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#mountain passes
afrotumble · 8 months
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📷 Cecilia Kokai
Karakoram Highway connecting Pakistan to China. Known to the Chinese as the "Road of Friendship", this highway connects Pakistan to China through the Karakoram Ridge. Crosses the Khunjerab Pass at an altitude of 4,964 meters (second highest in the world). Its construction began in 1959 and it was completed after 27 years. The Karakoram is an incredible feat of engineering, spanning 1,300 km across three mountain ranges of the Himalayas and the Hindukush.
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adventurealldays · 2 years
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Colorado backroads
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eopederson · 2 years
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Monument at the Top of Rogers Pass Marking Completion in 1962 of the Transcanada Highway (Canada 1), Glacier National Park, British Columbia, 2019.
Additional stretches of the road were completed later, but opening of the Rogers Pass road made it possible to drive from the Atlantic to the Pacific without leaving Canada. I fondly remember a trans-Canada trip in that year.
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somdyala · 8 months
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helloaelita · 10 months
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Dolomites Van Life Guide: Giau Pass, Part 4
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Motorbike on Mountain Pass
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incognito-princess · 1 year
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Monarch Pass, Colorado- This was my drive in my first year of college (University for the non-U.S.) Beautiful? Yes. Terrifying in my college car, which was an '81 AMC Eagle? Also yes. One of the major reasons I transferred to a Front Range school. The other reason is because I'm just not a small-mountain-town girl. I'm a front-range-city-visit-small-mountain-towns, girl.
photo credit- Lars Leber Photography
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orofeaiel · 9 months
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Autumn colors on the Cutthroat Pass trail
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jacksoncrabb · 2 years
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Mountain Passes and Small Town Experiences
Mountain Passes and Small Town Experiences
With Cranbrook in the rearview mirror the rain began to drizzle down on the hood of the Tacoma and we flipped on the windshield wipers and the fog lights, too. As the rain continued down highway 95 towards Yahk, we began discussing the last road trip through this same part of the countryside. “When was the last time we came through this valley?” Shauna asked. Starring down the road, my mind…
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rhapsoddity · 2 months
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Been concepting an AU (reworking it across fandoms and settling on this season of HC)
Most of the AU isnt set in stone - which is why I'm just concepting - but its a cyberpunk-y setting and Grian is stuck in a timeloop where if any of these guys die, the loop resets.
Oh, and Grian doensnt remember his friends at all :)
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annajewelsphotography · 8 months
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Jaufen Pass - Italy (by Anna Jewels (@earthpeek))
https://www.instagram.com/earthpeek/
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mariana-oconnor · 7 months
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wormees · 19 days
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sjm if you can hear me, please include a cute little scene where lucien gets his hair braided by elain PLEASEE
so many long haired men in this damn series and youre telling me theres not ONE cute hair braiding scene. so much POTENTIAL and for WHAT
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nature-hiking · 6 months
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climbing to the snow covered mountain pass - Alpine Haute Route, July 2021
photo by: nature-hiking
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motocrunch · 2 months
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Ride in the clouds
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pursuitseternal · 3 months
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“Use Your Words:” but Astarion prefers action 🔥 nsfw prompt fill: he’s your only companion.
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Astarion x F!Reader | E | 3.6K of seductive smut
Anonymous prompt fill: what if he was your one and only companion? I also imagined, what if he discovered you write smutty things about him?
Summary: Your only companion has grown distant after you’ve turned his advances away once. And then Astarion finds your writing, your fantasies and imaginings that give him the inkling you’re not so against his advances as you once were 🔥
CW: wounded-pride vampire, yearning fulfilled, elegant prose about his whiff, banter and seduction, caught in flagrante the next morning…
Ao3 Link | Bites Series on Ao3 |List
Night falls, another evening to yourself as Astarion treads into the forest of the Mountain Pass to hunt. Perhaps your body would finally relax if you had allowed for more company on your journey to finding a healer. Sometimes, you question if you might see that Cleric of Shar or that Wizard again on the road forward. Perhaps this time you would agree… or even beg them… to join you. For days it has been only you two, you and the… vampire. He had made himself known, what he was known, awhile ago it seems.
