#no wonder he’s the office strumpet

[yeetlegay]

#no wonder he’s the office strumpet #you’d have to be a heartless monster to turn him down like you might as well just shoot Bambi’s mom all over again while you’re at it #bed friend the series #why don’t queue stay

[libidomechanica]

Untitled # 8992

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all the speld. If any     wonderment, fair, in the other now-a-days is close coterie;     also some gain’d to Juan, till world, and favour’d on bounteous     as t were stand

sentiment I’d faine might be. His     Favour leave to precontracted much, earth, smiles breath,—he from     whose leaue vnto they would remote Shalott. And clinking doe themes     in threatening people throughout

life, and crooked Course, now hauing     piano our Theme. Comes to the strife, the might honest speech,     his Soul another men forsake thyself can Righteous toyle,     and run againe the

bridal wiles she were once enlumind     may find thrall, in this we have remember;—but a mortall,     check that his Memory of acceptation that feed.     The time, and eyelids stretch

around befriend, and whored, the     young; nae artfu’ wiles she which vnto me the revel in a     moment wealth, and doth strict order plac’d; where the mystical     usurper of that I

was a rock; she glorious elf,     we’ll sen’ me, O; but how sacred Empression of     every striue your fingers walk away; she repulse of kynd.;     The line or the kills were

she glides unfelt into a woman     principle will Swear, and then we use like their school, it     was once unkind an honey’d in the ground: that Stella shine;     that it from her frown’d, when,

again. How lonely officers     of champagne? Not all, then turn’d fiends, there is spent: that sad relief!     With the answer, echoes— like a lady in your parts     endured he rode beside

a long forth in bookes. Unless     arm; time breathe, have expansion House the trophees to the new-     blooming with these haples roomes that oppressionating     chance the blush against wrecks?

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #124 texts #ballad

[adowbaldwin]

Bed pan horror

for @sazmags and @butternuggets-blog - an expansion from the RP series ‘ therapy’ with @begins-with-an-absence-of-desire

December 1880

“So much for promises” Eva hissed, storming into Philippe’s office “you lickspittled, Hornswoggling ASS” she bellowed, eyes filling with fury as she caught sight of Baldwin in his father’s office.

She caught wind he was following orders from Philippe to intervene in matters in the Transvaal Rebellion.

“Wrangle your strumpet Baldwin” Philippe lifted his head from the map he was pinning pegs into “Or I will do it for you” he growled, eyeing her with as much hate as she did

“Bastard come near me and ill-“ her idle threat was cut short, when Baldwin grabbed her arm, pulling her from the office

“How dare you” he hissed “I gave you orders-“

His jaw snapped loudly, the crack delivered by her punch sending his face sidewards “ORDERS?” she bellowed, and Ysabeau winced from the decibels, and she was out in the gardening preening her Cheery Crocuses’. “I am not merely some solider you can order about I’m your PARTNER”

His head turned back, thunderous. He shoved her up against the wall, grabbing her chin with such force she thought it might snap “You can either behave or leave. I will speak of this matter later” he growled as she wriggled under his constraint “stop moving” he gritted out

She gawked her throat, retching back and spat in his face “I piss on our grave” she wriggled more, and his hand smashed her wrists to the wall, making a slight dent. He slipped his hand from her jaw to her neck and squeezed, not till she couldn’t breathe but enough that she understood no matter how much she tried, she wasn’t going to win.

She was feisty, and he liked the pain but there was nothing on this earth that would make her stronger then he was. He was almost 1300 years her senior, and despite her own history of fighting in wars her strength dwindled in comparison to his own.

Tears flooded her face “you lied to me” she sobbed, unable to look at him “you said you were finished fighting. you are supposed to be in finance”

“I will speak of this matter later” he hissed back quietly “do not disturb mans work again. Am I understood” he jolted her chin to look back at him, and he bit her lip drawing a little blood “Am I understood” he snarled

“Yes master” she hissed back with as much venom as a poisonous snake

He pushed away from the wall lightly, though his hands were still on her throat. He took this moment of passiveness to pull his lips to hers, running his tongue over where he had bitten into her. She went dizzy, eyes still burning from tears but she couldn’t help melting into him. He finally let her go, lips delightfully swollen and she sulked off to his tower awaiting for their argument after his meeting

                      He launched a book at his fathers head when he re entered the office, who was almost wetting himself from laughter “If you do not marry that one Baldwin you are a fool” he grinned at his sons dismay

“I shall not marry a dead woman” he snarled “she is unruly, no lady of a house a far too opinionated” he slumped heavily back into his chair, eyes running over the map of South Africa.

“Ah yes. But she does put a twitch in your pants no” he grinned, as another book went flying. He dodged this one, launching it back towards his son “You accept your fate that you would not settle for a meek flower, and we can move on”

They resumed their talks, though Baldwins mind wondered back to the little temptress currently fuming in his towers.

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

He found her taking quill to paper at her desk in his room, writing notes to her mother. He came behind her and planted a kiss to her head “I leave tomorrow morning” he whispered, knowing she would be displeased

“Yes Sir, would you like me to bend over now sir” she hissed, the quill snapping as she exerted too much pressure. She didn’t turn to face him, face ridden with fury

“Eva” he cooed “Don’t be angry with me, it shall only be a few short months” his hands smoothed over her sleeves, inching his way closer to her bodice.

“Yes sir, would you like me to spit and shine your shoes before you go?” her voice levelled into what she imagine a ‘good housewife’ would sound, to please his majesty whom clearly seeks the palatable lady

“we both know you have enough spit to go around” he growled “do you wish I leave without a goodbye” he was not intending on it, he was good at worming his way into her good books.

She folded her envelope, turning in her chair sideways to face him. They were nose to nose, and she lifted the envelope up to her mouth, darting her tongue out to lick the seal. Envelopes were still a rare commodity, especially those with the odd gum tacked to the seal but she took full advantage of the many perks it was to be in relations with a De Clermont. They always had the shiniest toys first.

He growled, a feral noise erupting from his throat as she licked the paper “Eva do not bate me”

She bit her lip slowly letting it fall from her mouth. She moved an inch, so she was straddling the chair facing him, leaning against the leather. She kept her eyes on him as she picked her bodice open, the hook eyes popping as she did “I lay on my back now, like a good lady to please her Lord” he words dripped with venom and condescension

He growled, nostrils starting to flare “For God sake Eva, I can’t refuse my father” he all but yelled “I have my orders”

She deadpanned him “so do I” her last button popped and his patience faltered  when she shimmied out of her skirts, leaving her clad in only a thin chemise and stays.

He grabbed her chin again, this time exerting so much force her jaw cracked under the pressure. She reared her head back, hand covering her mouth at the moment of searing pain that coursed through her body. He was absolutely mortified. He had never, and would never hurt her in a way she didn’t like. She was one for abit of roughness as he was, delighting in a good spanking but never that.

He paled, as much as he could for a vampire and dropped to his knees and actually kissed her feet “im so sorry Eva” he whispered

It took a moment for her vampire DNA to work the crack, mending whatever had snapped and she looked down to meet his horrified gaze. She was as much in shock as he was, and she was not thinking clearly.

She was a warrior like he had been, not having fought in as many battles, but never the less still a solider at heart. Her hand that was flat on the desk moved to grab her knife, and she clutched it between her fingers. A loud swoosh echoed the room as she battered him up side his head with the flat blunt of her knife.

Only it wasn’t her knife, it was the still warm bedpan that had been propped against the wall from the mornings linen change.

He thumped to the floor as soon as the connection was made, dazed and seeing stars. All he faintly heard was someone screaming for cold compress.

                       He woke up groggy, eye in slight pain. He remembered taking a good hit, and also remembered why. He peeped open his eyes to see Eva sat staring down at him on the bed and she was sniffling lightly. He reached up, wiping away her falling tears “Don’t cry doll, the blood will react with all the mercury on your face”

She tried to laugh but she couldn’t, her lip blubbered as she muttered a flurry of apologies “I didn’t mean – I thought it was my knife”

He pulled her down, and she curled ontop of his body “it is already forgiven, doll” his lips planted fluttered kisses along her head and she calmed

She peered up at him, with the most innocent doe eyed expression she could muster “However will I make it up to you, in the next six hours before you leave me”

He groaned, feeling her hips move to be flush with his own “Eva I have to leave, they need a commander not more soldiers. If it were bodies they needed, Matthew would be sent. Philippe needs someone to navigate both sides of the war”

She knew, she already knew. He would not disavow anything Philippe said. He could ask him to change his name to Nancy and he would “I know, you are following orders” her lips sought his, savouring his taste and the overwhelming scent of sandal leather and woodfire.

His hands crept up under her petticoats, the many layers ruffling as he did so. His hands found her sweet spot and he moaned into her mouth “no knee length draws today, doll?” he questioned, circling her in ways that made her toes curl

She bit her lip, groaning as he teased her “Are you going to please me properly” she shimmied her weight, flicking the covers from his body “or are you going to talk me to sleep”

He pinched her, jolting her alert “perhaps I am too dazed to love on you properly doll. Whom lies fault with that?”

She lifted herself out of her petticoats, hiking up her chemise. Her hands sought to free himself from his trousers, pinging his braces from his shoulders. He sprang free, ready as ever and she happily sunk onto him “then allow me” she moaned as they connected deeply for the last time they would in four long months till he returned home form the Boar War.

#fic #aodw #a discovery of witches

[clairebeauchampfan]

The biter bit. How ‘liberals’  are consuming their own

I’ll begin this post, as one has to nowadays, by reiterating my sincere commitment to whatever righteous cause takes your fancy this week. No one can accuse me of not following the party line, or having ‘wrongthought’. I freely confess to my past, deviationist, splittist opinions, and respectfully ask to be sent to a reeducation camp, preferably among the Uighurs. 

Meanwhile, back in what remains of the Free World, I have to laugh when I see so many prominent ‘Liberals’ getting themselves in hot water because of what they have said or done in contravention of the Groupthink that they themselves once so earnestly supported.  

For example Steve Bell, the wannabe socialist cartoonist, is being ‘let go’ from his contract with The Guardian, the UK’s Liberal-left paper of record. No doubt partly because of his age (ageism being rife amongst right-on folk) but perhaps also because they are looking for a young BIPOC/woman/LGBTQ+ to replace him, and , let’s face it, Steve Bell is...ahem...an older non-BIPOC non-female person (that’s an old white male, to those who aren’t woke). The Guardian recently published a Bell cartoon showing Priti Patel, the Home Office (Interior) Minister as an ugly cow - or a bull- forgetting that for Hindus, half the UK’s people of South Asian ancestry, the bovine is sacred. Cue an outraged and insulted minority, offended even more when the paper refused to apologise or withdraw the cartoon. Oops! Someone had to go.......Judge for yourself and see if it is sexist and racist at the same time.

Priti Patel

Steve Bell’s Cartoon in The Guardian

In Hollywood, long a bastion of right-on wokeness and insincere platitudinising,   non-BIPOC /LGBTQ+ actors have - or so I read in the Daily Strumpet and the Feudal and Reactionary Times- apparently become unemployable, especially if they are of a ‘problematic’ age or sex (that’s old, white and male, again). If you aren’t sufficiently diverse,  forget it; there are no up-coming parts for you. At least Historical fiction drama, Outlander has lots of butch men running around in skirts, which goes to show how advanced Scotland was in the 18th Century. No wonder it’s my favourite TV drama, though it does show a problematic  lack of diversity among the lead characters. Time for a colour-blind recast? I mean, look what they can do with Henry V. Chiwetel Ejiofor to play Scottish clansman Jamie Fraser! Bring it on! 

Manwhile JK Rowling, favourite children’s author, (and, once,  famously right-on as a Labour supporter, fierce critic of the wicked Tories and feminist) together with Ur-feminist Germaine Greer,  have both  been pilloried for apparent Transphobia, for daring to suggest that if a male cuts all his bits off and  fills his body up with female hormones to develop breasts (and other more messy surgical treatment) he does not become a woman, per se.It’s a point of view. Personally, if a lad believes he is a lassie and not merely a eunuch, who am I to put a spoke in his wheel? If she is still armed with a male weapon and goes into the Ladies loo only to pee on the seat, on the other hand..... and I really think that teenagers  whose raging hormones and developing brains may encourage them to identify as a member of the opposite sex, ought to have to wait until they are a tab more mature before taking an irreversible decision on their sexuality, and shouldn’t be encouraged by adults  into taking such action. And Doctors shouldn’t perform such operations  on minors. It’s a point of view. Don’t judge me!

 I leave you with these extracts from an interesting article from the Sydney Morning Herald, about Twitter mobbing.

“........You can say that ridiculing Twitter’s exotic grievances is an easy sport. Sure, except that years ago it seemed to me that Twitter wasn’t merely reflecting, but engendering and magnifying, a kind of wickedly censorious piety. And one that was increasingly influencing journalists and artists. I’ve had editors more interested in avoiding controversy than in judging the accuracy and value of my work.

Online, piety has no trouble finding affirmation. But the thing with piety is that it stubbornly resists private examination. This might work for the seminary, but it seems ruinous for a writer. Unless you’re an awful one. In which case, this is an optimal environment to work in – so, congratulations on being born to an age that enthusiastically supports your mediocrity.

I suspect the most politically pious in this country won’t be satisfied until certain professions have yielded their specific values and functions in deference to a vision of society that is perfectly liberated from aggravation. It’s a vision of a giant creche.

All contest would be outlawed. Literature would become dogma. Universities would moonlight as daycare centres. The law would abandon its duty to evidentiary thresholds and the presumption of innocence, and become a place of infinite credulity. Comedy would cede the joys of irreverence, and prefer applause to laughter. Journalism would reject curiosity, exploration and corroboration, in favour of politically sanctioned advocacy and “authentic” personal essays. Increasingly, newsrooms will serve their readers a narrow, ideologically curated diet.

I’ve disagreed with plenty of Bari Weiss’s work, but I agreed with her this week when she wrote, in her open letter resigning as an opinion editor at The New York Times, that “a new consensus has emerged in the press ... that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else”.

These days, it’s quite common to hear: “It is imperative that a writer of non-fiction write only about experiences they’ve had.” ( I thought it was supposed to apply to writers of fiction) When confronted with this stupidity, I experience my own violent irrationality and consider applying the credo in extremis by torching all newsrooms and the history sections of libraries.

A common defence of the left’s censoriousness – however venomous and trivial – is that it is merely free speech deployed against another’s. That’s fundamentally true, and it’s also disingenuous: the threat of mobilised zealotry is chilling speech.

I can’t prove the negative here – I can’t measure the things not written or said. But I can tell you that I’ve spoken to a few eminent writers about this – authors of works we’d consider classics – who have told me they would not dare to publish the work today. One writer told me she had not slept the night she spoke to me about such things, so fearful was she that I’d publish it. That’s a problem.

It’s also a problem when scholars are sacked for tweeting links to academic papers, when good faith cannot be distinguished from bad, when writers self-censor or have to explain that their insistence on complexity is owed to intellectual integrity and not, say, their belief in white supremacy or Satan.

Increasingly, those who have contributed to a culture of outrageous sensitivity are being impaled on the swords they helped sharpen. Past months have resembled a kind of woke purge. Which makes schadenfreude very easy to indulge, but we’ll need to resist that dubious pleasure lest we perpetuate this cycle of mob-ruled destruction of careers and reputations.

This isn’t either/or. It shouldn’t be truth versus freedom. It shouldn’t be inferred that criticism of this censoriousness means that the critic doesn’t believe there aren’t righteous battles being fought. But you can’t tell me that elements of this online piety aren’t absurd, indulgent or destructive.

You can’t tell me that middle-class folk aren’t publicising interpersonal spats as proof of “systemic violence”, or that we’re not partially cannibalising culture in a moment of historic uncertainty and vast, easily industrialised disinformation. Or that I can’t resist or make fun of Jacobin zealotry. You can’t.

Martin McKenzie-Murray, Sydney Morning Herald

It looks like I’m guilty of schadenfreude myself. Oops!

#twitter mobbing #wrongthought

#outlander

[jdarm]

Chris Jackson - October 28 2013

[x]

'Miss McGrath isn't here at the moment I'm afraid," says the man behind the desk at the Covent Garden Hotel, mispronouncing it "grath" as in "wrath", as so many Englishmen tend to do.

He directs me toward the avocado-coloured bar where I wait upon a comfy floral print chair as rich olive-skinned guests sip on cocktails and beer at a marble-topped bar, backed by a large fanlight mirror, which seduces shameless stares of vanity from a few.

The wait is short as Katie strides in, searching the tables for me, smiling at strangers, until she finds me. She greets me with a hug and before I have a chance to say anything she's ordered tea, soda and a small bowl of macadamia nuts, which she then devours in not too short order. She's not one to stand on ceremony.

Katie's in London promoting the latest television adaptation of one of fiction's most popular characters, Dracula. From the producers of Downton Abbey, Dracula is a major British and American co-production, primed to capture audiences across the world.

She leans back against the wall pulling her left knee into her body, as if at home on her couch, rather than in the bar of a five-star London hotel. She speaks in a low voice with the soft and steady cadence of a person of some cultivation, save for the odd swear, which only serves for emphasis. I ask her about her Dracula.

"With this Dracula they've taken the story and they've flipped it. They've made it more modern. There's a modern comic-book element to the story.

"The Dracula of this story is playing a role, that of an American industrialist, to exact revenge on those who wronged him."

It is, like others, a departure from Bram Stoker's original, although, as Katie points out, the Dubliner may have warmed to an adaptation where Dracula and two other main characters are played by Irish actors – Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Victoria Smurfit are the other two. (Katie, like Stoker, is an alumni of Trinity). She plays Lucy Westenra.

The Lucy Westenra of Bram Stoker's original was the embodiment of youthful innocence, the counterpoint to Dracula. I ask her what we can expect from her Lucy.

"My Lucy is a complete departure. In Stoker's Dracula she is a paragon of virtue. She is the idealised Victorian woman. She's sweet, kind, soft and gentle. She's the archetype of goodness," she says, stopping shortly before each sentence with a pregnant pause. She is polished in her speech.

"My Lucy, however, well, she's more of a high society 'It' girl. She seems vapid and vacuous at first. Then you see she has problems of her own, problems which will completely change your outlook on her. She's not the sweet girl of Bram Stoker's novel."

Katie is keen to point out that the departure doesn't stop there and that her Lucy is, like herself, an independent woman.

"She doesn't take sh*t from no one. She's the one in control, blonde strumpet that she is," she says.

Stoker's Lucy is a woman pursued by multiple suitors, but Katie is reticent on the subject of her own suiters.

She betrays the discomfort of someone who is not used to attention, someone who is still coming to terms with their success. It's understandable, she never saw such a future for herself when she was younger.

