#one sand grain among the others in winter wind
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Winter Flower
Chapter XVI: Tock-Tick
Masamune x OC [Hana]
Summary: Hana wakes up in the gardens of Azuchi castle without any recollection of her past. Who is she? What was she doing there? And most importantly – what is she supposed to do now? Placed under supervision of Lord Date, Hana has to find her footing in the unfamiliar reality of the warring states.
Series Masterlist
Content Warnings: poisoning
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Tock. Tock. Tock.
Tock. Tick.
Tick. Tick.
Tock…
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Tock. Tock. Tock.
Tock. Tick.
Tick. Tick.
Tock…
Sound flows into my ear, soothes my mind the way chill water placates burns. Birds chirp outside, just past the fluttering curtains, tangled somewhere among the chasing winds. Quiet taps of moving hinges, barely audible whispers of the wood… My own heartbeat vibrating through the springs in the mattress below me. Humming rock that flows in my veins, each thud in my chest an eruption forced through my arteries and veins…
The calendar hung above my desk is empty, not a trace of a year or any other date indicator persisting over the paper. I blink, and in this blinking I am whole. The sheets below me are chill to the touch, although warming, and inoffensively soft, little different from the dandelion seeds that still cling onto their parent’s corpse.
Tick. Tick.
Tock.
I turn my head towards the window, strands of my very own hair falling into my eyes. My arms, however, are quite uncooperative for whatever reason it may be now… So I choose not to mind either.
“Any questions, me?” I, another I, asks. We are quite different, in fact, but also… similar… identical… identical to a fault. The I smiles – frowns – lights up – her face falls. Mine, the actual mine, seems not to engage in any of that charade. If anything, it feels numb or numbed. Unresponsive. Restricted. Tight. Stretched over to the point of being taut.
“Ah. I see,” the I hums.
We take a step through the door frame, and so we sit in kitchen chairs, white IKEA – IKEA? What is IKEA? – plates lying before us, each with a hefty serving of muddied sand cake on top. The room itself is rather hazy. The longer I watch it, the less sense it makes, centipede-cupboards crawling over chameleon walls, the counter raising and falling among heavy thuds. I focus on the meal to drown out the sound.
“Your favourite,” she-I offers.
“Is it really, though?”
“Of course. Do not tell me… You can’t recall?”
“No.”
“Or yes?”
I don’t know. She-I slams her hand against the table, the dish spilling outside the ceramic bounds… There is plenty of it… Plenty more than a plate could hold…
Tock. Tock.
Tick.
The sand begins to carpet the floor, grain on a grain, and another one stacked on top. My legs kick leisurely, and so it ripples around my ankles, from brown, to yellow, to green… To blue, blueish purple.
The pier does not reach far into the lake, but it appears to be long enough to serve its function. Why is it there, though? I’m… not so certain, not anymore. The-I, however, seems to know, her toes just barely submerged in the water below. She-I appears rather carefree the way she is seated beside me, her hand holding onto mine gently… Motherly. I gives it a little squeeze. We give it a little squeeze.
Tock.
Splash.
Tick.
My eyes widen, something dropping from between the constellations above into the liquid skies at my feet. It warps the stars, diffuses their glow, before carrying it off and away under the cloak of waves.
“Starling.”
“Oh?”
“Let’s go.” I pulls at my hand, and so we fall. I hold my breath, now fully engulfed by viscously vicious lukewarmly slime-like water. It holds me quite fine and firms below my feet so that I can walk. Curious, curious that.
“How are you going to learn anything if we do not talk?”
I raise a quizzical eyebrow. How could I talk? My mouth is full of air… If I let go of it… Won’t I drown?
“You have always been a coward, me,” she-I continues her talk, her long finger tapping against the mole on her – our? – chin. I cover mine reflexively. “But… You are even worse now, don’t you think? Much worse, in fact. You are scared of breathing despite seeing with your own eyes that I can talk. Think about it, aren’t those nearly the same?”
I tilt my head to the side. It is dark, and were she to move outside the reach of my arm, I am quite certain I’d lose her in this here, wherever it is. Something about her is rather bright, burning at a place my eyes cannot reach. I consider her words for a while, but truth be told… This fire of the I eats at my air. My lungs have long worked through their share of it, and the prospect of letting them collapse without any attempts of making it out alive does not necessarily satisfy me now.
Bubbles form at my mouth. It… burns…
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” I wonders aloud. “How are we going to talk ourselves out of feeling this one? Or… is it that you are following me because you think I will figure it out?”
She turns around, takes a step towards me just as I grasp at my throat. “You are me, and I am you, me. We know exactly the same amount… So why do you insist on following something that you think you are not, while you are?”
She-I shoves me by the shoulder, my body tilting until I lay on the ground that somehow seems to be too high up at the same time.
“You wished to talk, but… No, you didn’t. We don’t do that.”
The world below me shatters, and through that, I am being elevated. Only I go, though, the she-I staring at me from down below before fading away completely.
I am taken into the white above, a heated collapse of some kind. I forget of my body, forget of my eyes and sight, the ringing in my ears the only sound that reaches me now. I curl up into a ball, too terrified of the roaring lightning bolts that circle me now. Who knows what may happen when they strike… Who knows whether I have not already learnt about that, just to lose whatever insight I have gained…
Electric violence simmers in the air.
***
I wake again, although this time to no light. The room is perfectly dark, so it occurs to me that now must be night – I cannot hear a sigh, not a hushed word or hurried steps sounding off anywhere nearby. However, my body does seem lighter than previously, and save for the throbbing between my temples, I am rather well… Or as well as I can be under those conditions.
I attempt to push myself up on my elbow, but vertigo swirls around my head as soon as my ear lifts off the pillow. It’s not exactly a pleasant sensation. Neither is the cold sweat running down my spine – I try to dispel them both through intentional breathing, but the air is rather unwilling when I try to draw it into my lungs. Heavy thoughts emerge from within their burrows the moment I lie back down.
Thinking about it now, I am left unguarded. It only makes sense that I cannot yet move around… I wonder, how much time has it been since…
The door slides open, light footstep coming from the unlit corridor. They’re barely a tap against the floor, barely a vibration running down the boards to where I’m resting, as if the feet that have produced them wished to whisper. More importantly, however, the person who is behind them does not invite in this maddening sweetness that I’ve learnt to associate with my captor… So, for now…
A cold cloth touches my forehead. I startle at the fact, quite unsure of how or when it has materialised – it does not even cross my mind that it might have been placed there by human hands. I’m proven mistaken, though, and it happens fast.
“Oh,” a woman lets out to my left, clearly similarly stunned. “You’re awake.”
“How long…?” I rasp at her. For some reason, it has her sigh in relief.
“Thank goodness you can still talk. It’s been a couple days since you’ve last woken up.”
Days. Have they noticed that I’m gone? They must have. They must have, so —
The towel slides over my forehead as my brows draw close to each other. Some tingling still lingers over my face, my frowning only agitating it further. I cannot stop myself, though. There are things I don’t know, things I need to learn, and now, I can try to acquire the information I may need… Provided that I can will my throat to co-operate.
“Thank goodness?” I echo, rather bitterly, something rattling at the back of my mind. It feels important, and I’m nearly certain I know what it is, or what it could be. However, it’s no use. I merely know what it is that I have forgotten. I have lost the dream I’ve dreamt last night, and although it is almost as if it laid itself out on the back of my tongue, I cannot reach it. Not quite.
“Lord Saitou’s medicine is… often not too well received by the body.”
Medicine?
“Oh,” she continues. “But our lord is quite skilled with herbal remedies. I am sure it could cause no lasting harm or discomfort.”
I’m of a different mind. Nevertheless, I am not able to give voice to the sentiment – likely, for the better, for the maid does not stop. She chatters on, her tongue paddling out words at an ever increasing pace. The weather, the state of the floors, just about anything and everything, my head beginning to spin from the strength of the stream that is her voice. Nervousness, I suppose?
“We’ve heard that you’ve been in the enemy encampment…” she pauses for a couple breaths. “It’s… not an advice, but… The castle can’t be taken. So –” she cuts herself off. Her movement is just about audible, the sleeves of her kimono rustling as she lifts her hands to her face, skin clapping against skin the very next moment. I do not suppose we are allowed to talk about that of all things, no.
“I… un-understand,” I offer through clattering teeth. Now that the room is quiet, I realise my hands are trembling below the covers. In fact, there’s not a bit of me that isn’t shivering.
“Fever’s normal,” the maid whispers and reaches for the cloth that cools my forehead. Water drips from it into a basin and so she submerges it again, just to wring it a second or so later. This time, she presses it to my neck. I cannot stop the sigh of relief that escapes my throat. I squirm a little in my place, the decreased discomfort making me all too aware of all the other things that hurt. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have lain here for far too long.
“You’ll be fine,” she murmurs, as if reading my mind. “Lord Saitou made it clear you can’t have bedsores… So you’ll be fine…”
Will I be, though? Considering my position, bedsores are not exactly the highest item on the list of my concerns. Nevertheless, it is a mercy. One I’d rather not have to take or be thankful for, but a mercy nonetheless. I clench my jaw to make myself rigid, as if that alone could help – and although I am well aware that it does not change anything that matters in the slightest, it does offer me a little solace.
I can hold myself together.
For now, I can hold myself together.
What I need to do, what I must do to save myself, to return, that will come tomorrow, or later today, or after I’ve blinked one hundred times – but not now. Not now, because my eyes burn, and chills race over me, and honestly… Not now, as when I cannot move, the despair is there to embrace me firmly. And I may not be able to push it back.
Warm fingers reach for my hands, deftly working a solution of sorts into my skin, taking particular care to tend to my wrists.
“My name’s Ai,” the maid utters and gets up from beside me. Just as quietly as she has entered, she now exists, my mind latching onto the splashing of water that follows her around. I haven’t noticed it earlier. It is curious to see my state change, but I pay it no mind.
Air smells of mint as my eyes close again.
Masamune… Kojuro… Anybody… Please, come. I am not sure I can make it out of here myself.
--
Series tag list: @cheese-ception @nuttytani
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“I wake with my hand held over the place of grief in my body. / ‘Depend on nothing,’ the voice advises, but even that is useless. / My ears are useless, my familiar and intimate tongue. / My protecting hand is useless, that wants to hold the single leaf to the tree / and say, Not this one, this one will be saved.”
— Jane Hirshfield, After; “One Sand Grain Among the Others in Winter Wind”
#jane hirshfield#after#one sand grain among the others in winter wind#words#poetry#god#on grief#the great wound#mm#unsayable#speechlessness dark like drowning
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Amazing Earth: Satellite Images from 2020
In the vastness of the universe, the life-bringing beauty of our home planet shines bright. During this tumultuous year, our satellites captured some pockets of peace, while documenting data and striking visuals of unprecedented natural disasters. As 2020 comes to a close, we’re diving into some of the devastation, wonders, and anomalies this year had to offer.
NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites and instruments on the International Space Station unravel the complexities of the blue marble from a cosmic vantage point. These robotic scientists orbit our globe constantly, monitoring and notating changes, providing crucial information to researchers here on the ground.
Take a glance at 2020 through the lens of NASA satellites:
A Delta Oasis in Southeastern Kazakhstan
Seen from space, the icy Ili River Delta contrasts sharply with the beige expansive deserts of southeastern Kazakhstan.
When the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this natural-color image on March 7, 2020, the delta was just starting to shake off the chill of winter. While many of the delta’s lakes and ponds were still frozen, the ice on Lake Balkhash was breaking up, revealing swirls of sediment and the shallow, sandy bed of the western part of the lake.
The expansive delta and estuary is an oasis for life year round. Hundreds of plant and animal species call it home, including dozens that are threatened or endangered.
Fires and Smoke Engulf Southeastern Australia
A record-setting and deadly fire season marred the beginning of the year in Australia. Residents of the southeastern part of the country told news media about daytime seeming to turn to night, as thick smoke filled the skies and intense fires drove people from their homes.
This natural-color image of Southeastern Australia was acquired on January 4, 2020, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The smoke has a tan color, while clouds are bright white. It is likely that some of the white patches above the smoke are pyrocumulonimbus clouds—clouds created by the convection and heat rising from a fire.
Nighttime Images Capture Change in China
A team of scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Universities Space Research Association (USRA) detected signs of the shutdown of business and transportation around Hubei province in central China. As reported by the U.S. State Department, Chinese authorities suspended air, road, and rail travel in the area and placed restrictions on other activities in late January 2020 in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the region.
A research team analyzed images of Earth at night to decipher patterns of energy use, transportation, migration, and other economic and social activities. Data for the images were acquired with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA–NASA Suomi NPP satellite (launched in 2011) and processed by GSFC and USRA scientists. VIIRS has a low-light sensor—the day/night band—that measures light emissions and reflections. This capability has made it possible to distinguish the intensity, types, and sources of lights and to observe how they change.
The Parched Paraná River
Though a seemingly serene oasis from above, there is more to this scene than meets the eye. On July 3, 2020, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this false-color image of the river near Rosario, a key port city in Argentina. The combination of shortwave infrared and visible light makes it easier to distinguish between land and water. A prolonged period of unusually warm weather and drought in southern Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina dropped the Paraná River to its lowest water levels in decades. The parched river basin has hampered shipping and contributed to an increase in fire activity in the delta and floodplain.
The drought has affected the region since early 2020, and low water levels have grounded several ships, and many vessels have had to reduce their cargo in order to navigate the river. With Rosario serving as the distribution hub for much of Argentina’s soy and other farm exports, low water levels have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the grain sector, according to news reports.
Historic Fires Devastate the U.S. Pacific Coast
Climate and fire scientists have long anticipated that fires in the U.S. West would grow larger, more intense, and more dangerous. But even the most experienced among them have been at a loss for words in describing the scope and intensity of the fires burning in West Coast states during September 2020.
Lightning initially triggered many of the fires, but it was unusual and extreme meteorological conditions that turned some of them into the worst conflagrations in the region in decades.
Throughout the outbreak, sensors like the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite collected daily images showing expansive, thick plumes of aerosol particles blowing throughout the U.S. West on a scale that satellites and scientists rarely see.
