops outside a large Colonial-style three-story home in upstate New-York. She gets out, grabbing the paper bags from the passenger seat and makes her way to the front door. Before she can reach for her keys, the door swings open to reveal Steve and Bucky, both dressed in soft plaid sleep shorts and grey t-shirts, looking beyond relieved at the sight of her. Wordlessly, they reach out and pull her inside their home and into their arms.

They stand like that for what feels like an eternity, just soaking up the irrevocable feeling of home. Eventually, though, they let go of each other and y/n holds up the bags. "I brought Chinese," she grins, handing the bags over to Bucky who leads the way into the living room where the title card for The Little Mermaid is paused on the tv screen and two toddlers dressed in Buzz Lightyear and Tinkerbell footie pajamas, clutching their respective bears are sitting on the couch, waiting for the adults. When they see y/n step through the doorway, they both reach out their little arms, crying out happily "Mama!"

Y/n rushes over to the couch, crouching in front of the children and bringing them into her arms for a warm tight hug, kissing their little faces and fighting back the tears that threaten to make an appearance. "Oh my babies, mama missed you so so much!" she exclaims.

Twenty minutes later find all five of them, with y/n now also dressed in plaid sleep shorts and a grey tank top, make-up free, and hair in a messy bun, cuddled close together on the couch, eating Chinese take-out and watching The Little Mermaid together.

Once the food was all gone Jamie and Sarah both lay snuggled into their mom with their little heads on her chest and holding each other's hands as they drifted off to sleep. Making sure not to wake either of them, Steve and Bucky both shifted closer, nuzzling into their wife's neck. "How was the dinner?" Bucky whispers before placing a feather-soft kiss to her jaw.

"It was to die for, although I doubt that he would feel the same once he wakes up tomorrow with a nasty headache. Remind me to thank Tony for the tranquilizer," she whispers back, relaxing into both her husbands' embrace.

"Coulson called while you were gone. He told us he picked him up and they're on their way to The Raft right now, so by this time tomorrow he'll be sitting in a cozy cell with the rest of his associates," Steve informs her as he kisses her temple softly.

"Good. Now, how about we put our little angels to bed then go cuddle in our room. I've missed sleeping in my own bed," y/n suggests with a flirtatious wiggle of her eyebrow suggesting that they would be getting very little sleep that night, but that was more thank okay with Steve and Bucky who were more than happy to have their best girl back exactly where she belonged; in their arms.

Tags:

@mcdesij @spiderrrling @arrow-guy @interestedbystanderwrites @murdocksmartinis @gwendelerynan @here2have-fun @bookscoffeeandracoons @bambamwolf87 @loricameback @rockrchick51 @love-nakamura @baebeepeach @timelordy-fangirl2 @jewelofwinter @caramell0w @jewels2876 @ladysergeantbarnes @notawritergettingtherethough @patzammit @fanfictionjunkie1112 @lumar014 @kirstie-evans-writes @robertdowneyhiddleston @lil-lex1 @dragonrosegardens @bookgirlunicorn @shadymidge @kaithezaftig @that-place-called-middle-earth @marshyrebelcloud

#marvel #avengers #steve rogers #bucky barnes #steve rogers x bucky barnes #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x reader x bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #poisoning #fluff #allusions to sexy times

[clad-in-sunshine]

[ID: A picture of my character, Mey. The left half is a woman with long hair and a neutral expression drawn in pencil. Her right side is split into three rectangular blocks that are bolder, drawn with pen, showing the right side of animals: the first is a lion; the second an owl; and the third a wolf. Around them are hawthorn flowers. End ID]

[ID: A drawing of my character Fearn. On the left side a fern, and on the right of it emerges the right side of a cat's face. From the side of that are three profiles, getting darker, and moving towards a more human shape.]

[ID: A digitally sketched outline of a woman in white lines. She's smiling a little, has long hair, and is holding a bow. Behind her is a photograph of a sunset. End ID]

My friend, @shaheenarnitipsyart​ (Instagram link here) drew all this incredible art of my OCs from a narrative poem I wrote just under a year ago. I plan to write more about them, but for now I’ve edited and rewritten bits of the poem itself, to improve on it. It’s fun noticing where I’ve improved. Also thought to record myself reading it, for accessibility.

Wandering Kind

Ellen, she was a wandering kind her spirit aching to be freed from duties that would her confine and now, she thought she’d found the key

So she journeyed, through the trees to the dwelling of a faerie gay Who could set her from her duties free that she might travel the world, away

Into the dark, she raced ahead over leaves that snapped like jaws The plants they swiped her as she fled, gripping tight to her chestnut horse

Eventually she came unto a twisted house: abandoned, torn Yet a sign of life - it lay in view: a fishing line that clothes adorned

Rolling fog around her drew; all sound banished from the night Thoughts, it seemed, were muffled too, then a figure bounded into sight

It landed softly on the ground - a lithe young cat; then bigger still until as a bear it turned around Its eyes were heavy, anger filled

From its mouth a voice did roar: Cracked the air with every word “How come you to my front door? “Are you here, by hatred stirred?”

Boldly then young Ellen moved; from reeling horse did swiftly leap “Fear not, by me you are not loathed- I met one who does your secrets keep

“He told me an exchange to make: for they would have me married be - to one whom I ne'r love nor like, but with your help, that I might flee”

The bear stepped back; it lifted high ‘til on it’s own hind quarters held Then ‘tween two breaths he gave a sigh; him now a man: the bear dispelled

A solid face like oaken bark, and hair like weeping willow worn Upon his chest he bore a mark like a bow; string tightly drawn

He turned and pulled some linen down, wrapping ‘round his torso bare Without a tie or buckle bound, holding tight as he stepped near

“You know my Jack?” he asked of her “then a friend to you I’ll surely be, but I don’t see him with you here, did he not guide you to me?”

His voice rang out as if a song: it danced and moved the air between, to fall then gently, ears upon, warmer than the sun at e'en

Warmed, she took from her waistband: a letter writ from Jack to him She pressed it in the faerie’s hand and his face did soften then

Once he’d read, with gentle eyes he smiled, then broader to a grin “To help you out I can devise, a plan of sorts, but then again -

"I can’t control those human whims such as to wish you to be wed Unless you ask a task so grim: I’ll hunt them down and leave them dead.”