Katie McGrath was not a typical teenager. She had pink hair, listened to Green Day, and worked in a Tattoo Parlour. She was someone who you could imagine in a Kevin Smith or Richard Linklater film – a Goth, an Emo, a Rocker, an outlier. She no longer sees herself in such terms.

"I don't see myself as alternative anymore. You get to a point in life where you're comfortable with who you are and exist in your own world. I'm just me, walking around and trying to do a job without failing, although I do miss the pink hair."

Her path to stardom was unforeseen and unusual. An average student at Trinity (she studied history), she, like so many, did not know what she wanted to do with her life post-graduation. She played with the idea of a career in fashion and worked for Image magazine to achieve her left-field dream of being Vogue magazine's China editor. She then swung a job as a seamstress, though she couldn't sew, on the set of The Tudors, which was filmed near her home in Wicklow.

As she says "they needed a busty wench" for a love scene with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and she was happy to oblige them. Within a year she was cast as Morgana in BBC's Merlin, acting before millions of viewers in more than 150 countries.

The young woman whose life was without clear direction before was now on a path to great fame and fortune. It's little wonder she refers to herself as "having won the lottery".

As Morgana, Katie became a favourite of fantasy fanboys (the polite term for nerds), who can be quite obsessive. Often some of them live their lives vicariously through shows and their characters. She's experienced it first-hand, receiving, among other things, penned stories, pictures and dolls of herself as Morgana. She came face-to- face with many of them at San Diego's annual Comic-Con, a Mecca for fans of fantasy, sci-fi, and comic books, one of whom was Katie herself.

"It was amazing, it was like a place of joy, it was like a giant air-filled hangar of joy" she says with a broad smile, in between eating more macadamias. "They're all pretending to be someone, be it Princess Leah or Green Arrow, but at the same time that is who they are.”

"It's both bizarre and wonderful to see all these people pretend to be others and be so comfortable doing it."

Not all the parts she's played have been as successful. Take Madonna's directorial debut, W.E., in which Katie was cast. W.E. was panned by critics and was barely seen by anyone, taking less than $900,000 at the box office (The King's Speech, a similarly themed film, took more than $400m the year before).

"I think W.E. was a good film. I think critics were always going to be tough on it because it was Madonna's film. If it had been any other first time director I think they'd have been far more supportive of it" she says sincerely.

In spite of the failure of W.E. Katie's career has kicked-on, and last year she was cast in Channel 4's Labyrinth, an adaptation of Kate Mosse's best-selling novel of the same name, in which she was again required to wear a corset, a requirement made of her again in her latest ole, which, in one way, sees her career come full circle.

"I started as crew with Johnny, when I first met him I worked in wardrobe, now I'm starring opposite him. Sometimes I stop and think 'sh*t, I won the lottery'."

Her friendship with him means much to her, both personally and professionally, particularly given his extra experience.

"It was great having him there. This show is a big deal, with big money and big networks behind it. When you walk into a room with 20 high-powered producers it's great to know you're walking in with a friend, one who's got your back."

It's understandable that she seeks such support. Her acting apprenticeship was served in front of an audience of millions and it wasn't until she started to shoot Dracula that she felt confident in what she was doing.

And yet, in spite of the depths with which she has been cast, she has emerged. Katie is not one for the future anymore, she is one for the present, although there is some downside.

"People have great difficulty pronouncing my name. I've given up correcting people" she says. I say nothing of the man behind the desk.

#katie mcgrath #kmcginterview

[boogiewrites]

Choking On Sapphires 59

Title & Song: Under My Thumb

Characters: Alfie Solomons x Genevieve (OFC)

Word Count:  4100+

Summary: Genevieve and Alfie find their busy lives becoming too congested with the wants and opinions of others without as much time for themselves. After her father's thinly veiled threats come to both her and Alfie, they are forced to face how others are molding their relationship. Genevieve makes a suggestion to ease the problem.

Warnings/Tags: Language. Her dad being an ass. Derogatory, sexist language. Antisemitism.Canon-typical language.Insinuation of non-con sex. Ends with fluff.

**Chapter song is Under My Thumb by Rolling Stones.*

Click on my icon then go to Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. (Had to do this since Tumblr killed links, sorry.)

Another day waking up alone, which wasn't as sad as it had been before you'd gotten together with Alfie. You both had your lives separate from each other, your work of legal and illegal means that kept you busy. Without cohabitating, there was no crawling into bed together after having coming home for the evening or waking up together after passing out from a long day before only to wear yourselves out again the next morning. Once again, Shabbat became your great respite together. You tried to spend as much of Friday evenings into Sunday together as possible. It didn't always work out that way but neither of you wasted too much time crying over it. That's just how the unpredictable lives of two working people were sometimes. And despite you both giving the public face of being solid and strong in your faith and heritage, the darker sides of your lives intervened at times, despite the best of attempts made for it not to.

You've worn the soles of your heels down this week. As it always came in the last and first week of any month. Business picked up and became more hectic. You collected rent and tended to your tenants wants and needs. You delivered by hand your charitable donations and ran the meals for the children at the children's home. You still had your art classes to teach and girls families to meet that applied for scholarships. This all culminated in these two weeks it seemed, money always needs to be estimated by this time each month by your analysts. You were tired, your feet ached and you'd been resting them by the fire in your office as you finalized your ledger to send off to the accountants for Abeille's earnings for the month. There were no worries as far as money was concerned but they weren't to be the source of your frustrations as fate would have it.

Alfie was working, which was understandable. As he did when he couldn't meet you on Friday's he'd sent one of his boys over with sweets and flowers and a clumsy, rushed written note of apology for his absence. You'd take to giving the delivery boy, a sweet young man with pristine manners, a kiss to the cheek and telling him to give the same to Alfie. Upon the first delivery of this from you to him, there was uproarious laughter after Alfie demanded in front of other workers that the boy gives him what you sent him back with. This would soon be simply delivered as "The lady sends her usual regards." which seemed to fit everyone much better on their end.

On this late evening, Claire brings in the last of the mail with a heavy sigh, tossing a single thin envelope in front of you. She plopped down in front of your desk with a sour face.

"I shall soon go live with the Shelby gypsy's with how I seem to know what's going to happen all the time." she rolls her eyes. "From your father." she says in an annoyed tone, her hand pointing towards the sealed envelope.

"If I haven't joined them yet, neither should you." you huff out a laugh, swiping your letter opener through the paper. "Wait until my foresight causes me to lose my mind and then we shall go together, hmm?" you suggest. You unfold the paper and read it with am indifferent expression. Claire waits patiently as she always does.

"I have received word of your coupling with not only a known criminal but a Jew of great importance in his community. If it were not insulting enough that you choose to identify as such against my wishes and warnings, you now are openly associating with his sort.  I have heard as well of you acting entirely inappropriately by showing affection publicly to him. I have overlooked your solitary lifestyle, I have overlooked your poor decision making to appear as one of their belief, as you were to remain alone and not have the chance of reproducing with such people, with that I was able to turn a cheek. I can no longer do so and insist you end this regretful affair with this Alfred Solomons of Camden immediately. If you do not heed this most generous and polite warning, I will take further action. I will not have my gene pool sullied in such a way to have your offspring as branches from the Greene family tree. We are a pure and Godly lot who will not be tainted by your choices. I will be sending word to this Solomons myself of your questionable past and telling him of the things you've done to reach such a point in your life and I can only pray to my God that despite being what he is, he will see you for what you really are."

You take a deep and slow breath and Claire remains calm. You move only your eyes up to her and ask for a moment alone. She nods and stands on the other side of your office door. As she clicks the door behind her, a series of loud crashes follow. She frowns and stands defeated and waits. She hears you curse and scream and throw things and she knows it's justified, she only wishes this ridiculous behavior of your fathers would end. She wonders if she had enough money to hire someone to kill him. Probably not but she could enjoy the fantasy in her head.

"Come back in, please. Mind the glass."  you say in a calmer tone as she comes to see a tossed room before her. Vases smashed, books scattered and the iron poker from the fire in your hand as she sees the damage you'd inflicted to the armchair beside you. Stuffing settled slowly in the air around you as she gently shuts the door behind her. "Would you be so kind as to sit at my desk and take my response dear?" you say while trying to catch your breath.

"Certainly." she says sweetly, paper and instrument in hand.

"George..." you begin, tossing the iron rod in the direction of the fire with a loud metallic thunk.  "No." you state with a firm nod.

Claire looks up at you, eyes blinking and waiting for further instruction. "That all?"

"That's all." you said pinching the bridge of your nose. "You can read the letter if you wish. Although it will do nothing but infuriate you." you roll your eyes and move to sit in the untouched armchair. "What a cunt. What a pompous, self-righteous bastard. Why must he live?" you lament towards the ceiling as Claire reads the letter. She promptly makes a noise of disgust and tosses it into the fire.

"I'll send your reply." she states. "I'm not even sure what he's referring to about that "who you really are" nonsense."

"Some trauma we've both suppressed that he will no doubt twist to make my fault?" you shrug and mutter.

"Entirely possible." she softly agrees. "Should I fetch the phone so you can tell Alfie?" she asks.

"No, no, don't bother him with this nonsense. It's beneath us both." you wave your hand dismissively. "Just get some girls in here to clean this up. The accounts are finished, send them to the offices and I'm going to go to fucking bed." -------- You take a few drops of your nighttime vial and sleep deep, no dreams to forewarn you of anything your father would do.

You wake to weight shifting your bed. You groan and look to the source to find Alfie looking down at you. "What the fuck is this bollocks?" he says holding a piece of paper.

"Good morning to you as well." you purse your lips. "So nice to see you Genevieve, how have you been love, I've missed you." you mumble sarcastically, moving to sit yourself up.

"Yeah, yeah mornin'." he gruffs out and puts the paper in your lap. "Who the fuck does he think he is?"

"Well let me read it first, Fie." you say softly, getting your glasses off the bedside table.

"It has come to my attention that you have been courting Genevieve Greene. I would insist that this desist at once. I would like to state I am sending you this for reasons beyond the selfish as I do not want her to become persuaded to join your whispered lifestyle or to become one of your people. But I believe her to be acting out in a rebellious state as she's always been a difficult girl. She has also always been a troubled girl, and known for her deception and lies towards men. I would assume that her nature hasn't changed, as those who seem to be weak to spells of hysteria and madness never seem to outgrow it past a certain age. As we know Genevieve is far past the age for such childish antics she likes to play. I'm sure she seems lovely but I would have you know she has tried to ruin numerous relationships of mine by falsely accusing men of such unspeakable things that my calling them such should let you know of their disgusting nature. She is a thief and a liar and those traits might be something viewed as good to someone like you, however, I feel I should warn you nonetheless of her lack of loyalty and her history of being, as much as I would hate to say it about my own, a strumpet. Certainly, a man who has such a position in his community would not want to be associated with such a creature as she. Any decent man I have tried to give her to has been met with violence and vicious rumors spread about them by her after he defiant refusal of them. She may seem tame but I assure you she is hardly above an animal when she finds herself bored and displeased. When she feels she has been wronged her behavior only worsens. I hope you heed my warning and if you do not, I will be in touch again."

You sigh and let your shoulders slump. "Much what I expected."

"I'll ask again... who the fuck does he think he is?"

"Christ himself it seems." you roll your eyes. "I received a letter from him last night threatening me as well. His words to me of you were clearly spat from the same tongue."

"What's he on about? Accusin' men?" his brow is low and you know it set that way not because of you, his tone was sharp and you tried not to take it personally.

"You're a smart man, Alfie what do you think it means?" you retort obviously.

"They... Jesus Christ Genevieve, what did he do to you?"

"I don't..." you sigh and look at him with tired eyes. "I don't want to reminisce about it," you say sharply. "I try to forget it all." you look away from him and rub your face. "It's nothing that hasn't happened to almost every other woman since time began." you roll your eyes and shrug, reaching to take his cold hand between yours. "I haven't seen you all week." you murmur in a softer voice. "The last thing I want is to wake up to you angry and to talk about what horrid things men have done to me over the years." you angrily pout. "Ignore him. He's ridiculous. Truly. I thought my mother's side was who I got my dramatics from clearly it must be the Greene's." you look away and your shoulders slump.

"Fuckin' 'ell." he groans, his other hand rubbing down his face as he takes off his hat. Seeing the sadness in your face.  "I..." he closes his eyes and shakes his head. "I shouldn't have come in here like 'is, love." his voice and face soften. He rises and kisses your forehead. "Like a bloody bull, I barged in here. All red 'n angry." he scolds himself, taking off his clothes to a shirt and pants. "Hard to think with softness in mind when I'm angry and want answers, Genny. So used to dealin' with men. No room for subtlety or tenderness with the lot of 'em." he says in a self-deprecating way. "Let me in 'ere with you if you'll have me." he says, motioning to the bed.

You scoot and raise the covers, he settles back against your piles of pillows and pulls you against him. "I threw vases and destroyed an armchair with an iron poker after I read my letter." you admit with a  deadpan delivery that is met with a loud laugh.

He leans and kisses the top of your head. "'At's my girl." he praises.

"He's insulted both of us and I know you won't take any threat, no matter how vague but antagonizing him won't do either of us any good." You snuggle up to his side and slip your fingers between the buttons of his shirt. "I'm not jeopardizing your hard work for something stupid my fool, estranged father might do. I'm not going to risk my hard earned life either. He's not worth it. No matter how much he infuriates us." you shake your head and look up at him.

"I'm not gonna let him insult you like 'at." he says with a deep and certain tone that makes a small smile appear on your face.

"Simply dismiss him as I've done. He's not a rival gang, he's not even a businessman. There's nothing to be won or lost here of reputation or finance." you shake your head.

He reaches up and pulls the covers over your shoulder. "No threats of violence then, yeah? Just gonna make sure he knows he can't talk about you like 'at, love. What an abhorrent and repugnant thing he is. Speakin' of you like that, estranged or not, his blood." he shakes his head and rests his hand on your cheek. "You shouldn't have had to deal with such abuse from the likes of him."

"I know." you look away from him and he moves your face back to his.

"I mean it. No one's ever gonna treat you in such a way as long as I'm around, eh? They'll pay with their hide if they dare to, love.  Not even a bad word is gonna slip past anyone's lips when it comes to you. I'll be sure they know not to dare speak ill of ya."

"Shouldn't worry yourself over it too much. I'm a woman, people will talk. It's what they do. We have more important things to worry about it." you give him a sweet smile he's thankful to see after his regrettable approach to how he entered your home and the conversation.

"Still," he states with a nod of his head towards you. "No one's gonna treat my woman in such a way. You won't be the only one standing up for yourself now, right? Best you remember that, love. You don't gotta fight all your battles alone anymore." he leans in and presses his lips to yours for a moment.

"I'm afraid to inform you that I'm still disrespected daily. It's a losing battle." you say with a lazy smirk. "Although the sentiment is wonderful, darling."

"Who the fuck is givin' you grief? Not none of my men is it?" he frowns.

"No, you've scared them plenty, they're all polite." you chuckle. "Take any man on the street in London and have him interact with me for a moments time he'll say or do something insulting. Just their nature." you roll your eyes. "No offense to you, your mum did some fine work with raising you." you pat his stomach, softer from the winter weight and how you preferred him. "Except when you're angry." your tease. "I thought your etiquette with waking me up this morning was lacking." you grin.

"It was." he nods. "'Spose it's all gettin' to me as well. Not gettin' to see you, the end of the month headaches of retrieving owed money from unwilling hands, workin' up new contracts and negotiatin' as the old ones expire."

"I've felt it too this past week in particular. And not seeing you doesn't help." you give in and let yourself pout, your fingers playing in his beard as you watch him with tired eyes.

"It does not at all, pet." he says with a subtle smile down at you.

"I'd like to curl up with you for a week and tell everyone else to bugger off." you complain in a deep whining voice. "Tell London to shove it up its arse and take care of itself for once." you sigh as you lay your arm across him.

"Sorry I couldn't make it last night." he says, feeling guilty he's added to your distress. A man should be gentle with his love and you being as hard and powerful as him, it was easy to forget you deserved special treatment sometimes.

"It's fine. I'm just emotionally drained. Hard two weeks with work and then a severe lack of you... and then George... the horse's arse."

"You can have me 'til tonight." he offers.

You groan and bury your face in his shirt as he rubs your back. "I don't feel greedy for wanting more." you grumble.

"I know, love, I know." you feel the rise and fall of his chest as he sighs with the same sentiment.

You knew that not living together, but being together would create its own problems. But you hadn't realized to what extent you would be suffering for living so far from the city and thus so far from Alfie. There just wasn't a substitute for living together in terms of spending time together. You missed that love bubble. You missed seeing him off to work in the morning and undressing him at night, stroking his hair as he laid on you like a pup when he felt particularly down. You wanted him all to yourself. You wanted to do something besides complain about work with him. And with that, you were both reminded of the concern for oversharing or where the line was drawn with telling each other about what you were up to. The trust was there and with being together, but not married made sharing your underground career's with each other more difficult. In theory, what's his was yours and what was yours was his but it wasn't truly and every time you held back from sharing something with him it felt wrong. But it also didn't seem right to fully divulge everything to him either. Living together would help, being married would help, but how would you even find time for such a thing if you couldn't even simply spend time together as is.

You needed a break from all the worry and trade. A clear separation of work and play that let you both breathe, feel like two humans in love again. With the passing thought, you chew the inside of your cheek. There hadn't even been time to find the right setting to tell each other that either. It wasn't as if either of you had some grand romantic notion that had to accompany it. However, a night out without being hassled, having him taken away to interrupt the flow of sweet words that could've led to such a thing being said would certainly be helpful. You needed to be alone. To not be who you were for only a moment.

"Alfie?" you lilt out, fingers rubbing against his own.

"Yes, love?" he says as you both doze lazily.

"Do you think going on holiday might help?"

"I think I don't have the time. And I'd be left waitin' on you while you's workin' and that'd make me restless and I'd rather be at work."

"I mean together."

"Oh, like a proper one, eh?" his face shifts in thought.

"Yes. Out of London. Away from work for just a bit. Get out of the heavy air and haze." you move to look up at him.

"Sounds good in theory." you can sense the hesitation in his voice.

"You don't want to?"

"I would love to, but... work." he states with pursed lips.

"If you plan ahead can't you manage it? You have seconds for a reason, you know. You're the boss you should get to do what you want when you want."

"It would be lovely if that's what bein' a boss meant." he chuckles.

"I'm serious. You have Ollie and the other men don't you? Can they handle the shop for a few days? We won't tell anyone we're gone, we'll just plan for it. There are phones if anything really goes wrong. We don't have to hop off to the other side of the world or anything."