This image shows North America on September 9th, 2020, as a frontal boundary moved into the Great Basin and produced very high downslope winds along the mountains of Washington, Oregon, and California. The winds whipped up the fires, while a pyrocumulus cloud from the Bear fire in California injected smoke high into the atmosphere. The sum of these events was an extremely thick blanket of smoke along the West Coast.
The Sandy Great Bahama Bank
Though the bright blues of island waters are appreciated by many from a sea-level view, their true beauty is revealed when photographed from space. The underwater masterpiece photographed above is composed of sand dunes off the coast of the Bahamas.
The Great Bahama Bank was dry land during past ice ages, but it slowly submerged as sea levels rose. Today, the bank is covered by water, though it can be as shallow as two meters (seven feet) deep in places. The wave-shaped ripples in the image are sand on the seafloor. The curves follow the slopes of the dunes, which were likely shaped by a fairly strong current near the sea bottom. Sand and seagrass are present in different quantities and depths, giving the image it’s striking range of blues and greens.
This image was captured on February 15th, 2020, by Landsat 8, whose predecessor, Landsat 7, was the first land-use satellite to take images over coastal waters and the open ocean. Today, many satellites and research programs map and monitor coral reef systems, and marine scientists have a consistent way to observe where the reefs are and how they are faring.
Painting Pennsylvania Hills
Along with the plentiful harvest of crops in North America, one of the gifts of Autumn is the gorgeous palette of colors created by the chemical transition and fall of leaves from deciduous trees.
The folded mountains of central Pennsylvania were past peak leaf-peeping season but still colorful when the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite passed over on November 9, 2020. The natural-color image above shows the hilly region around State College, Pennsylvania overlaid on a digital elevation model to highlight the topography of the area.
The region of rolling hills and valleys is part of a geologic formation known as the Valley and Ridge Province that stretches from New York to Alabama. These prominent folds of rock were mostly raised up during several plate tectonic collisions and mountain-building episodes in the Ordovician Period and later in the creation of Pangea—when what is now North America was connected with Africa in a supercontinent. Those events created the long chain of the Appalachians, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world.
A Dangerous Storm in the Night
Ominous and looming, a powerful storm hovered off the US coastline illuminated against the dark night hues.
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NOAA-20 acquired this image of Hurricane Laura at 2:20 a.m. Central Daylight Time on August 26, 2020. Clouds are shown in infrared using brightness temperature data, which is useful for distinguishing cooler cloud structures from the warmer surface below. That data is overlaid on composite imagery of city lights from NASA’s Black Marble dataset.
Hurricane Laura was among the ten strongest hurricanes to ever make landfall in the United States. Forecasters had warned of a potentially devastating storm surge up to 20 feet along the coast, and the channel might have funneled that water far inland. It did not. The outcome was also a testament to strong forecasting and communication by the National Hurricane Center and local emergency management authorities in preparing the public for the hazards.
A Windbreak Grid in Hokkaido
From above, the Konsen Plateau in eastern Hokkaido offers a remarkable sight: a massive grid that spreads across the rural landscape like a checkerboard, visible even under a blanket of snow. Photographed by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, this man-made design is not only aesthetically pleasing, it’s also an agricultural insulator.
The strips are forested windbreaks—180-meter (590-foot) wide rows of coniferous trees that help shelter grasslands and animals from Hokkaido’s sometimes harsh weather. In addition to blocking winds and blowing snow during frigid, foggy winters, they help prevent winds from scattering soil and manure during the warmer months in this major dairy farming region of Japan.
Shadows from a Solar Eclipse
Formidable, rare, and awe-inspiring — the first and only total solar eclipse of 2020 occurred on December 14, with the path of totality stretching from the equatorial Pacific to the South Atlantic and passing through southern Argentina and Chile as shown in the lower half of the image above. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 16 (GOES-16) captured these images of the Moon’s shadow crossing the face of Earth.
The “path of totality” (umbral path) for the eclipse was roughly 90 kilometers (60 miles) wide and passed across South America from Saavedra, Chile, to Salina del Eje, Argentina. While a total eclipse of the Sun occurs roughly every 18 months, seeing one from any particular location on Earth is rare. On average, a solar eclipse passes over the same parcel of land roughly every 375 years. The next total solar eclipse will occur on December 4, 2021 over Antarctica, and its next appearance over North America is projected for April 8, 2024.
For additional information and a look at more images like these visit NASA’s Earth Observatory.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
#NASA#Earth#science#earth pictures#planet earth#solar eclipse#eclipse#oceans#solar system#planets#space#satellite#stunning photos
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Sweet Creature
Summary: sam is in love with the girl at the front desk of the VA, but he has the ability to help-- so he will. (named after the harry styles song but not ENTIRELY based off it. takes place pre-TWS, through AOU, until right before CW)
Pairing: sam wilson x reader
Warnings: language. NSFW, sexual content, 18+. very slightly angsty.
A/N: i don’t usually write smut and here i am, writing 2 sex scenes in one one-shot. anyway sam wilson is an angel who has been through a lot and is still full of love.
gif below isn’t mine.
She’s hired in autumn and it’s like color bursts with every step she takes.
Dull grayscale fades into red and yellow leaves, orange and pink sunsets. The burning sun finally cools, grains of desert sand stuck to his every memory slowly trickle away with the chilly breeze. Jack-o-lantern grins hurt his cheeks less, words exchanged over lukewarm coffee now spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg come easier.
He hears the whistling of birds at dawn without the thought of malfunctioning wings, sleeps in a bed of softness without an ironic longing for dirt and rock mattresses under attacking stars.
He falls in love in autumn. And smiles.
A smile that’s gap-toothed and silly by winter. A smile that brings warmth and sweetness to bitterly frozen December mornings. One which he offers her as he slides a cardboard cup across her desk, a white napkin tucked underneath it.
She sees him listen in winter. Sees him as he lets others bleed on him while he bandages himself in silence.
She hears him give heavy advice with a lightness that makes the others chuckle, like glittering rays of sunlight tearing through the blanket of clouds which is spread by mid-afternoon nowadays.
He demystifies plastic bags that resemble harbingers of death, dispels blame and shamefully missed opportunities in favor of forgiveness and acceptance. He offers ribbon to tie a broken heart together, balm to ease the tightness of guilt.
And it’s all done real easy. Pain isn’t discounted. It’s merely no longer thought of as the sublime mountain range of Romanticism. It’s real and surmountable, it has a slow-acting— but acting, nonetheless— antidote. There is liberty to be attained. Enlightenment.
There’s hope. A word which had lost its meaning until it’s said with those hot cocoa eyes and that woolen smile. A word that hurts less each time it’s used.
She watches him radiate heat in the form of realistic optimism in winter. And falls in love.
They’re setting up chairs one morning in spring. Half-past eight, the smell of percolating coffee and a greasy pink box of donuts in cool air. Sam’s phone is connected to the AUX cord, it plays something bluesy. A little sleepy sounding, but infinitely smooth.
It reminds her of his voice as he greets her each weekday morning, his smile a saxophone solo and laughter a symphony.
“I’ve been thinking.”
Setting a chair beside the one Sam has just unfolded, she smiles. “That’s never a good sign.”
Deep brown eyes narrow in playful annoyance. “Cute.”
“I’m aware.”
“I want to take you out.”
She stills, rubber caps fastened to the end of the chair legs like boots are suspended just above the floor. Her eyes meet Sam’s as he stands a few feet away. He wears an effortless, confident smile and she stifles one back. Albeit miserably. “That’s what you’ve been thinking about? Asking me on a date?”
“Among other things.”
Something about the way he says it, that soft glimmer in his eyes and slyness in his smile, makes heat rise to her cheeks. She doesn’t look away, though. Simply narrows her eyes and sets the chair down. “Yeah? Like what?”
He leans in her direction to take a folded chair from the rack behind her. She can smell his cologne, feel the warmth which rolls off him in waves, and something in her seems to catch on fire. Softly, he replies, “Say yes and we’ll talk about it on the date.”
“Bribes don’t work on me,” she says, nose wrinkled as it almost bumps against his. She smooths his collar with nimble fingertips, gently brushing the cotton of his button-up.
He watches as she looks up at him through her eyelashes and he nearly loses his balance— clumsy at the sight even as he stands still.
“Give me until the end of the day to think about it?”
“Take as long as you want,” he breathes before he can help it, practically putty.
Her nod comes with a smile. Something gentle and sweet. Steps slow and casual as she walks to the door.
“Sam,” she calls, fingers wrapped around the wooden doorframe. Everything about her posture speaks to a reluctance to leave, a reluctance to follow that stupid advice from her old college roommate to mask eagerness. She grins when he looks up from the coffee he’s pouring. “I want you to take me out, too.”
He grins as well. The coffee pot is set back down and he slips his hand into his pocket. Casual.
Right?
He hopes so. “You free tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow night?” she repeats with a laugh. Colorful against the beige walls, scuffed tile floors. “A little eager?”
A shrug. Casual.
But the look he gives her? Far from. “Maybe.”
She looks away with a frown of consideration. Sends a smile to one of the regulars of Sam's sessions as he slides past her to enter the room with a short wave in greeting, sun-creased fingers and anemia-paled nails a brief flourish. “How about tonight then?”
The gushing red of the first date seems to bleed into the second.
The days between pass with sly looks, smiles hidden behind coffee cups and wrapped around smoothie straws. It’s as if his eyes have remained in hers since that night over a dinner she can’t remember the taste of. That same glimmer, that same miserably hidden desire and elation she knows are in her eyes, too.
He touches her more in those days when the sun lingers a bit longer and the petals of flowering dogwood blossoms stick to the bottom of her shoes. Deep amber toned skin meets hers when a thumb sweeps over her knuckles, when a hand is placed at the small of her back, when fingers tangled together are hidden between them as they walk to the Hall C vending machine together— whispers about no other vending machine having the ginger ale she likes.
There’s longing in those touches and whispers. In the looks exchanged across the lobby of the VA. In his posture as he stands in her doorway, a single long stem white rose in his hand. And especially in his gaze as he scans the length of her, done up all pretty for a movie he doubts he’ll be able to pay attention to.
It’s just as well, though, as they don’t make it to the movie.
She invites him in, mumbling something about needing to fasten an earring, and forgets about it as soon as he takes a step to invade the space she’s kept open for him all along.
A gentle breath when she thinks her eyelashes might caress his skin before she can and her laugh is a little nervous when she plucks the rose from his gentle grip. “I should put this in water.”
He nods, but neither of them move. It’s only a second that his eyes slip a glance to her lips. But in that second he’s conveyed the shakiness in both their chests and the rose is forgotten at her feet as his lips claim hers.
Warm fingers curve around the nape of her neck, holding her steady as he pours every bit of longing and withheld desperation into the kiss. She grasps the softness of his thin sweater in her fists and pulls him closer, smiling against his lips when a groan is ripped from his chest.
A blind kick— one which has Sam worried that he’ll put a hole through her wall— shuts the door and a graceful spin has her back pushed into the splintering wood she’d painted turquoise a week after moving in.
The brass knob digs into her side but it’s entirely ignored. All she can perceive is every solid, stone-like inch of his body— hot like fire beneath burgundy cotton— pressed against her, his soft but urgent lips moving with hers.
It’s another minute, hour, decade perhaps of firecracker heat before he breaks the kiss. He smiles at the weight keeping her eyes closed, forehead lazily set against hers. He visually traces the slight swelling of her lips, the smudged gloss he’s sure is smeared over his own mouth in a thin, shiny layer on her cupid’s bow and the skin below her bottom lip.
She sweeps her tongue over it, as if it’ll help bring her back to Earth. Her eyelashes flutter up toward her brows. Irises a mere ring around pupils blown wide, she gazes at deep brown eyes just barely honeyed by overhead bulbs.
He watches his thumb glide over her cheek, feather-light over her lips. Commits the image and feel to memory.
There’s amazement in his eyes. Perhaps at the confirmation that she is just as soft as he’d imagined. Perhaps at the feeling of finally. And, through harsh breath, his voice is hoarse as he says, “The movie’s in twenty minutes.”
Before she can reply, he presses a kiss to her left temple, her left cheek then her right. Another kiss at the corner of lips now pitched upward and smooth lips glide over her jaw, then just below. She cranes her neck for him. “I have movies here.”
His smile is felt rather than seen and it inspires one of her own. A strong arm winds around her waist, tight and answer enough. But, once he’s kissed his way to her lips again, he voices one anyway, “Even better.”
She closes whatever centimeters of distance separate their lips and sighs when his hands slide behind her thighs, lifting her so that she can hook her legs around his waist. Her arms wrap around his neck and, somehow, she feels as if they aren’t close enough. Not with the layers of fabric separating them, not as he stands only feet from her door.
His step backwards is hesitant, slow.
“Down the hall,” she tells him, lips brushing his, “first door to the left.”
His eyes open, but struggle to remain so when she presses kisses everywhere he had. Barely a foot past the hall entryway, she nips the skin beneath the hard line of his jaw a bit harshly. A soft hiss through his teeth and her tongue soothes the sting. It has his steps faltering until he presses her against the wall to join their lips in a deep but quick kiss.
Her bedroom door is ajar and requires only the gentle push of her fingers to allow them through. The setting sunlight streaming through her drapes paints patches of her white comforter a deep gold, shining over her mirror and closet door.
Everything about the space is warm and inviting. From the rumpled grey faux fur throw blanket and the floral rug placed before her bed, to the melted candles in glass jars and sloppily made porcelain vases he thinks she must have thrown and glazed herself.
He lowers her onto the bed, surrounded by fluffy pillows haphazardly thrown near the headboard, and firmly kisses her lips— but only for a moment. “Baby, are you—” coffee brown eyes pop open to meet hers. “Are you sure? We don’t have to—”
“I know we don’t have to.” Her nose wrinkles before she smiles up at him, sun outlining her features. “It might be a little soon, but I’ve wanted this for a while.”
He grins in return. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So have I.”
She narrows her eyes. A jesting glare, a contradictory smile. “And you waited this long to tell me? Disgraceful, Wilson.”