But Ellen asked a different thing, and happily he would comply But to kill the Faerie king - he charged her then, at least to try

Then from his chest the mark he pulled and like a shadow so it formed 'til it could manifest so bold: A wooden bow of body born

She took the wondrous bow in hand and on her fell a strange unease. It seemed to shift, and move around, despite the absence of a breeze

He gave no arrows with the bow, and before she could breathe her thought he reached behind him, bending low and from his back a quiver brought

“This bow of mine is strong and true; the arrows made from mine own heart And when the arrow pierces through, my heart, through his, shall play its part

"You should not afear his wrath, though he can strike a mighty blow If you eat nought along your path - his power wanes, and yours will grow”

It’s then her fingers to her lips, and she aloud did whistle high To her side her horse came thus and she mounted up, away to ride

The bow behind her led the way 'Twas as the faerie by her side And there was nought led her astray ‘til beyond the woods the tower spied

But before the tower was a town: the dwellings there both strange and quaint A sumptuous feast spread out around, and at her heart clawed hunger, want

The bow it morphed to fiddle fine, and with a song it graced the air It sang of trees and summertime; of fae folk joined in mirth and cheer

Then in song did Ellen join as so she went, the food untouched The singing kept her spirit warmed: her fortitude remained unmatched

Then at the tower’s base did stand and from her travelling pack she took, some rope, as woven by her hand; turned her head to upwards look

The tower dwarfed her, tall and dark, bleak though sunlight drenched the stone Below it, Ellen surveyed her task before the fortress, stood alone

Then from the quiver an arrow brought which to the rope she firmly tied And the looming tower, she feared it not, despite the king that lay inside

The bow she raised, and arrow drew: Pulled tight and strong before she loosed And through the air the arrow flew; like a dragonfly, the window chased

It whirled and spun, cut through the air until its destination found It turned and lodged in firmly there: rope hung and swayed above the ground

Then Ellen in her hands did hold the rope that waved before her face And forcefully, with courage bold she tugged it thrice; it held its place

“Wait here, friend” she bid her horse as she upon the tower stepped Began her climb with barest pause- in hand the rope so tightly gripped

Hand and foot were moved with ease She made her way, 'til with a start a bird did fly out from the trees: It dived at her, her hands to part

Then suddenly, without a sound the bow it stretched from on her back it spread and curved out, all around, ‘til the bird’s own snapping beak did break

The bird repelled, she did resume shoulders straining with the force And soon she climbed into a room more comfortable than her own house

All around were colours bright Blinding 'gainst the darker stone She noticed then, within her sight a forlorn figure: curled; alone

“That’s my brother’s bow you bear, have you been sent to set me free? I feared that he had left me here, it’s been so long since him I’ve seen.”

Her voice it murmured, barely reached to fall upon young Ellen’s ears Yet a familiar pattern to her speech, it brought Elinor’s eyes to tears

For where the brother’s voice was warm Hers it strained, retreated, fell She found she reached out with her arms, and this young woman within them held.

A careful moment passed, then two. and leaning back, she spoke betwixt “Your brother’s quest led me to you: I must slay the king, my life to fix”

Reaching hands caressed the bow; and a smile to her face was brought “Come quick, the king lies down below but first to beat him - here’s a thought.

"A curse 'pon me, in prison high that I should ne'er my powers see But if we go where the spell does lie, from aching binds I might be freed”

The bow drawn back; the door then struck It splintered, cracked and fell with ease Through they stepped, and down did look- a dreary light; an upwards breeze

The two then turned; ahead they crept - as fast as foot could fall, step, by step, by step, by step, ‘til they stood before a door.

Ellen turned the handle then thrust it open, and she saw. A room. Far darker than she’d seen before.

There lay a light, all in the centre: the smallest glow, bathed in the black Says the girl “this place, I cannot enter, You must traverse it for my sake”

So striding forward, Ellen went the darkness all around her sealed The air was heavy, burned and bent and twisted all that she did feel.

Until the glowing light did reach her body barely brought her breath but then she moved - the glow to breach and with her blade she broke it. Swift.

From the shards erupted out a spectral shape, then winding through Until the doorway it did meet Unto the sister, shadow flew.

It entered there upon her brow, stained and stirred her unmarred head and from that point a shape did grow till her form into the air it bled

It coalesced 'fore Ellen’s eyes Gathered to an unknown shape And then it jumped, began to fly Above her head: an owl grey

“Come, let us go” she called out then, landing soft on Ellen’s arm, but she had barely spoken, when: A sound did ring out loud and clear;

A voice that set their hearts to fear;

A discordant hum drew ever near;

An echo that did lock them here-

'Til sudden did the king appear.  

Him past the door - in anger flew, then from his thigh a hammer drew the room he lit and traveled through as the space about, around them grew it spread and swelled, 'til they could view…

A quiet clearing laid with dew.

There they stood, in clearing then as the sun it blazed so high and 'twas as though trees knelt for him their branches dipped and bowed close by

And all about the air was still: made room for frenzied king to cry He yelled and into silence spilled, as his body strained and writhed

The twisting hammer in his hand it snaked its way unto his chest it sank beneath his writhing skin and from it then a glow did spread

Then the king he shifted in the space - all as a dragon he did roar And Ellen then her legs did brace as dragon’s breath, it blew a storm

Upon his breath these words did sound: “Mey, my heart! How dare you leave?! I gave you the finest things around! What must I do to win your love?”

As the words slipped from his tongue boldly then the owl proclaimed “I am Mey, and you’re undone - for from your lips I take my name!”

And she has flown, above the field changed to hawthorn: razor sharp And to his scaled body dropped; drove her branches; wrapped him up

The dragon changed beneath her binds, and Ellen now in anger flew She in her hand the bow did find: and against the string an arrow drew

The arrow carved through shifting limb and embedded in the soft green earth but all his limbs did vanish then into a body now of slimmer girth

Not dragon, but a serpent large - it slipped away, and fangs did bare With striking speed the snake did charge to Ellen’s arm, it fastened there

Then Mey became a lion fierce She pounced upon the biting thing and from the teeth that held in place The viper tore: split mouth and fang

The bow then changed all in her grip It twisted, wrapped her arm around An arrow then, as sword did flow from palm, prepared to strike him down

'Tween Mey’s teeth the snake did shrink 'til he fell to ground beneath And raised again; as man did smirk Naught but blood where had lain teeth

Then his feet began to swell His skin did stretch, his bones did too His lips they curled; the blood it fell - hit the grass, to stain the dew

Then Mey she grew, and matched for size and strange enough, did Ellen too 'Til all of them as giants rise and none of them the ground could view

The fight then shook the very air - as giants struck, blow for blow, Until but two were standing there and the King he fell to ground below

He fell so slow that it did seem that time had ceased to do its work Until he landed, as if a dream then from the fall the world did quake

Panting, bleeding they did crouch and shrunk unto their normal size Until so close that they could touch the whites around the giant’s eyes

They walked across him, to his chest as the king did bellows make Holding the bow, now as it was Ellen offered it for Mey to take

But Mey, away the bow did turn - Says “You cannot this offer give, for the faerie king is only slain by a mortal with a faerie gift”

Then Ellen, passion in her eyes did turn unto his beating breast And held the bow; drawn and poised Pulled tighter still, then arrow leased

From the wound dug in his heart, a sound like thunderstorm did draw The arrow where the skin did part, then changed to block the gaping maw

Still the clouds fell all around, and like a hurricane, wind flew They held on tight until they found no corpse beneath - they fell below

Now on the ground, young Ellen ‘mazed as all about - the walls they came Then in the tower found they laid, where they’d started, once again