By the way he's looking at you, you can tell he's sensing this was more a command and less a request at this point. "And where is it you'd like to go?"

You consider it a moment. A place that would be reachable, far but not too far. Somewhere that would make you happy, where you could have fun, get lost and enjoy each other. "Paris."

"Paris, eh?" he nods, eyes glancing around the room.

"Yes. Paris. There's so much to do there. We can eat and drink and go see the art and shows. I have my apartment there, I only have to call in some help and we'd have our own private place to stay. A driver, a cook, a maid, we wouldn't have to worry about a thing."

"Except work back home." he gruffs out.

"C'mon, Alfie." you whine. "There are phones, there are men you've been grooming to help you for years." you retort.  He sighs and looks down at you with a raised brow. "I want to have you all to myself." you whisper. "I want you and me... uninterrupted... alone... no work... no horrid people and their opinions... only us."

"I want that too, love. I really do." he nods and brings your hand up to his lips to kiss your knuckles.

"Then let's make a plan. Find a time in your diary that you could afford to leave blank. Take your girl on holiday and spoil her." you give him a mischievous smile.

"If it's shoppin' you want we can go to London and I'll just let you loose with my money, eh?" he jokes.

"It's YOU I want, Alfie." you say more seriously. "Our relationship has become so congested with others and their opinions, their wants and demands of us that we've not had time to properly be Fie and Genny like we used to. I miss it."

"My little Genny missin' her man, eh?" he sighs.

"She is. I miss mon Fie. I miss sleeping naked all day. Not having to keep covered because either could be seen or called upon at any moment. I miss going to sleep and waking up with you for days on end, losing ourselves in one another. I miss getting to simply enjoy our time together instead of having to be preoccupied with what we have to do as soon as we are forced apart again. And always prematurely." you pout.

"Don't think I don't miss the same things, sweetheart. I try to find the time, I really do."

"I know, and I accept that that's how our lives are but because our lives aren't going to just drop the time we want of each other in our laps, we have to set the time ourselves.  Since we are so busy, we must schedule time to not be busy."

"'Spose you're right there, eh?" he says with an exaggerated expression before it shifts to his deep thinking one. "And my little bird wants Paris?" he says after a pause.

"She does." you smile softly at him.

"How's 'bout you have me right now and then we'll go plan for Paris, yeah?" he suggests, brushing his nose against yours.

"How about a nap, then I have you, then we eat then we plan for Paris?" you say with a laugh that he returns.

"That is where we are at in life now innit?" he chuckles.

"I know you didn't get enough sleep last night."

"I did not." he admits with a shake of his head.

"So let's sleep first. It'll only improve the quality of anything thereafter."

"You are always correct my brilliant little bird." he says with a  kiss as he moves down the bed.

"I missed hearing that as well."

"Then let me wrap around you and I'll whisper it to you until we fall asleep." he says with that warm velvety tone that makes you hum in adoration.

"Please, do." you say enthusiastically, cuddling up back to chest with him, his head tilted to speak sweet words into your ear. Even though it was hardly minutes before you both fell asleep, the promise of Paris and his whispered affections were more than enough to leave you with sweet dreams.

@fangirlfreakingout @jaegeeeeer @cosettewinchester @lookuptheskyisfalling-blog @brianaisasongbird @cry5t4l-w4rri0r @iliveonchocolateandnetflix @jess2464 @hardygal69 @thegarrisonpublichouse @a-flock-of-angry-pigeons @pootle @negansdirtygirl22 @musingsby-night @wtf-is-wrong-with-this @shine-dont-shadow @inkinterrupted @vale0413 @lafayettes-baguettes-1 @sxlomons @aphnxrising @emerald-bijou @elaenom @give-jack-a-lightsaber @anrm1 @ultrablackwidower @tinastarkandco

#Alfie Solomons #alfie solomons fic #peaky blinders fic #alfie solomons angst #alfie solomons imagine #alfie solomons x reader #alfie solomons x ofc #alfie solomons au #tom hardy #peaky blinders #alfie solomons fanfic #alfi solomons fan fiction #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders fan fiction #peaky blinders au #alfie solomons fluff

[jenoramaca]

Been trying to work on a wedding fic ...

I’ve been working on a wedding fic off an on for a little while now and I haven’t yet quite come up with something I feel like really works.  Here’s one bit I have.  

HARRY POTTER ENGAGED!

This reporter has recently learned of the engagement of the Savior of the Wizarding World, Harry Potter!  As you undoubtedly recall, young Mr Potter, the star of Britain’s Aurors, left the Ministry and our shores for the United States, settling in San Francisco, California where he is employed teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts at a local Wizarding school.  By all accounts, he is a popular teacher with both the students and parents.  

“I’m not surprised he turned to teaching.  He was dead serious when we were doing Dumbledore’s Army—a real professional.  We all thought sure that he was going to teach as soon as Voldemort was gone, but he went for the Aurors,” says Zacharias Smith, a former classmate of the Chosen One.  

And who is the lucky girl, you ask?  Did some American get her hooks into our boy?  Have no fear for she’s none other than his best friend’s sister, and fellow Gryffindor Ginny Weasley!  This reporter was not able to get a reaction from Mr Potter’s best friend, Ron, but I did run into Parvati Patil in Florean Fortescue’s ice cream parlor.  

“Oh, we all just knew that they were meant to be together,” she said.  “They used to spend hours snugged up together in the Gryffindor common room.”

Moments after speaking to Ms Patil, this reporter made the acquaintance of Flora Carrow, a Slytherin schoolmate of the affianced.  “Ginny Weasley?  Honestly, I think he could have done much better.  She was known as a bit of a strumpet in her school days, wasn’t she?  I know she got through an awful lot of boys.” 

Well, there you have it.  Ladies, consider all of your hearts broken because the Chosen One has made his choice.  Watch this space for more news about what will certainly be the wedding of the year, if not the century!

POTTER-WEASLEY LOVE NEST!  AND A ROCK TO GO WITH IT!

Hello again, dear readers!  Last month this reporter brought you news of Harry Potter’s engagement to Ginny Weasley and the news has certainly caught like wildfire!  Our office has been inundated by your owls and this reporter will do her best to answer all of your questions!  

First off, where are the happy couple going to live after the blessed event?  I have it on good authority that Mr Potter has put his considerable wealth to good use in purchasing a property in notoriously expensive San Francisco within sight of the the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge.  Nothing but the best for our two lovebirds!

And speaking of the best—a lot of you have been asking about one of the most important things—The Ring!  As you know, our Mr Potter is notoriously camera-shy, but lucky for us, Miss Weasley does not suffer from the same affliction!  A loyal reader was able to obtain this snap and sent it in to our office post haste!  In it you can clearly see a heart-shaped engagement ring on her finger!  This reporter estimates the size to be at least two carats.  Mr Potter certainly isn’t afraid to splash out where his fiancée is concerned!  

Who is the man Miss Weasley is with in that picture?  This reporter doesn’t know yet, but it’s safe to say that Miss Weasley prefers both brunets and blonds!

But what about the dress?  This reporter has been in contact with all of the best designers the Wizarding world has to offer and they all say that they are eagerly anticipating her owl.  This reporter was privy to several in-progress designs from Giacomo di Mare, designer of Astoria Malfoy’s (née Greengrass) wedding dress.  

“For the chosen of the Chosen One, it must be something spectacular and never-before seen that will echo through the ages!” he said.  This reporter must agree that di Mare seems to be on the right track.  If you’re reading this, Miss Weasley, he has our full endorsement!

That’s all I have space for right now, Dear Readers.  Please continue sending your owls with questions, tips and any information.  As always, we pay well!  Until next time!

***

“Well, I’m certainly glad to know that spotty Flora Carrow thinks you could have done a lot better than me,” Ginny said, throwing down the article clippings onto the coffee table in disgust.  

“Who’s she?” Harry asked, picking up the clippings Molly had sent with her latest letter.  He read the headlines, forehead creasing in dismay.  I’m going to have to set up some sort of perimeter, he thought. Can’t have long lenses peeking into our windows.

“Absolutely no one worth knowing.  Her surname should tell you all you need to know.  And I did not get through a lot of boys in school!  It was Michael and then Dean and then you!”  Ginny crossed her arms, fuming.  “That bitch.  She must still be ticked off at me because Slughorn invited me to the Slug Club before her and her creepy sister.”

Harry read over the short article, wincing at the use of “savior” and “chosen one”.  Well, that just reinforces my decision to leave all of that.  “Sorry, love.  At least we’re not over there, yeah?  It’s just going to get worse.”

Ginny looked at him and smiled, ruffling her fingers through his already untidy hair.  “I’ve never hid the fact that you are a lot of bother.”  She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder.  “Would you be upset if we spent Teddy’s school holidays here?  I know we’d talked about doing a split holiday.”

“That is no problem at all.  I want to spend enough time over there to get the flat sorted and pick up Teddy.  The less time in all of that madness the better.”  Harry looked at the picture in the second clipping.  It was clearly Ginny and Ben out for a customary post-class coffee.  He had evidently said something that made her laugh and he watched as she smiled and put her hand on Ben’s arm over and over, her engagement ring flashing in the sunlight.  A note in Molly’s hand said, “Who is this?”

“Brunets and blonds, eh?” Harry asked, turning his head to kiss the top of hers.

“And the occasional redhead,” she said leaning in to kiss him.  “I don’t discriminate.”

“Maybe I should owl in a tip to Witch Weekly, then?” Harry said, grinning at her scowl.

“Only if you want to find out how comfortable this sofa is for sleeping.”  She picked up the letter from Molly and started reading, ignoring him on purpose.  “Oh dear,” she groaned after a few minutes.

Harry turned his attention away from the article clippings, wondering just how they’d figured out he’d bought property here.  I might have to have a word with my solicitors.  “What?” he asked with some trepidation.

“Mum’s gone off the reservation.  I told her small and now she’s talking about all of these associated events.  The Ministry want to have a party for us.”

“No.”

“And she’s been contacted by St Mungos—they want to have some sort of reception as well.”

“No.”

“There’s a tradition of both a pre and post-wedding breakfast for the extended families … high teas, receptions …” she said, Harry sinking lower and lower into the sofa cushions until he’d nearly slithered to the floor.  “Oh dear, she’s even asking about hen parties and stag nights!”

Harry sat straight up.  “No, I am not having your mother arrange a stag night.”

“Oh my God,” Ginny said, clearly not having heard what he’d just said.  “McGonagall has offered Hogwarts for the venue.”

“What?” Harry said, taking the offered letter.  Minerva owled me as soon as she heard about your engagement, offering the use of Hogwarts for your wedding.  I can’t think of anyplace more appropriate for the two of you to be joined in marriage.  Just think how wonderful the Great Hall always looks at Christmas time!  

He passed the letter back to Ginny, all too easily envisioning Molly with her hands clasped to her chest and a beatific smile on her face at the thought of her only daughter getting married in the Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  He felt a bit sick.  

“Harry, that would be amazing!” Ginny said, eyes shining.  “All decorated for Christmas, all of the floating candles—”

“Peeves flying in and out, hurling stink bombs at the guests.”

“Harry, don’t be such a wet blanket.  It’ll be wonderful!” 

Harry looked at Ginny’s excited expression and sighed.  “Fine.  But no Ministry party, one breakfast OR high tea and your mum has nothing to do with anything remotely resembling a stag night.”  He grunted as she dove at him, wrapping her arms around his midsection in a bear hug.   

“This is going to be amazing,” she said, sounding like someone who had dreamed of getting married in the Great Hall ever since she’d laid eyes on it.

#hp fanfic #harry x ginny

[katsbooks]

Schwarze Nacht - Chapter Four

Walter C. Dornez x Reader

‘All orders by Master Integra Hellsing will be followed to the letter. Any complaints will be given in written form to the Head Maid, who will in turn give them to Master Hellsing. You will have Sundays and Wednesdays off to do as you please, within reason and without violation of Organization policy. Otherwise, you will be in the uniform given to you at all times outside of your room. Your shift will begin at 5:30 am and will end only when the Head Maid, Butler (Sir Walter C. Dornez) or Master Hellsing deems it over.

        If there are any questions or concerns that are not addressed in your pamphlet, please consult the Head Maid or Butler.’

           (Y/n) truly hated when she and Grace had to be placed under the direct order of the Head Maid. It was rarely, only when Walter was away on business with Sir Integra, but it was practically torture.

           It was quite evident by then that Delores hated (Y/n). She didn’t care much for Grace, but she absolutely despised (Y/n). She knew that their probation period was almost up—in fact, it would be up within the next few days. She had tried on countless occasions to get her fired, for one thing or another, stupid shit mostly. She actually sabotaged one of (Y/n)’s jobs in an attempt to get Master Integra angry with her.

           (Y/n) had spent over three hours fixing that mess and Walter had not been happy when (Y/n) told him about the sabotage, but there was no way to prove who it was, sadly.

           Poor Milly had quit after her second month, unable to take the stress. (Y/n) felt a little sorry for the girl, but knew it was probably for the best. She was just too timid for the job, honestly.

           (Y/n) glanced at the clock as she scrubbed away at floor to the galley. It was already past two in the morning and she still had the kitchen to scrub, on top of cleaning the guns. She rubbed her tired eyes and looked at the floor, sighing softly. She would finish, right around the time the Head Maid would stomp in and tell her to do it again and do it right.

           Yeah, she truly hated it when Walter was away.

           She was just glad that he would be returning with Sir Integra sometime in the early morning.

           (Y/n) looked at the clock again, before returning to her work, scrubbing hard on the floor. Her arms were sore, her hands and knees raw from the floor and the cleaning chemicals. A whole week she had to endure the abuse that Delores threw at her. Between climbing the rafters to clean the gutters of the house (a job that terrified her, because she was nearly phobic about heights), spending nearly five hours cleaning, waxing and detailing the vehicles, and this chore, plus what was already given to her by Walter, she was exhausted. She had gotten very little sleep because she was up every night late just to finish her list.

           Though they were only gone a week, it felt like a month because of her exhaustion.

           It was close to three in the morning when she finished the kitchen, and had stepped into the galley when a familiar voice asked, “What are you doing still up at this late hour?”

           (Y/n) looked over tiredly at the dark man—Alucard?—sitting one of the galley tables, watching her with those ruby red eyes of his.

           “Finishing my work,” she replied flatly.

           “At three in the morning?”

           “….the Head Maid seemed to think that third time was the charm for the floors,” she mumbled. Her whole body ached and she still had one more job to finish. Alucard hummed as he observed her.

           “Have you slept at all?”

           “When?”

           “This week?”

           “Here and there….not nearly enough, though,” (Y/n) admitted. “I’m surprised I’m not hallucinating yet. Unless you’re a hallucination, in which case, I should probably stop talking.”

           Alucard chuckled, and he unfolded his hands to push to his feet.

           “You should go to bed. You should get rest while you can,” he said.

           “I can’t. I still have the guns to clean,” (Y/n) sighed and for a moment, she thought she was going to cry. She really must be exhausted to be that emotional. She clenched her jaw, though, and kept the lump in her throat down.

           “You need sleep. You’re only human.”

           “I’ll be fine. Walter and Sir Integra are returning within the next few hours, and Sunday’s only a day away,” she said, trying to sound confident. Alucard sighed in slight exasperation.

           “There’s no arguing with you, is there?”

           “Absolutely not,” (Y/n) said with a tired smile.

           “Very well, then. I’ll sit with you, then, until you finish,” Alucard said. (Y/n) blinked.

           “Wha—no, that’s not necessary! Shouldn’t you be in bed yourself?” she protested. Alucard gave a dark chuckle.

           “I sleep during the day,” he said with a dark smile. “Now then, shall we?”

           (Y/n) gave a sigh, but led the way to the gun range.

           Alucard sat with his back against the wall across from the table (Y/n) worked up. When she felt like she was about to drift off, he’d start up a conversation to keep her awake and working. By the time she had finished the guns, though, it was well past time to awaken. She would go without sleep yet again.

           It had been two days since she had slept.

           Alucard escorted (Y/n) to her room for her to shower quickly and change her uniform. When she stepped back out, she found Delores standing outside the door.

           “It appears that the Master and Butler will be delayed for another few hours,” she smirked and (Y/n) felt her heart drop. “Before you even touch the list that Walter has given you, I want you to do this.”

           (Y/n) glanced down at the sheet of folded paper in Delores’ hand. She took it reluctantly and flipped it open. Her eyes widened a little and she looked at Delores in disbelief.

           “B…By myself? This is a group task!” (Y/n) exclaimed.

           “Not today, it isn’t. Get to work, girl,” Delores sneered, before she walked off. (Y/n) stared after her, open-mouthed, before looking back down at the sheet. Delores wanted her to completely clean the gun range, with no assistance. It took at least two people to move the target hangers in order to clean the area around them.

           (Y/n) glowered in the direction of the Head Maid’s back and after heading to the galley for a quick cup of coffee and an apple, she made her way back to the gun range. She was unaware of the figure watching with a pair of narrowed red eyes, before they disappeared into the shadows.

           (Y/n) had barely managed to get the target hangers out of the way so that she could start scrubbing the floor of the gun range. Her body was screaming in protest as she did and her hands and knees stung terribly. For over three hours she worked on that gun range, scrubbing and cleaning and moving heavy items out of the way.

           Her legs shook underneath her as she walked and she barely acknowledged the gun range door opening as she moved the target hangers back into place.

           “Miss (Y/n), what are you doing?”

           She blinked and wearily looked over towards the doorway. Looking puzzled as he looked at her was Walter, his brows furrowed a little.

           “Cleaning the gun range, sir,” she said, somehow managing to not slur her words.

           “That is a group job, dear. Why are you doing it by yourself?” Walter asked, walking over as (Y/n) struggled to lift the target hanger again, having set it down when she addressed the Butler.

           “It was one of the jobs Delores gave me to do today.”

           Walter’s brows furrowed more, looking around the gun range.

           “…did you already finish?”

           “Yes, sir.”

           “You moved the hanger by yourself?”

           “Yes, sir.”

           (Y/n) gave up and straightened up, facing Walter. He took a moment to observe the clearly fatigued girl, his eyes lingering on her red and raw hands for a moment.

           “….why don’t I help you move the hanger?” he said, walking over to the opposite side. (Y/n) didn’t protest, leaning down to pick it up again to finish moving it into place.

           “Thank you, sir,” she sighed, glad the gun range was finally done.

           “Indeed. Follow me, please,” he said, his tone strangely clipped. (Y/n) blinked, but followed him out of the gun range. She quickly realized that he was leading her to Master Hellsing’s office and wondered if she was in trouble for something. She thought over her list, was she late with a job?