“I’ll make it up to you.” The pitch of his voice is lowered, he ducks his head so his lips skim the skin behind her ear. He hears the hitch in her breath when his teeth scrape a particularly sensitive spot and shifts his weight so his hips rock into hers. “Over, and over, and over.”
The grind is faint. Barely there. But her mind reels, her nerves spark. Voice a mess of sighs, she asks, “How do you plan on doing that?”
“Guess you’ll have to be patient and see,” he says, but only once he’s nudged his nose against hers. Spared a long look into her eyes. Watched as her tender bottom lip is bitten.
His hands— such, such good hands, all warm and strong and safe— are everywhere. One grips the tip of her chin to mould their lips together, one skims bare skin just below the hem of her shirt. Fingers soft and the press of them gentle, blunt nails run up her side to follow the curve of her waist, tracing the band of her bra and just barely along the underside of a lace cup.
He tips her chin upward to trail his lips to her throat. She gasps at the feel of a bite, the lap of a tongue just as his fingers pop the button on her jeans, and the muscles in her abdomen contract as he moves lower.
His hands now push the knit fabric further and further up— slowly, inch by inch— until, in impatience, she lifts her shoulders and strips it away. Chin set just above her waistband, Sam grins at her. His low laughter is more felt than heard. “A little eager?”
He’s met with a glower as she reaches back to unclasp her bra and toss it aside— and it only makes him laugh harder. However her frustration is merely a thin veil. A veil which has gone sheer the moment she struggles against a smile.
Though there hasn’t been a loss of the heat in either of their eyes, their movements are now decidedly unhurried. The drag of his knuckles as he pulls black denim and lace the color of marigolds over her ass and down her legs once he’s tucked his shoulder under her thighs. The slow lift of his gaze as he seems to study every inch of her. The path of his lips and tongue from her belly button to her breasts to her lips. And the languid kiss that follows.
Her leg hooks over his hip and, though she breaks the kiss, she speaks against his lips, “You’re a little overdressed.”
Feeling him smile, she pushes against him and manages to roll him onto his back so her knees dig into the mattress. A playfully smug waggle of her eyebrows and she giggles— and, oh, he thinks his heart might burst at that. At the sight of her disheveled and a little scuffed from his ministrations. At the sight of her so bare and vulnerable, but so trusting and strong and happy.
He stares up at her, not hiding any bit of wonder or love, as she imitates the way he’d pushed the fabric of her shirt up her torso until he pulls it off the rest of the way. When she leans over him to kiss him once more, his hands cup her face to hold her there, barely registering in his mind how she unbuckles his belt and undoes his jeans.
Thoroughly kissed silly, she presses swollen lips to his jaw, his neck, shimmying lower until she’s knelt between his legs. A lift of his hips helps her remove the bothersome fabric and she gives him a slow study of her own. That deep shade of his skin— interrupted only by a few lifted scars littered over his chest— seems to glow and reflect the golden shade of sunlight. Early evening sunlight which brightens already sparkling eyes, an already shining smile.
Just as she makes to lean down a bit, intending to teach him the feel of his hard length down her throat, he sits up, fingers comb through her hair to guide her lips back to his.
His arm then wraps around her waist and he pulls her into his lap, those soft, deliberate fingers slipping between her legs. The kiss gains further urgency when she moans into his mouth. When she rolls her hips to grind against his fingers. When he slips in a finger, then two, as his thumb moves against her clit and she arches into him.
A slight lift of her hips only to bring them back down, Sam’s lips are at her neck now. A stroke of his thumb, a curl to his fingers as they’re thrust deep inside her. Her whimper is broken, a little choked as her walls tighten around his fingers. “Fuck. God, Sam.”
He looks up at her. Stares at the shadow her eyelashes cast over her cheekbones, the plumpness of her parted lips, that wrinkle of tension between her brows. His hand moves faster, impatient as if he can feel the tight coiling in her stomach, the heat slowly creeping through her limbs.
A whine escapes his throat as she practically shivers at a particularly slow, purposeful stroke of his thumb. “There we go, baby. Come on, I’ve got you.”
She says something. Something she herself doesn’t grasp. Stutters it, stammers it, slurs it.
Arm resting on his shoulders, her nails dig into his back harshly as the coil snaps. All at once. Walls fluttering, pulsing around thick fingers. Heat impossibly higher in trembling legs and tense arms.
But it’s not enough.
Not until, a slight burn and quiver in her thighs, she rises to her knees and grasps him at the base. She swallows over the thickness in her throat as she twists her wrist in a slow stroke of her own. Over his answering shudder, she says, “Condom.”
A steadying breath. “I’ve got one in my wallet.”
He looks over her shoulder to the floor where the dark denim has been carelessly tossed and nearly whimpers.
Then she giggles. Presses herself closer and tilts a little to the left to reach into a drawer in the bedside table. She tears the package and seems to go purposefully slow as she rolls the latex down the length of him, smiling as her hand, loosely gripping him, sweeps back up and he softly groans. “Did you come here with expectations, Sam?”
“Just precautionary.”
Another laugh and a skeptical, “Uh-huh.”
So stiff she feels empathetic pain, she sinks down on him with little resistance. A bit of a lift, then down further.
She, resisting the downward pull of her eyelids, watches him. As his eyes close, lips part, chest falls. All as he sighs. A loud rumble of relief from deep in his chest.
He hits a point so far inside of her, it very nearly hurts. So thick, she feels she might have been split in two had he not taken the edge off so expertly.
And he finds himself having to regulate his breaths. Not to choke at the silky feel of her stretched around him. Not to embarrass himself so quickly because it’s been so long. Since he’s had sex, yes— but especially since he’s felt anything near what she inspires in him, from wonderment to adoration, from blissful to so much love.
“You doin’ okay?” through light laughter, she asks. Her voice is not much more than an exhale and there’s a soft squeeze around him. Not nearly at the strength of his fingers on her hips, though, bruising and stilling as she experimentally rolls her hips.
She can’t help her smile at the hissed grunt he lets loose, at his own reacting laughter— dry, a little embarrassed. “Gotta give me a second, baby.”
It’s only a few seconds— seconds she spends familiarizing herself with the heavy weight of him inside of her— before those same hands beckon movement. First by adjusting her legs so she crosses her ankles behind his back, then by pulling her impossibly closer.
She pulls off of him inch by inch, sighs a moan at the slow drag of him, and whimpers at the snap of his hips, his voice gruff as he grinds out, “Fuck. You feel so fucking good.”
He punctuates the statement with a hard thrust, drawing a gasped whimper from her, and effectively takes control as his hands guide her hips forward and back. One hand, however, slides across her skin to her neck, his fingers curving around her nape and tangling through knotted hair to pull her into a messy kiss.
She pants against his lips, kiss broken when his hips— definitely showing off— take on a somewhat circular motion as he thrusts. Her head tips back as he relearns the taste of her throat.
His teeth scrape that spot he’d learned about just a few minutes— although it feels like a lifetime— ago just as his fingers slide between her legs, carefully passing over that bundle of nerves before pressing down fully with rapid movements.
It’s as if that firecracker heat now sparkles up her spine, back arching into him as her vision seems to white out. Her walls tighten, her moans broken.
“God, fuck.” His voice is harsh. Deeper than usual as he watches himself disappear inside her, each thrust more difficult than the last with the way she clamps down harder.
He tries to stall the warmth that spreads through him, tries to hold himself back, but as his eyes trace every bit of her before focusing on the way pleasure twists her features, he thinks he might snap. Voice now verging on revelatory, he breathes, “So fuckin’ good, so perfect.”
“Sam— Sam, I’m—”
He doesn’t voice how thankful he is. Doesn’t praise the heavens aloud because fuck knows he wasn’t going to last much longer at all.
He thrusts deep, hard. Sweet words mere babble against her lips, hips and fingers working quicker until—
His name is a mantra. The mingling of kaleidoscopic visions beneath shut eyelids and alight sandalwood incense nerves a kind of meditation.
“Goddamn.” He slows but doesn’t stop working his hips against hers. The sounds from his throat blending with hers as he feels the quick squeeze and release around him, pulsing waves overtaking him entirely. “Fuck, fuck.”
One last thrust. As far as he can go. And he spills white hot into the condom, words a mixture of curses and praises, declarations and damnations. She’d forgotten her own name in the throws of it all until he says it. Repeats it. A confirmation of reality to them both.
Silence apart from jagged breaths. Sunlight depleting, but she finds his skin still glows, eyes are still bright as he stares right back at her.
It starts as a silent chuckle through her nose, one that is more felt as she shakes than heard. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip in an attempt to hold it in— this odd, messy laughter of happiness, and surprise, and so much love. It bubbles out of her anyway, especially as he grins in return.
She doesn’t care about the goofiness of her laughter. The hiccupy punctuations liberally littered throughout. Doesn’t care about the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, along the bridge of her nose. The smudged makeup it sharpens. She leans forward and presses a soft kiss to his lips, smiling when he follows her after she pulls away.
“So are we gonna talk about that condom you brought?”
A groan born of a snicker, he buries his face in the crook of her neck. His hands follow the curve of her waist, the indents of her discarded bra against her back and shoulders. Touches meant to memorize, rather than rouse. His thumbs sweep across her ribcage. “Told you. They’re just precautionary.”
She gasps. Entirely too dramatic. “‘They’?” Her nails dig into his shoulder a little mean when he refuses to loosen the strong arm around her waist.
He immediately lifts his head to glare at her and she glares back, far more convincing than he could ever be. “‘They.’ ‘They’!”
She pokes her fingertip into his side. Once, then twice when his hold on her only tightens. “Did you have a big night planned, Sam? Huh?”
Twice more and he sighs, pushes off the bed to roll the two of them over, smiles at the surprised squeak falling from her lips. He slips out of her as he holds himself above her. “You never know what might happen.”
“At the movies?” she asks. He’s sure he would’ve been able to hear the grin in her voice even if he hadn’t seen it stretching swollen lips. Another jab to his ribs and he hisses. “Just in case we fucked at the movies?”
In one hand, he grasps both of her wrists and pins them against the mattress. “Try it now.”
Though his grip is loose enough for her to simply twist out of, she glowers up at him. But the glimmer in her eye, the way her toes trace up his calf stirs something still burning inside him. Tone deadpan, she murmurs, “Oh, no. What a terrible position you’ve got me in. What will I do now?”
Though night falls quickly, draining the room of light but not desire, she sees her bedroom walls turn pink, her comforter now the hue of strawberry bubblegum.
It seems to blossom more and more each night they spend tangled together beneath her sheets. On the kitchen counter after an early morning trip to the farmer’s market. In her car when the film is just too boring and she kisses him just too fucking much to stay in that fucking theater any longer. Against the wall beside his front door after he’d vanished with that new super-friend of his to chase down a ghost story on a busy highway.
A pink balloon which pops before summer. Wilted scraps cast a shadow over cotton candy skies, browning once-green grass now gone unwatered. The sun burns tense skin and she fans herself with an informational brochure from the plastic pockets mounted to the wall.
A summer like the frosty can of lemon-lime soda she drops after having just purchased it from the Hall A vending machine. Barely contained, set to combust at the first purposeful touch. Bent. Entirely wrong.
She watches as new counselors take over Sam’s sessions. Watches as regulars fall away. Watches as CNN pundits berate a different Steve Rogers than the Please, just call me Steve who drops by monthly with a fresh donation check signed by Tony Stark— a Steve allegedly semi-responsible for the destruction of Sokovia. Watches as the story shifts to one of hope in the glowing hands— and on the wings— of new recruits.
He stands outside her door that August evening. Shadows under his eyes, a scar below his hairline. “I can explain,” is his greeting.
The green of a freshly mowed lawn stains her white canvas sneakers. Humidity leaves a sheen of perspiration over the high points of her cheeks. One of the Mickey Mouse band-aids the VA jokingly stocks in the break room first aid kit pasted over her knee. He stores the sight away, something nice to hold onto. “Can’t you always?”
He follows her inside, she knows she shouldn’t allow it.
He stands too close, she knows she shouldn’t allow that either. “It’s been two weeks. You’ve called maybe twice. You won’t tell me where you’ve been.”
And she believes him when he says, “I can’t tell you where I’ve been. I told you, some things are classified.”
“Jake Tapper on CNN says you’re moving to New York,” her voice is as small as she feels under the warm, safe hands he holds her face— and every bit of her heart— in.
There’s little anger in the eyes she watches him with, almost none in fractured words. And he’s fully aware he’s undeserving of that. Of her neverending kindness, that small smile hidden under the long-suffering frown she’d offered upon seeing him in the hall, the home she provides.
But not the warm apartment with the gauzy drapes and mismatched dining chairs— it’s the heart she somehow hasn’t taken back. Neither through the Steve needs me to find someone explanation which is meager at best, nor the I’ll be back as soon as I can goodbye each time he gets even the faintest lead on the assassin who owes him a new steering wheel.
He isn’t sure why she’s stuck around. Or why she’s allowed him to walk in and out this way. He sighs and gives her the most detailed explanation yet, “Things are a mess upstate. Steve, Natasha, Stark… They’re scrambling. Trying to get everyone who can help together to avoid another Sokovia.”
“You could’ve asked my opinion.” She wishes she could sound more stern to even herself. But her voice is a plea and overhead lights do for her filled eyes what the sun does for the ocean. Blinding glitter. “I wouldn’t have said no.”
“I wanted to tell you in person. Talk to you about it face to face.”
Though he’s made his decision. Made it the second Steve asked. And she knows it.
Because this is the same Sam with ribbons, balm, and hope. The same Sam who knows there is no liberty to hold when it isn’t made available to everyone. The same Sam who does what’s right no matter the personal cost— and what’s right is helping, simply because he can.
She forgets that, beyond the barren walls and slowly emptying shelves of his home, summer still scalds bare shoulders and lemonade made from concentrate is still being sold by five-year olds from plastic lawn tables. Too busy boxing up his life. Too tired from nights— and early mornings— marked by urgency and premature goodbyes.
It isn’t like the first time. Tears punctuate laughter. He holds onto her tighter and thrusts into her harder. Leaves marks as if reminders of himself he knows will physically fade but hopes remain emotionally. Each kiss an attempt to imprint the shape of his lips on the brightness of the soul she’s already embroidered his every touch onto with sharp needles and gilded thread.