'Twas with a sigh of bending wood, the arrows to her quiver went They passed her arm, wet with blood and as they did the wound did mend

Looking up to Mey’s own face she noticed then that it had changed Where human 'guise had been in place now features like her brother’s shaped

“Now come, you stranger, tell your name; for you know mine, and I not yours As I my life do owe to thee, although my brother was your cause”

“My name it is Elinor, but your life I do not need - It seems we had a common goal: From love’s cruel clutches to be freed”

To an owl again, then Mey did shift- of a size to let young Ellen ride And joyously held them aloft 'til down below her horse they spied

She mounted up, and rode for home While Mey, as wolf, ran by her side Upon the twisted house they came Saw the cat, with Jack beside

And there as these two friends did speak a smile broke out on wolfish face For Mey into a run did break: on her two feet approached the place

“Fearn!” She cried - to her he leapt, changing quick from cat to man Before her then Fearn almost wept lips spread wide by glowing grin

He threw her clothing from the line, wrapped some more about his waist then to each of them did turn and for each introductions made

Mirth and joy around them grew: it filled the air, and in them welled The siblings - reunited, now stood by two friends, their wants fulfilled

One final task before them lay 'twas of Fearn for Ellen’s wish As such his hand upon her placed whereupon her skin did shift

She felt a buzzing through her bones and there in place did shake and lift 'til in another form she rose Now as a lively horse most swift

She danced and sprung in great delight Changed her form again, again Until as a human bright once more did she appear to them

“And of your other wish,” said he, “that much was done 'fore you returned, When I felt you slay the king, for me - had gold and jewels sent to your home”

Elinor felt her word at ease now all her problems, they were solved She would - to wealth - ne'er wedded be yet family would not want for gold

And though the prince could her confine, she would ne'er as captive lie For she would make the world her home: Content to swim, to bound, or fly. *

Ellen, she is a wandering kind, and her spirit cried out to be freed from duties that would her confine That was, until she found the key

For she sought out Fearn, beyond the trees and when she helped his sister, Mey He set her from her duties free And now she travels the world,

Away.

#Writeblr #Poetry #Fantasy #Narrative poetry #Epic poetry #Aromantic characters #Aplatonic character #Art #me #my voice #audio #Original writing #My writing

[wonderlustlucas]

soonie, doongie, dori, & john - lee minho

⇢ prompt “Why did you steal a fish? You don’t even take care of yourself let alone a fish.”—a prompt from @the-moon-dust-writings​ ⇢ pairing minho x female reader ⇢ word count 4.4k ⇢ genre fluff ⇢ warnings lots of cat interaction. if u don’t have a cat you may be confused. mega fluff. that’s it. ⇢ summary Sharing an apartment with Lee Minho has been an adventure since day one. Plus, you got a best friend and three fur children out of the deal. But when a heavy realization hits you the same morning Minho has an accident at the pet store, it seems as if it’s only a matter of time before John shoots Cupid’s arrow and paves the way for a happy ending.—friends to lovers!au ⇢ a/n bear with me on this one, it’s kind of slow in the beginning. this is the first i’ve written in ages. i feel like i’ve forgotten how to english. also i did as much research as i could find to try & figure out the genders of minnie’s cats hopefully theyre right jsfajkhkjf. also i watched a lot of vids of minho for this & it rlly made me realize how much i love him & how soft i am for him & it seems as if my bias list is unstable now

From her curled-up position in between your legs, Dori’s ears twitch up in attention at the sound of the front door swinging open and closed from across the apartment. She has grown a lot since Minho first brought her home, you notice when she finally lifts her tiny head to listen to the footsteps past your bedroom door, jade eyes blinking tiredly at you in post-nap dreariness. Excited, she pushes herself up to arch her back in a long stretch before she abandons the warmth of your bed to greet Minho. Pouting, you watch as Soonie ditches you as well, hopping off from his perch looking out the window to follow the younger kitten.

“Oh well,” you mutter to none other than Doongie who stays by your side, white mittened paws tucked snugly under her chest that rumbles with a purr when you reach over to scratch the soft fur behind her ear, “I still have you.” You can practically feel Minho’s jealousy radiating from behind the door when only two out of his three children go to see him— not that this is new.

It has been this way since you moved in together nearly two years ago. Due to increasing international interest for your university at the end of each year, not every incoming freshman was guaranteed a dorm room. It just so happened Minho and you were two unlucky victims of such a shortage. By chance, you had met at an open house only seven months prior and so, not even knowing whether he was frantically searching for an apartment like yourself, you reached out to him with an offer your parents helped scrap up.

Minho was uncertain at first. First, he was not prepared to start university living with a girl. It wasn’t that he did not like girls; he simply grew up expecting to meet his forever “bro” in his dorm room. In addition to this, he was an only child and imagined living with a female only child could end up causing him some great distress.

Secondly, while the pros outweighed the cons for the most part, he was more than disappointed that the apartment was in a more… domestic part of town. Yes, the rent was cheaper than the apartments closer to campus. Yes, he would be able to have a car now and yes, the apartment really was more than sustainable for two kids, but it was all these things and more because it was not an area where sleaze balls sunk their talons into desperate students looking for a place to live. And so, this basically meant that the two of you were close to the only students in the area.

And last but not least: there was only one bathroom. Enough said.

But what eventually won him over was the fact that the apartment was pet friendly, which meant he could bring Soonie and Doongie (and Dori, eventually) with him. It was for this reason he finally agreed to share the apartment with you before he lost the opportunity and you asked someone else.

It couldn’t be that bad, right? Afterall, you seemed nice enough at the open house and you did go out of your way to ask him in the first place to live with you. And he was right. In fact, it was not bad at all. You were more than nice, generally not concerned with specifics other than the agreement that Wednesday was grocery shopping day together, Friday was cleaning day, and that you washed your own dishes. Minho did not mind those three simple promises because he found getting to be your friend easy and your roommate his favorite part of his day.

What he did mind, however, was the fact that Doongie instantly took a liking to you. “This isn’t fair,” he complained only your third day together after searching for said feline and finding her cozied up with you on the sofa, “how can she betray me like this?”

His possessiveness humored you, to say the least. “What can I say? She just likes me better. You’ve bored her, Minnie.” He grimaced at the nickname and your bold statement. You were just bluffing—there’s no way Doongie would choose you over him after all these years, right?

Wrong. After freshman year flew by and the two of you agreed to stick together for a second year due to how dependent you had become on one another, he suddenly brought home Dori to ‘fill the void Doongie left in my heart,’ he exaggerated. “Wow, is Soonie not enough for you? You make him sound so unimportant. Maybe I’ll steal him too,” you had replied, grinning from your spot in bed when he narrowed his eyes at you.

“I thought you’d be mad I brought a kitten home,” Minho admitted from the doorway, ignoring what you said and holding said tabby against his chest with one arm. He’s so cute, you admired for hardly a second, reaching for your iced tea on your bed side table and shrugging to him, “You know I don’t care, you’re the one who pays the vet bills. Bring all the cats you want; the more, the merrier,” you said, taking a sip and blinking at him lethargically.