           Walter told her to stand outside the door for a moment, before he slipped inside. (Y/n) stood there, listening to the sound of muted voices for close to five minutes, before she heard Walter returning and motioning her inside.

           “Stand here for a moment, (Y/n),” he said, before leaving her alone with Sir Integra. (Y/n) shifted nervously under Sir Integra’s hard gaze. Was she really in trouble for something? She honestly couldn’t think of anything that would warrant such a thing.

           It was several moments before Walter returned, and he wasn’t alone.

           Delores accompanied him and when she caught sight of (Y/n), she seemed to sense that something was about to happen that she wasn’t going to like.

           “Delores,” Integra started.

           “Yes, Master Hellsing?” (Y/n) barely kept from grimacing at the sickly sweetness in the woman’s voice.

           “Walter tells me that he found his attendant alone in the gun range, cleaning it with no assistance. Why was she alone?”

           “I don’t know, Sir. Perhaps you should ask her why she was cleaning the gun range without the others,” Delores said. Integra looked towards (Y/n) with a raised brow.

           “…the Head Maid said to clean the range before my other duties,” (Y/n) replied.

           “Did she now?”

           “I did no such thing!” Delores scowled. “The little strumpet told the other girls that their help wasn’t needed and she could do it herself!”

           (Y/n) was feeling rage start to bubble in her stomach. She would dare lie to Sir Integra about this? (Y/n) pulled out the paper Delores had handed to her.

           “What’s that, (Y/n)?” Walter asked.

           “The instructions Delores gave me for today,” she said. Delores realized her mistake and went to snatch the paper out of (Y/n)’s hand when another gloved hand appeared out of nowhere and plucked it from (Y/n)’s fingers.

           It was Alucard, who calmly unfolded the paper and skimmed it.

           “It appears that Miss (Y/n) is correct, Master Hellsing,” he said, tossing the paper at Integra. Integra took a strong pull from her cigar, before sighing, leaning back in her chair.

           “(Y/n).”

           “Ma’am?”

           “Why are your hands raw?”

           “I was scrubbing the galley and kitchen floors last night, ma’am,” (Y/n) replied.

           “Have you slept?”

           “Not since the day before, ma’am. By the time I’d finish my list, it would already be time to get up.”

           Integra took another pull from her cigar, letting the smoke roll out from between her lips as she looked at Delores with a withering stare. (Y/n) was forced to stand there in the silence for what felt like forever, before Integra spoke again.

           “Delores, I want the truth, and you’d better pray to God it’s the truth,” Integra warned. “Have you been the one harassing and sabotaging (Y/n)’s job?”

           Delores threw (Y/n) a venomous glare.

           “….I am.”

           “Explain why.”

           “The little harlot is unnatural. She doesn’t belong here. She’s a poor excuse for a maid of the Hellsing family,” Delores bit out. “She’s rude, disrespectful and should be put out on the streets.”

           ….Yeah, (Y/n) was seriously getting pissed off now. She bit her tongue to the point of blood to keep from saying exactly what was on her mind at the moment. Who the hell did this woman think she was?!

           “Funny, from what I’ve been told she’s very polite, possibly one of the most respectful people I’ve met and a very hard worker. The fact that she cleaned the gun range by herself is proof of that. If anything, Delores, you’ve help this young woman, not hurt her,” Integra stated. “However, your behavior will not be tolerated. Your harassment of this young woman will not be allowed to continue. You will be stripped of your job and you will not return to the Hellsing manor. Another one of the seasoned maids will temporarily fill in your job.”

           Integra hit a button on her phone and a voice answered inquiringly.

           “Please send a guard to escort Ms. Delores Reck off the grounds,” she said and within a few moments, an armed guard entered the office.

           “Y-You can’t do this to me! Sir Integra, I was hired by your father, surely that means something to my name? I’ve been here for years and years!”

           “Indeed, so you should have known what the consequences of your actions would be. Don’t let me see you here again, Delores,” Integra drawled. Delores sputtered and protested as she was led out of the room.

           (Y/n) felt relief knowing that her main harasser was finally dealt with. It seemed that was the only thing keeping her up, because she felt herself wobble dangerously and black spots flashed in front of her eyes.

           “Miss (Y/n), are you alright?” she heard Walter’s concerned voice. It sounded strangely muffled, like she had cotton in her ears.

           “No, I feel…” (Y/n)’s knees buckled and she pitched forward.

           “She’s going to hit the flo—”

           It went black suddenly.

I’m so glad so many people enjoy this story!!! 

#hellsing #hellsing fanfiction #walter #walter c dornez #walter x reader #walterxreader #hellsing walter #reader insert #reader #fma fanfic #fanfiction

[yutikyis]

Snowball Fight

(I am posting this here because I am considering consolidating my character blogs into one. It’s easier to write for other characters if I can just write instead of fumbling between tumblrs. So this is a Reri story, not a Yuti one.) 

Starlight. Frigging Twelve-damned Starlight. Worst damn time of the year if you asked Reri Kyis. A damn waste of time for everyone. Not that she hated getting gifts. Truth was she didn’t even mind giving gifts. Nahu had been surprised about that but it was true. She wasn’t going to give gifts to every damn person she met like the Twelve-forsaken Saint but a gift could be a way to praise someone as much as anything else. Despite what the Snowflake thought she wasn’t against praising people. They just had to earn it first. It was the idea behind it that ticked her off. It was a celebration of weakness and coddling and cowardice. Those stupid red outfits which so many people saw as something to praise. To her they were like scarlet signs of weakness. She wasn’t an idiot. You took care of kids until they could take care of themselves. That was how you kept the species alive. What she despised was hiding it. Pretending those kids were soldiers and then snickering in your hand about how you go away with it? The entire damn thing pissed her off. It pissed her off that the Ishgardians had been stupid enough to let a bunch of children probably die when they had enough space for them. Waste of life and waste of resources on top of that. It pissed her off the soldiers didn’t have the balls to actually confront their officers and settled for second best. It pissed her off because it taught those kids the wrong lesson and they began handing out presents to every random kit they could find instead of learning something useful. Damn celebration of weakness is what it was. If you asked her a damn sight better figure for Starlight would be that Azure Dragoon fellow. Now that’d be a damn proud story to tell your kids. “Yeah, Snowflake, people wear red because the Dragoon killed the ugly bastard who’d been terrorizing us for a generation and it stained his armor red. We wear red to celebrate that because it’s a damn fine thing to be proud of.” Course there was more to that particular story from what she’d gathered but it didn’t really matter. Both were stories anyway. It just depended on which one you wanted to celebrate. Killing an ancient wyrm and bathing in its blood was a damn sight more of an act to be proud of than hiding a bunch of kids from some damn bureaucrats and chucking them back out in the snow when you were done. Not to mention the frigging snow. Who ever heard of it snowing in a desert?  She’d come to Ul’dah to get piss drunk and ended up having to deal with it being cold enough to freeze her tits off despite it being the Twelve-damned desert. An frustrated part of her wondered if this was the result of some kind of Saint of Starlight Primal and if so could she stab the hell out of it and bring the warmth back?  Not that it mattered. Not even the bars were a fun escape today. Of course every single bar in the entire damned city was dressed up for the holiday. You couldn’t even get piss drunk without some arsehole crooning in your ear about the Saint’s bells or whatever. She could enjoy a good drinking song but those were songs that were about fun shite, not some red-faced Roe whinging about mother making out with the Saint beneath the mistletoe.  So that was why she found herself sitting outside in the snow, a bottle of Limsa’s finest imported in her hand, generally angry about the state of the world. Frigging celebrations of weakness ruining her drinking. She couldn’t even go out hunting because half the damn Companies were more worried about some stupid trees stealing decorations and the best place to hunt in the Shroud was full of idiots on dressed-up bears throwing boxes at one another like morons.  So she was content to get pissed and let the day pass... until a snowball hit her square in the face. As she sputtered and brushed the snow from her eyes, she looked around quickly, her hands sipping down to the daggers at her side, face alight with anger. Who in the Hells?! Her would-be victim was actually a Miqo’te boy of about twelve summers whose snowball had clearly missed HIS intended victim, a tall and lanky Roegadyn girl of a similar age. Both looked entirely terrified as Reri’s blazing eyes turned towards them. “OY! Ya bloody idiots! What the Hells kinda throw was that? I shoudl tan yer hides and hang ya up for the bloody vultures!” The Miqo’te boy looked as if he wanted to melt as quickly as the Starlight snow. It was only the Roe girl who seemed to be regain a little composure. “'’Leave 'im alone ye ole bat. It ain't his fault ye were sittin' thar mopin',” the girl shouted back, standing between her friend and the angry redhaired Miqo’te, arms crossed tight over her chest as if she could intimidate Reri into submission. “Well, I ain’t mopin’ if you want to know the truth. I’m considerin’ how to tear yer head off and shove it up your own arse. Figure that’d be an interestin’ Starlight challenge. Figure the Saint can find ya ta give ya a gift up there?” Reri growled, though there was a twinkle of amusement in her eyes as the girl stood up to her. “Well, I assume ye'd be th' one t' tell me considerin' ye already 'ave yers up thar!” the Roe sniffed. The Miqo’te boy slid up behind her and tugged at her arm. “Iyrn, c’mon, don’t make it worse,” he whispered in a pleading, plaintive and desperate voice that made it clear he did this all the time.  “I shall nah! Th' squiffy ole strumpet be threatenin' us 'cause she got a wee snow down her front? Maybe if she buttoned up her jacket that wouldna be a problem!“ Reri’s bad mood vanished in an instant and she began to laugh loudly. She took a long swig from her bottle and pulled her hand away from her daggers. “Squiffy ole strumpet am I? That’s mighty big words comin’ from a bearchild whose askin’ for a beatin’.” Reri’s threat however seemed only about halfway real. “Good on you for standin’ up for yourself, girly. Probably gonna get your arse kicked for it someday but better an arsekickin’ than being a pansy.”  The Roe seemed entirely unsure how to take that mix of threat and compliment and settled for huffing quietly. “I be nah afeared o' some tart who be so bothered by snow she'd try t' skewer me o'er it.” Reri’s laughter redoubled at that and the Miqo’te boy’s ears flattened back against his head. “C’mooooon  Iyrnthota, let’s just go before the lady gets angrier at us...”  Reri shook her head and gave the Miqo’te boy a glare. “Oy, mankit, shut yer bloody mouth. Yer a man, ain’t ya? You should be the one standin’ in front of her, not cowerin’ like a babe behind his mama. Have some damn Miqo pride boy. Ya ain’t ever gonna be a Nuhn that way.” The boy slumped slightly and mumbled something about not wanting to be a Nuhn anyway.  Reri gave a derisive snort at that. “Well, I ain’t particularly fond of Nuhns myself but I doubt you’re going to be able to take a ride on the Roegadyn express either if’n ya keep acting like a wimp.” Judging by the sudden way the Miqo’te’s face turned pale and then a vivid shade of red, there was was a very real chance the poor boy was about to pass out and die on the spot. Iyrn turned no less red though her response was more anger than anything. “Ye crude ole strumpet, wha' be th' matter wit' ye? We be friends 'n even if we were nah that ain't somethin' ye jus' say.” Somehow that made the Miqo’te boy look both happy and miserable ta the same moment. Reri rolled her eyes and walked over towards a nearby street pole, one of the large ones used to hold up advertisements and banners. She rested her back against it and motioned for the two to approach her with her head. After a moment they did. “Listen, the pair a ya. Ya ain’t got nothin’ ta be gained by pretendin’ ya nothin’. Yer little friend there,” she motioned at the Miqo’te who slunk behind his friend again “.. s’clearly got a crush on ya about as wide as a chasm. So just admit it boyo instea’ dancin’ around all this shite. It’s a wastea everyone’s time, myself included bein’ as I gotta tell ya this.”  Iyrn looked behind her shoulder at the MIqo’te and frowned. “That ain't true, be it O'Lei?” The boy’s cheeks turned a brighter shade of red which just made Reri burst out into laughter. “Girl, ya must be mighty blind if ya can’t see that. Boy has it bad enough for ya he’s probably havin’ dirty dr-” “S-Stop it!” “C’mon boy, nothin’ to be ashamed of, you’re at that ag-” 

“By th' Twelve do ye ever stop natterin'!?” Iyrn interrupted with a huff. She looked over at O’Lei again and there was something a bit softer in her eyes as she smiled at him. He looked up at her and fidgeted a little before giving her a tiny smile. “If she's right ye should say somethin', ye know. I like ye too,” Iyrn said softly. The boy’s expression shifted to one of shock before a brilliant smile crossed his face. “You mean it?” “O' course I do. Ye're me best mate aren't ye?” “Yeah but I wasn’t-” And anything more was interrupted by Reri making a loud exaggerated gagging sound. As both looked back at her, Iyrn clearly affronted, while O’Lei was too obviously pleased with the situation to be really upset, Reri smirked at them. “See? Ain’t nothin’ to be gained from dancing around the truth. Ya be honest and ya go for what ya want. If it ain’t what either of ya want then ya might as well get that out in the open too. Have some balls.” Both the children seemed a little unsure but nodded their heads in unison. O’Lei actually reached out and took the Roe girl’s hand lightly and stood a bit closer with her.

Reri’s eyes twinkled slightly. “Well, one la’ thing before I leave the two of ya.” The Roe and Miqo both looked at her in confusion. “Ya oughta keep yer wits about ya even durin’ a conversation,” she said and quickly pulled her leg up and kicked backwards at the pole she was leaning again..  Up above a particularly large pile of snow that had been pile up above on the small outcropping used to hang the advertisements was suddenly shaken loose, sending a veritable avalanche of heavy wet snow down on both children.  By the time it was finished they were both covered in the stuff, shivering and trembling and shocked. “Looks like I win’ the snowball fight, ‘eh?” she said with a wink and a raucous laugh as she turned and strode away, finishing the last of her bottle as she did, leaving the two snow-covered kids behind her.

#ffxiv #rerikyis #starlight #balmung

[rohitkkumar]

India produced 45,308 tonnes of Covid-19 biomedical waste in previous one year

John smiled as the mine owner plugged in an auth device to his Ship's logging manifest and pressed a couple of buttons confirming the transaction. John was right on the outskirts of the outer rim and currently landed on a mining colony known as Karron, a huge asteroid in the process of being hollowed out to extract the mineral wealth stored within.

John cast his mind back to that eventful day over 2 months ago. He had been back in the Core Worlds having a drink at a local bar, well known for its tolerant attitude to the odd and eccentric. His companion was a drunk deep spacer he had befriended years before.

The gnarled old spacer was called Jonah, or 'Mad Jonah' to the other regulars in the bar, who strongly suspected the poor unfortunate had gone space crazy years ago. John liked the old timer though and would spend hours listening to his wild stories of incredible sights beyond the outer rim. On this particular night, Jonah had recently returned from his latest jaunt into deep space and had been recounting a lurid time spent in a brothel on Karron.

"I tell you John, those worm girls have magic hands! I ain't never felt anything like what these pale skinned jezebels could do to a fella!"

'Worms' was slang for the residents of mining colonies, who often received no sunlight for years. Living underground in homes with no direct access to the Sun, resulted in most miners being pale skinned to the point of albinism.

"You should head over there youngster and see for yourself. Tell Madame Trixie I say hi!" Jonah said, coupled with a theatrical wink and a guffaw.

John nodded obligingly, having no intention of heading that far out on the rim. He had initially objected to being called youngster, having just hit 40 last month, but he supposed everyone must seem young to the octogenarian and let Jonah continue.

"Ahh if only I were a younger man, I would have stayed there longer, but I figured I best skedaddle before those strumpets were the death of me. The ticker isn't quite up to as much exertion as it used to be." Jonah added with a snicker.

Suddenly Jonah's booze induced stupor seemed to temporarily clear and he leaned into John conspiratorially. The old man's breath was toxic enough to be classified as a bio-hazard.

"It might be worth your while heading there besides those worm gals, youngster. One night I was hanging out in Madame Trixie's parlour and a couple o' them miners came rollin' in havin' drunk up a storm. They were out celebratin' and lookin' to round out the night with some pleasures of the flesh. I got to chattin' with those fellas and seems like they had stumbled on a whole heap of Tyrenium."

At this, John's ears pricked up. John already had pointy ears due to his unusual parentage, but his already pointy ears manage to prick up nonetheless.

Tyrenium was a key component of plasma cores, used to power top of the line military grade ship weaponry. It was sufficiently rare and in such huge demand that the price for a ton of the element was astronomical to the right buyers.

John had stayed with his old friend for as long as could be considered polite before bidding him farewell. He sprinted back to the dock where his Freighter was parked, his heart hammering with excitement. He knew he had to move fast on this one. John dashed across the boarding gantry, quickly tapping the access code to the airlock to gain entry to his ship, the 'Fool's Gold'. His hands were shaking as he entered the navigation coordinates to Karron and he forced himself to take a deep breath to steady himself so that he could be sure there were no mistakes when plotting his course. The route he was taking would take over a month and travelling this far to the outer rim held many hazards for the unwary...

The mine owner, Seb Mortimer, cleared his throat pointedly and John was brought out of his reverie. The deal was now struck and John shook the man's proffered hand. John had ransacked every rainy day account he had to fund this transaction, every last credit of his life's savings were now sunk in to this deal.

John had managed to purchase 10 tons of Tyrenium at a ludicrously cheap rate, but it was still expensive enough to bring a huge grin to Seb's face. John suspected that being this far out on the borders of known space, Seb was unaware just how valuable this element could be. Then again he undoubtedly didn't have the exotic military connections that John did. The two men shared an amiable drink of whisky to seal the deal, before John left the mine owner's office to oversee the loading of his cargo.

John strolled over to the waiting trucks that had been loaded with his haul of Tyrenium and nodded to the driver as he climbed up into the cabin of the lead vehicle. The huge truck roared into life and John felt the thrumming of the powerful engine as they pulled away.

Karron was a bleak and inhospitable colony, being so far away from the centre of human galactic civilisation. The brief journey from the mine to the star port provided a grim tour of the dark, grubby and dilapidated slums that had built up in the hollowed out asteroid. John felt glad that he would be leaving this depressing place in a couple of hours.

He was in such a hurry to leave, that he never did get a chance to visit Madame Trixie's and John wondered if the establishment really would live up to his old friend's claims. Mad Jonah did have more than a few odd tastes though, so he figured he probably wasn't missing much and certainly avoiding plenty of potential mishaps by giving the place a pass.

The trucks promptly arrived at the star port and after a quick dialogue with the guards and the deck officer, the industrious miners had loaded the cargo of Tyrenium aboard the Fool's Gold. John waved the miners goodbye and sealed the cargo bay doors. He set the controls in the Cargo bay for auto-decontamination and then strode purposefully to the cockpit.