On the eve of his departure, he’s a sinner in confessional. Tells her everything as he rolls them over, a delicate entangling of their fingers while the movement of his hips is anything but. “I love you,” is said against her lips, repeated when he hears her breath stall. But this time as he looks into her eyes. “I love you. I have for so long.”
He finds himself unable to stop. Strung out on each moan and gasped breath of hers and how long it might be until he can hear it again. How long it might be until he can feel her tighten around him again. “You’re so good. My sweet, beautiful girl. I love you so much.”
She can’t speak. Not around the knot which has tightened itself at the base of her throat. The knot which only lets his name through, only lets please’s and profanity wrapped in the voice of an angel through.
She loses count of how many times he says it. Only remembers the different inflections each time. From revelatory and amazed, urging and pleading, to firm, as if it’s indisputable fact. And that, coupled with the way he angles himself to drag against her clit with every bit of push and pull, causes her to fall over the edge twice— nerves overshot and almost painfully sensitive.
He wants a third. Needs to give her a third. Something to remember him by. So his fingers shoot down between them, thumb hooked between her legs. Even as she grasps his wrist. Her eyes shut, her back arched and head thrown back.
“You have one more in you,” his voice is rough. Slurred syllables, dragging consonants. His free hand grabs her chin, an attempt to physically bring her gaze back to his. But her eyelids remain closed. “Look at me.”
Eyelashes with remnants of the day’s mascara flutter up toward her brows. Hazy. Yet through it all— through the sparks shooting up her spine as she comes for the third time and through the tears which seem to have found a home above her lashline throughout the past week— she sees him. She’s always seen him. She always wants to see him.
So as he paints her pulsing walls in warm white ribbons and tells her he loves her for the nth time, she breathes, “I love you, too. Also have for a long time.”
A beat of silence. Shallow breath held. And he smiles. Silly and warm, like winter in summer. “And you waited this long to tell me? Disgraceful, baby.”
She rolls her eyes— well-meaning and fond. A giggle that makes him lose his mind. Thumbs brush feather-light over his cheekbones. “Come back to me in one piece and I’ll make it up to you. Over, and over, and over.”
He makes her a promise that night.
One he echoes the next morning and every subsequent night they manage to catch each other on the phone. The promise which becomes a goodbye whenever, after a day or two of personal leave as far as SHIELD and the Avengers are concerned, he’s set to take her heart back to New York with him.
“I’ll always come back to you.”
---
#sam#sam wilson#sam wilson x reader#sam x reader#sam wilson x you#sam wilson fic#falcon x reader#damn i didn't know that was a tag#SAM'S DICK GAME IS 2 STRONG
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All V Poems
William Blake, A Dream
Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.
Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:
'Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.'
Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, 'What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?
'I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home!'
William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.
All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body, revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery. Shame is Prides cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs.
Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate.
Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish smiling fool, & the sullen frowning fool, shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once, only imagin’d.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit: watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.
The cistern contains; the fountain overflows.
One thought, fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ’d is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning.
Act in the noon.
Eat in the evening.
Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer’d you to impose on him knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight, can never be defil’d.
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius, lift up thy head!
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn, braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird of the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish’d every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d.
Enough! or Too much!
William Black, Earth’s Answer
Earth rais'd up her head,
From the darkness dread & drear.
Her light fled:
Stony dread!
And her locks cover'd with grey despair.
Prison'd on watry shore
Starry Jealousy does keep my den
Cold and hoar
Weeping o'er
I hear the Father of the ancient men
Selfish father of men
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear
Can delight
Chain'd in night
The virgins of youth and morning bear.
Does spring hide its joy
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower?
Sow by night?
Or the plowman in darkness plow?
Break this heavy chain,
That does freeze my bones around
Selfish! vain!
Eternal bane!
That free Love with bondage bound.
William Blake, Love and Harmony Combine
LOVE and harmony combine
And around our souls entwine,
While thy branches mix with mine
And our roots together join.
Joys upon our branches sit,
Chirping loud and singing sweet;
Like gentle streams beneath our feet,
Innocence and virtue meet.
Thou the golden fruit dost bear,
I am clad in flowers fair;
Thy sweet boughs perfume the air,
And the turtle buildeth there.
There she sits and feeds her young;
Sweet I hear her mournful song;
And thy lovely leaves among,
There is Love: I hear his tongue.
There his charmed nest he doth lay,
There he sleeps the night away,
There he sports along the day,
And doth among our branches play.
William Blake, Songs of Innocence, “Infant Joy”
I have no name
I am but two days old.—
What shall I call thee?
I happy am
Joy is my name,—
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee;
Thou dost smile.
I sing the while
Sweet joy befall thee.
William Blake, Poetical Sketches
Oft when the summer sleeps among the trees,
Whispering faint murmurs to the scanty breeze,
I walk the village round; if at her side
A youth doth walk in stolen joy and pride,
I curse my stars in bitter grief and woe,
That made my love so high and me so low.
O should she e'er prove false, his limbs I'd tear
And throw all pity on the burning air;
I'd curse bright fortune for my mixed lot,
And then I'd die in peace, and be forgot.
TO THE MUSES.
WHETHER on Ida's shady brow
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the Sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceased;
Whether in heaven ye wander fair
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air,
Where the melodious winds have birth;
Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea
Wandering in many a coral grove,
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry!
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr' all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs & Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
The wild deer, wandring here & there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care
The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbelievers fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity
He who torments the Chafers Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar
The Beggars Dog & Widows Cat
Feed them & thou wilt grow fat
The Gnat that sings his Summers Song
Poison gets from Slanders tongue
The poison of the Snake & Newt
Is the sweat of Envys Foot
The poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artists Jealousy
The Princes Robes & Beggars Rags
Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags
A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands
Tools were made & Born were hands
Every Farmer Understands
Every Tear from Every Eye
Becomes a Babe in Eternity
This is caught by Females bright
And returnd to its own delight
The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar
Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath
Writes Revenge in realms of Death
The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air
Does to Rags the Heavens tear
The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun
Palsied strikes the Summers Sun
The poor Mans Farthing is worth more
Than all the Gold on Africs Shore
One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands
Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole Nation sell & buy
He who mocks the Infants Faith
Shall be mockd in Age & Death
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall neer get out
He who respects the Infants faith
Triumphs over Hell & Death
The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons
The Questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to Reply
He who replies to words of Doubt
Doth put the Light of Knowledge out
The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesars Laurel Crown
Nought can Deform the Human Race
Like to the Armours iron brace
When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow
A Riddle or the Crickets Cry
Is to Doubt a fit Reply
The Emmets Inch & Eagles Mile
Make Lame Philosophy to smile
He who Doubts from what he sees
Will neer Believe do what you Please
If the Sun & Moon should Doubt
Theyd immediately Go out
To be in a Passion you Good may Do
But no Good if a Passion is in you
The Whore & Gambler by the State
Licencd build that Nations Fate
The Harlots cry from Street to Street
Shall weave Old Englands winding Sheet
The Winners Shout the Losers Curse
Dance before dead Englands Hearse
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
#v#dmc5 v#devil may cry 5 v#v devil may cry 5#devil may cry 5#devil may cry#v devil may cry#poems#poetry#william blake#william blake poems#dmc fandom
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The Snow Queen
The devil, in the form of an evil troll, has made a magic mirror that distorts the appearance of everything that it reflects. The magic mirror fails to reflect the good and beautiful aspects of people and things, and magnifies their bad and ugly aspects. The devil, who is headmaster at a troll school, takes the mirror and his pupils throughout the world, delighting in using it to distort everyone and everything. They attempt to carry the mirror into heaven in order to make fools of the angels and God, but the higher they lift it, the more the mirror shakes with laughter, and it slips from their grasp and falls back to earth, shattering into billions of pieces, some no larger than a grain of sand. The splinters are blown by the wind all over the Earth and get into people's hearts and eyes, freezing their hearts like blocks of ice and making their eyes like the troll-mirror itself, seeing only the bad and ugly in people and things.
Years later, a little boy Kai and a little girl Gerda live next door to each other in the garrets of buildings with adjoining roofs in a large city. They could get from one's home to the other's just by stepping over the gutters of each building. The two families grow vegetables and roses in window boxes placed on the gutters. Gerda and Kai have a window-box garden to play in, and they become devoted to each other as playmates, and as close as if they were siblings.
Kai's grandmother tells the children about the Snow Queen, who is ruler over the "snow bees" — snowflakes that look like bees. As bees have a queen, so do the snow bees, and she is seen where the snowflakes cluster the most. Looking out of his frosted window one winter, Kai sees the Snow Queen, who beckons him to come with her. Kai draws back in fear from the window.
By the following spring, Gerda has learned a song that she sings to Kai: Roses flower in the vale; there we hear Child Jesus' tale! Because roses adorn the window box garden, the sight of roses always reminds Gerda of her love for Kai.
On a pleasant summer day, splinters of the troll-mirror get into Kai's heart and eyes. Kai becomes cruel and aggressive. He destroys their window-box garden, he makes fun of his grandmother, and he no longer cares about Gerda, since everyone now appears bad and ugly to him. The only beautiful and perfect things to him now are the tiny snowflakes that he sees through a magnifying glass.
The following winter, Kai goes out with his sled to play in the snowy market square and hitches it to a curious white sleigh carriage, driven by the Snow Queen, who appears as a woman in a white fur-coat. Outside the city she reveals herself to Kai and kisses him twice: once to numb him from the cold, and a second time to make him forget about Gerda and his family; a third kiss would kill him. She takes Kai in her sleigh to her palace. The people of the city conclude that Kai died in the nearby river. Gerda, heartbroken, goes out the next summer, to look for him and questions everyone and everything about Kai's whereabouts. She offers her new red shoes to the river in exchange for Kai; by not taking the gift at first, the river lets her know that Kai did not drown. So Gerda climbs into a boat and the river carries her away, to start her on the right path.
Gerda next visits an old sorceress with a beautiful garden of eternal summer. The sorceress wants Gerda to stay with her forever, so she causes Gerda to forget Kai, and causes all the roses in her garden to sink beneath the earth, since she knows that the sight of them will remind Gerda of her friend. However, a while later, whilst playing in the garden, Gerda sees a rose on the sorceress's hat, then remembers Kai and begins to cry. Gerda's warm tears raise one bush above the ground, and it tells her that it could see all the dead while it was under the earth, and Kai is not among them. So she interrogates the other flowers in the garden, but they only know a single story each, which they sign to her. Realizing that they cannot help her find Kai, Gerda flees the garden of eternal summer and realizes that it’s already autumn. She has wasted a lot of time, and has no warm clothes to wear.
Gerda flees and meets a crow, who tells her that Kai is in the princess's palace. Gerda goes to the palace and meets the princess and the prince, who is not Kai but looks like him. Gerda tells them her story, and they provide her with warm clothes and a beautiful coach. While traveling in the coach Gerda is captured by robbers and brought to their castle, where she befriends a little robber girl, whose pet doves tell her that they saw Kai when he was carried away by the Snow Queen in the direction of Lapland. The captive reindeer Bae tells her that he knows how to get to Lapland since it is his home.
The robber girl frees Gerda and the reindeer to travel north to the Snow Queen's palace. They make two stops: first at the Lapp woman's home and then at the Finn woman's home. The Finn woman tells the reindeer that the secret of Gerda's unique power to save Kai is in her sweet and innocent child's heart:I can give her no greater power than she has already," said the woman; "don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kai, we can do nothing to help her..."
When Gerda reaches the Snow Queen's palace, she is halted by the snowflakes guarding it. She prays the Lord's Prayer, which causes her breath to take the shape of angels, who resist the snowflakes and allow Gerda to enter the palace. Gerda finds Kai alone and almost immobile on a frozen lake, which the Snow Queen calls the "Mirror of Reason", on which her throne sits. Kai is engaged in the task that the Snow Queen gave him: he must use pieces of ice like a Chinese puzzle to form characters and words. If he is able to form the word the Snow Queen told him to spell she will release him from her power and give him a pair of skates.
Gerda runs up to Kai and kisses him, and he is saved by the power of her love: Gerda weeps warm tears on him, melting his heart and burning away the troll-mirror splinter in it. As a result, Kai bursts into tears, which dislodge the splinter from his eye, and becomes cheerful and healthy again. He remembers Gerda, and the two dance around so joyously that the splinters of ice Kai had been playing with are caught up into the dance. When they tire of dancing the splinters fall down to spell "eternity," the very word Kai was trying to spell. Kai and Gerda leave the Snow Queen's domain with the help of the reindeer, the Finn woman, and the Lapp woman. They meet the robber girl, and from there they walk back to their home. Kai and Gerda find that everything at home is the same and that it is they who have changed; they are now grown up, and are also delighted to see that it is summertime.
At the end, the grandmother reads a passage from the Bible:
"Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 18:3).
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Saints&Reading: Frid., June 14, 2019
Leavetaking Ascension
Prophet Elisha
The Holy Prophet Elisha lived in the ninth century before the Birth of Christ, and was a native of the village of Abelmaum, near Jordan. By the command of the Lord he was called to prophetic service by the holy Prophet Elias (July 20).
When it became time for the Prophet Elias to be taken up to Heaven, he said to Elisha, “Ask what shall I do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha boldly asked for a double portion of the grace of God: “Let there be a double portion of your spirit upon me.” The Prophet Elias said, “You have asked a hard thing; if you see me when I am taken from you, then so shall it be for you; but if you don’t see me, it wilt not be” (4 [2] Kings 2: 12). As they went along the way talking, there appeared a fiery chariot and horses and separated them both. Elisha cried out, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen!...continue reading OCA
Saint Methodius patriarch of Constantinople
Saint Methodius, Patriarch of Constantinople, was born in Sicily into a rich family. Having a vocation to serve God, he went while still in his youth off to a monastery on the island of Chios and renovated it with his means. During the reign of the iconoclast Leo the Armenian (813-820), Methodius held the high position of “apokrisiaros” (“advocate for Church matters”) under the holy Patriarch Nicephoros (June 2). He was dispatched by the patriarch to Rome on a mission to the papacy and he remained there. During this period Leo the Armenian removed Nicephoros from the patriarchal throne and put on it the iconoclast Theodotus of Melissinea, given the nickname “Kassiter” (“Tinman”) (815-822). After the death of Leo the Armenian, Saint Methodius returned, and in the dignity of presbyter he struggled incessantly against the Iconoclast heresy...continue readingOCA
Acts 27:1-44
The Voyage to Rome Begins
27 And when it was decided that we should sail to Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to one named Julius, a centurion of the Augustan Regiment. 2 So, entering a ship of Adramyttium, we put to sea, meaning to sail along the coasts of Asia. Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, was with us. 3 And the next day we landed at Sidon. And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him liberty to go to his friends and receive care. 4 When we had put to sea from there, we sailed under the shelter of Cyprus, because the winds were contrary. 5 And when we had sailed over the sea which is off Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra, a city of Lycia. 6 There the centurion found an Alexandrian ship sailing to Italy, and he put us on board.