You almost wish you had one more person with you to keep watch on him during those long, dark hours of night when he was the one on watch.
Of course, he fed on you nightly or daily, an act that ensured he stayed strong enough to protect you, even as you ran around bloodless the next morning. But, after that first night, you insisted he only feed when you are awake. There’s nothing, no one to hide his nature from.
Your camp is quiet, just a humble tent he makes each time in case of rain and two simple bedrolls by the fire. He hunts for your meat, bringing you back fresh kills, even if they are mostly drained already.
While your days are filled with adventure and bloodshed, your evenings are quiet.
Except for that one, a tenday ago already or more. When he suggested that he could give you a little something in return for the daily feeding you allotted him.
Your stomach had knotted, not unlike the way it does every time his fangs pierce your flesh, every time his lips and tongue suck you down over dinner by the fire. When you eat, so does he….
But that night he offered to taste more of you than the veins of your wrist.
No, you had replied. Flustered. Hasty. Head swimming from blood loss as your blood still dried on his chin. It wouldn’t be safe, too risky, too dangerous… too, too.
“A pity,” he had whispered before sliding away to keep watch first that night. “You look delicious in the moonlight…”
Since then, he had built so many walls, found so many excuses to keep himself busy during those quiet hours after dark before you slept. He kept every book you had looted, insisting that perhaps these were more helpful than any plans you had for finding a way to Moonrise Towers. When he wasn’t hunting, he was reading… or feeding…. Or if you caught him from the corner of your eye, glaring at you with some sort of mix of hunger and fear and resentment.
And you… you had taken to writing and drawing with quill and ink in a small leather book you purloined from the Monastery yesterday. Tonight, he turns from the mountain trails, two rabbits already prepped for roasting in his hands. He is silent. Something once so uncommon between you two. His hands work quickly to hang them over the fire, the scent of them cooking making your stomach growl. Astarion isn’t much of a cook, but he does at least continue to give you the consideration of a good nightly meal. His eyes look down at you, his gaze goes from sharp and bitter to… surprised.
“What the hells are you doing?” he demands, that voice just as silken as he judges you as when he tires to seduce you.
You shrug, pulling the small book against your stomach. “Nothing… not really….”
“Come come now, I bring you a brace of rabbits, you could at least reward me with some entertainment….” His eyes shift as he lowers himself to sit beside you on your bedroll. Something he hasn’t done since you rejected him. And you can tell, by the way his tongue rolls, he’s teasing you with just what kind of entertainment you insist on offering him.
Or denying him.
“I’m… not sure,” you hem in hesitation. And for as much as you know in your brain you should lean away as he encroaches on your space, you just… can’t. You missed that easy company he gave you. Before he suggested more. Before his naming you delicious had settled in your brain as a daily moniker you could almost hear him thinking as he drank from you still.
Oh yes, that was what he wanted. You swallow loudly, keeping the journal between your thighs, rolling up the cuff of your nightshirt for him to drink from your wrist. He catches your hand in his, a soft cradle to his fingers, thumb stroking up the sensitive gooseflesh of your inner wrist. As if he were trying to find the perfect spot to bite.
As if he didn’t always bite in the same place.
Before you know it, that small book is pulled from your hiding spot, his velvety voice peeling giggles as he cracks it open where your quill rests. But then he freezes.
“You’re writing… poetry?” He gives you that rakish look, that canted brow and quirking lips, even as you try to snatch it back.
You growl, aggravated. He’s just too quick and too dexterous to fight fair. “Music, if you must know… though I am no bard… just with words.”
He casts a look at you, one of pure judgment, “So, poetry, darling.”
“Does it matter? It’s mine,” you huff, reaching across his lap for your book. He doesn’t waste a second, using your frustration and your momentum to flatten you out over his thighs.
And over other parts of his anatomy you… well, ones you had been observing perhaps more since his advance on you that night.
He presses his elbows into your back, points digging between your shoulder blades. “Your words choice is impeccable… gods, when was the last time I read anything with the word effervescent in it… or nefarious…” he pauses; leaning forward to put more of his body weight into where he prods your back. “Oh my, you little scribe of humble poetry… who is this who ‘you wish to inhale the scent of petrichor from his skin?’”