For a moment he was quiet, processing your words before, “If we get married it would be our vet bills.”

You nearly choked on a mouthful of tea. Married? You took a moment to collect yourself and your thoughts. “Minho, if your plan is to marry me, you’ve done a terrible job at getting that message across.”

“Damn, what can I do?” He asked, sulking.

“I don’t know,” you shrugged, grinning at him behind warm cheeks, “you can start by getting your ass over here so I can see this new kitty and discuss our wedding theme.”

And that’s just how things were; you, Minho, Soonie, Doongie, and Dori.

Or so you thought.

Past the hum of your ceiling fan and the purring coming from Doongie like an engine, for a minute or so you listen to Minho sing, “I want to see my little boy,” from Vine to presumably Soonie at least four times, followed by a loud thud, a high-pitched screech (not from a cat), a door slamming closed, and then the pipes moaning like a horror movie as the shower is turned on. Unfazed by the chain of events as this kind of chaos was something you have come to accept living with Minho, you shrug off all the noises you heard and opt instead to regretfully roll over until you meet the edge of the mattress.

Once you manage to tumble out of bed and stretch good enough to make your legs shake, Doongie lets out unamused meow now that her own personal space heater and pillow has moved.

It’s you. You’re the personal space heater pillow.

“Whaaaat,” you reply, grabbing a pair of cotton shorts from a drawer and glancing back at her. With ears drawn flat, Doongie follows your movements with a cold glare. “I’m sorry,” you coo, falling for her manipulation and bending back over the mattress to envelope her in a hug of sorts and cover her muzzle in kisses. When she starts struggling to get away from your grip, beginning to meow loudly and pushing your arm away with her paws, you pull away and scratch the base of her tail as she stands to stretch.

Shimmying the shorts up your legs with an unnecessary amount of effort exerted, you at last exit your room for the day, grabbing your phone from where it sat charging on the bed side table on the way. Padding barefoot down the brief hallway, you realize with a shiver when you reach the tiny dining room table how unreasonably freezing it is in the apartment. Minho must have not raised the thermostat this morning after lowering it to sleep.

Instead of fixing the problem, you reach for Minho’s orange university sweatshirt draped over one of the chairs and pull it over your head. At your feet, Doongie weaves between your legs, dragging the side of her face against your shins and she does not stop mewing until you bend down to gather her into your arms so that her front paws dangle over your shoulder. “So needy, you are,” you grumble, blowing her tail away when she threatens to swat your mouth and making way for the kitchen where coffee calls your name.

Minho must have made enough for the both of you as there is still another cup or two left in the pot, you realize with a smile, reaching up into the cabinet for a mug and pouring yourself a cup. Doongie leaps off your shoulder when you open the refrigerator for creamer, joining Soonie and Dori who sit poised like statues along the kitchen’s pony wall.

Stirring in cream and sugar, you wait until the color softens to a lighter shade of brown before unwrapping the flakey chocolate croissant Minho bought you yesterday and taking a seat at the table. Humming to yourself, you shift to cross your legs on the chair while taking slow sips of your coffee, heart beginning to thump faster in your chest.

And it’s not from the caffeine now making its way through your system.

This is too good. Life is too good, and you should not feel at such peace at twenty years old. You should not be having such a casual morning, drinking coffee Minho made for you, eating a croissant Minho bought you, wearing a sweatshirt Minho left hanging around, having a staring contest with the cats Minho brought into your life, listening to Minho sing in the shower one room over. Minho.

You slowly set your mug down with a newfound epiphany flashing like a billboard in your brain. Of course, you always knew Minho was the most special person in your life recently, your best friend really, and that you loved him. You probably would not have lived with him for this long if you didn’t. But since when were you in love with him?

You shake your head and take a hefty mouthful, hoping to wash away such troublesome thoughts. You’ll get over it. It’s just a crush. On the boy you live with. And spend all your time with.

“Oh boy, what are we gonna do now?” You ask the three felines who have abandoned studying you to stare down like hawks at the table, ears raised in curiosity. You follow their gaze, squinting in hope to better your vision when you see the fluttering tail of a fish as it swims within its tiny plastic cup. Blinking once, twice, and on the third you finally reach over and grab the container, bringing it closer to inspect and yep, that most certainly is a betta fish staring back at you.

Setting it atop the refrigerator where the cats can’t get to it, you stuff the rest of breakfast into your mouth and dump what’s left of your coffee into the sink before marching to the bathroom, swinging the door open without so much as a knock. He yelps from behind the shower curtain and you mentally thank God you did not barge in to find him butt naked in front of the mirror.

“Lee Minho, care to explain why there was a fish on the kitchen table?” You bark, crossing your arms and leaning against the sink for when he pops his head outside of the curtain.

“First of all, you could have knocked,” he starts, looking to the floor when you glare at him, “and I, um, I stole it.” You sigh in defeat, dragging your hands down your face when he disappears back into the shower. “Minho, why did you steal a fish? You don’t even take care of yourself let alone a fish.”

“That just isn’t true. I am fully capable of taking care of myself and my children. And I didn’t mean to steal it,” he retorts, turning off the water and you watch as he slips an arm out to slap around in search of his towel. “How the fuck do you accidentally steal something, Minho? And did you not think I would see it eventually?” You huff, exasperated.

“You see, I went to go pick up cat food and I dropped my phone where all the betta fish in cups are and when I went to pick it up the bag hit a cup and it fell and then the lid popped off and then there was water everywhere and the fish was just flopping around so I panicked and put it back in and then ran to get water from a fish tank and I thought I would get in trouble so I just ran out since no one saw me,” Minho rambles without taking a breather, whisking open the shower curtain and stepping out as he does so, towel snug around his waist and cheeks glowing pink from both embarrassment and the aftermath of a hot shower. You sigh for a third time, moving out of his way when he makes way for the cabinet and opting to sit on the toilet.

“Did you even get the cat food, then?”

“No, I just ran. With the fish.”

Pinching the bridge of your nose, you grumble, “You’re an idiot.”

“But I’m your idiot,” he grins, dragging a cotton round over his face with toner. You send him a warning glare. “Well,” you click your tongue, hypnotized as he combs out his hair and by how unfairly ethereal he looks post-shower, “we should probably go to a different pet store to get cat food. And we need to get a nice fish tank and food.”

He raises a brow, surprised with how nonchalant you are, and moves to stand in front of where you sit so he can tilt your face up with his index finger tucked under your chin. “Are you mad?” He asks.

It’s not fair, really, the way he asks such a question after making you feel so vulnerable under his touch and proximity, heart racing a mile a minute. Really, you should be mad. But when it comes to Minho, you cannot find it in yourself to be. This is just how things are with him.

“No, I’m not mad,” you smile reassuringly, leaning into his touch and you both seem to forget for a moment that you are nothing more than friends when his hand moves to cup your cheek, thumb ever so slightly brushing over your warm skin as he beams down at you, “just amazed as usual at how stupid you are.”