7 When we had sailed slowly many days, and arrived with difficulty off Cnidus, the wind not permitting us to proceed, we sailed under the shelter of Crete off Salmone. 8 Passing it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near the city ofLasea.
Paul’s Warning Ignored
9 Now when much time had been spent, and sailing was now dangerous because [a]the Fast was already over, Paul advised them, 10 saying, “Men, I perceive that this voyage will end with disaster and much loss, not only of the cargo and ship, but also our lives.” 11 Nevertheless the centurion was more persuaded by the helmsman and the owner of the ship than by the things spoken by Paul. 12 And because the harbor was not suitable to winter in, the majority advised to set sail from there also, if by any means they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete opening toward the southwest and northwest, and winter there.
In the Tempest
13 When the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their desire, putting out to sea, they sailed close by Crete. 14 But not long after, a tempestuous head wind arose, called [b]Euroclydon. 15 So when the ship was caught, and could not head into the wind, we let her [c]drive. 16 And running under the shelter of an island called [d]Clauda, we secured the skiff with difficulty. 17 When they had taken it on board, they used cables to undergird the ship; and fearing lest they should run aground on the [e]Syrtis Sands, they struck sail and so were driven. 18 And because we were exceedingly tempest-tossed, the next day they lightened the ship. 19 On the third day we threw the ship’s tackle overboard with our own hands. 20 Now when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest beat on us,all hope that we would be saved was finally given up.
21 But after long abstinence from food, then Paul stood in the midst of them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me, and not have sailed from Crete and incurred this disaster and loss. 22 And now I urge you to take [f]heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. 23 For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve, 24 saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ 25 Therefore take heart, men, for I believe God that it will be just as it was told me. 26 However, we must run aground on a certain island.”
27 Now when the fourteenth night had come, as we were driven up and down in the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors sensed that they were drawing near some land. 28 And they took soundings and found it to be twenty fathoms; and when they had gone a little farther, they took soundings again and found it to be fifteen fathoms. 29 Then, fearing lest we should run aground on the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern, and [g]prayed for day to come. 30 And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, when they had let down the skiff into the sea, under pretense of putting out anchors from the prow, 31 Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.” 32 Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the skiff and let it fall off.
33 And as day was about to dawn, Paul implored them all to take food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day you have waited and continued without food, and eaten nothing. 34 Therefore I urge you to take nourishment, for this is for your survival, since not a hair will fall from the head of any of you.” 35 And when he had said these things, he took bread and gave thanks to God in the presence of them all; and when he had broken it he began to eat. 36 Then they were all encouraged, and also took food themselves. 37 And in all we were two hundred and seventy-six persons on the ship. 38 So when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship and threw out the wheat into the sea.
Shipwrecked on Malta
39 When it was day, they did not recognize the land; but they observed a bay with a beach, onto which they planned to run the ship if possible. 40 And they [h]let go the anchors and left them in the sea, meanwhile loosing the rudder ropes; and they hoisted the mainsail to the wind and made for shore. 41 But striking [i]a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground; and the prow stuck fast and remained immovable, but the stern was being broken up by the violence of the waves.
42 And the soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any of them should swim away and escape. 43 But the centurion, wanting to save Paul, kept them from their purpose, and commanded that those who could swim should jump overboardfirst and get to land, 44 and the rest, some on boards and some on parts of the ship. And so it was that they all escaped safely to land.
Footnotes:
Acts 27:9 The Day of Atonement, late September or early October
Acts 27:14 A southeast wind that stirs up broad waves; NU Euraquilon, a northeaster
Acts 27:15 be driven
Acts 27:16 NU Cauda
Acts 27:17 M Syrtes
Acts 27:22 courage
Acts 27:29 Or wished
Acts 27:40 cast off
Acts 27:41 A reef
John 17:18-26 NKJV
19 The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, “You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!”
The Fruitful Grain of Wheat
20 Now there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the feast. 21 Then they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
22 Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn Andrew and Philip told Jesus.
23 But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. 24 Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much [a]grain. 25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.
Jesus Predicts His Death on the Cross
27 “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour.28 Father, glorify Your name.”
Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified itand will glorify it again.”
29 Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.”
30 Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. 32 And I, if I am[b]lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.” 33 This He said, signifying by what death He would die.
34 The people answered Him, “We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever; and how can You say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man?”
35 Then Jesus said to them, “A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them.
Footnotes:
John 12:24 Lit. fruit
John 12:32 Crucified
New King James Version NKJV Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. @biblegateway
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First lines meme
Tagged by lovely @hardlyfatal for this meme, and following the suit of her interesting and long post. The rules are: List the openings of the last ten stories you published. Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any!
I am tagging fellow writers @asimplylucia , @thefeatherofhope , @zip00198704 , @sarahtheblack , @weshallflyaway ,@bluecichlid and anyone else who feels thus inspired! Hopefully also including some kind of summary of their own conclusions if they see a pattern...
My own observations are that my openings seem to be a bit scattered; several where the actions starts immediately and we catch the characters in the middle of doing something, a few where the character is internally musing about something, and two (for special challenges, I may add) which start with a depiction, in an epistolary-type opening. Conclusions? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This Time, We'll Do Better
The sounds of someone walking about, scraping noises of the furniture being moved, clink and clatter of something being set on the table, alerted Sansa from her deep slumber.
“Good morning, my lady. I trust your sleep was peaceful?”
She startled awake with a gasp, not only because of the presence of a stranger in the room, in her room, but also because of the odd way that stranger spoke. Formally, deferentially, with an accent that was not from Kings Landing nor from any other region of Westeros Sansa knew of.
Her heart drummed a few extra beats as her eyelids fluttered open – and then another realisation hit her. She was – as a matter of fact – not in her room. Not in her bedroom in her family’s comfortable house in White Harbour, nor in her modest hotel room on the foothills of Visenya’s Hill in King’s Landing. She was…
Gods!
Horrified after latching on the last recollection of her still foggy mind Sansa shot up, expecting to see a disapproving frown of a museum guard directed at her. Instead, all she saw was a freckled face of a young girl dressed in a period costume, pouring water from a jug to a basin resting on a side table against the wall. At her sudden movement, the girl turned to her and smiled, a hesitant smile but one that looked genuine nonetheless.
In the Quiet of the Night, Candour
“Scheiße!” Lord John Grey muttered as he examined the rapidly swelling bruise in his left ankle. It already showed a distinctive shade of red, radiating from the ankle bone and promising to develop into a spread of interesting hues from purple to blue to yellow.
“Heiliger Strohsack!” he said a bit louder, attracting the attention of Jamie Fraser, who was cleaning sand and mud from his boots just a small distance away. It hurt, it hurt bloody much, and despite having endured worse Grey closed his eyes and hissed through his teeth. The Scot’s only reaction to this unusually unrefined show of displease –amplified by the use of German swearwords, exclusively reserved to most dire adversities - resulted however in no more than a raised eyebrow before he got back to his task.
And it had all gone so well up until – well, until things have started to go bad.
I’ll Share My Secrets If You Share Yours
Arya heard her coming; soft shuffle of steps, leather slippers against the stone floor. She heard everything and everyone, everywhere. Never would she be taken unawares again, never would she be in a situation not knowing who was near her, in the other room, in the castle, in the yard.
Sometimes it tired her – being alert at all times and never letting her guard down. At other times she was glad of her training and how it had become her second nature.
Safer that way.
“What are you thinking?”
Sansa smelled of herbs and flour and a log fire burning in the big ovens of Winterfell kitchens. Her tone was uncertain, guarded, but still, she made the effort. Arya respected that even though part of her found it alien. It had been such a long time when anyone had cared about her thoughts or paid attention to her state of being.
The newly established relationship between the sisters was still fragile and they both danced around the tender bond cautiously, willing to move forward but wary of what lay hidden under the surface. Their differences from a long time ago had been forgotten and pushed away like children’s foolish squabbles – which they truly had been – but their paths since then had been so different. What if there was nothing left but a name of their house to join them anymore?
Four Stages of Courtship
Stannis Baratheon shook his head and closed his eyes wearily, hearing the words but not truly registering their meaning. It had been the same that day, long ago, when Robert had told him that he was to forfeit Storm’s End to Renly while being forced to take that sevenforsaken Dragonstone as his own seat. He hadn’t believed him at first, thinking it to be only a distasteful jape at his expense, but when had Robert ever japed about things he wanted to go his way?
Still, surely he had heard her wrong.
Is she mocking me?
Stannis had accepted that this was a situation with no escape. He had fought and lost and now all there was to do was to die with honour. Stoic - he could be stoic. His whole life had prepared him for this moment; to die under a sword of an enemy. He only wondered if it would be a sword, or something more brutal.
He scanned the room and saw the dark-skinned soldiers in spiked caps carrying long spears lining the wall. Would he be subjected to a thrust of a spear instead? Or maybe a noose around his neck? Was he to become fodder for dragons, perhaps?
“I realise my proposal may be surprising to you, but let me assure you it is an honest one.” Her purple eyes fixed on him and Stannis, the man who didn’t shy away from beast nor man, flinched. There was a rare aura of utter self-confidence and certainty radiating from her, the slip of a girl.
Past Was Such A Long Time Ago
Sandor touched the smooth surface with his fingertips, let them travel down the exposed grain admiring the way the shapes undulated and weaved their way in the wood. He could feel every nick and roughness clearly – he had lost callouses from years of holding a sword and musket already a long time ago, and his hands were now his most sensitive tool of the trade.
They were large and gnarled still; those of a man who works with them every day. Prominent veins formed the web against the backdrop of browned skin dotted with sunspots.
Old man’s hands.
He huffed and got back to work, finishing the already scraped surface into an even finer sheen. Swoosh – swoosh – swoosh, the pumice stone sang against the wood. There was a rhythm to it and he found himself in tune with it, with his body and soul.
It was the same rhythm and flow of peace he had finally found in his life, and his heart sang to its tune.
A low growl from the floor alerted him and Sandor lifted his head.
“Quiet now, boy.”
The huge black dog sprawled down on his stomach went silent but revealed its teeth and a murmur below human hearing vibrated its chest, making Sandor glance out of the window.
He froze.
There, on the worn path leading to his little hut, walked a woman; tall and proud, carefully coiffed clusters of auburn curls framing her face and cascading down the front of her pale blue silk dress. The face whose features were achingly familiar although it had been a long, long time since he had last laid his eyes on it.
It was her.
Sansa Stark.
Winter, thy enemy, thy friend
Sandor pushed the door open, the old gnarled wood giving in reluctantly as if wishing to hold on to the secrets it held behind it.
Damp smell, musty whiff. Coarse wooden furniture knocked over, dust settled on surfaces. That mattered not.
His feet felt leaden when he stepped across the threshold and collapsed onto the floor, the girl in his arms almost getting crushed under him. Deep ragged breaths filled his lungs with stale air. Safe.
After gathering his breath for a moment he scrambled onto his knees by pure force of his iron will – the same will that had seen them through the snowstorm and never-ending howling wind. Slowly he climbed to his full height, supporting his weight against the wall. He felt too weak to lift the girl but he dragged her by the shoulders just the same to the pallet at the back of the room. She looked like a broken doll lying there, face paler than snow. Sandor leaned in slightly and saw her lips quivering, her face screwed up in pain or cold or both.
Good. She is still alive.
Would That She Would Cleanse Me
“What do you plan to do with her, Your Grace?”
Stannis had to duck to avoid being hit in the head by a load of planks carried on the shoulders of a builder, both navigating their way to the opposing directions through the corridors of Red Keep. He took no umbrage at the hapless man though - everyone was busy and the keep was seething activity; men going here and there, carrying things, running errands, shouting, arguing, trying to clean the mess left by the battle.
Yet the overarching impression was order – with a touch of chaos perhaps, but order just the same. And he liked it that way. Stannis was not the kind of war leader who let his men run amok among the conquered. The battle was one thing and ferociousness and mercilessness were to be expected during one, but after it was over, it was time for law and order to return.
Ser Davos Seaworth walked by his side, also ducking and weaving to keep up the pace with his king. They were on their way towards the throne room, where Stannis had called the key members of his council to gather on that first day of his rule.
Stannis of the House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.
Stannis was not a vain man, but he appreciated the sound of that. Not that it mattered what he thought of it – the kingship was his by law and it was his duty, whether he liked it or not.
Until Thine Will Is Done
*BANG-CLATTER-CLANK*
A loud crash woke Sandor; the clatter and crash of tin mugs and claypots smashing against a stone floor.
He turned on his pallet trying to ignore the racket that followed; cries and shouts, the clumsy servant girl getting dressing down from her elder, and more clinks, rattles and sobs as the wretched wench tried to clean up the mess. Attempting to cling to the vestiges of deep slumber Sandor squeezed his eyes shut and curled his body into a tight coil. Even through the haze between sleep and wakefulness he knew that he didn’t want to wake up just yet.
No more were his nights filled with an abyss of dark horrors and impotent fury, only able to be conquered by stupor from drink or fatigue. These days his sleep was unperturbed, but even after many years the notion was still fresh for him and there were mornings when he woke up slowly, marvelling at the lack of nightmares.
Sometimes he wasn’t sure what to do with himself, with this newfound freedom.