His voice fades quieter. And your stomach sinks as you can feel his pride curling stronger inside him. “Oh, I had no idea darling… and here I was, thinking you just kept me for my looks and that I bring you food for a warm meal each night.” He leans back on his palm, your book still in one hand, and that blastedly smug smirk on his sharp features. “I had no idea you wanted to smell the fresh earth scent on my skin till dawn.”
You cringe, rising back up to your knees. Mortified that he read your drabbles, your little ways of occupying your thoughts, with him so… distant. And you, so alone.
“How long would you let yourself keep pining for me? Yearning for the scent of my skin on yours, hmm?” He smirks so twistedly, his fangs flash in the firelight. “All you have to do is ask, pet.” He gives you a cheeky grin, proffering the book back towards you, “unless…” he yanks it from the tips of you fingers. “Unless you wanted me to find your lustful prose… In which case you might be an even more masterful seductress than I gave you credit for, darling.”
“Give it back….” You whine. Irritated and annoyed. And your skin grows hotter by the second the more those crimson eyes stare into yours.
“Ah, ah,” he taunts and flaunts the book in your face. “I know you are more gifted with words than that. What if we play a game? Let’s see just how prettily you can plead to have this book back in your possession… unless there is something else you wish me to give you?”
“I….” You swallow. Your belly cries out yes, yes there is something else. Your reason however still nags at you that it is too dangerous.
That he is too dangerous.
“I think it might be best if we just eat and go to bed, Astarion,” you whisper. But even your own ears aren’t convinced by that timid tone.
“You think…?” he purrs, setting the book right at the top of your lap. Pushing it against your body. “Sounds rather uncertain for a wordsmith.”
You can’t help the way your eyes flutter shut, feeling his breath down your neck. Cold… like the mountain wind that carries his scent to your nose. That earth-laden scent of his skin masked by his fragrances of sharp citrus and mellow herbs. His hand barely brushes the top of your thigh as he withdraws, not an accident with his skilled hands. And all you're left with as he rises back to his feet is the true night breeze chilling your skin and the scent of roasting meat over the fire.
Astarion smiles to himself, all arrogance and seduction, using his dagger, one you hope is clean, to carve off the freshly cooked rabbit. He places it in the bowl with his own fingers, only looking up at you to lock eyes as he languorously licks the juice from those pale digits.
“You know,” he starts to muse, eyes cast into the night sky. The perfect picture of wistful. “We could have been quite the pair, you and I, aside from the obvious prowess in battle thus far. There’s much about one another I’m sure we would… enjoy… getting to know, many layers of ourselves we could peel off one another….”
You sigh, and he hears it, head snapping down to give you that look like you’re his next meal served up as prettily as the one he starts bringing in your direction. “Shame you haven’t capitalized on two such offers now.”
“Tell me, just how much are we alike? Can’t be that much if your advances have failed twice…” you smirk, feeling a little bratty edge, a naughty tone in your voice.
It makes him smile, and wrinkle his nose in insult all at once.
He settles near you, not so close as before. Waiting for you to pick at your food first before he can reach for your wrist. Instead his eyes seem fixed on your mouth, watching as your fingers place your food inside, the way you suck them clean after each bite. “Alike?” He finally speaks after a swallow and a shift of his body. “No, I think we… complement one another, though we may be completely opposite. You love to write. I love to read. You can't help but follow your instinct to give aid to nearly everyone we encounter, and I keep us going ahead on our adventure regardless. You speak with justice, and I can swindle and rob.” He grins, finally leaning closer to wrap his cold fingers around your wrist. He tugs you, more forcefully than usual. Resting your palm against the hard planes of his chest. “We go well together, lots of give and take…. I can give… if you can take it, darling”
You almost choke on the food in your mouth, his hand landing square in your back, slap after slap as you try to clear it completely.
“I don’t think words would bring you so close to death, darling,” he continues, giving you room to grab your water and drink from the glass neck of its bottle a few times. “I mean, I was hoping I might bring you to a little death, but not that close to that kind…”
You groan. Shoving your wrist in his face you throw him a withering glare. “Please, you think you’re so skilled with your tongue…”
“…and other parts of my anatomy, yes.”