“Hey!” He steps back at this, running his fingers through his damp hair and shaking out the strands. “I’m not stupid.”

“Yeah, and Doongie likes you more than me.”

“It sucks we have a fish now. I was thinking about getting a guinea pig or something soon. Maybe even a rabbit,” you announce, leaning over with Minho to peer into the guinea pig enclosure. His giggle reverberates throughout the entire store and you cannot help but grin in return, even though he has scared all the little critters back into their huts. With nothing left to coo over, you grab his hand and tug him toward the fish care.

“Where are we going to keep… him? What’s his name? Do we even know if it’s a him?” Your question turns into three, stopping in an aisle full of different tanks and small décor pieces to go inside.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a dude. I think they only sell males in that section anyway. I’ll check if he has a dick when we get home though,” when you look over, he’s smirking as if he just said the funniest thing ever and you have to hold back your laughter. “Yeah, you do that, Minho. I’m sure you’ll be real successful.”

“We can probably just put him on the desk. I’ll move all my shit and he can just go next to my laptop,” he continues, wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his chin on your shoulder as you look over the different tank options. It makes it hard to concentrate with him so close. “I mean— yeah. Yeah. That works,” you stutter, swallowing past the sudden lump in your throat and quickly scanning over the tanks one more time, “we should get this one. Is that okay?” You move closer to said tank, hoping he would let go when you reach out to grab the box but when he doesn’t, your heart seems to beat so erratically in your chest that you think it might fly out. Why, all of a sudden, are there butterflies—no, lions—in your chest when he is around you when there weren’t before? When did this happen?

“Minho. We can cuddle at home. I just want to get what we need and leave,” you whine, trying to pry his fingers apart from where they are linked above your hips, leaving your skin tingling even under his sweatshirt. He huffs, detaching himself from your frame. “Fine. But we’re gonna get home and you’re gonna say ‘Wait, we have to take care of the fish’ first and by the time we’re done, you’ll fall asleep before we even have a movie on,” Minho grumbles, taking the box you shove into his hands and trailing after you.

You gasp, pointing an accusing fake plant in his direction, “No, you fat head. You’re always the first to fall asleep. You just like to blame it on me.” He continues to grumble under his breath while you grab a bag of pebbles, fish food, and water conditioner, finally able to breathe now that he isn’t clinging to you.

“Come on, stinky. I don’t want you to start crying on me,” you grin, wishing you could hold his hand but alas, you did not think of grabbing a basket on your way in. His face brightens up with a smile anyway, and he follows you the rest of the way right at your side.

“So, you never gave him a name. What’s it gonna be?” You ask, nearly unhinging your jaw to take a bite of the Big Mac Minho begged you to order after making fun of you the whole ride home for never having one. You stopped at McDonald’s just to appease him. You look to the fish, surprised yourself over how pleasant his quiet presence is, especially with his emerald and sapphire scales that reflect and glow iridescent in the light.

“Mm,” he hums, chewing on his own hamburger and watching the fish in thought, “I think… I think John.”

You blink at him now, setting your food down. “John?”

“John.”

“Why… why John? Why not Nemo or something?” You ask, eyeing him curiously and gnawing on the straw to your soda.

“Dunno. He just looks like a John,” Minho explains, giggling cutely and looking back up to you with stars in his eyes. It feels like liquid adrenaline is being injected right into your bloodstream when you lock eyes, and looking into Minho’s cat-like eyes feels like looking into the sun for too long—it almost burns, instead, there is an entire zoo in your chest. But it feels good. You almost wish he did not stop giggling so you could giggle with him. Instead, you have found yourself lost in him, every ounce of breath stolen from your lungs.

“Are… are you going to actually take a sip of that?” He giggles again, glancing to the soda straw dug awkwardly into your bottom lip.

Your cheeks flush hot pink, stomach sinking heavily and you cannot find your voice. Clearing your throat, you look away as you begin to hyperventilate and stand up abruptly to grab John’s fish tank from the table and walk across the room toward the desk.

“___? You alright?” He asks, worry lacing his tone and you wince when you hear him push his chair in. “Y-Yeah. I’m fine,” you laugh breathlessly, placing John down and adjusting the tank so it sits catty-cornered next to Minho’s laptop.

“No, you’re not.” He is quick, you’ll give him that. In the blink of an eye he is at your side, grabbing you by the hips and spinning you to face him. Here we go again, you hiss at yourself to snap out of it, clenching your fists at your sides simply due to how overwhelmed you feel. How incapable you are to forget how you have been feeling and brush it under the rug.

“Why’d you get all googly eyes on me over there?” Minho questions, grinning like a madman when he brings his hands up to cup your face and squish your cheeks together. “And why are your cheeks all hot?” You gasp, defensive, and press your hands over his, “M’not.”

He drops his voice to a whisper, leaning in closer so his breath fans over your face, “Is that how I make you feel, ___?”

You blink at him, all the color draining from your face and you must look ridiculous right now, jutting your lips out in a pout as he continues pressing your cheeks together. And what can you say now that he has caught you? Lie? “No,” is all you quip, staring at him, practically begging for mercy. No more questions. Just a ‘goodnight’ and off to your room for the night.

“Hmm,” he hums, pondering for a moment, before grinning once more, “I have an idea.” Oh no, you do not like the sound of that. Minho? Having ideas? Bad. This thought progressively resonates louder in your mind the closer he gets, this is bad, this is bad, this is really bad. It just so happens that a whimper on behalf of your sanity escapes you the same moment his grip on your face eases and he moves his hands to rest below your ears, thumbs caressing your cheeks before his lips brush yours.

His lips are warm and taste… salty? The fries, you realize, before his tongue pressing to the seam of your lips obliterates every thought. The worries leading up to this moment evaporate like a summer shower on a hot car and, of course, you part your lips and grant him access. Drunk on endorphins, your brain seems to light itself on fire and warmth spreads throughout your entire body, your only desire to touch him, to stand up higher and to hold his cheek the way he holds yours.

His fingers run down your spine, pulling you closer until there is no space left between you and you can feel the beating of his heart against your chest. A kiss like this is a beginning, a promise of so much more. “___,” he whispers slowly when he pulls away, prolonging each letter as if to savor them. You smile, heart fluttering at his voice as you lean forward and bury your face into his chest, overwhelmed with relief and desire and worry and giddiness.

“___,” Minho repeats, running his hands up and down over your arms, calming you down before reaching your shoulders and pulling you back, “how did that make you feel?”

“You— what?” Is all you manage, searching his face for a trace of mirth, and yet you find none. In fact, he himself seems relieved, the corners of his mouth quirked up and his eyes bright and dark all at once like the midnight sky. He grins, laughing a little and stroking the baby hairs around your face with his finger. “I like when you wear my stuff,” he says, tugging at the collar of his sweatshirt you still wear.