Nonetheless, it was not the leisure of sleep that enticed him this morning, but the dread of the day ahead. Yet it was useless - his senses had been woken and his mind had already started to race ahead like a caged animal. Sandor cursed, pressed his face against the pillow and felt the tension in his muscles increasing until he was taut as a bowstring.
Fuck!
The Great Tournament, The New Noble Brotherhood And The Mystery Of The Missing Lady
It is with Special Pride that The Gazette announces the Beginnings of the Great Tournament to be held at the Gates of the Moon, that most illustrious keep of noble House Arryn.
As we advised our avid readers in our previous Edition, this Prodigious Tournament is devised for the Establishment of a new Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of Winged Knights, to serve the Noble Heir of this ancient house, the Lord of the Vale and the Warden of the East, young Lord Robert Arryn.
It was thus announced that four-and-sixty Knights have been invited to compete for the honour of serving Young Lord Robert in his personal guard, only eight brave Combatants to be afforded this privilege and the Right to bear Falcon’s wings in their war helms and guard their Lord. The competition will undoubtedly be Fierce, and will consist of several days of Jousting, Sword Fighting, Archery and Melee. Nonetheless, even those who shall not receive the Greatest Award will not go empty-handed, as the Lord of Harrenhal, Lord Paramount of the Trident and Lord Protector of the Eyrie and the Vale, Lord Petyr Baelish, has donated heavy purses to the Second-Placed in each Category.
The young Knights of the Vale have endorsed these invitations overwhelmingly and every thus honoured Candidate has accepted the Challenge, and over the last days, these brave young Men have started to arrive in the Place of Festivities.
From Her Lips to His Ears
Act I - SCENE: Kingsroad, somewhere near Trident.
It is morning, the sun still low on the horizon, its warm rays falling on the hive of bustling activity on the ground. A young woman, hardly more than a girl, with delicate features and auburn hair, walks slowly along the side of the road with a huge direwolf following her on a leash. The road is crowded with soldiers, servants, wagons and supply carts, all busily getting ready for yet another day on the road. Dust swirls lazily in the air, raised by the commotion of many feet and wheels.
The girl walks unhurriedly, eyeing the activities curiously but cautiously, stepping aside to avoid a puddle of water spilt by men carrying buckets. The wolf presses her nose against her side and she scratches it behind the ear, talking softly to it as she does so.
A tall, broad-shouldered man clad in half-armour observes her from among the trees, near where the horses are tied up. His face is a ruin, half of it terribly burned, and despite his long dark hair being combed to the burned side to cover it, the sight is gruesome. His eyes are grey and sharp and relentlessly trained on the girl.
As she meanders closer to where the man is standing he squares his shoulders, sets his jaw and walks towards her. At first, the girl doesn’t pay him attention, but when he gets closer she notices him. An unsure beginning of a smile – forced and polite – appears on her face. The man speaks.
“That little sister of yours is getting herself into trouble.”
#meme#first lines meme#more like first paragraphs#as it is very hard to pick any theme from the first line or two...#long post#writing#fanfic writing#hmmm#conclusions#¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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The smell of snow, stinging in nostrils as the wind lifts it from a beach
Eve-shuttering, mixed with sand, or when snow lies under the street lamps and on all
And the air is emptied to an uplifting gassiness
That turns lungs to winter waterwings, buoying, and the bright white night
Freezes in sight a lapse of waves, balsamic, salty, unexpected:
Hours after swimming, sitting thinking biting at a hangnail
And the taste of the—to your eyes—invisible crystals irradiates the world
“The sea is salt”
“And so am I”
“Don’t bite your nails”
and the metal flavor of a nail—are these brads?—
Taken with a slight spitting motion from between teeth and whanged into place
(Boards and sawdust) and the nail set is ridged with cold
Permanently as marble, always degrees cooler than the rooms of air it lies in
Felt as you lay your cheek upon the counter on which sits a blue-banded cup
A counter of condensed wintry exhalations glittering infinitesimally
A promise, late on a broiling day in late September, of the cold kiss
Of marble sheets to one who goes barefoot quickly in the snow and early
Only so far as the ash can—bang, dump—and back and slams the door:
Too cold to get up though at the edges of the blinds the sky
Shows blue as flames that break on a red sea in which black coals float:
Pebbles in a pocket embed the seam with grains of sand
Which, as they will, have found their way into a pattern between foot and bedfoot
“A place for everything and everything in its place” how wasteful, how wrong
It seems when snow in fat, hand-stuffed flakes falls slow and steady in the sea
“Now you see it, now you don’t” the waves growl as they grind ashore and roll out
At your feet (in boots) a Christmas tree naked of needles
Still wound with swags of tarnishing tinsel, faintly alarming as the thought
Of damp electricity or sluggish lightning and for your health desiring pains
The wind awards: Chapped Lips: on which to rub Time’s latest acquisition
Tinned, dowel shaped and inappropriately flavored sheep wool fat
A greasy sense-eclipsing fog “I can’t see
Without my glasses” “You certainly can’t see with them all steamed up
Like that. Pull over, park and wipe them off.” The thunder of a summer’s day
Rolls down the shimmering blacktop and mowed grass juice thickens the air
Like “Stir until it coats the spoon, remove from heat, let cool and chill”
Like this, graying up for more snow, maybe, in which a small flock
Of—sparrows?—small, anyway, dust-kitty-colored birds fly up
On a dotted diagonal and there, ah, is the answer:
Starlings, bullies of birdland, lousing up
The pecking order, respecters of no rights (what bird is) unloved (oh?)
Not so likeable as some: that’s temperate enough and the temperature
Drops to rise to snowability of a softness even in its scent of roses
Made of untinted butter frosting: Happy Name Day, Blue Jay, staggering
On slow-up wings into the shrunk into itself from cold forsythia snarl
And above these thoughts there waves another tangle but one parched with heat
And not with cold although the heat is on because of cold settled all
About as though, swimming under water, in clearly fishy water, you
Inhaled and found one could and live and also found you altogether
Did not like it, January, laid out on a bed of ice, disgorging
February, shaped like a flounder, and March with her steel head pocketbook,
And April, goofy and under-dressed and with a loud laugh, and May
Who will of course be voted Miss Best Liked (she expects it),
And June, with a toothpaste smile, fresh from her flea bath, and gross July,
Flexing itself, and steamy August, with thighs and eyes to match, and September
Diving into blue October, dour November, and deadly dull December which now
And then with a surprised blank look produces from its hand the ace of trumps
Or sets within the ice white hairline of a new moon the gibbous rest:
Global, blue, Columbian, a blue dull definite and thin as the first day
Of February when, in the steamed and freezing capital cash built
Without a plan to be its own best monument its skyline set in stacks
Like poker chips (signed “Autodidact”), at the crux of a view there crosses
A flatcar-trailer piled with five of the cheaper sort of yachts, tarpaulined,
Plus one youth in purple pants, a maid in her uniform and an “It’s not real
Anything” Cossack hat and coat, a bus one-quarter full of strangers and
The other familiar fixings of lengthening short days: “He’s outgrown them
Before you can turn around” and see behind you the landscape of the past
Where beached boats bask and terraced cliffs are hung with oranges
Among dark star-gleaming leaves, and, descending the dizzying rough stairs
Littered with goat turd beads—such packaging—you—he—she—
One—someone—stops to break off a bit of myrtle and recite all the lines
Of Goethe that come back, and those in French, “Connais-tu ... ?” the air
Fills with chalk dust from banged erasers, behind the February dunes
Ice boats speed and among the reeds there winds a little frozen stream
Where kids in kapok ice-skate and play at Secret City as the sun
Sets before dinner, the snow on fields turns pink and under the hatched ice
The water slides darkly and over it a never before seen liquefaction of the sun
In a chemical yellow greener than sulphur a flash of petroleum by-product
Unbelievable, unwanted and as lovely as though someone you knew all your life
Said the one inconceivable thing and then went on washing dishes: the sky
Flows with impersonal passion and loosening jet trails (eyes tearing from the cold)
And on the beach, between foam frozen in a thick scalloped edging so like
Weird cheek-mottling pillowcase embroidery, on the water-darkened sand the waves
Keep free of frost, a gull strangles on a length of nylon fishline and the dog
Trots proudly off, tail held high, to bury a future dinner among cut grass on a dune:
The ice boats furl their sails and all pile into cars and go off to the super market
Its inviting foods and cleansers sold under tunes with sealed in memory-flavor
“Hot House Rhubarb” “White Rock Girl” “Citrus Futures” “Cheap Bitter Beans” and
In its parking lot vast as the kiss to which is made the most complete surrender
In a setting of leaves, backs of stores, a house on a rise admired for being
Somewhat older than some others (prettier, too?) a man in a white apron embraces a car
Briefly in the cold with his eyes as one might hug oneself for warmth for love
—What a paint job, smooth as an eggplant; what a meaty chest, smooth as an eggplant
—Is it too much to ask your car to understand you? the converse isn’t and the sky
Maps out new roads so that, driving at right angles to the wind, clouds in ranks
Contrive in diminishing perspective a part of a picture postcard of a painting
Over oak scrub where a filling station has: gas, a locked toilet (to keep dirt in)
A busted soda pop machine, no maps and “I couldn’t tell you thet” so
The sky empties itself to a color, there, where yesterday’s puddle
Offers its hospitality to people-trash and nature-trash in tans and silvers
And black grit like that in corners of a room in this or that cheap dump
Where the ceiling light burns night and day and we stare at or into each
Other’s eyes in hope the other reads there what he reads: snow, wind
Lifted; black water, slashed with white; and that which is, which is beyond
Happiness or love or mixed with them or more than they or less, unchanging change,
“Look,” the ocean said (it was tumbled, like our sheets), “look in my eyes”
— The Crystal Lithium, James Schuyler
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DOL AMROTH IS, most often, a city full of sunlight - - it seems the first rays of summer’s warmth strike there first, and last there longest. winters are mild, more rain than chill. and everywhere there is the sound and the smell of the sea. it’s people are, in general, calm, full of good cheer, and good-natured, some say as benefit of exposure to the sea. but they are, of course, a proud people, with a propensity for shrewdness, and - - in the kingless years - - tended toward independence bordering on isolation.
the hall of the prince sits at the highest point (the sea laps at its foundations, the glittering waters visible from every window on that side). like minas tirith it is made of white stone, though leaping arches feature predominantly. it is very open inside, light and airy, with gardens and fountains in its courtyards. swans amble in the largest garden, swimming among water lilies and bright, fat fish. many of the floors are set with mosaics, often in blue, silver, and green. some simply depict patterns in sea-colors, others show images of dol amroth’s history, from the ship that waited for nimrodel to the knighting of the first swan knight. in gondor the prince’s libraries are second only to those in minas tirith, both in size and scope of content. many elvish pieces remain, and history of the region of belfalas. the swan knights train within the hall’s grounds, and their stables are beside the prince’s private stalls. (the swan knights are one touch of reminder that all is not always peaceful: there is ever a watch from the towers for corsairs, and the docks are well guarded. corsairs, pirates, and dangerous thieves are treated with sternly and swiftly)
the banner of the ship and swan fly from every pinnacle, adding the flap and snap of banners to the roar of the sea and the sound of the wind.
below this point the city ambles - - most of the buildings are of white, though with brightly-colored roofs and doors (blue and green feature most prominently, though yellow and red sometimes burst through). the streets are paved in broad, grey stone, becoming pebbles where it winds closest to the docks. (it is not uncommon to see the prince or members of his family upon the roads or in the marketplace - - the men often alone or in each other’s company, the ladies with their retinue and, often, accompanied by a guard or two.
there are markets near at hand to the docks near every day, merchants selling wares from wherever they have come. there is great noise from it, and many bright colors, and though the prince’s soldiers stand guard upon it, there is very seldom cause for their involvement. (thievery does occur, of course, though it is rather rare - - and most young thieves are treated well enough, with a cuff and an escort from the marketplace)
it is kept a very clean city, even in its poorest segments (where the buildings are plain but well-structured, where broad paving stones give way to pebbles and to cart-paths.
though not in general a suspicious people, many - - rich and poor - - hang more or less elaborate strands of sea glass and shells from doorways or open windows - - it is considered good luck to keep a length of sand dollar shells on silken strings above a doorway. pearls are considered good-luck, particularly for maidens and for brides upon their wedding day. (maidens often wear them in their hair, brides upon their wedding garment, and married women in strands around the neck)
the diet consists mainly of fish, oysters, and other food from the sea: octopus or squid is not uncommon. there is other meat, of course, for those who keep it. olives feature prominently on many tables,and olive oil is a staple both of table and of trade. there are also citrus fruits, grapes figs, almonds,and other such. there is farmland inland, where the soil is not so rocky, where grain and other crops are grown. the region is also well-known for its wines, its embroidered silks, and glass-work.