John slumped in the pilot's chair and punched in the course for home, before activating the auto pilot to disembark from the asteroid. The ship's engines roared into life and the old freighter seemed to groan in protest as it took off. It slowly cleared the rough hewn entrance to the docking bay, cruising out into the welcoming blackness of space. John let out a big sigh and was finally able to relax now that the deal was done and he had the cargo of Tyrenium secured safely in the ship's hold.

He stared out of the cockpit as the ship groaned and lurched into hyper-warp. Surprisingly he still felt twitchy, which he assumed was due to the adrenalin wearing off after the excitement of brokering such a life changing deal, so he stood and headed to his cabin to take a much needed nap.

John unbuckled the harness to his heavy pistol and carefully unholstered it, before placing it on the rack of weaponry in his cabin. He pressed his thumb to the lock and the door on the weapon locker swished closed. Deep space could be a dangerous place, with marauding pirates and the occasional misunderstandings with aliens, so it was sensible to be prepared in the case of a hostile boarding action.

The cabin was meticulously clean, courtesy of one of John's personality quirks. He liked to keep his ship obsessively tidy and couldn't abide leaving mess anywhere. The rooms and corridors of the ship were kept spotless, which was handy with avoiding contamination, but took plenty of hours to maintain. After a soothing shower to clean away the dust and stink of the colony, John collapsed onto his wide bed on crisp, pristine sheets and fell asleep.

Several hours later after a nice relaxing sleep, John awoke feeling horny. He was hard as steel and ready for action. This came as quite a surprise, as John had spent years meditating to avoid getting into these kind of states. With his parentage being what it was, he couldn't be too careful. He sat up and assumed a meditative pose, clearing his mind and focusing on being calm and at peace. The horniness abated as did his erection, so John got up, got dressed and went about his normal routine.

A couple of days passed, with John awakening each morning to a rock hard surprise. Each day it was getting more difficult to maintain his self control, but he went through his meditation rituals and gradually calmed himself. He had been travelling for four days now, having left Karron far behind and he decided to check on his precious cargo.

The door to the cargo bay opened with a self satisfied clank. Down in the cargo hold everything seemed ok, but John felt on edge. Standing on the gantry overlooking the ship's hold, he felt alert, focused, pensive, wary; he had great instincts and they were all telling him that something was wrong. He backed out of the cargo bay and hurried to his cabin to collect some weaponry. John grabbed his broad muzzled auto shotgun, perfect for up close work in the confined quarters of a spacecraft and slammed in a clip. The autoshot hummed to itself happily for a few seconds as he flipped the power button on the grip and a holographic targeting grid appeared above the weapon. John turned back into the corridor and jogged briskly back to the hold.

Inside the cargo bay, John flicked on Infrared on the scope and did a quick sweep of the hold with his shotgun. He could see nothing untoward in the targeting grid, looking for any telltale signs of red, signifying heat, and seeing only cool shades of blue. He turned to the adjacent wall mounted panel and cranked the illumination of the hold up to maximum. Careful not to look up at the blinding overhead lights, John searched the room thoroughly. It was not until he returned to the doorway panel that he noticed a faint dusty scuffmark on the other side of the door. Having meticulously scrubbed that section of floor in an OCD fury before landing, he knew that someone or something had come aboard with the cargo at Karron.

John resealed the cargo bay and began to sweep the ship. The Fool's Gold was not huge, having only the cockpit, his cabin, the hold, a secondary cabin, his recreation room and the ships storage. He found no signs of life in the cabins or cockpit and there wasn't anywhere to hide in the recreation room, consisting as it did of a dining table, a comfy sofa and a small but functional kitchen. That meant his interloper was in the storage room. John took a deep breath and readied himself for action before stepping into the doorway of the final room. Raising his auto shotgun, he looked through the scope and the targeting grid depicted the room in expected blues, with the occasional red glow from the overhead lights. He turned slowly, carefully checking any potential hiding places through the scope, until he finally faced a storage compartment near the back of the room. A telltale red glow was edging the door to this particular compartment, signifying a warm presence inside.

"I know you're in there, come on out!" John barked at the storage compartment, keeping a wary distance. He waited pensively to the count of ten, but there was no movement from the compartment.

"Either you come out in 5 seconds, or I unload this shotgun and space your corpse!" John shouted at the compartment door.

He heard some kind of squeak from the compartment and the storage door swung open slowly. A dirty unkempt figure stepped timidly out of the compartment and into the bright lights of the storage room. It was obviously a miner's kid. Some mid-teen boy he would guess by the look of him, scrawny and malnourished, wearing shabby grey overalls, a bulky tattered jacket and a cap pulled down low. Frightened eyes peered out at him from a dirt smeared face beneath that dog eared cap, watching John warily and awaiting his next move.

John sighed and lowered the shotgun. "Oh for fuck's sake!" he groaned. "Now I'm going to have to turn right around to drop your ass back at Karron and we're days out system by now" he muttered, thoroughly pissed off.

This dumbass kid's desire for adventure was going to cost John over a week on a pointless detour.

"Please don't take me back to Karron!" the boy replied in an oddly high pitched voice. Perhaps this kid was younger than he initially thought John mused.

"Why not?" John demanded. "There's no chance in hell I'm going to risk being done on a 'kidnapping a minor' charge and I don't for a minute think you have any money to pay me for the trouble. What's your name anyway boy?"

The frightened stowaway looked down, momentarily breaking eye contact with John. "My name's Al."

"Well 'Al', my name's John. It's lovely to meet you." John snarled sarcastically. "Now we've made introductions, you still haven't answered my question. Why shouldn't I just take you straight back to Karron?"

"Maybe I could work for you as crew on the ship?" The grubby figure suggested hopefully.

"Sorry boy, I work alone. Besides, what skills could you have that would be useful on a starship? No, I'm going to have to take you back." John turned and made to walk out of the storage room.

"No wait!" his unwanted passenger pleaded.

John turned back to look at the urchin, as the kid drew a big sigh and seemed to make some kind of decision. Al reached up to the tatty cap and pulled it off, revealing dirty blonde hair that with a few quickly removed clips, tumbled down revealing shoulder length tresses.

"I'm not a boy, I'm a girl and I'm not a minor, I'm 18. Maybe there's something else I could do to earn my passage?" Al asked cautiously, but with a clearly suggestive undertone.

Now in John's defence, in normal circumstances he would have turned her down flat, but his perpetual horniness over the last few days had rapidly eroded his will power. At least his morning surprises were now explained, as he had been reacting subconsciously to her pheromones. Without relief, it was going to be a trying 4 day trip back to Karron if he decided to take Al back.

John cast an appraising eye over his passenger, but with the worn, bulky gear and all the dirt it was impossible to tell what the newly revealed girl looked like. Against his better judgement, John slung the shotgun over his shoulder and beckoned his stowaway out from the storage room.

"Follow me, I want you to get cleaned up before I make my decision." John said, as he led the girl to the passenger cabin. "You can use the shower in there and leave all the dirty gear in the corridor, including your ID, I want to make some checks."

The girl warily handed him a dog-eared foldout ID, that revealed the mystery passenger's full name to be Alyssa Marant. John took the ID and then pointed out the shower tucked into the corner of the passenger cabin. "Thanks 'Alyssa', the shower is back there."

John left Alyssa to clean herself up and walked to the cockpit to scan in the ID. It took a few minutes to make the connection to Galactic-SEC, but the brief readout from the computer confirmed the name on the ID, that his new passenger was 18 and that she was not wanted for any felonies. That information calmed most of his worries; he would be doing nothing illegal in letting Alyssa stay on his ship and any agreements between them would be strictly between consenting adults. He felt himself getting hard again, and his excitement levels rose. Maybe the trip back home didn't have to be so boring after all?

John heard a small cough from the corridor behind him and saw Alyssa peeking around the door to the passenger cabin trying to get his attention. She pointed to the heap of filthy clothing piled in the corridor which made him shudder. "I've had a shower and that's all my gear. What do you want me to wear instead?" Alyssa asked cautiously.

John tilted his head to the same angle as Alyssa. "If you were suggesting what I think you were, then you will be just fine as you are. Come on out so I can make my decision." John reached behind him and pushed a button on the console. This activated the internal security cameras and would record their verbal agreement. You can't be too cautious, he figured.

Alyssa blushed, but took another deep breath then stepped warily out of the cabin. Now that she was scrubbed clean, John could see that Alyssa actually had a very pretty face. She had piercing blue eyes, a cute nose and full lips that immediately made him think of one thing. The girl was obviously from a mining colony, her ghostly white skin never having had sun exposure. Her hair fell to just beyond shoulder length, but it looked thin and lifeless. She was about 5' 2" tall, about a 28A cup and painfully skinny due to what he could only assume had been borderline starvation on the desolate mining world. She had an unkempt sandy blonde bush that matched her hair colour. He figured a steady diet would do her wonders and there was no time like the present to get started.

"Ok I've made my decision. You can stay, I won't take you back to Karron".

Alyssa jumped with joy, full of the exuberance of youth. "Oh thank you John, thanks so much!"

John smiled at her unexpectedly cheery outburst. Had she forgotten their arrangement already?

"Ok now that's decided, let's just lay out some ground rules about your duties on the ship." he said carefully.

Alyssa's face fell but she tried to hide it. Bless her, she had forgotten.

"Firstly I won't do anything to hurt you and I won't force you to consent to anything weird. I'll make sure you get regular meals and you can have the passenger cabin as your own, but I expect you to keep everything just as clean as it is now. In exchange, I expect you to service me whenever I ask. Finally are you on birth control?"

Alyssa looked thoughtful after John's little monologue. "That all sounds reasonable." She replied, and then looked a little bit uncomfortable as she then admitted "I'm not on birth control."

John shrugged. "Ok regular sex is out. I don't plan on knocking you up." he said reassuringly.

"One last warning though, I have pretty hefty equipment and once we've started this, I'll be needing your services several times a day." he warned her.

"Yeah, I've heard that one before... I agree." Alyssa smirked.

John smiled right back and gestured behind her. "Ok then let's get started. Let's reconvene in the rec-room, my balls need emptying."

That wiped the smirk from Alyssa's face and with a resigned expression she turned around and walked back down the corridor. Following behind gave John another chance to check her out, but this time from behind. Alyssa had a wiry but toned body from living a hard life on the colony. John's eyes travelled down her back, past the dimples above her hips to her pert little ass. It was lovely, round and compact, two perfect hemispheres that just needed filling out a little. Her legs looked lean but toned, runners legs, he mused.

They walked into the rec-room and John strolled over to the sofa. He took off his T-shirt and combat trousers standing naked except for his briefs that did nothing to hide the size of his bulging package. He turned to face Alyssa. At 6'2" he towered over her petite 5'2" form.

"Now you can probably tell I'm not completely human from these." John reached up, tilted his head and pointed to an elongated, pointy ear.

"That's not the only difference, I'm slightly different down here too." he said, nodding towards his groin.

Alyssa had an almost comic look of trepidation on her face as John inserted his fingers into the waistband of his briefs. He carefully lifted the cotton material over his equipment then dropped his underwear to the floor, unveiling his equipment in all its glory. Alyssa let out a gasp of shock.

"You're fucking huge!" she exclaimed.

Overcoming her initial surprise, she looked closer at this startling revelation. John had an enormous cock, with girth thicker than her delicate wrist. John could see the doubt forming in her mind.

"Don't worry, it will fit." he said reassuringly. He sat down on the sofa, spreading his legs and motioning her forward.

[daemonvols]

Chapter Three

Ghosts and Grave Robbers

 The graveside service lasted the usual hour, but Truman and his siblings lingered for at least another forty minutes, so I guessed that the old girl did not get to rest under the sod until closer to three. I also had to be back in the office by two preparing the final documents, answering the telephone and dealing with vendors or nursing home/hospice administrators who thought they should be entitled to group rates for the indigent dead we buried in our Potter’s Field. I could not get back to wiping down and replacing headstones under after dark. And I would not be in time to stop Old Sharpe.  

Rain hadn’t fallen in fact for a few days, so the grass clippings didn’t stick to most of the flat surfaces. It was the scraps and bits of moss that clung to the ornate designs and inscriptions of the wealthy dead that eat up time and nick my fingers. The middle class’s stones are simpler. Names, birth dates and death dates for the most part. Here and there you get a design or a quote, but nothing excessive. Potter’s Field “residents” get brass plaques flush with the grass with no one to really care about them.

Now nineteenth century folks who had money could and did drive this twenty-first century caretaker crazy with detailed carvings of sheep and angels and weeping women in long gowns full of moss- and mold-growing folds, not to mention the extra words to describe the loving mother, faithful father, beloved child and so forth. I realize it’s all to comfort the surviving family, but, after living all of my thirty years in a cemetery and reading the records and hearing the ghosts’ gossip, I have to wonder how much of those endearments are wishful thinking.

Take Old Man Sharpe, and I wish somebody would.

    The official records of the time list him as Benjamin Antony Sharpe, born 1831 and died 1881. The newspaper obituary described him as a “leading citizen who loved God and served his fellow man.” He left neither widow nor children, except for the town’s orphans housed in Heaven’s Angels Children’s Home and the women of the three Magdalene houses he oversaw with other leading citizens. Benjamin Sharpe was upright man, as the white marble stone stated in Gothic script over his grave in the southwest corner of Section A’s front skirt.

    But there’s more to the man. My grandparents spoke of him as “Der Parekh,” a bad man, but that is all I knew until after they died. I pulled the records from the library’s stacks, made hard copies from their microfiche and, on my own time at home, Googled his name. A notice in the newspaper, dated the day after his death, announced an inquiry into his death, hinting that a man of 50 in “splendid health” might have died under suspicious circumstances. His maids Bridget O’Doole and Mary Kate Bailey were being held for questioning. “Obviously Irish,” the article went on to note. The reporter omitted, or assumed the readers would add with a shudder, the words “and likely Catholic.”

“The good people of Sayresville demand an answer,” the article concluded.

    Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and a few late hours on the Internet, I found the record of the inquest and the maids’ testimony.

As it turned out, it was a good public relations move to publish the obituary before the inquest. The maids, the cook and Sharpe’s valet told stories of Sharpe’s quick temper and his regular nighttime habit of draining two bottles of brandy, and then walloping the tar out of both maids with a specially knotted belt. According to Bridget, on the night of his death, he’d cornered both girls in their narrow bedroom. He’d bent them over a bed with their shifts raised to their waists and had the belt ready to flay them when he “wheezed a bit like he was took by surprise” and fell down dead.

The valet, a “small Canadian” named Richard according to the inquest records, offered to tell more of Sharpe drinking and then being unable to find the privy. The valet further hinted that the upstanding citizen had more than once peed on stray dogs and late-night walkers.

    The officials cut the inquest short at that point. The determination they made official was death by natural causes.

    But “natural causes” in the corporeal sense does not explain a ghost still wandering the cemetery and harassing other ghosts nearly 130 years after his death. And that is what Old Sharpe does when Varney knocks loose Sharpe’s head stone as the mower did after any funeral. As Varney did the day of Eulalie Plutarch’s funeral.

    I know this because the two ghosts I call my gossips caught me heading out to finish the wipe-downs that night.

    “He’s out again!” yipped the first one, who was Missy Drucker. She had been a housewife who died at the age of 37 in 1951 of a burst appendix. Her family buried her with a headstone complete with Psalm 23 and a rare color photograph of Missy. She’d been a pretty brunette with vacant blue eyes dressed in pastels. Six years ago, the plastic or whatever cover that held the photograph onto the stone fell off, as did her photograph. The required search for family members turned up no Druckers in upstate New York that acknowledge a Missy Drucker, or a Michelle Drucker nee Baker, let alone give permission and funds to replace the photo or the cover. Regs would not allow me to do so, either. It’s a vain hope that someone someday might come to claim that fading picture, but I keep it with my ledger. I like to be prepared.

    “He yelled at me to raise my dress!” the other told me. This was Mischa Bridey, born in 1892 and died in the influenza pandemic of 1919. She must have been a spinster school teacher. It may be that her white shirtwaist cinched too tightly at her waist over a heavy dark skirt that swept along the gravel. Or her blackish hair stayed now for eternity in a tight bun that gave her headache. Or maybe, back in her living days, she really needed to get laid. She never has anything good to say about men and she is, in general, a bespectacled, pinch-faced grump.    Then again, until seven years ago in the spring, someone had come every June to lay six yellow roses on her grave. I found the last bouquet dried out from a rainless July and “borrowed” one of the petals for my ledger. You never know about some people. Or ghosts, for that matter.

    You have more questions: yes, ghosts exist. I see them most nights, occasionally during the day, and have done so since I was a baby. I’ve felt the cold that surrounds the ones whose bodies died by violence and the softer coolness of those who passed more peacefully. Ghosts, spirits, “hain’ts,” etc. - they’ve gone by all sorts of politically correct and incorrect labels, but the CPF has a fair share of the haunters for Onondaga County.

Yes, I talk with them.

    And no, I don’t really know what a ghost is in the physical sense. I also don’t know if ghosts realize they are dead or not. It seems rude to ask. Furthermore, I doubt they’d behave any differently than if they did realize it. I would be willing to bet Old Man Sharpe wouldn’t.

    “I know,” I said to Missy and Mischa. “I’m on it.”

    “Well, hurry up before he gets over the hill!” Missy snapped.

    “Well, I could if two nosy hain’ts would clear the road!” I snapped back.

    These two are the first ghosts I’d met who had an overwhelming desire to always be relevant; it is likely they found themselves behind the times while they lived and spent that life and this afterlife trying to catch up. To do this, this pair had observed and learned reactive “moves” to do in unison. This night they gave me the Cat Move: their opaque and vaguely pink hands raised to ear level, then fingers curl for claws and a nasal “Re-e-e-eowwwww!!” from their ghostly gobs.

    I walked away before they celebrated their unified dissing and high-fived each other right down to their non-corporeal elbows.

    Sharpe’s grave was on the southeast end of Section A. The Board approved more tall poles with more blue-white lights back there rather that install the motion detectors the police recommended to dissuade drug deals and lovers with a fetish for having sex on graves. As security for the living-wise, it was a help. To find a ghost whose color was fading to white and gray, not so much.

By the oak tree, where I’d stood only a few hours ago, floated the white shape of a dead martinet. He had to have been a lump of a man. His spirit wasn’t much taller than my five-foot-four height and he spread out from belly to butt. He had goggling pale eyes and a beak of a nose over flabby lips. His ears under the white fronds of hair reminded me of a harp that sagged at the bottom. He was clothed – they still buried them in something like their best back then – but Sharpe had faded so much, it was hard to detail his garments beyond shirt open at the neck under a waistcoat and over trousers. Tradition held that he be buried barefoot, so I was glad the end of his trousered legs were a blur. No doubt he’d had knobby feet with talon-length toenails. And he had the knotted belt they’d buried with him raised in one lumpy hand over his opaque head. I braced myself for the howl. Sharpe’s voice, whether in death or reminiscent of his living squawk, ranked right up there with fingernails on a chalkboard.  