“Um, I— thanks?” You laugh nervously, heartbeat beginning to skyrocket once more when he reaches for your arms and maneuvers them to hug around his waist. You hum, confused, but content nonetheless and link your hands together. He instantly presses closer, tipping your chin up, “I know you always say I flirt with everyone, but I don’t know how you haven’t realized by now I only want to flirt with you. It’s been you since Doongie chose you. I can’t even get you out of my head, imagine how hard it is living with you, not able to kiss you and do all the cute shit I know we would love.”

He what now? You blink up at him, more than bewildered, “Wait, are you trying t—”

“Yes,” he interjects, not even giving you a chance to finish, “whatever you’re thinking, yes. I’m confessing, or whatever. So let’s cut to the point. Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

Your brain stutters for a moment and every part of you goes on pause while your thoughts catch up. Girlfriend? Well, of fucking course you want to be his girlfriend, but how have you been misreading all of him for so long? “God, I’m an idiot, aren’t I?” You mutter instead, slapping the palm of your hand to your forehead and his giggles ring throughout the room.

“How many languages do I have to get through for that to translate into a ‘yes?’” Minho cackles, prying your hand away to return it around his waist. When you look up at him, you feel as if you may cry, so instead you opt to laugh with him in order to dodge the waterworks. “Yes, of course that means yes. It’s always been a yes, stupid.”

“Hey, you’re the stupid one. Seriously, have you seen us today? We’re so coupley already, literally nothing is changing,” Minho chuckles, walking you backward until you comfortably fall back on the sofa together, “except now,” he pauses, settling himself above you and bringing his face up to yours once more, “I can kiss you wheneeever I want.”

And he does just that; peppering your face, your lips and cheeks and nose with kisses until he has made you a giggling mess, writhing beneath him until he finally stops, sharing a mingled breath with you. “Is it too early to say the ‘L’ word?” Minho whispers, tracing your upper lip with his thumb. You smile, kissing the pad of his finger before, “No. I already know I love you, Minnie. I’m more than in love with you.”

His smile is one of happiness growing, much as a spring flower opens. “Heh. I like this. I love you too,” he answers, finally returning to kiss you in a way that is slow and soft and comforting in ways words cannot describe. And then he pulls back with a gasp.

“I forgot the cat food.”

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[get-your-fics]

Whatever He Wants

Summary: You’re an intern at Wayne Enterprises, and you mistakenly catch Bruce Wayne’s eye.

Pairing: dark!Bruce Wayne x reader

Warnings: Smut, rape/non-con, sexual harassment, language

You stood in the back corner of the executive-conference-room-turned-work-party with a drink in your hand and your arm folded protectively around your waist. The air was filled with chatter and laughter, and you stared at the clusters of business execs and board members who all got paid ten times what you did. It was supposed to be a casual affair, but casual meant something completely different at Wayne Enterprises than it did to you. You felt out of place in your plain slacks and button up blouse. Everyone was wearing what they had worn to work that day, but that meant the women wore Louboutin stilettos and designer dresses, and the men wore two piece Givenchy suits. It looked like a casting call for New York Fashion Week models more than a work party.

Being an intern, you didn’t have many friends at Wayne Enterprises, especially not ones of this high of status. In fact, your work only ever required you to talk to one person, and you hadn’t spotted him yet...

“(Y/N) (Y/L/N)!” You snapped your head to see your boss Lucius Fox walking up to you. Spoke too soon. “Shouldn’t you be on a coffee run somewhere?”

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, shut up.” You knocked your shoulder playfully into his.

Contrary to his joke, Lucius was one of the few bosses you had while interning that didn’t make you fetch Starbucks orders or make copies the entire time. He actually taught you things that would apply to your career later in life, and sometimes he would even let you handle projects he oversaw. For someone in this cutthroat line of work, he was surprisingly nice and levelheaded. He never talked down to you or acted you like you were less than him. He treated you more like his coworker than anything, and you severely respected him as your mentor.

He opened his arms, and you gave him a big bear hug. “How are you?” He stepped away. “Why are you lurking in the corner by yourself?” he asked.

“Waiting for you to show up, don’t you know?” you taunted him.

“Oh, I’m flattered.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “But relax tonight. Mingle, meet some people.”

“Right, ‘cause who wouldn’t want to talk to a broke college intern in a room full of world class business execs?” You scoffed.

Lucius opened his mouth to speak, but he never got the chance to as a tall figure approached. Bruce Wayne strolled up to you, dressed in a black Yves Saint Laurent suit. His jet black curls were parted and slicked, and his dark, brown eyes were sharp like a hawk’s. “Lucius.” He gave him a nod of acknowledgement.

“Bruce.” He met his gaze before shooting you a look out of the corner of his eye.

Bruce Wayne was an absolute foil to Lucius Fox. He walked around like he owned the place even though he had just recently come into his inheritance of the company within the last year. He would strut into Lucius’s office and completely ignore you most days. On the days he didn’t, he would send you on meaningless errands and talk to you like how an owner would talk to his dog. He claimed the title of advisor and CEO, although he hardly did more than prance around and flaunt his abundance of wealth and condescend to anyone who had the unfortunate displeasure of crossing his path.

He turned his head, and his dark eyes locked with yours, scalding you. “Mr. Wayne.” You clasped your hands in front of you and kept your tone passive and neutral.

His eyes narrowed into slits as he looked you up and down. You felt like you were under examination. “Intern, I have some papers in my office I need filed.”

Your eyes widened. He didn’t just... did he?

“Bruce,” Lucius’s tone was sickly sweet and artificial, a warning, “it’s a work party. Nobody’s doing any work right now.”

He laughed like he had said a joke. “Like she does work any other day of the week? All she does is sit there and watch you type on your computer.”

Your hands clenched into fists at your side, and you bit your tongue. He was acting like you weren’t even there. You so badly wanted to tell him off for speaking to you in such a rude manner, but you knew better than to do so. As much as you hated it, he was your boss, even more so than Lucius, and he could have your ass thrown out of the Wayne Enterprises building any time he liked.

“Come on, Bruce. Let her enjoy the party. You should enjoy it too,” he suggested.

His face remained stone cold and unfeeling. He switched his gaze to you. “Let’s go. I’ll show you where they are.”

He spun around on the heel of his polished dress shoe, and you knew better than to disobey him. Lucius let out a sigh next to you. “Have fun, intern,” he accentuated the last word, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Oh, you know I will.” You took one last look at Lucius’s smile full of blinding white teeth and chased after Bruce. You hurried to close the distance between the two of you before he could realize you had tarried.

You turned out of the conference room and into the hall as you followed him. Your flats slapped against the glossy, marble floors as you approached the elevators. He jammed the button displaying an up arrow with his thumb, and a second later, a resounding ding sounded as a red light flashed above the elevator to your left. The sleek, metal doors of the elevator slid open.

He placed his hand on your lower back. “Get in.” You stiffened under his touch. His hand moved down until it was resting just above the curve of your ass. You were about to step out of his grasp when he gave you a nudge with his hand towards the elevator.