#AND WITH - AH! - BRIGHT WINGS (headcanon)#BY THE SEA (dol amroth)#(lol this is mainly headcanon pulled straight outta nowhere but with like)#(hints of research and prior knowledge of similar regions)#(it's so idyllic in my head?? that i have to keep reminding myself that there are faults with it)#(anyway)#(just some word vomit since we get like 0% info on dol amroth/belfalas)
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The devil, in the form of an evil troll, has made a magic mirror that distorts the appearance of everything that it reflects. The magic mirror fails to reflect the good and beautiful aspects of people and things, and magnifies their bad and ugly aspects. The devil, who is headmaster at a troll school, takes the mirror and his pupils throughout the world, delighting in using it to distort everyone and everything; the mirror makes the loveliest landscapes look like "boiled spinach." They attempt to carry the mirror into heaven in order to make fools of the angels and of God, but the higher they lift it, the more the mirror shakes with laughter, and it slips from their grasp and falls back to earth, shattering into billions of pieces, some no larger than a grain of sand. These splinters are blown by the wind all over the Earth and get into people's hearts and eyes, freezing their hearts like blocks of ice and making their eyes like the troll-mirror itself, seeing only the bad and ugly in people and things. There was only one way to get it out. Years later, a little boy Kai and a little girl Gerda live next door to each other in the garrets of buildings with adjoining roofs in a large city. One could get from one's home to the other's just by stepping over the gutters of each building. The two families grow vegetables and roses in window boxes placed on the gutters. Gerda and Kai have a window-box garden to play in, and they become devoted to each other as playmates, and as close as if they were siblings. Kai's grandmother tells the children about the Snow Queen, who is ruler over the "snow bees" — snowflakes that look like bees. As bees have a queen, so do the snow bees, and she is seen where the snowflakes cluster the most. Looking out of his frosted window one winter, Kai sees the Snow Queen, who beckons him to come with her. Kai draws back in fear from the window. By the following spring, Gerda has learned a song that she sings to Kai: Roses flower in the vale; there we hear Child Jesus' tale! Because roses adorn the window box garden, the sight of roses always reminds Gerda of her love for Kai. On a pleasant summer day, splinters of the troll-mirror get into Kai's heart and eyes while he and Gerda are looking at a picture book in their window-box garden. Kai becomes cruel and aggressive. He destroys their window-box garden, he makes fun of his grandmother, and he no longer cares about Gerda, since all of them now appear bad and ugly to him. The only beautiful and perfect things to him now are the tiny snowflakes that he sees through a magnifying glass. The following winter, Kai goes out with his sled to play in the snowy market square and — as was the custom — hitches it to a curious white sleigh carriage, driven by the Snow Queen, who appears as a woman in a white fur-coat. Outside the city she reveals herself to Kai and kisses him twice: once to numb him from the cold, and a second time to make him forget about Gerda and his family; a third kiss would kill him. She takes Kai in her sleigh to her palace. The people of the city conclude that Kai died in the nearby river. Gerda, heartbroken, goes out to look for him and questions everyone and everything about Kai's whereabouts. She offers her new red shoes to the river in exchange for Kai; by not taking the gift at first, the river lets her know that Kai did not drown. Gerda next visits an old sorceress with a beautiful garden of eternal summer. The sorceress wants Gerda to stay with her forever, so she causes Gerda to forget all about Kai, and causes all the roses in her garden to sink beneath the earth, since she knows that the sight of them will remind Gerda of her friend. However, a while later, whilst playing in the garden, Gerda sees a rose on the sorceress's hat, then remembers Kai and begins to cry. Gerda's warm tears raise one bush above the ground, and it tells her that it could see all the dead while it was under the earth, and Kai is not among them. Gerda flees and meets a crow, who tells her that Kai is in the princess's palace. Gerda goes to the palace and meets the princess and the prince, who is not Kai, but looks like him. Gerda tells them her story, and they provide her with warm clothes and a beautiful coach. While traveling in the coach Gerda is captured by robbers and brought to their castle, where she befriends a little robber girl, whose pet doves tell her that they saw Kai when he was carried away by the Snow Queen in the direction of Lapland. The captive reindeer Bae tells her that he knows how to get to Lapland since it is his home. The robber girl frees Gerda and the reindeer to travel north to the Snow Queen's palace. They make two stops: first at the Lapp woman's home and then at the Finn woman's home. The Finn woman tells the reindeer that the secret of Gerda's unique power to save Kai is in her sweet and innocent child's heart. When Gerda reaches the Snow Queen's palace, she is halted by the snowflakes guarding it. She prays the Lord's Prayer, which causes her breath to take the shape of angels, who resist the snowflakes and allow Gerda to enter the palace. Gerda finds Kai alone and almost immobile on a frozen lake, which the Snow Queen calls the "Mirror of Reason", on which her throne sits. Kai is engaged in the task that the Snow Queen gave him: he must use pieces of ice like a Chinese puzzle to form characters and words. If he is able to form the word the Snow Queen told him to spell she will release him from her power and give him a pair of skates. Gerda runs up to Kai and kisses him, and he is saved by the power of her love: Gerda weeps warm tears on him, melting his heart and burning away the troll-mirror splinter in it. As a result, Kai bursts into tears (which dislodge the splinter from his eye) and becomes cheerful and healthy again with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks, and also recognizes Gerda. He and Gerda dance around on the lake of ice so joyously that the splinters of ice Kai had been playing with are caught up into the dance. When they tire of dancing they fall down to spell "eternity," the very word Kai was trying to spell. Even if the Snow Queen were to return (although it is never said from where), she would be obligated to free Kai. Kai and Gerda then leave the Snow Queen's domain with the help of the reindeer, the Finn woman, and the Lapp woman. They meet the robber girl, and from there they walk back to their home, "the big city." Kai and Gerda find that everything at home is the same and that it is they who have changed; they are now grown up, and are also delighted to see that it is summertime.
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i wish i had something to believe in and i wish someone would show me. if its not too much to ask id be grateful if you had any words, one is fine too, about the loss of faith? ive seen a lot of grief connected to the experience so if u had any about grief id love to look through it too. regardless, thank you, seeing ur icon on my dash always makes life seem beautiful <3 have a wonderful day
god i've felt these words in my heart so many times. when i was growing up i felt so certain of so many things. of god and god's role in my life, of the redeeming power of love, of who i thought i was, of who the people around me were supposed to be, of how my life was supposed to go, how it was supposed to turn out. i remember having a conversation with one of my colleagues in grad school about faith and the loss of it. he apologized to me when i told him i didn't have that same faith i used to have. i said it is what it is. he pointed out that it was still a loss. it's all connected to grief because it is a loss. how we view the loss though? at that time my loss of faith was connected to a separate hurt that pervaded all other areas of my life. but the truth is that i think my view of faith was simplistic growing up. all my young life i'd been told that my voice was a gift from god. i wrapped my entire identity around my singing. when i lost the desire to sing, it felt like i'd lost myself, like i'd lost everything. if there was a god, i felt abandoned. but i'd also been through some things that made me question who i was. i didn't respond to the events in my life the way i'd believed i would. i wasn't who i thought i was. the people around me weren't who i thought they were. for a period of time, i really lost faith in others as much as i lost faith in myself. since then i've discovered what i do have faith in: i have faith that we're all trying our best, that mostly we all want to do more good than harm; i believe deeply in believing the best in and of each other, of extending the grace to each other to make mistakes and try again and do better. i really do believe in what nikki giovanni said:
but regarding the loss of faith, i always think of that louise glück poem, "october":
and that scene from fleabag:
a few more excerpts that remind me of this kind of grief:
"But faith ebbed away from me gradually, the way illnesses sometimes ebb away, and one day you tell yourself that you are well. The illness no longer finds any foothold in you. That is how it was with my faith. What foothold could it still have found in me?"
— Christa Wolf, Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays (tr. Jan van Heurck)
“I wake with my hand held over the place of grief in my body. / ‘Depend on nothing,’ the voice advises, but even that is useless. / My ears are useless, my familiar and intimate tongue. / My protecting hand is useless, that wants to hold the single leaf to the tree / and say, Not this one, this one will be saved.”
— Jane Hirshfield, After; “One Sand Grain Among the Others in Winter Wind”
— Carl Phillips, from “Hymn”
“Imagine three days of God / gone missing. Now, / imagine my lifetime of it.”
— Airea D. Matthews, “Sexton Texts a Backslider after Breaking Lent,” Simulacra
— Franz Wright, Out of Delusion, from his collection Wheeling Motel
"…and I am on my knees asking / for permission to doubt again."
— Traci Brimhall, from Our Lady of the Ruins; “Revelation”
— Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, ‘Tassiopeia’
#ask#anon#on loss#on grief#compilation#long post#idk i went through a period in my life where i became v cynical. it was easy to live in that space#because that anger felt good. because until then i'd never let myself feel that anger. and that anger felt justified#and honestly i believe i needed to feel that anger. but ultimately i also needed to let myself come out on the other side of it#i know this is all super vague bc i don't want to get into the personal details of my life but#i really do wish you the best and send you love and hope you find steady footing again and the kind of faith you want <3
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K-12 Words
K
dry
wet
shoe
ten
long
stay
yellow
watch
inch
cup
time
words
same
six
bones
black
child
ear
most
page
work
white
five
arms
snow
main
nine
water
head
eggs
rain
test
seven
root
law
fall
cow
red
doctor
baby
feet
room
rule
one
blue
dark
legs
wind
skin
ball
green
two
ever
car
body
box
orange
gave
door
four
europe
picture
wish
purple
ready
try
neck
brown
through
sky
grass
air
sign
whether
dance
pink
eight
drive
too
sat
gray
three
hit
man
love
hand
the
of
and
a
to
in
is
you
that
it
he
was
for
on
are
as
with
his
they
I
at
be
this
have
from
or
had
by
but
not
what
all
were
we
when
your
can
said
there
use
an
each
which
she
do
how
their
if
will
up
other
about
out
many
then
them
these
so
some
her
would
make
like
him
into
has
look
more
write
go
see
number
no
way
could
people
my
than
first
been
called
who
oil
sit
now
find
down
day
did
get
come
made
may
part
1.1
anything
syllables
past
describe
winter
even
also
eleven
moon
fruit
sand
apple
women
nose
solve
Math problem
plus
minus
equals
stone
pants
shirt
starry
thousand
divided
just
train
shall
held
short
lay
dictionary
twelve
suddenly
mind
race
clothes
learn
picked
probably
raised
finished
end
plaid
years
bill
place
hundred
different
drop
came
river
milk
beautiful
square
lake
hole
fingers
flat
sea
type
over
new
sound
take
only
little
work
know
live
me
back
give
most
very
after
things
our
name
good
sentence
man
think
say
great
where
help
through
much
before
line
right
too
means
old
any
same
tell
boy
follow
want
show
around
form
three
small
1.2
interest
job
because
such
think
thirteen
subject
answer
letter
meet
north
length
need
times
divide (by)
times table
edge
soft
months
present
energy
point
sound
log
south
wide
members
exercise
flowers
set
found
things
heart
cause
site
brother
teacher
live
read
billion
another
distance
written
kept
direction
developed
wall
east
happy
million
world
must
house
turn
west
change
well
twenty
felt
put
end
does
large
big
even
here
why
ask
went
men
land
different
home
us
move
try
kind
hand
picture
again
off
dress
play
spell
air
away
animal
page
mother
study
still
learn
should
America
2.1
paragraph
weather
window
third
believe
discovered
simple
gone
paint
new
store
form
cells
matter
follow
perhaps
cannot
good
means
around
line
center
kind
reason
move
forest
sentence
return
instruments
beside
represent
wild
study
back
farmers
sum
difference
product
quotient
remainder
mother
animal
land
region
record
summer
general
caterpillar
scratch
modern
adjust
passenger
promise
equal
creak
almost
croak
book
dainty
song
high
every
near
add
food
between
own
below
country
plant
last
school
father
keep
tree
never
start
city
earth
eyes
light
thought
head
under
story
saw
left
don’t
few
while
along
might
close
something
seem
next
hard
open
example
begin
life
always
those
both
paper
together
got
group
often
run
2.2
misty
poor
caution
pest
phrase
life
startle
squirm
alone
centaur
rise
mountain
above
illustrator
footprint
temperature
decorate
country
sweat
sometimes
hair
smiled
everything
began
thick
compass
themselves
enough
took
although
splendid
crowded
second
act
attach
sly
talk
wonder
let’s
whirl
someone
Africa
borrow
beat
belong
blink
per
fasten
pain
begin
drenched
bed
shell
free
earth
tiny
slippery
count
factors
important
until
children
side
feet
car
mile
night
walk
white
sea
grow
river
four
carry
state
once
book
hear
stop
without
late
miss
idea
eat
face
watch
far
Indian
real
almost
let
girl
mountains
cut
young
soon
list
song
being
leave
family
it’s
3.1
drowsy
bashful
hatch
glad
copy
possible
wicked
grin
sibling
shovel
run
verb
sail
polish
ride
young
steep
case
Indian
laughed
soil
appear
bolts
costume
melody
narrow
behave
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K-12 Words was originally published on PinkWrite
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Protect Vehicles From Elements That Damage Your Paint Job
Dirty birds are one of the natural elements attacking your vehicle’s paint job.
The elements of spring represent more than warm temperatures and green grass and they threaten your vehicle’s paint job. There are damaging forces targeting your cars and trucks in Madison WI. Protecting a car’s finish protects its value and keeps it in prime condition.
What elements of nature are so damaging? The term “acid rain” was popular for years and everyone knows about hail, road salt and debris. The elements of spring are equally serious but less obvious. Most of them seem harmless.
The most common elements to deal with are:
Tree and shrub pollen
Bird droppings
Tree sap
Bugs
Sunshine and UV exposure
What They Do To A Paint Job
People with airborne allergies know all too well the air is filled with pollen. Microscopic examination of pollen grains shows each tiny piece is rough. These abrasive particles actually scratch your car’s paint. They’re so small they infiltrate small pores in the paint and release acid. Coat the car with enough and it will stain which makes fading and oxidation more likely. Before you park underneath trees or near large bushes, consider:
Potential damage – even pollen grain can damage paint. This time of year parking near pine trees can leave your vehicle covered in a fine, yellow powder – pollen grains. Each acidic grain threatens you paint. It’s like covering you hood with ultra-fine grains of sand.
Preventive measures – the best way to prevent damage is keep the paint clean. Wiping down the surface is like applying fine sandpaper. Cleaning must include warm, soapy water. Avoid water only, it will activate the acid in pollen grains. Soap modifies the acid.
Use a protective layer – a professionally-applied commercial car wax is the front line protector of vehicle paint. It helps to keep pollen from “getting a grip” on the surface. It also fills in the pores in paint to keep pollen from finding a way in.
Put a shine on your car and a smile on your face with professional car washes and detailing.
There’s another “airborne” threat that’s easier to spot – birds. Springtime means more and more birds are returning to Madison. Birds love the smorgasbord of springtime berries and seeds. Unfortunately for car owners, these seasonal bird treats are deposited on their cars. Bird droppings are more than simple ugly stains. Their threat includes:
Uric acid that eats its way into a vehicle’s clear coat finish.
Stains – colored berries pass their purples, blues and reds onto your car.
Sunshine bakes on the poop – forming a corrosive mixture.
Your Paint Job Is Fragile
Where you park your makes a difference. When the sun gets warmer it’s natural to look for a shaded parking spot. Unfortunately, parking beneath trees is another way springtime elements attack your car’s paint. Unless caught in a storm, the trees aren’t a danger. But, take into account:
Early in the season trees are growing and many drip sticky sap. Sap is baked onto the surface by the sun and crystalizes into the painted surface. A rough patch is the result.