You smack him with your arm in the chest. “Fine, given you know my little secret, that I love words….”
“…not to mention your ever-growing lust for me since you’ve realized your mistake, that secret too.”
Another smack in his chest, this time he half catches it, holding your extended arm tightly.
“Why don’t you use some words instead and tell me what you would do?”
He brings the tender flesh of your wrist against his lips, eyes half closed as he speaks against your skin. “I’ve never been one for poetic flattery as a tool of seduction and a means of conquest.” He runs his tongue up to your palm. “I’m rather limited in where I can demonstrate…” he flashes his eyes down the collar of your nightshirt, “unless you wish to grant me a larger sample?”
“Use your words first…” you simper, “then perhaps if I’m convinced.”
“I’d rather make little words and sounds cry from your lips instead…” he rasps, skating the edge of his fang back down your arm. A little, breathy moans slips from your mouth, and you feel him laughing. “That’s right, darling. You’re delectable, delicious…” the wet breadth of his tongue sweeps back up to your hand. “You’re tantalizing and succulent….” Your thumb slips into his mouth as he toys with it around that devilish tongue. “Luscious and mouthwatering… even if I wasn’t a Spawn I would no doubt hunger for you night and day….”
You have slid closer, close enough for one of your legs to dart between his muscled thighs. Fingers grip into your thigh, pulling that leg higher, right into the peak of his lap. He’s still caressing inside your wrist, his thumb working one way, his tongue another. You can hear your own breath quicken, your pulse deafens your ears to any sound but your heart and the wet sucks of his mouth.
Just as the swirling rhythm of his tongue threatens to sweep you away with it, his teeth bite into your wrist. The slice of pain through the heat and tingling bliss that gathers in your core shed pleasure exploding from your core. His eyes flare wide, watching as you can’t break your own stare from his mouth on your wrist, on the feeling of your blood melding with his own body.
“Now… you’re a writer of sorts, so im sure you’re familiar with all sorts of flowery terms for all of life’s… delicacies. For instance,” he pauses to drink down more of your blood from your wrist, “imagine all that I did on your poor, unsuspecting wrist but instead…” he pulls you by the wrist until your chest is flush with his, your breasts, unbound under your shirt, rising and falling with your rapid breath. “Imagine I’m… diving for your most precious pearl. Delving into your treasure trove before I… plow your fertile garden.”
“Maybe you should shut your mouth and leave the poetic words to me,” you hiss, barely annoyed and definitely flustered by the sensations in your folds his words alone have stirred.
“Maybe you need to make me shut my mouth, darling,” his hand wraps around to the small of your back. “If you want this, darling, but, given your poetic musings, we both know you do….”
“We both know it, do we?” you pout a bit, a little sneer on your lips.
Suddenly you're laid out in your back, his arms caging over your, thighs pressing on the outside of your own. You laugh, “You’re obscene, Astarion…”
“Come on now, we’ve already established I want you to call me so much worse than that, little poet,” he smirks down on you, taunting mercilessly as you squirm beneath him.
“Shouldn’t we…” you eye your surroundings.
“Why don’t you just forget about all this madness for tonight, let me show you just how complementary we can be, darling.”
You wrap your arms around his long, graceful neck, and pull him down to crush you into the dirt, into your bedroll. Night passes impossibly fast, a dance of limbs and undulations that last the night. You only pause for a drink and to stoke the fire to keep your skin warm against the freezing mountain air. You lose count how many times he takes you, on his fingers, on his tongue, speared relentlessly in every position on his cock.
Your brain is numb from pleasure, your neck numb from his bites, your nipples aching from his lips and well… the rest of your whole lower half strains as you grip your thighs around his waist one more time. His fingers claw into your hips, locking you firmly in place as he thrusts into you. The way his hips grind each time, you’ve already lost yourself in one more wave of sweat and pleasurable fire down your nerves. From the grunts on his breath, he’s not far behind. Astarion’s hips snap quicker, harder. Deeper. Until he’s shuddering and collapsing on your frame for a final time. His sweat covers your skin, and you do breathe deep that scent of wet earth as if it were your own perfume. One more stilted pant and he pulls out of your swollen aching, overused folds.