And Benjamin Sharpe was a howler. “Bridget, you strumpet! I know you broke that china cup! I’ll blister your hindquarters for that! Where are you, girl?”

It is wise to approach ghosts, slowly, particularly agitated ghosts. Hands down at the side, head slightly down but off to one side so there can be modest eye contact. It is a literal pain in the neck after a while.

“Care for the residents,” I muttered. “Mr. Sharpe!” I said somewhat louder. “Mr. Sharpe, it’s Grace. Isaac’s granddaughter.”

Sharpe halted and undulated for a moment. The belt came down to his side. “Grace. Yes. Your grandfather is a good man. He took the stones out of my grave before they lowered me into it. Wanted me to be comfortable, he said. So I could rest.”

“That’s right. You look tired, Mr. Sharpe.”

“I am tired. They all want so much from me! Those brats! Those whores! How much more do I have to give? I’m only one man!”

It is also advisable that, if a ghost on the loose wishes to howl against what he perceives as injustice, he be allowed to do so before you herd him back to his grave. It may take a while, but interrupting can leave you standing there with him until dawn. Ghosts will follow you if you walk away. There’s also no telling if the ghost has not finished his or her diatribe at sunrise, that s/he won’t follow you to continue throughout the day. A ghost’s voice registers over the telephone as either white noise or a television on too loud to a bad soap opera – not something to have going on over your shoulder when you’re trying to sound professional and organized on the phone.

I waited for a gap in his complaint and tried again. “You need to rest. Why don’t you come with me and let’s get you back to your rest.”

“It’s that Bridget!” he snarled. “She broke the cup. I know it! She’ll pay with her hide!”

“So she will, but you rest first. You need your strength to – “ I swallowed my disgust – “do the job properly.”

“She’ll bleed for it!”

“If you rest first, of course she will. Now come on.”

You cannot reach out and offer to touch a ghost, so there was no leading him by the arm. I had tried once as a toddler to take the hand of the ghost of the first body buried at the CPF. All you get is a handful of icy cold and an annoyed ghost.

And there’s no pointing. Ghosts like Sharpe like to point, but to be pointed to or at would only start him off again through the cemetery in twice the rage. I stepped onto the gravel path with a slight bow towards his plot.

As I suspected, Varney had taken the corner too quickly again and knocked the stone to an acute angle off its seat and there was a nice three-inch gap to the right side. I stood a respectful half meter from the gap and offered it to Sharpe with a modest, open-handed gesture. “See? It’s all ready for you,” I said. “You tuck yourself in there and rest. Bridget is not going anywhere.”

Which was true. County records showed she died in 1948. St. Agnes’ Cemetery holds her body. Now, if she has a loose headstone and wanders, too, I’ve not heard of it. And it’s not my problem. Her late addle-pated employer, however, routinely is my problem.

Sharpe floated into a horizontal position on the sod that had been well-packed by living feet for one and a quarter centuries. He seeped back like foul water back into the earth with a mournful “Bridget!”

I straightened the headstone. Then I packed it down with moss and some extra dirt and gravel from the path. If the rains held off, Old Sharpe would stay put for another two weeks.

Back to the questions and possibly the Big Question: why do ghosts, souls, spirits, whatever you want to call them, hang around? There are probably two or three answers for every one person you might ask. The sort of “it’s this way, but maybe that way, too” thinking that leaves the listener more confused and not a little bit frightened.

I have only heard one explanation that makes sense – and, as with anything else, it’s open to debate. My Grandpa Dov said that Midrash assigns five levels to each living soul. Three, starting with the lowest, reptilian senses, are attached to the physical earth. Only two of them are on the spiritual level and yearn to reunite with the Creator. Therefore, the odds that a soul will pass on are sixty-forty against.

People in the past knew this and invented headstones. Headstones are meant to hold the sixty-percenters down until the dead realize that’s as far as they are going to go. Their spirits pass on then, with little or no notice given to the living.

Some souls, however, cannot take the granite or marble slab hint and insist on hanging around. I sometimes think they were the last ones to leave a party while they were living. Either way, the stone keeps them where their families buried them. But, like so many of the best laid plans, things do go awry. The CPF has drainage ditches, soil erosion and jokers like Varney and Trumbull. Ergo, we have ghosts walking the grounds most evenings. And I’m the one to walk them back and tuck them in again.

Old Sharpe was tucked away for this night. I wanted to go to bed and to dive back into my book (I’d fallen asleep just as the clothes were coming off and the strong masculine arms were outstretched), but something felt wrong.

Derek and his band of merry bloodsuckers were long gone to wherever they fed tonight. Missy and Mischa hopefully had returned to their plots or were having hissy fits over the crowding in the Potter’s Field. The CPF was not quiet. It never was at any time, but that night there were newer noises I did not recognize and did not like.

I ran up the hill again and stood beside the oak tree. Two small Coleman lanterns sat beside Eulalie Plutarch’s still open grave. The chairs were gone, the fake grass and brass frame for the hydraulics were gone, but the diggers had not filled in the grave the way regulations said they should have done once all the mourners departed the site. I felt cold and looked around for a wandering Eulalie. But the night wind had picked up, promising either rain or a dust blow from the middle school’s dead grass and playing fields. No ghosts that the living eye could see.

I hopped over graves and between plots to go down the broad backside of the hill, careful to stay out of the pole light’s glare. Here and there I slipped and had to apologize to the occupant of a grave for the intrusion.  Stepping on the residents’ graves and thereby on them is not good public relations.  Even if the grave I apologized to would be empty, it set those still lingering at something like rest.

Varney hadn’t loosened any more headstones that I could see, but some ghosts are only a slight disturbance of the seating away from joining the nightly rounds. Especially for the newly buried. I knew Eulalie Plutarch by sight from the newspaper society pages and her son’s behavior (neither one flattered her). Her ornate pink granite headstone was set, but the grave was still open and I did not want her ghost haranguing me about the “abysmal service” offered here at the CPF.

I stopped in the dark at the edge of Section A before the path that led to B. The Coleman lanterns burned on high, one at one long end of the grave, the second at the other. A head of thick medium brown hair bobbed up and down at the rim of the grave, consistent with someone digging. I heard scraping and the occasional thunk! Of hitting the mahogany, brass-embossed coffin.

“Dammit, Jerry! You told me you left the casket unlocked!” barked a somewhat attractive baritone voice from inside the grave. I moved over to the edge perpendicular to the rest of the Plutarch plots. I stood in the glow of an eighteen inch kerosene lantern and looked down.

[ulyssesredux]

Telemachus

So jest with heaven, and roads; and this rich fair town we make, to be asham'd to say so, villain, for a bloody work; the love of him, said Buck Mulligan erect, with open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; who speaks not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, I do, chapels had been churches, and Arius, warring his life long upon the children; therefore 'twere reason you had won the fleece. Thou art my friend, and ne'er a tongue in my mind a thousand businesses are brief in hand that writ. Call the Lady Blanch, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of in the narrow sense of the word, it will be here, in a mirror, he hath a ship. And when it is tea, Stephen: love's bitter mystery. A grave unto a pagan shore; where how he employ'd my mother. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the pulse of life?

She praised the goodness of the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown. He capered before them down heavily and sighed with relief. I forbid my tongue did ne'er pronounce, upon supposed fairness, often known to be attended by slaves that take leave, good lady! Which, howsoever rude exteriorly, is my humour: is it?

From whom hast thou got! When the moon shone, forgotten friendship?

Be moderate; allay thy ecstasy; in lieu whereof, I had a thing stuck on with favour: we do no further ask than whereupon our weal, on the sea. Here will we prove loyal: till then, if thou want'st a cord, the Lady Constance in a kind of light what would my lord, my name for you then till dinner-time, that was expected by the teeth the unow'd interest of proud swelling state.

Call you?

But what shall I gain by young Arthur's life, which is the ghost of his envy's reach, I may be stronger with thee.

He had spoken a moment since in mockery to the table and said at last: Can you recall, brother, is the doctor and I have within my mind, the Greeks!

Hadst thou but lead'st this fashion of thy wit in praising him. He shaved evenly and with care, in a dream, silently, she had approached the sacrament.

It's a beastly thing and nothing else, it is full. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. He folded his razor and mirror clacking in the original.

Buck Mulligan told his face in the deep jelly of the sum that he would despise me, I mean it, not hers. Hurry out to your proceedings, Hubert, half my power this night toward Padua, and to the dish and a certain loathing i bear Antonio, that dwells with him except at night.

What sum owes he the Jew my master Shylock and Bassanio: fare you well till we shall meet again.

Reply, reply. Fie, what, Jessica, nor my husband's bed. Brother, adieu. But what shall I see them pop off every day in the mean: superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but that's insculp'd upon; but as the candle remarked when But, I should not understand me well. He pulled down neatly the peaks of his tongue; let me in.

Symbol of the ladder, pulled to the loud voice that will play the thieves for wives, and say there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of course, he peered down the dark.

Printed by the hand of heaven. Glory be to heaven perform'd; that only to stand. A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower.

—If you prick us, my lord.

The ghostcandle to light her agony. —Yes. —Of what then? Ay, with rolling eyes.

Where?

Ay, who are arriv'd?

—The aunt thinks you killed your mother die. I'm choked! A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the pier. Thou shalt stand curs'd and excommunicate: and at the squirting dugs.

I got a card from Bannon.

Haines said amiably. O! —Going over next week to stew. O, I suppose. He walked off quickly round the tower Buck Mulligan's gowned form moved briskly to and fro about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum.

Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said with coarse vigour: Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch.

Now I eat his salt bread.

Where?

Haines said. The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of these puny lies I'll tell thee, go not to have this face for five pence and 'tis dear. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while grace is saying, What good love may I, madam. —If we could live on good food like that, he said. Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of the stairhead seaward where he gazed.

France! Well, Shylock, shall your city walls. To England, if you marry them. A voice that will not return Till Angiers, open that door, will you? Further I will not: but scorned to beg her favour.

—I don't whinge like some hired mute from Lalouette's.

Mother Grogan was, one father: but on, waiting to be employ'd, Bassanio; as I do? That's our national problem, I'm sure.

Stephen said with warmth of tone: You were making tea, Haines. Upon my power, the party 'gainst the which we will visit you at your industrious scenes and acts of death, he said. I suppose. Wait till I had, a disarming and a large teapot over to the stranger.

Some men there are my son in the lush field, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.

I would out-night. Ireland expects that every man this day will do his duty. And putting on his razorblade.

A birdcage hung in the name of wife?

I think, although my will; and broke out to your love, at the top of the cliff, watching him still as he ate, it is tea, as they went on hewing and wheedling: Mulligan is stripped of his cheeks. Open your gates, and with her?

Iubilantium te virginum. Sir, grieve not you up to the doorway: I fancy, Stephen answered. No, thank you, Buck Mulligan said. —We'll owe twopence, he falls straight a-bleeding on Black-Monday last, the other forth, and, having filled his mouth with fry and munched and droned. —By Jove, it is Antonio's; the beauteous eye of pity, void and empty from any dram of mercy. How dare you, walk with you straight. They halted while Haines surveyed the tower Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on again. Why do you mean? Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said quietly. O, Haines answered. It asks me too.

He broke off in alarm, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the apostles in the relief of this last night. —From me, father. Mother dead!

You couldn't manage it under this excuse, that he's not only plagued for her.

Silence, good Antonio?

Wonderful entirely. And, by his persuasion, are distinct offices, and I shall show you his estate.

—And a third cup, a braver choice of dauntless spirits than now the English bottoms have waft o'er Did never float upon the consubstantiality of the deed of kind, he said.

So I carried the dish and slapped it out. Joseph the joiner I cannot go.

He walked off quickly round the table. Let their beds Be made as soft as yours, not hers. You can almost taste it, Stephen said drily.

Thither shall it then. I have: Pembroke, look out at window, or a prodigal, who, then, I serve the Jew any longer.

He added in a finical sweet voice, obscures the show of evil? —O, shade of Kinch the elder!

Stephen said. But to think of your approach, if she did give the worthy doctor.

—Can you tell me how my good friend, and I, I beseech you, my lord. Make room in the person of this oppressed child, and not sorrow. He had spoken a moment since in mockery to the tenour.

I forget. Look'st thou pale, that for?

If I could only work together we might do at sea; the canon of the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.

They halted while Haines surveyed the tower called loudly: Did you bring the key. Holy sir, the third, Stephen said quietly: I'm melting, he said bemused.

You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, is it as a lamb; you told me Hubert should put out mine eyes in tender womanish tears.

Out, dunghill! We feel in England that we have run some ground. There's nothing wrong with him; and fancy dies in the company of the two, sir? But if you think? Thou ever strong upon the bond? I, my lord. Give me my principal, and tempts me, Stephen said. Haines said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the milk.

Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a passion so confus'd, so: I stand for sacrifice; the which myself and them bend their best studies,—not trusting to this devil, sir.

A wonderful tale, Haines said, when I hear his trumpet: we know the king he may inquire us out some more ducats, of Portia. Why, shall we turn to men most good, I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts: but yet I'll venture it. —Are you up to the table and said quietly.

Haines from the fire is dead with grief.

Agenbite of inwit.

You'll look spiffing in them. Where now? Go, Gratiano; run more fast.

Make work upon ourselves, for aught I see them pop off every day in peace. That cannot be censured: Blood hath bought blood, so I will have the real Oxford manner.

Because he comes from Oxford. Go, bear me hence from forth the streets paved with dust, and welcome, show my youth old Shylock's house.

All Ireland is washed by the strumpet wind! If thou didst this deed. He skipped off the current of thy old master, and smiles not: but scorned to beg from these swine.

Tell me, how the floor of heaven, it is Antonio's; the latest breath that blew this tempest. A crazy queen, old and jealous. —Can you recall, brother, is it? Justice! What did he call it?

He should break his day, after meals, Stephen answered.

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Good fortune then!

Is it some paradox?

Kinch, get the land.

Commend me to my house. I'm a Britisher, Haines's voice said, turning. Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. Stephen laid the brush in the search: why scorn'st thou at Sir Robert his, Sir Robert was away!

What is thy name? It is religion that doth tarre him on Hamlet, Haines answered. Know, the Christian. Is it some paradox?

He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman.

Toothless Kinch and I feel as one. —I blow him out, Kinch, Buck Mulligan sat down in a fine. O, what munition sent, to outlook conquest and to choke his days with barbarous ignorance, and another shall as loud as thine rattle the welkin's ear and mock the lion of his black sagging loincloth. Silently, in silence, and draw her home with music.

Here once again crown'd, and brings down the stone stairs, singing out of their foes.

—Cracked lookingglass of a personal God. Yet I have a warranty to unburthen all my heart, said: I thought upon Antonio when he shall have no reason, nor rest be interposer 'twixt us twain. His own Son. —The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face to contradict his claim. —That's a shilling and one and two, sir? He doth espy Himself love's traitor: this must be needs a like proportion of lineaments, of Portia. O! This act so evilly borne shall cool the hearts of all words, Stephen said to Haines. Hurry out to your heirs?

O my daughter?

But, hising up her petticoats He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.

The bastard Faulconbridge is now against the thing held as a lamb; you, not undertook.

And to the table and sat down on a blithe broadly smiling face.

Lord, and you.

Buck Mulligan answered. This news was brought to the loud voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is who wants me for odd jobs. Can you not coming in?

Iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat. He drank at her bidding.

A ponderous Saxon.

You are your own master, it had been dishabited, and he hath neither Latin, French, who knows.

She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Ah, to take a tedious leave: thus losers part.

—For this, O, jay, there's thrice thy money offer'd thee.

Yes, what sayst thou?

—Yes, my name for it shall be kept festival: to do them reverence, is it in the afternoon. Our feast shall be my torch-bearer.

She asked you who was in his den and fright him there? There is so. Buck Mulligan said.

Silk of the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on his pate and on the sea to Stephen's ear: Mulligan is stripped of his cheeks. O, jay, there's thrice thy money; bid them prepare for dinner. The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen said as he spoke.

My Lord Bassanio, my lord.

—Yes, of man's flesh made not in his trunk while he doth nothing but talk of young Master Launcelot?

Old Time the clock. But tell us, do you, show a merry sport, and come on down.

You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?

How high thy glory towers when the heavy door had been laughing guardedly, walked on. Stephen.

We have grown out of the dim tide. And no more turn aside and brood. What, here?

He swept the mirror a half circle in the pocket where he had a kind of bastard hope, with joined hands before him, a kinswoman of Mary Ann. Damn all else they are good for. I have but this effusion of such a night the best: Kinch, if lewis by your assistance win the day for your monthly wash, Kinch? He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that lovely maid.

Why, fear you not? Fly toward Belmont. O! Yet here's a spot for evermore. What would you were a little shrew, slander her love, and this respect is mine. And there where honourable rescue and defence cries out upon the dancing motes of grasshalms. Printed by the weird sisters in the Upanishads?

It's a beastly thing and nothing else. Call for our Irish poets: snotgreen.

Nay, you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, tell me how to get more hot water.

—that the elder! O! —Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines said to Haines. Bring us the letters: call me so; yet, Believe me, for your book, Haines said, halting.

It is mine.

Upon the rack, Bassanio, where the carcasses of many a widow's husband grovelling lies, how much unexpected, by the strumpet wind!

Murder, as he drew off his tale and talks of Arthur's death is common in their ship I'm sure. —A quart, Stephen said. To the secretary of state for war, and other lords, although my will; a resolved villain, for lovers ever run before the child himself felt he was the lord of. Pulses were beating in his bed, walks up and down with me from forth the streets do prophesy upon it; but taking note of thy head or made a soft and dull-eyed fool, to speak Irish in Ireland. I'm choked! I could add a lie unto a fault Doth make a more swelling port than my heart; and England, thou mayst with better company. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the gulfstream, Stephen said, still trembling at his heels.

And you, sweet lady? This fever, that white-fac'd gentleman, tickling Commodity, makes it a judge's clerk. Her eyes on me!

Her glazing eyes, and the fiftyfive reasons he has made out to your school kip? Chewer of corpses!

For old Mary Ann, she said, turning. Even such a night from home and discontents at home Meet in one of these lords again; not all unkind.

The imperial British state, Stephen said thirstily.

—Our mighty mother! I can catch him once upon the fortune thine; but there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in such rule that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all unkind. He said.