Sap is a chemical – it isn’t easily removed by simple washing.
Sap isn’t acidic but because it forms a bond to the surface it is hard to remove – roughly scrubbing is a prime way to scratch the paint.
Permanent stains result from too much sap left on too long.
Custom mixed bug and tar removers are the first choice for removing sap. If it’s baked on, get advice and treatment from a vehicle finish professional.
It is obvious there are a lot of elements flying through the air. Some ride the wind while others launch themselves. Bugs are out in force with spring’s warmth. And they splatter all over your car. Why is this a threat to your vehicle paint?
Bugs are full of acids that erode vehicle paint.
Splatters get baked on in the sun making removal much more difficult.
Even swarms of little bugs contain fluids that linger on your vehicle.
Unseen deposits slowly corrode the surface.
Bug splatters are more than a nuisance they’re serious problems waiting to erupt.
Protect Your Paint From UFOs
After a winter of plowing and salting, a lot of debris and dirt remains on the road. All of them are potential flying objects assailing your vehicle. Among the most common are:
Pavement debris – plows chip pavement and short-term patches include small particles that fly away regularly. Each of these bits of loose pavement are jagged missiles launched toward you car or truck. Paint chips on front fenders, bumpers and hood are common concerns. Without proper attention, paint can flake and chip leading to serious body corrosion. Professional paint touch up is the immediate solution – professionals are equipped to match your paint and prepare the surface properly.
Generic dirt – there’s sand, soil, gravel and all kinds of substances making up what we just call dirt. And, it’s all over the roads. Frequent car washes help protect against it, but in spring it’s hard to keep up. And if you’re into “off roading” and think a dirty truck is cool, you’re mistaken. You might light the look but it is like applying sandpaper to your painted surfaces. The dried dirt on the surface is gritty and when you wipe it off – with a rag, brush or fingers – it begins the degradation process.
Almost all of these elements have a common link – the sun. Springtime sunshine is welcomed in Wisconsin, but its effects are not all good. We all know about protecting our skin, but how about protecting your car’s skin? UV radiation causes paint to fade and discolor. Dirt makes the impact even worse. Parking in the shade is a solution – except for the elements deposited from trees.
Protecting your vehicle’s paint is not easy.
Car Care Pros Protect Your Paint job
Here are some reminders of everyday steps you can take to protect you vehicle from the elements:
Regularly wash your vehicle with warm soap and water – an occasional quick car wash.
Dry your vehicles immediately after you wash them – don’t allow them to air dry.
Polish you paint – protect it with quality wax.
Wipe off stains, droppings and debris as soon as you can.
Invest in professional detailing on a regular basis – at least 2-3 times a year.
Protect you vehicle whenever you can – park in a garage, etc.
Now that spring is here it’s time to take on a whole new level of threats to your vehicle’s surfaces. Our car care professionals service vehicles inside and outside. To protect your painted surfaces, connect with AutoColor’s Madison area locations – West on Parmenter Road in Middleton and East on Stoughton Road. We’re ready with a professional car wash, detailing and paint repairs. Call AutoColor and apply the latest technology and or trained technicians to protect your paint job anywhere in Madison WI.
Paint Repair Services
Auto Detailing Services
https://autocolorwi.com/protect-vehicles-from-elements-that-damage-your-paint-job/
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The Camel: A Special Animal in the Service of Mankind
New Post has been published on https://www.truth-seeker.info/refuting-darwinism/the-camel-a-special-animal-in-the-service-of-mankind/
The Camel: A Special Animal in the Service of Mankind
By Truth Seeker Staff
The Camel: A Special Animal in the Service of Mankind
“Do they not look at the Camels, how they are made? And at the Sky, how it is raised high? And at the Mountains, how they are fixed firm? And at the Earth, how it is spread out? Therefore do thou give admonition, for thou art one to admonish.” [Al-Gashiyah 88:17-21]
It is beyond doubt that all beings reflect the endless Power and Knowledge of their Creator. This fact is expressed in many verses of the Qur’an, constantly emphasizing that everything created by Allah is actually evidence of belief and a lesson for admonition.
The 17th verse of the Chapter Al-Gashiyah, which is “Do they not look at the Camels, how they are made?“, mentions an animal that has to be carefully examined and thought about: This is the ‘camel’. In this article, we will study this animal on which the Qur’an invites us to ponder about.
The exclusively specific characteristic of the camel is its body structure, which is not affected even in the most severe circumstances. Its body has such features that for many days, it can survive without water and food and can even travel with a bulk of hundreds of kilograms on its back. Many characteristics of the camel constitute evidence that this animal is created particularly for the dry climate conditions, and put into service for the comfort of man.
In the Qur’an, it is stated; “Verily, in the alternation of the night and the day, and in all that Allah hath created, in the heavens and the earth, are signs for those who fear Him.” [Yunus 10:6]
The camel is specially designed for the conditions of the desert. As a matter of fact, each part of the animal’s body has to be investigated in order to understand how it is “made” by Allah.
Feet for all types of land; its feet are donated with two toes connected to each other with a flexible cushion. This structure which enables it to firmly grasp the land consists of four fat-balls. These feet are totally proper for all kinds of land conditions. Its nails protect the foot against any potential damages that may occur as a result of blows. Knees are covered with a structure called “callus”, which is composed of skin as hard and thick as horn. When the animal lays down on the hot sands, this calloused structure protects the animal from being defected by the extremely hot sand.
The hump as a food stock; the hump of the camel forms is a mass of fats, and provides nutriment to the animal periodically in times of starvation. With this system, this animal can live 3 weeks without water, whilst it loses 33% of its weight. Under the same severe circumstances, a human being would lose 8% of his weight but die within 36 hours. Since he would completely lose the water in his body.
Heat insulating fur; this fur consists of thick and felted hair that does not only protect the body of the animal against cold and hot climatic conditions but also eliminate the water loss of the body. The Hecin camel can delay the perspiration of its body by means of increasing its body temperature up to 41° C, and thus prevents the water loss. With its thick fur, camels in Asia can survive high temperatures reaching up to +50° C in summer and falling down to -50° C in winter. Head sheltered from the sand; the eyelashes of the camel are designed like two separate combs clamping together. In case of danger, they are automatically closed. With this special design, even a single grain of sand is not let into the eye. Nose and ears are covered with long hairs for protection from sand and dust. Its long neck enables the animal to reach and feed on the leaves, which are 3 meters high from the ground.
In addition to the above features, the camel also has other specialized systems in its body. Actually, each one of these qualities of the animal gives it proficiency in the harsh conditions of the desert. These features may be categorized as below:
Resistance to Thirst and Hunger
Camels can live without food and water for 8 days under temperatures of 50° C. During this period, it loses 22% of its body weight. However, it can survive even if it loses 40% of the water in its body, whilst loosing just 12% would cause a man’s death. Another reason for its endurance against thirst is a mechanism that enables the camel to increase its internal temperature up to 41° C. Thanks to this, the animal keeps the water loss at the minimum level in the extreme hot climates of the desert. Camels can also decrease their internal body temperature down to 30° C in the cold nights of the desert.
Improved Water Utilization Unit
Camels can consume 130 litres of water almost in 10 minutes. This amount is approximately one-third of their body weight. Besides, camels also have a mucus structure in their nose, which is 100 times larger in area than the man. Every time the animal breathes, the air is moisturized by the mucus. When we breathe, we lose 16 mg of water vapour for every litre of air. However, with the structure of the mucus, camels can get use of the moisture in the air in a ratio of 66%.
Maximum Benefit from Food and Water
Most of the animals die when the accumulated urea in their body gets into the blood circulatory system. Yet, camels use this urea produced in their body, by filtering it through the liver continuously. Consequently, they use it as a source of protein and water. Both the blood and cell structures of the camel are specialized for enabling this animal to survive for long periods.
Hump is another aide to the camel. One-fifth of the camel’s body is stored as fat in its hump. The storage of the body fat in only one part of the camel’s body prevents it from losing water all through body. This lets its body to use a minimum amount of water. Although a camel with humps can take in 30-50 kilograms of food in a day, it is able to live one month with only 2 kg of grass.
In addition, camels have very strong and rubber-like lips that make it easier for them to eat thorns sharp enough to pierce leather. Furthermore, it possesses such a strong digestive system that it can eat everything it comes across with like plastic plates, copper wire and reeds. The four-chambered stomach of this wonderful animal gets use of everything, even other than food. It is rather obvious how precious these features of the camels are in such a dry climate.
“Do ye not see that Allah has subjected to your (use) all things in the heavens and on earth, and has made his bounties flow to you in exceeding measure, (both) seen and unseen? Yet there are among men those who dispute about Allah, without knowledge and without guidance, and without a Book to enlighten them!” [Luqman 31:20]
Now, let us think in the light of this information: Has the camel adapted its own body to the desert conditions on its own? Has it formed its own mucus of the nose or the hump on its back? Or, has it designed its own nose and eye structure with protection against wind whirls and storms? Has it arranged its own blood and cell structure based on the principle to prevent waste of water? Has it chosen itself the type of hair covering its body? Has it converted itself to a ‘desert ship’ on its own?
Just like any other living being, the camel surely cannot execute any of the above-listed features in itself. Moreover, it cannot make itself advantageous or beneficial to mankind. The verse in the Qur’an stating, “Do not they look at the camel, how it is created?” explains the creation of this excellent animal in the best way. As the other beings, camel is too, created with many characteristics and then placed on earth as a sign of the excellence of the Creator in creation. While it is created with such superior physical features, it has been given to the service of humankind. On the other hand, humankind is given the responsibility to see similar miracles of creation throughout the whole universe and know the Creator of all beings, Allah.
———
Adapted with editorial adjustments from www.sunnahonline.com.
#Allah#Creation#darwin#Darwinism#evolution#Faith#Featured#God#The Camel: A Special Animal in the Service of Mankind#the Creator
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Asia industry: Sand mining – Bring me a nightmare
Asia industry: Sand mining – Bring me a nightmare
Asia's hunger for sand is harming farmers, fishermen and the environment
THE MINERS usually prefer to work under cover of darkness. This dredger is more brazen. It is not yet sunset when the boat's crew begin hoovering sand up from the riverbed and pumping it onto a nearby bank, where it will be collected and sold. At least seven barges are doing the same thing on this stretch of the Red River, about an hour's drive from Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Such teams often work without the right permits, but the rewards outweigh the risk. Whereas the average Vietnamese makes $269 a month, miners can earn between $700 and $1,000 for every boatload they scoop up. The teams working here have deposited so much sand on the bank that dunes have formed.
There has probably never been a better time to be in the sand business. The world uses nearly 50bn tonnes of sand and gravel a year--almost twice as much as a decade ago. No other natural resource is extracted and traded on such an epic scale, bar water.
Demand is greatest in Asia, where cities are growing fast (sand is the biggest ingredient in cement, asphalt and glass). China got through more cement between 2011 and 2013 than America did in the entire 20th century. Since the 1960s Singapore--the world's largest importer of sand--has expanded its territory by almost a quarter, mainly by dumping it into the sea. The OECD thinks the construction industry's demand for sand and gravel will double over the next 40 years. Little wonder then that the price of sand is rocketing. In Vietnam in 2017 it quadrupled in just one year.
In the popular imagination, sand is synonymous with limitlessness. In reality it is a scarce commodity, for which builders are now scrabbling. Not just any old grains will do. The United Arab Emirates is carpeted in dunes, but imports sand nonetheless because the kind buffeted by desert winds is too fine to be made into cement. Sand shaped by water is coarser and so binds better. Extraction from coastlines and rivers is therefore surging. But according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Asians are scooping up sand faster than it can naturally replenish itself. In Indonesia some two dozen small islands have vanished since 2005. Vietnam expects to run out of sand this year.
All this has an environmental cost. Removing sand from riverbeds deprives fish of places to live, feed and spawn. It is thought to have contributed to the extinction of the Yangzi river dolphin. Moreover, according to WWF, a conservation group, as much as 90% of the sediment that once flowed through the Mekong, Yangzi and Ganges rivers is trapped behind dams or purloined by miners, thereby robbing their deltas both of the nutrients that make them fecund and of the replenishment that counters coastal erosion. As sea levels rise with climate change, saltwater is surging up rivers in Australia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, among other places, and crop yields are falling in the areas affected. Vietnam's agriculture ministry has warned that seawater may travel as far as 110km up the Mekong this winter. The last time that happened, in 2016, 1,600 square kilometres of land were ruined, resulting in losses of $237m. Locals have already reported seeing dead fish floating on the water.
Nguyen Van Thoan, a farmer whose pomelo orchard lies not far downstream from the barges scouring the Red River, says that 30 years ago a kilometre of land stood between his house and the river. Today only 20 metres separates them. He blames sand-miners. So do the 6,000 fishermen who have had to abandon their coastal villages in the Indian state of Kerala in recent years, after extraction and erosion left them vulnerable to flooding.
Curbing sand-mining is difficult because so much of it is unregulated. Only about two-fifths of the sand extracted worldwide every year is thought to be traded legally, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime. In Shanghai miners on the Yangzi evade the authorities by hacking transponders, which broadcast the positions of ships, and cloning their co-ordinates. It is preferable, of course, to co-opt officials. Ministers in several state governments in India have been accused of abetting or protecting illegal sand-mining. "Everybody has their finger in the pie," says Sumaira Abdulali of Awaaz Foundation, a charity in Mumbai. She says she has been attacked twice for her efforts to stop the diggers.
Ms Abdulali is nonetheless "a bit hopeful". Scientists are experimenting with alternatives to concrete and cement. Architects are trying to find ways to use such materials more sparingly. Even the odd government is taking action. In 2018, Maharashtra passed regulations requiring contractors to use plastic waste as filler when building or repairing roads. Singapore is creating a new patch of land by draining it of water rather than piling it with sand. Kiran Pereira of SandStories.org, which promotes awareness of the issue, says "there are plenty of solutions" if only governments would find the will to implement them. Time to pull heads from the sand.
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