With a deep recovering sigh, he starts to lift the blanket from your bed… but you catch it, tucking it back around his shoulders. “I was… thinking… it’s cold in the mountains. And…” he rolls over to face you, sharp face furrowed even sharper, skeptical as you finally use your voice for more than moans and screaming his name and how good he feels. “…maybe since you’re already so cold, you could stay?”
He pauses, a bit rigid as he perches halfway out, away from you. Halfway close to you.
“Please, Astarion, it’s cold, and I am warm. There would be no better place for you to rest than between the warm campfire and me….” You leave the offer gently in the air. Rolling on your side to face him, you wait and watch his thoughts flicker behind those crimson eyes. Uncertain, unsure. As if, despite being the consummate lover he had always bragged about being, this was his first invitation to sleep with someone.
Just sleep.
To keep him warm from the mountain air.
Blanketed in all manner of heat for once.
Slowly, he slinks back beside you, perched on his side like you are, his face trying hard to remain just as self-assured. Even though you see his eyes dart, as if waiting for you to change your mind.
“Relax, Astarion,” you whisper, taking the top blanket and wrapping it over the high crest of his shoulders. Tucking him in. “I feel more than complimentary with you now…” you tease. “And you were right….”
“Of course I was,” he huffs dramatically as he lays on his back beside you, head turning to flash you a devilish look. “You’ll have to be more specific though; what was I right about?”
“Actions were definitely more fun than just using my words….”
He chuffs a laugh, exhausted and spent and wet from how much of you he’s consumed, blood and arousal still staining his chin. You slide a tinge closer, slotting your body beside him, wriggling yourself in that small space between his arm and chest. Ever so slightly, his hand finds your elbow, bringing it over his chest as his breath deepens for his trance.
He seems happy, contented. Your world reduced to only you two, the only beings in Faerûn it seems, sharing one bed. And you wonder for a moment why you ever turned him down before.
Sleep claims you quickly… but dawn finds you somehow faster.
“Ahem,” a deep voice startles you awake, your eyes flying open to find three faces staring down on you in your bedroll.
You in your bedroll naked… and not alone.
That Druid from the Grove, you almost forgot you told him to join you if they could find you, he smiles at you, a bit cheeky and a bit good-humored. And your cheeks are searing hot. Astarion has already bolted up to sit, dagger in hand from somewhere he had it, just in case.
But he’s already lowered it to the earth at the familiar visitors.
“We did say we would come find your camp in the Pass, didn’t we?” the Druid Halsin chuckles in that big baritone of his.
The other two beside him, the Wizard… Gale and that Cleric whose name has already slipped your sleepy memory look far less approving of catching you on full display after your night’s activities.
“Well, you’ve found us…” Astarion bites acerbically, letting his full annoyance color his silken tones. “Make yourselves at home, if it pleases you.”
He lays back down, tucking himself half on top of you, that long, lean arm of his caging over your bared chest, squashing your breasts beneath it.
Your voice finally returns, even as mortified as you feel for that moment. “Plenty of supplies and food in the trunks.” You try to wave in that direction, but his arm clutches harder, a smile of his lips playfully pressing against your cheek.
The prick.
“Well I certainly hope you have some clean bedrolls,” that Cleric sasses back.
“Feel free to take mine,” Astarion barely lifts his head to call after the three. “Seems I won’t be needing it any longer,” he purrs, pulling you closer to warm his undead, chilled skin.
“You probably will,” you shake your head as you give your reply.
“Not when I can simply give you another demonstration to convince you otherwise,” he smirks, hand slinking fast and nearly imperceptible until it finds the still-slick mess of your night’s pursuits between your thighs.
You give a huff of a laugh, “Do you forget it isn’t just us two any longer?”
Your vampire shrugs. “A boon and a pity in some ways, which reminds me….” A mischievous smirk on his lips before he brings your wrist to his mouth for another suckle. “You will obviously give them the night watch now instead… won’t you?”
You laugh, chiding and yet pleased all at once. “Only if you convince me, and if you use your words this time.”
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