You caught yourself on the frame of the elevator door before you could tumble. You thought you heard a deep chuckle behind you, and you gritted your teeth before walking into the elevator. He got in beside you, entering with grace and elegance, and hit the button for the top floor of the building. It lit up as the doors clicked into place, and the elevator jolted as it started its ascension.

Silence settled over the elevator, and you could feel it eating you up inside. You fidgeted and shifted your weight from foot to foot as Bruce stood beside you, stoic. The prospect of spending time alone with him made dread form deep in the pit of your stomach, although you didn’t mind getting away from the party. You were slightly grateful for having an excuse to escape, if only he hadn’t have been that excuse.

The elevator halted, and a moment later, the doors opened. Bruce stepped out first, and you followed after him on instinct. You walked down a corridor before stopping in front of a tall door. He fished his keycard out of the pockets of his suit pants and swiped it through the scanner. The red dot changed to green, and he turned the handle without a problem. He pushed the door open and stood to the side, gesturing you inside.

You walked into his office. All of the lights were off. He stepped in behind you and let the door fall shut. With a flick of his finger on the light switch, the dim, overhead lights cast a warm, yellow glow down on his office. You had never been in here before, but it looked just how you expected it would. The walls were lined with floor to ceiling bookcases, the shelves filled with neatly stacked, color coded books. A grandiose, black desk was in the middle of the room, a overstuffed, tufted desk chair on one side and a plain one on the other. You assumed whoever had sat in the plain chair was either really lucky or really unfortunate. But the most breathtaking part of his office was the wall behind his desk that consisted of large windows looking out onto Gotham City’s skyline. You could see every neon light, every digital billboard, and every headlight of the cars stuck in traffic several levels below your feet. You wanted to press your hands and face to the glass and stare out the window all night, but resisted the urge to.

“You have a beautiful view,” you broke the silence, your voice wavering.

Bruce didn’t say anything. He merely walked past you, and you swore you felt his hand brush up against your ass. But it must’ve just been your imagination. You shook off the feeling as he got out a stack of loose papers piled a mile high. He dropped it onto the desk with a solid thud.

“Here’s the papers.” He maneuvered around the desk and pulled out the bottom drawer. “And here’s where you can file them.”

You walked over and peered down at what he was talking about. The bottom drawer of the desk was a built in filing cabinet. It was separated by multiple dividers all a different color. They each had a tab with a letter going from A to Z in bold, black font and a manila folder behind each divider.

“I want all of them sorted by the first letter of their last name.” He put his hands on his hips. “Think you can manage that?”

You quirked a brow, but his face was hard and unreadable. Was he joking? You learned how to do this in middle school. “Yeah, I can,” was all you said, however.

“Good. Then get started.” You thought that he would leave, but he remained stationary where he was.

You grabbed a paper off of the top of the stack and scanned it with your eyes. It looked to be contact information of some sort. You found the person’s last name and bent over the filing cabinet. Out of the corner of your eye, you thought you saw Bruce lean over as well, as if he was trying to get a peek down your shirt. You fixed your blouse so it covered more of your cleavage and shrugged it off. You were just paranoid, and now your mind was playing tricks on you. You searched for the corresponding letter and filed the paper into the appropriate folder.

You still felt his presence behind you. Maybe he was just trying to make sure you knew what you were doing. He didn’t trust you to file a few papers correctly? “Like that?” you asked, hoping the slight edge to your voice made it clear you wanted to be left alone.

“Yeah, just like that,” he answered. His voice sounded breathier and lower than it had before.

That’s when you felt it: two hands on your hips, and something hard brush up against your ass. You immediately retracted and turned around, your back bumping into the desk. You stared at him with wide eyes. “What the hell?”

Unfortunately, your position allowed him to trap you between him and the desk. “You’re such a tease, you know that?” He pushed a strand of hair behind your ear and pressed an openmouthed kiss to your neck. “Walking around this office with your nose in the air like you’re better than everyone, like you’re better than me.”

He nipped at the skin on your throat, and you squeaked. You grabbed him by his shoulders and shoved him back far enough so he wasn’t touching you. What was he talking about? He was the one who thought he was better than everyone! “I... I think I should go.”

You made to slip between him and the desk, but he wrapped his fingers around your wrist and jerked you back. “You’re not going anywhere, not until I show you where you belong.”

You furrowed your brows. “What are you doing?” It was becoming increasingly hard to hide the panic in your voice. You tugged against his hand on you, but his grip held strong. “Let go of me!” You struggled to break out of his grasp. “Help!”

“Go ahead, scream. Most of the floors below us are empty. No one will hear you.” He pushed you back against the desk and held your body flush against him. His erection was now painfully evident as it strained against the fabric of his pants and poked you in the stomach.

Your eyes widened with fear as you realized no one was coming to save you. Now that flight was no longer an option, you decided to fight. You raised your free hand and clawed at him with a snarl. However, he caught your hand before it neared the smooth, pale skin of his cheek. Your vengeful expression fell, and his lips curled into a devious smirk.

“We’ll have to work on your behavior,” his hold on your wrists was tightening, his fingers painfully digging into your skin, “especially towards your boss.” He leaned in and buried his nose in your hair, inhaling your scent. His hips bucked against yours, and you yelped when you felt how hard he was.

“I’ll... I’ll tell someone!” you threatened, your voice shaky and uneven. “I’ll tell-”

He reared back. “Who are you going to tell? Lucius?” he cut you off. “He can’t do anything. Besides, I’ll just fire you, and you’ll look like you’re making up shit to save face.” He took the skin of your neck between his lips and sucked, clearly aware of the power he had over you.

You bit down on your lip to hold in any moans that wanted to escape as your body tensed against him. You didn’t want to lose your job - couldn’t lose your job. It was the first internship you had found that you had actually enjoyed, not to mention being an intern as a freshman in college at Wayne Enterprises was a major feat. You knew you would have to give into him eventually. It was inevitable; he was Bruce Wayne. Everything got handed to him on a silver platter. Anything he wanted, he got, no matter the cost.

“Please, don’t fire me,” you squealed. You despised how pitiful and helpless you sounded.

He pulled away and cupped your face in his hands. “Oh, you want to be a good girl for me now?” You were forced to stare directly into his eyes. They were dark with lust, and his pupils were extremely dilated. They looked completely black.

You sucked in a breath before your next statement. “What will you do for me if I do?”

He grinned like a wolf barring its teeth. “Now, you’re talking.” He moved his leg in between yours and pressed his thigh right against the sensitive area in your crotch. You gasped at the pleasure that ran through you like a chill as warmth pooled in your gut. “I’ll double your salary,” he rocked against you, causing his thigh to rub your clit, “and guarantee you a job in four years time.”

“Do you like doing this?” You tried to seem tough despite your wavering voice. “Forcing yourself on vulnerable interns?”

He chuckled at that. “Lucky for you, you’re my first. There’s just something about you I find so... irresistible.” He ran this thumb over your bottom lip, and your jaw went slack. You were the same age, but right now he seemed so much older than you. “So, do we have a deal?”