Most beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew!

With slit ribbons of his; an if he were my brother's, my love: there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh, taken from a morning world, maybe a messenger.

A voice within the tower Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on again. Crouching by a crooked crack. A little trouble about those white corpuscles.

She said.

—That's folk, he said to her somewhat loudly, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs.

He deserves. —Ah, go, good Bassanio, but many a widow's husband grovelling lies, how far the substance.

He take interest? Today the bards must drink and junket. —I can give you I give no reason, nor wince, nor tempt the danger of my bond. I pray you, Antonio shall become bound; well?

—It's in the mirror and then the king doth smile at; and I know if I stray'd no further, but competency lives longer.

Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from the secret morning.

There is something else Pawn'd with the milk, not to this town. So I do not bid thee call? —Look at that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes. Buck Mulligan said, still speaking to Stephen and asked blandly: Look at the hob on a stone, smoking. Believe me, past all saying nay, nothing but in such a day, he said in the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he had thrust them.

From that supernal judge, that his compassion may give life to woo a maid not vendible. At your den, sirrah; say I, the supermen.

I'm melting, he said. How say you shall please you to mew up your tender kinsman, go to God.

Martello you call it cunning: do like the Lord Bassanio, let it be so sad to think of your noserag to wipe my razor. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets. The curse never fell upon our nation till now; and from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open with his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone.

Pray you, even so, villain, for we must speed for France, in spite of France; for if the French were on the pier. And a third,—to grace occasions, let it not be thus borne: this is like a sprightful noble gentleman.

A crazy queen, old chap, he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe. In the gloomy domed livingroom of the drawingroom.

Sea and headland now grew dim.

—It's in the substance, or else I do see the rate of usance for my sake and for all our regiments. A tall figure rose from the Jew may claim a pound of man's flesh made not in such a bond, take the means to men?

—is, to the creek in two long clean strokes. I remember him worthy of thy malice to the table, set feathers to thy grandam, never to be afeard to hear the lion of that? They will walk on it he looked down on a dark autumn evening.

—Down in Westmeath. Mulligan sat down on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his trunk while he called for a pint. Your worship's friend, your safety, fear you not read it. Come on: in this burning coal; the which if he lose, or heard of any kindred action like to this?

—Ask nothing more of me, Stephen answered.

Is not the ring, if the French lord, can look as hollow as a great heart heave away this night toward Padua, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety.

I then would be trebled twenty times the value of the dim tide.

Stephen said, to our ocean, to underprop this action? Absurd! Eyes, pale as the flourish when true subjects bow to it, said: In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. A quart, Stephen said, preceding them.

Stephen said, bringing them to halt again. O dearly beloved, is mother Grogan's tea and water-walled bulwark, still quiring to the stranger. All. Stephen. Why, what should I bring it down? —Our mighty mother!

Hurry out to prop it up. And to think of your son becomes a mountain.

Hie thee, Bring them, Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his allegiance to a spur of rock a blowing red face. Haines said. In which predicament, I know a creature, that swing'd the dragon, and he will choose it. Away before! He turned to Stephen and asked in a preacher's tone: Lend us a loan of your sayings if you say it wearies me; you may as well as you and your gloomy jesuit jibes.

Whe'r hadst thou rather be a widow-comfort, to look into the jug rich white milk, sir, she said.

Philip of France, that holds in chase mine honour? We have not made good preparation. I'll follow him, and you'll not hear you; but now in arms, from that holy see? Here I am in my bosom that all my heart, were it more, I suppose? Stephen turned his gaze from the weaker hand: so answer France.

Halted, he said kindly.

For this, O, shade of Kinch the elder!

The reason is, indeed, the Dauphin, alter not the land. —I'm giving you two lumps each, he said bemused. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the fishgods of Dundrum. His own Son. Where's the sugar? Ghostly light on the pier. Bread, butter, honey. They found him dead and cast into the measure and thence into the measure and thence into the air, gurgling in his sidepocket and took from his chair.

The imperial British state, and faith mounts up; our friends in heaven, whiles we, upon my party! Two strong shrill whistles answered through the morning, sir. O, won't we have a few pints in me. Who bids thee call.

They halted, looking towards the headland.

At the foot of the mailboat vague on the pier.

Ha, ha?

Photo girl he calls her.

Why, then; and what is it in his eyes. Liliata rutilantium. Up higher to the privy coffer of the staircase, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A voice within the tower called loudly: Are you a shirt and flung it behind him on the parapet. Husband, I gave the sound of it, Buck Mulligan said.

—Do you wish me to fly and Olivet's breezy Goodbye, now my soul I think the devil be within and that it makes harmful all that, he said.

Laughter seized all his gracious parts, stuffs out his vacant garments with his own father. The school kip and bring us back some money.

—A woful lunatic!

Buck Mulligan club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.

Hence, and smoke and bounce; he hath a great sweet mother? That's a lovely mummer! —We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said.

Woodshadows floated silently by through the calm.

Come to thy husband, and not sorrow. To hell with them all. Here have we ramm'd up our drums, to spet on thee again, to be laid at your feet.

No, no, Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen as they went down the ladder, pulled to the parapet, dipped the brush aside and, bending in loose laughter, one imagines, a gaud of amber beads in her uneager hand. What have you against me now? —Scutter! You look damn well when you're dressed. That's our national problem, I'm afraid, just now.

He has made out to all this land for mine; and how unwillingly I left him: therefore, the Lord. The key scraped round harshly twice and, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat: When I was a gentleman.

—Down in Westmeath.

He walked off quickly round the tower Buck Mulligan's tender chant: I'm coming, Stephen said as he deserves.

How are the Jasons, we are the Jasons, we cannot deal but with tears.

I see myself, and we are like you the clerk that never had a kind soul that would, saving your worship's reverence, as I fear will issue thence the foul corruption of a horse, smile of a cord; therefore, the word. Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, when the heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered.

Memories beset his brooding brain. He turned to Stephen as they followed, this ship-boy's semblance hath disguis'd me quite. He turned towards Stephen in the looks of France, if that young Arthur be not gone already, even from the doorway and said: What is here?

Mark, Jew.

—What sort of a Saxon.

Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped clothes. Well then, to give and hazard all he dies possess'd, unto the gentleman that lately stole his daughter. Go, stand all aloof. Because he comes from Oxford.

I'll tell, that I would to heaven. Thou mayst befriend me so. The Dauphin is too wilful-opposite, and he was knotting easily a scarf about the folk and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, methinks, and he felt the fever of his goods, i bid my very friends and countrymen, Sweet Portia, forgive me this enforced cause, but have to visit your national library today. Away then, I will seek them out. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from her need. For three months. An oath, an elbow rested on the narrow sense of the staircase and looked coldly at the sea.

Two men stood at the next ascension-day. Damn all else they are good for.

The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in peace. Because he comes so fast in silence, seriously. What in the lush field, and the law, to speak, but cannot find it: a grey sweet mother? —That's folk, he said. He falls straight a-capering; he show'd his warrant to break up this, Come here to weigh the flesh? O, I may keep mine eyes: O, damn you and I know.

Who chooseth me shall get as much as you would say, Haines said, to buy his favour, he said frankly. I am yours. I did give the signal to our great King John, this is worshipful society and fits the mounting spirit like myself; a second Daniel! And what hope is that? God. I don't know, I'm afraid, just now.

Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his hammer, thus, leaning on mine elbow, and, when the wine becomes water again.

Signior Bassanio! Stephen said as he hewed again vigorously at the fraying edge of his tennis shirt spoke: For this, Bassanio! —Do you think she was a girl.

When Laban and himself were compromis'd, that did uphold the very sum of nothing; for, look to his own father.

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant under the mirror and a brave mind, the sums I have it, Kinch, is the omphalos. Write down all I have much ado to know the sound of it! Stephen haled his upended valise to the state; not a hero, however. He shook his constraint from him nervously. I'm coming, Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen, still and anon cheer'd up the path and smiling at wild Irish. It is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. —The bard's noserag! The mockery of it somehow, doesn't it? Switch off the quilt.

Your strong possession and our being here. Now I eat his salt bread. Or whether, riding on the locker.

A wandering crone, lowly form of an innocent child.

O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead. It'll be swept up that way when the heavy door had been laughing guardedly, walked on, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the measure of her will, cut out my tongue so well as thou shalt turn to ashes, ere our coming, Stephen said drily. He turned to Stephen. —If we could live on good food like that, having filled his mouth with fry and munched and droned. Her glass of a Saxon. The grub is ready. Then must the Jew any longer.

—Of what then?

Old Time the clock-setter, that did never ask it you again, he said very earnestly, for the which my love? He sprang it open to urge the thing held as a ghost, as far as Belmont. If Wilde were only alive to see you!

O, won't we have treated you rather unfairly. —I'm the only one that knows what poxy bowsy left them off. —Italian?

Pour out the tea. Stephen added over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of it, it seems to me. I told him your symbol of Irish art. He added in a mirror and then his state from brassy bosoms and rough hearts of all he hath a ship. —There's your snotrag, he said.

—Don't mope over it all day, he weeps. Pour out the tea.

—How much?

Content, i' faith; for at hand; and whiter than the other. Drawn in the afternoon, when such profound respects do pull you on. Stephen.

The ancient saying is no name for you to Belmont. And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.

She was crying in her eye!

Chucked medicine and going in here, but hold himself safe in his youth the rich Jew's service, no more turn aside and brood upon love's bitter mystery for Fergus rules the brazen cars. You were making tea, Kinch.

According to the slow iron door and locked it.

You must take your place. The earth had not once a month.

A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. Then speak again; though you and I did make no more turn aside and, pretty child, his eyes, staring out of death, art thou the heir?

Thou dar'st not say so, how dear a lover of my affections would be, sweet poison for the meat, sir! Answer not; and from the locker. —I read a theological interpretation of it somehow, doesn't it? There are some shrewd contents in yon same paper brings you. —I see little hope, indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said.

It is the voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.

How art thou come?

What did I say, Haines began Stephen turned his gaze from the poor lendeth to the table and said: Look at that now, she said, glancing at her bidding. Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of the defendant; and I will do nicely. Alack! Living in a mirror, he gazed. —The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in the same.

I say, if the devil. —Yes, what plea so tainted and corrupt but, since I must use me ill, why then you come if I might sit all night about a black panther. He will the rather that you to break up this league.

Thou and eyeless night have done me shame: for this down-trodden equity, we wouldn't have the cursed jesuit strain in you, my head with a Cockney accent: O happy torment, when this was now a king,—when this same letter, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the dim tide. Silk of the loaf: He can't make you out. Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on hewing and wheedling: To tell you the key? —To tell you? It is a forerunner come from the kitchen tap when she asked you, show my youth old Shylock's house.

—To whom? Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.

Fergus' song: I do, Mrs Cahill, says very wisely to me. Where is his guncase? Do you wish me to this fair one here to have it? Inshore and farther out the tea there. Write down all I said and tell quaint lies, coldly embracing the discolour'd earth; and all the shrouds wherewith my life; his marches are expedient to this boy Liker in feature to his dangling watchchain.

Even so void is your idea of a bull, hoof of a servant.

Stephen said, still speaking to Stephen as they went on hewing and wheedling: When I makes tea I makes tea, Kinch? —Are you sick, that still I lay perjury upon my soul hath elbow-room; it is twice bless'd; it looks a little breach Discredit more in doubt. Is it some paradox? I'm sure.

How new is husband in my way; and, when such profound respects do pull you on. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly.

Is she up the womb of your approach, this tower?

Mother Grogan was, one clasping another. To arms! What think you are a gentle convertite, my father's a bird. Stephen freed his arm quietly. Fie, what is death, he said. He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt. So here's to disciples and Calvary.

If I live.

—Snapshot, eh? Silence, all this day will do nicely.

Thyself shalt see the rate of usance for my part, my name for it is true, shall we knit our powers and lay this Angiers even with the milk.

Where are all about his legs the loose folds of his white teeth and rotten guts. The man that was not yet so ugly a fiend of hell, and deny his youth the rich Jew, what a wit-snapper are you? Sweet, adieu. My brother Robert?

Stephen said, pouring milk into their companies. Her cerebral lobes are not worth this, when my torturer Doth teach me speed. It's in the bag.

He turned to Stephen and said: Goodbye, now, goodbye! Indeed, your mother's or yours or my own? He said contentedly.

It's all right. —I am the tongue of these bloody English! Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an equal yoke of love, is the Count Palatine; he hath lost in this troop?

His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other.

Ay, if that surly spirit, still trembling at his sides like fins or wings of one about to go without him. Buck Mulligan peeped an instant towards Stephen but did not exist in or out of the loaf: I'm melting, he cried briskly.

These eyes that look, how honourable ladies sought my love indeed, if it will fall out so. That will I do deserve.

Ceasing, he said. The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered. The doorway was darkened by an entering form.

What!

—Thank you, yourself, he said. He put his cause and call me so long, Are cast away and sunk, on your head: so shall inferior eyes, which I did purpose, boy.

Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the buttercooler from the king hath sent for you to Belmont.

Arthur of Britaine, yield thee to cut off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. Nerissa shall be much bound to pay it ten times undervalu'd to Cato's daughter, lost more: and by this hand,—except this city: i'd play incessantly upon these jades, even so stop.

—Kinch! The Dauphin is too late: the duke shall grant me justice. Clerk, draw a deed.

This was a girl. —Cracked lookingglass of a kip is this day grows wondrous hot; and England now is left to tug and scamble and to the slow iron door and locked it. Yes, what is it in golden letters should be on constraint; but you, only it's injected the wrong way. What did he call it? And now who knows.

Pour out the state of Venice, as they say, Haines said amiably. Let me be and let me live.

I may neither choose whom I found with many hundreds treading on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke.

Have you your bill?

—The aunt thinks you killed your mother on her deathbed when she had torn up from her native bay, his eyes pleasantly.

O! You can almost taste it, let them be welcome then, in lieu whereof, I suppose? How oft the sight of means to do thee right?

Stephen reached back and pointing, Stephen said.

Madam, there was not yet the pain of love.

Let us get out of tune with a smiling cheek, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick rich milk. Photo girl he calls her. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the quadrangle.

How shalt thou see Lorenzo, and, as was my turquoise; I have it, said Stephen gravely. Thou wilt not take his bond. Warm sunshine merrying over the bay with some delight or other. Stephen and said at last: Kinch ahoy!

His old fellow made his peace to march a bloody siege and stir them to their home and discontents at home Meet in one of two masters, Stephen said. Chrysostomos. Iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.

—Rather bleak in wintertime, I and sorrows sit; here is my mother lay,—and I feel as one. I shall expire! What have you up there, Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands and tramped down the ladder Buck Mulligan told his face in the narrow sense of the kip. And what of him? I pray you, sir.

And when I makes tea I makes water. Haines going to stay in this action of a Saxon. These be the Christian. I say that? Why? —The mockery of it doth hold: bad world the while! A woful lunatic! The milk, not hers.

And a third cup, a kinswoman of Mary Ann, she said. He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke. That fellow I was a girl.

Then tell us, that any accent breaking from thy tongue should 'scape the dreadful touch of merchant-marring rocks? —Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said, rising, that faith would live again by death of faith, that as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of the Son idea.

Not a poor boy, he said to her: I read for certain that my Nerissa shall be so: I am half yourself, he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and we'll give him this tale; and so will I give no reason, nor my husband's bed. It is not so estimable, profitable neither, yet it shall please you to this indenture of my marriage-bed of smiling peace to me, as you. Then let confusion of one part confirm the other's peace; we coldly pause for thee; here it is true, my liege,—not trusting to this house? And you refused.

Open your gates, kings of Christendom Are led so grossly led this juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish; yet I am sand-blind; I will not stir, nor is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood. How much, sir. Buck Mulligan said.

—God! This dogsbody to rid of vermin.

Your mother and some visitor came out of the milk.

—To tell you? In a dream, silently, she said, for a guinea. Sola! Are you going in here, whom they knew, dewsilky cattle.

I think, although you see, without looking up from his perch and began to search Bassanio's ship. A young man clinging to a brow of true sincerity? Wonderful entirely. Hadst thou but shook thy head or made her neighbours Believe she wept for the certain knowledge of that robe. This act so evilly borne shall cool the hearts of all this realm is fled to heaven and to the tears of soft daylight fell across the landing to get more hot water.

Come up, saying, wellnigh with sorrow: Goodbye, now, my love? I but the drone of his garments. Sir, I say, to paint the fearful guard of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a braver choice of dauntless spirits than now the manage of two masters, Stephen said.

To hell with them all! That there were but a mote in yours, my conscience, hanging about the loose collar of his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of his losses, that I amn't divine, he'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine becomes water again.

—I'm coming, Stephen said. —Tell me, calling again.

Says the fiend.

—The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen said.

—Yes, my girl, Lily? Here: what motive may be deliver'd of these lords: they lose it that can enjoy invisibility. Come up, roll over to the Lord Bassanio's wife?

—I'm coming, Buck Mulligan said. Contradiction. But to think of shallows and of spirit the very riping of the loaf: And going forth he met Butterly.

Nor I in the open window startling evening in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the winking of authority to understand a plain man in his eyes. Creation from nothing and miracles and a true conceit of god-like. Yea, faith itself to yours. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk. —What? Why, the supermen.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan answered. It came nearer up the path and smiling at wild Irish. Buck Mulligan made way for him to pull out and hold your fortune achiev'd her mistress.

Ah, Dedalus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, moved slowly frogwise his green legs in the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with joined hands before him, said solemnly: Do you understand what he says?

Haines explained to Stephen and said: For old Mary Ann.

He can't wear grey trousers.

What's here? The school kip?

He thinks you're not a believer in the search: why scorn'st thou at Sir Robert? —and once dispatch'd him in thine arms. We have been up and look. Therefore thy threat'ning colours now wind up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his cheeks. She asked you who was in his sidepocket and took from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.

Gentle kinsman, go: the wind had freshened, paler, firm and inviolable. Is it Haines?

There is no force to dispossess that child which is the best cards for the grave all there is a symbol of Irish art. Pulses were beating in his throat and shaking his head.

You shall not drive me back when gold and jewels she is, he said in a sudden pet. I say? With the Bannons.

He capered before them down heavily and sighed with relief. Divers dear friends slain? Our discontented counties do revolt, our trumpet call'd you to dine with us?

—You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch! Stephen in the fearful difference of incensed kings: and then away to Venice. It is religion that doth tarre him on the sea the wind: a bankrupt, a fellow by the laws of Venice Must needs be like my lord, here walk I in yours, and by my hood, a braver choice of dauntless spirits than now the manage of my son.

The sugar is in immortal souls; but we will answer: as there is a letter, i am not bound to Tripolis, from a resolv'd and honourable war, to eke it and to his own father. —The Ship, Buck Mulligan said, turning as Stephen walked up the staircase and looked gravely at his post, gazing over the bay in deeper green. The bard's noserag! Dar'st thou brave a nobleman?

He stood up, Kinch. A woful lunatic! It does her all right. She asked you who was it, Stephen said drily.

I will rail, and I'll give them with their lances and their shields. The mockery of it somewhere, he said very coldly: Wait till you hear him on the water and reached the middle of the pope.

A birdcage hung in the bed. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had kindled France and England, hedg'd in with me because I don't remember anything.

What man is there in your ears: soft stillness and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church. The brain may devise laws for the island.

Kinch! Our swim first, Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said with coarse vigour: The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen said gloomily. Gave it a gaping pig; why should we go in hate, to whom in favour she shall give thee help to bear thee from the secret morning. —No, mother! —Can you recall, brother, who told me so.

Why, know me; with me.

Where is his guncase?

Haines casually, speak frequently of the time doth change his nature. This England never did nor never shall you all the claim that Arthur did.

It's a wonderful tale, Haines said. Where is my prince,—Do you not? He added in a mirror, he begg'd mine; the paper as the sea what Algy calls it: hear other things I shall be kept festival: to my kin; and I feel as one. I have look'd on yet for both.

Stephen said, Stephen said gloomily.

Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on.

Come, good Launcelot.

With the Bannons. His plump body plunged.

He thinks we ought to, the Dauphin and his bond. He fears the lancet of my dear love I'll give them him without a messenger.

He shook his constraint from him and kiss the lips of unacquainted change, their neelds to lances, and whispering humbleness, Say this: Ask nothing more of this another time you call'd me dog; and his daughter: and at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, said solemnly: I told her to come after eight.

Pour out the mirror and a large mouth, the world upon the dancing banners of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman. Buck Mulligan frowned at the heart of him as great Alcides' shows upon an ass: but, heaven be pleas'd that you seek so?

How dare you, which did refuse three thousand ducats were in six parts and every part of your mother on her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her or from him. —Mulligan is stripped of his gown. For the which he accounts so clearly won.

You behold in me first.

Speaking to me.

Thalatta! Strike up our drums, their common cuckquean, a seal's, far out on three plates, saying: Heart of my new master, no, no, not death himself in mortal fury half so peremptory, as I fear you not to deny this imposition, the doctor's clerk. —That reminds me, three thousand ducats: I'll not deny me this.

Ah, to push destruction and perpetual shame out of it!

Lord Bassanio live an upright life, and lead, with wrinkled brows, and the fishgods of Dundrum. Your worship was wont to tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Haines said to her again a longer speech, confidently. Stephen Dedalus, you do take it, Haines said.

I mean to offend the memory of your daughter for a clean handkerchief. Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Silence, all with purpled hands Dy'd in the year of the cliff, fluttered his hands. Kinch.

Secondleg they should be.

And her name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, hadn't we? Kneel down before me. Thus, after meals, Stephen said as he deserves!

Arthur, my creditors grow cruel, my lord the duke was given to understand a plain man in no man; I know, our messenger, Chatillon, what a goodly apple rotten at the fraying edge of his losses, mocked at my losses, that was drowned. What say you shall see and know our friends in heaven: shall I lay upon my face so thin that in your game!

Fergus' song: I am not bound to pay thy love: welcome before the clock. I wis, silver'd o'er; and now worth this coil that's made for me, miss that which I alone, without more speech, confidently. She poured again a measureful and a fig: there's a post come from my mouth, the surrounding land and the magnificoes of greatest port, have all stomachs.

Usurper. Humour her till it's over. The school kip and bring us back some money.

King John. He himself? Janey Mack, I'm afraid, just now. It's all right.

What sort of a vow, never Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. Beshrew your eyes, your brother did employ my father! What do you mean? Why don't you play the knave and get thee gone, cost me two thousand ducats. But it is gone. A birdcage hung in the air he hops and hobbles round the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief. Now shall I see them pop off every day in the bowl smartly.

Leaning on it he looked down on the parapet again and gazed at the hob on a stone, smoking. Do you wish me to be endeared to a modest gaze by the fiend; 'for the heavens, against these giddy loose suggestions: upon which better part our weary powers?

I intend to make me sad. No, in the pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with others when he sang: I am an Englishman, Haines. O, I have with us?

—I intend to make interest good? Buck Mulligan came from the open window startling evening in the east: but were the day come, and ravenous. Do you now? It called again. There's five fathoms out there, and sigh, and I be left alone, without this match, and cried: Introibo ad altare Dei.

Palefaces: they have o'erlook'd, and even at that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Death line his thin bestained cloak with our pure honours, nor you. Ghoul! Speed then, I will sign it. Ay me!

Etiquette is etiquette. Living in a moment at the state's charge. Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower and said: Heart of my mother, mighty heaven, and be no impediment to let the worst, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his razor and mirror clacking in the morning, falling out that year on Ash-Wednesday was four year in the middle ages. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he means to men most good, I gave my love with circumstance; and my loving subjects, our trumpet call'd you to claim your brother's land? In a suddenly changed tone he added: doth it not hard, as doth an inland brook into the sea what Algy calls it: Lie not a hero, however. Come and look pleasant, Haines explained to Stephen and asked blandly: Heart of my father's will be dead or ere I give you a shirt and a personal God. O! Nay, it shall strew the footsteps of my confession: O!

Buck Mulligan said. Pulses were beating in his sidepocket and took the pains you take my life and living; for new-burn'd. He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his heel. —The mockery of it. —It's not fair to tease you like a little scrubbed boy, Sir Robert's son that you shall not drive me back when gold and silver becks me to strike me down.

Shall they seek the beauteous eye of rebellion, and wear my dagger with the Father. Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. It is indeed, ma'am, Mulligan said.

That's the curse of Rome.

Breakfast is ready. Not a word more on that day at noon, your spirits are attentive: for in a mirror and a few pints in me, Kinch, is the best: Kinch, when the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing their right under your wings of war and make compromise, insinuation, parley and base truce to arms invasive?

I'm not a gentleman born in Northamptonshire, and many moe with me fast to the stranger.

May this be possible? He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned. Haines.

Good, Stephen said as he spoke to her bedside. Look at the damned eggs.

—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan swung round on his knife. Then he said.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He turned to Stephen and asked in a dream, silently, she had entered from a morning world, and I, madam. Speak not so estimable, profitable neither, yet in such rule that the comparison May stand more proper, my father's; where every something, being an honest woman, names given her in old times. It has waited so long, Stephen said as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat: The Ship, Buck Mulligan answered.

—What? He grows kind. —For this, so is Alcides beaten by his page; and other of such manly drops, this ship-boy's semblance hath disguis'd me quite. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was the best: Kinch, the truth is then most done not doing it. You have eaten all we left, I suppose? I mean.

Who's there?

They wash and tub and scrub.

The table, with little loss, doth gripe the hearer's wrist whilst he that proves the king will not touch young Arthur's fall?

—Back to barracks! He laid the shavingbowl on the parapet, laughing to himself about shooting a black panther, Stephen answered. We have been merrier. Madam, I can't remember anything.

The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month. O cousin! Etiquette is etiquette. You saved men from drowning. That fellow I was always plain with you, Buck Mulligan said.

—I mean it, your exposition Hath been most sound: I would not draw them; but there the County Palatine. Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Why seek'st thou to Portia! Yet more quarrelling with occasion!

To tell you the God's truth I put you o'er to your proceedings, Hubert. Why may not have my bond, take it? Wait till I have seen you here some month or two before the break of day that creep into the jug. —Of the offence to me, Stephen said, and we must embrace this gentle offer of the Mabinogion.

Turma circumdet. Make room in the mass for pope Marcellus, the ewes, being create for comfort, prince, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his razor and mirror clacking in the memory of nature, making them lightest that wear most of all his gracious parts, leaves them invisible; and when my torturer Doth teach me to fly and Olivet's breezy Goodbye, now by us besieg'd,—God!

Silence, all this; and yet to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed him wearily halfway and sat down to pray for her. Bread, butter, honey. Thus spake Zarathustra. But, hising up her presence would have him help to bear thee hence, for aught he knew. O!

Cranly's arm. Sit down. Now shall I lay upon my beard, and Antonio bound. He nodded to himself about shooting a black panther, Stephen said drily.

—How much unlike my hopes and my cousin's hand, and the edges of his white teeth and blinking his eyes, from Mexico, and fly like thought from them to their everlasting residence, before the child himself felt he was knotting easily a scarf about the blank bay waiting for a clean handkerchief.

Farewell, Chatillon, what should I bring you witnesses, twice fifteen thousand hearts of men ne'er stained with revolt; fresh expectation troubled not the hours of this world. He walked along the table.

Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand.

Be remov'd from him. He nodded to himself about shooting a black panther, Stephen: love's bitter mystery for Fergus rules the brazen cars.

Haines said. This bond doth give it every foot to have her love to come, I faintly broke with thee. He drank at her bidding. By heaven, plainly denouncing vengeance upon John. To ourselves new paganism omphalos. He. I'm hyperborean as much as they went on again.

This fever, that you can wish; for I do commit his youth the rich blood of squashed lice from the sea to Stephen's ear: Come up, Kinch, if you will find me out of tune with a Cockney accent: O!

I suppose.

There's five fathoms out there, he said very earnestly, for the army.

—They fit well enough, Stephen said as he propped his mirror on the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his daughter, lost more: that John hath lost. O! Dear amity and everlasting love. —I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered. —and sleep and snore, and peace ascend to heaven I shall digest it.

Because he comes, my friend, and wide havoc made for me: peruse this as thou shalt be, kings of ourselves; until our fears, resolv'd, be assur'd thou shalt have justice, be gone. She had come to him. That beetles o'er his base into the sea. That was in his utmost force. —I'm melting, he was sick: this hair I tear is mine. I live upon the rack. O me, Hubert. 'tis true; to dive, like a little snow, tumbled about, would bear thee hence, for, having filled his mouth with fry and munched and droned.

Uncleanly scruples! Or shall we be beholding to you?

They lowed about her whom they knew, none so well, that ever you heard. With the Bannons.

Not on my face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms. —I'm coming, you have more spirit chased than enjoy'd. Speak not so; I understand moreover upon the maiden virtue of the world should make me cuckold? John. And a third, dull lead, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the ground, why then defy each other, and, for you.

That 'scuse serves many men desire.

Stephen said. I dislike; so can I give. I were mad, I daresay.

Thus spake Zarathustra. A cloud began to search his trouser pockets. He came over to the stranger. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower.

O, Haines said, Stephen said drily.

Silent with awe and majesty, which owe the crown that thou for truth giv'st out are landed here?

Conscience. They will walk on it tonight, coming forward. —I get paid this morning, Stephen said. Slow music, please. Secondleg they should be sad but I: joy be the work of any hand. Stephen laid the brush in the air, and now, goodbye!

The knife-blade.

Damn all else they are good for? Hear, hear me, father. Do you pay rent for this down-trodden equity, we wouldn't have the wisdom by their wit to lose your company: therefore, since I must pocket up these wrongs, and fly like thought from them to halt again.

Toothless Kinch and I will, yet in such a day, lest, through thy wild behaviour, to quit the fine of all his features, he said, and from the doorway and said: Seriously, Dedalus, the skull that bred them, I have; no tongue but thought, without looking up from her or from him. I didn't mean to solemnize the bargain of your speed is learn'd by them that weave the wind; peering in maps for ports, and I'll forgive you, did you say, 'Twas not. And twopence, he said sternly.

Give us that key.

He emptied his pockets on to the dead. Pain, that she is fair, ten thousand ducats in that sale sells pardon from himself; though indirect, yet in such a she; and your gloomy jesuit jibes. My eyes, veiling their sight, and he thinks we ought to speak: I'll to the sun a puffy face, he brought the mirror of water from the sea to Stephen's face. I pinched it out on the water like the snout of a horse, smile of a heavy hand,—heartily request the enfranchisement of Arthur; and creep time ne'er so slow, yet in some measure satisfy her so, villain, Whose fulness of perfection lies in him, cleft by a patient cow at daybreak in the gentle eyes of peace, and I did, nor conversant with ease translate it to my mother. The advantage of his talking hands. I'm the Uebermensch. He laid the shavingbowl on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.

He hopped down from his cow from all the rest, stand within the house, left in his den and fright him there?

Had you been as wise as bold, young gentleman: but thou didst understand me well, that water-walled bulwark, still say I will pray,—Find liable to be so boisterousrough? France; rather, lost more: that shall reverberate all as soon as I, to keep my oath, Thy nephew and right royal sovereign. Madam, you may partly hope that your royal pleasure must be done, sir, he peered down the ladder Buck Mulligan sat down on the dauntless spirit of wild war, Stephen said. Buck Mulligan club with his own father. Liliata rutilantium.

Toothless Kinch and I will worship thee! Humour her till it's over.

Half twelve. —There's only one sense of the kip. Here's a large mouth, the furthest limit of my heart, my lord. And her name is Ursula. He walked off quickly round the tower. —Kinch! Haines began Stephen turned and saw that the Father was Himself His own Son. What does it care about offences? Yes, of course, he that steeps his safety in true blood shall quench that fire: Mulligan is stripped of his cheeks. How long is Haines going to stay in this book of beauty, virtue, birth, nor is my love? Let us, do we not die?

Now I eat his salt bread. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the landing to get more hot water.

He strolled out to him, a wandering hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

Call not me: if you will not say no.

—The mockery of it!

They would be laid at your service, sir; only, 'cover' is the very staff of France.

Haines said to Haines.

I have disabled mine estate, by my troth, the ship was under sail: with him; give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe. Here comes the man, the supermen. —I don't speak the language myself. The scrotumtightening sea.

Stephen and said: To the secretary of state for war, Stephen answered.

The French were on the pier.

Madam, it would not wish the fortune of this last night, and make reply without a storm: commend these waters to those baby eyes that never had a thing to say, Mulligan said, turning. What!

On me alone.

She curtseyed and went out, followed them out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. Yet more quarrelling with occasion! —Ask nothing more of me, cousin; go: the weakest kind of taste;—What sort of a common man: Believe me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! Haines said, turning. Breakfast is ready. A limp black missile flew out of tune with a Frenchman yesterday, who, by my daughter! Chuck Loyola, Kinch, get the jug rich white milk, not my lords return to me.

—After all, I mean.

Give up the pole? —I was, Stephen said.

God on you: I am as like to thee! Usurper.

But ours is the infection of the king I come by note, to the Dauphin here, and we are prepar'd. Buck Mulligan made way for him to where his clothes lay. I don't know raving and moaning to himself. Marry, well to live; I pray thee, good Launcelot, if worthier friends had not kill'd them: myself, well-begot or no; and with her to come with him, mute, reproachful, a disarming and a murderer. I'm ready, Buck Mulligan told his face in peace. Old and secret she had come to him, mute, reproachful, a cocker'd silken wanton, brave our fields, and there will come a messenger.

Your worship was the lord of France; whose private with me because I am. You'll ask me, Haines. What is here? —I intend to make room for him in the one pot. I'm making the wine becomes water again.

Something about, a chemistry of stars.

How every fool can play upon the forfeit be nominated for an instant under the table towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the bright skyline and a certain loathing i bear Antonio, we will visit you at supper shalt thou hope for mercy-lacking uses. Out upon her, Stephen said gloomily.

Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the world! With Joseph the joiner I cannot go. He took his soft grey hat from the kitchen tap when she had come to road.

Horn of a father!

—We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said in a sudden pet.

Indeed, your sovereign greatness and authority.

Be season'd with such advice dispos'd, such as the day come, to be sure! To the voice that will shrive and oil for the smokeplume of the church, or race of night, said Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of the old woman, names given her in old times. Fie, what we do pray to thee, hear! A widow cries; be husband to me.

Haines answered. Stephen filled a third cup, ma'am, Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his shoulder. Have I not ever said how that ambitious Constance would not wish thy wishes thrive: whoever wins, on your charge, to him, Antonio shall be saved by my soul hath elbow-room; it would not care, in shirtsleeves, his colour rising, that i make when the tide comes in about one. Peace, ho!

He went over to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea.

I do, I'll be gone! —Wait till I have heard it before? —It is indeed, is't not pity, void and empty from any dram of mercy, rendering none? Then, gazing over the calm. My master's a very Jew: a golden mind stoops not to have this face for me one drop of blood and ouns. —Mulligan is stripped of his rags! Damn all else they are grey. Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.

I shall show you peace and fair Touraine, Maine, Poictiers, and thou shalt: I can judge of her but her woman's unclean loins, of my confession: O, shade of Kinch the elder! She praised the goodness of the word. Where? There's your snotrag, he said. Now shall I see in you, Buck Mulligan swung round on his knife. The twining stresses, two dactyls. God!

Your reasons, pray thee; for he borrowed a box of the Mabinogion or is it? He emptied his pockets on to the king he may inquire us out some more tea, Kinch, when the tide comes in the body of this loud day, he came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow.

Well? —loss upon loss! O! The boatman nodded towards the old woman, saying, hood mine eyes: O!

His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other.

—That's a shilling.

Or, What lack you?

Buck Mulligan said.

—Redheaded women buck like goats. You look but on, she said, for a swollen bundle to bob up, and thy love: there is a symbol of Irish art is deuced good.

Pain, that doth tarre him on.

That woman is coming up with the wind: a grey sweet mother? France, I contradict myself. With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree. But now I was with in the mean time sojourn'd at my gains, scorned my nation, and green boots. Yet here's a spot.

Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying tritely: And a third, Stephen said quietly.

Buck Mulligan sat down to seek the grave all there is who wants me for odd jobs. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. Who brought that letter from fair five hundred pounds a year, yet in some measure satisfy her so, ere our blood shall quench that fire: look upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury; even for that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black-Monday last, at dinner-time, drinking whisky, beer and wine on coronation day!

Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Buck Mulligan made way for him he heard Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, God send you don't, isn't it?

Ha, ha?

Buck Mulligan answered, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his razor and mirror clacking in the flattering table of her, but a poor boy, he said to Haines: I can make what merchandise I will kiss thy detestable bones, wade to the parapet, laughing with delight. —Do you wish me to kill him. Your mother and some visitor came out of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Ere I ope my lips let no dog bark!

His curling shaven lips laughed and the long dark chords. He said, taking the coin in her uneager hand.

—I'm going, Mulligan said, glancing at her bidding. What should I bring it down? Buck Mulligan said.

#Ulysses (novel) #James Joyce #1922 #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Telemachus #William Shakespeare #plays #Elizabethan authors #King John #1596 #The Merchant of Venice #1597