You were absolutely aching now. As much as you hated the wetness that gathered in between your thighs, it was growing unbearable. You didn’t think you could stand it any longer, and his offer was pretty much impossible to pass up on. Securing a job at Wayne Enterprises would set you on a good career path for the rest of your life.

You nodded. “Okay.” Your voice cracked.

His grin widened, and his eyes darkened until they swallowed all light that hit them. “Good.”

He crashed his lips against yours. You were so taken aback that you bumped back into the desk, causing the stack of papers to crash to the ground. They scattered across the floor, and some floated in the air before slowly descending and coming to rest. He didn’t seem to care and continued to move his lips against yours. You closed your eyes and tried to relax into the kiss. He tilted his head to the side and slipped his tongue into your mouth, quickly gaining dominance over yours. He tasted like whatever drink he had been sipping on downstairs at the party: sweet, but bitter. You loathed the fact that you enjoyed the taste and found yourself yearning for more.

He disconnected your lips, a flush of red across his pale features and one dark lock out of place on his forehead. “Get on the desk,” he whispered huskily, his lips tickling the shell of your ear.

You did as he said and grabbed the lip of the desk, pushing yourself on top of it. You laid down on your back and hugged your knees to your chest. You caught sight of the red marks he had left on your wrists and rubbed at them. You rolled out your sore wrists, knowing you would find bruises there later.

He grabbed your blouse and tore it open, causing buttons to pop off and fly everywhere. You listened as they bounced off of the desk and onto the floor. He covered the cups of your bra with his hands and left a trail of wet kisses over the swells of your breasts. He moved his hands lower to the zipper on your pants. He pulled it down and practically ripped your pants and your underwear off of you. He pushed your legs apart, and you became aware of how exposed you were. You felt like you were on display for him.

He stared down at your pussy like he was mesmerized and ran a finger through your folds. “You’re so wet, all for me.” You felt your cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. He slipped his finger inside of you, and you gasped as the burning stretch gave way to pleasure. “Don’t pretend you don’t want this.”

He got on his knees and wrapped his lips around your clit as he continued to pump his finger in and out of you. The sensation was too much for you, and you couldn’t stop the filthy stream of expletives that spilled from your lips. You needed something to grab onto, so you threaded your fingers through his hair. He moaned against you as you roughly yanked on his dark curls, the vibrations only aiding the arousal pulsing through you.

Just as you felt your climax building, he pulled away. You almost whined at the loss, but stopped yourself by biting down your tongue. He ran his tongue over his lips, licking your juices that dripped off of his chin, and sucked your slick off of his fingers. He shrugged off his suit jacket and loosened the tie around his neck. Then, he reached down and undid his own zipper. You watched as he pushed his pants and boxers over his hips, freeing his straining erection. You got a good look at just how big he was, precum dripping off of the red tip.

He leaned over you so his face was mere inches from yours. You felt the head of his cock at your entrance. He pushed in, and a squeak fell from your lips. You felt like you were being pulled apart in different directions. You sat up on your elbows and spread your legs wider to alleviate some of the tension. He pushed you back down and pressed his chest flush against yours. He finally pushed in to the hilt, and you squeezed your eyes shut.

He pulled out of you only to thrust back in with a sharp snap. You yelped, your walls still too tight to accommodate him comfortably. “Relax, intern,” he purred, his tone strangely soothing. He planted one arm on the desk next to you to steady himself as he set a pace. “Fuck, I knew you’d feel amazing.” Sweat gathered on his brow as his lips parted in rapture. The sight made your stomach crawl, and you looked away. He grabbed your chin, squishing your cheeks, and turned your head back to face him.

He forced you to stare into his eyes as he fucked you. They were like two blackholes, endless, bottomless voids that you could fall into. He pounded into you faster now, and you could feel your orgasm starting to build once again. His white button up clung to his chest with sweat where your bodies met, and the creaking of the desk under your weight filled your ears. Your breaths came shorter now, and there was no stopping your desperate mewls. He grunted in time with his thrusts, the head of his cock hitting that spot in you just right each time he pushed in to his max.

You were on the cusp of your orgasm as you latched onto his shoulders. “Are you going to cum for me, intern?” he almost sneered at you.

You wanted to curse him out, but found that your brain couldn’t form any words. All you could do was let out a breathy sigh and nod your head. You locked eyes with him as your pussy constricted around his cock, drawing a high-pitched whine from you. Your juices spilled out of you and coated your thighs as you came. You arched your spine, the back of your head painfully connecting with the desk, and curled your toes as every nerve ending in your body was set on fire. You raked your nails up his back under his shirt, leaving goosebumps and red, irritated skin in your wake.

He groaned and sped up. “Gonna fill you with my cum,” he muttered and licked at your breasts. “You want that, intern? For me to cum inside you?”

You couldn’t say anything; you were still coming down from your high. He growled and pushed your knees up by your shoulders. He thrust into you all the way as he came, spilling his warm seed into you. He stilled on top of you, his thighs twitching and his face frozen in ecstasy. Then he pulled out of you, and you could feel his cum drip out of your sore pussy.

He collapsed on top of you, burying his face in your hair. You both stayed like that for a moment as you recovered from your climaxes. Then, he pushed himself up and covered your face in kisses. It was a strangely sweet and intimate gesture for the harsh fucking he had just done to you.

He got completely off of you and pulled his pants up, zipping his fly. You slowly sat up, your head spinning. You looked for your discarded pants on the floor and eventually located them through your blurry gaze. You reached for the lacy underwear sitting on top, but a hand snatched them out of your grasp before you could get to them. Bruce brought them up to his nose and sniffed, a mischievous smirk coming over his face. “Consider these assurance of our agreement.” He dangled them from his finger tauntingly before stuffing them in his back pocket.

You grimaced as you pulled on your pants, the material sticking to your legs. You didn’t know why you were getting dressed; there was no way you could go back to the party looking how you did. Your hair was mussed, your lips red and swollen, and you were covered in sweat and saliva and cum. You looked thoroughly fucked, and everyone would know what you were up to with your boss in his office. It wouldn't be hard to come to some conclusions.

Speaking of... “So, when will I get my raise?” you asked as nonchalantly as possible. You tried to casually lean back against the desk. You could see an outline of your entangled bodies in sweat on the surface.

You watched as he adjusted his tie. “Probably by the end of this weekend.” He fixed the collar of his button up. “However, it is going to come directly out of my personal bank account. Not that that’s a problem, but I think that I should be the one getting the benefits of your hard work instead of Lucius.” He smoothed out the fabric of his shirt with his hands. “So you’ll be interning under me for now on.”

Your heart sank to your stomach. “Wha... what?”

He smirked. “You heard me, intern.” He wrapped an arm around your shoulder and pulled you into his chest, pressing a kiss to your matted hair. He had gotten the last laugh. “It looks like me and you will be working very, very close together.”

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