#refuge at clifftop | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aworryingdarkness · 2 years

Text

Shelter.

The best thing about being dead, he decided, was not having to deal with people. There were other benefits too, but they paled into insignificance with the burden of obligatory interaction being lifted from his shoulders. Downsides existed, naturally, and he'd never dealt with boredom well to begin with, but all things being equal - and since he did not exactly have a choice in the matter - being dead probably wasn't as bad as it had been made out to be. That this stance was the result of a long-considered conundrum rather than some revelatory moment of insight felt evident, although he'd be the first to admit he couldn't actually have told anyone how long he'd been not been alive. Worse, for a long time he hadn't actually known that was the case. In a stone-built shelter overlooking the clifftops and the ocean beyond, this was a quiet, contemplative spot. Never the best at keeping track of time, his instinctive memory had been that this was a place he came to think, because of its solitude. So a lack of people was to be expected - indeed, enjoyed. They came by occasionally and for the very most part ignored him. This was fine. He'd caught the interest of a handful of children in the company of distracted or disinterested parents, although he refrained from properly engaging with this young audience. Dogs didn't seem to like him but that had been the case when he was alive, too. Nothing had felt inherently unusual. No, it had been the slowly changing style of people's clothing - those few who passed by his way - and the developmental shift in their manner of speaking which caused him to realise all was not right. Most of the words seemed to make sense individually, but their flow and subject matter became more... abstract. It had gotten to the point where he struggled to understand overheard conversations, when he remembered he could not quite compare their utterances to others he had recently heard elsewhere. For he had recently been nowhere else. At all. Once this perceptual barrier had been broken, more followed as swiftly as his fragmented train of thought would allow. For instance, he could not remember the last time he had been at home. Nor where that home actually was. Hazy images of a town were evoked by these ponderings, but he found he couldn't name that town. That it was within walking distance of these clifftops seemed logical, but who was to say what sway logic held? No, the gradual realisation that he was dead was only alarming in how little alarm it caused. Then again, he'd already noticed that he wasn't conscious all of the time, so any distress it could have engendered was therefore limited in a strictly mathematical sense. This didn't feel like a cycle of waking and sleeping, more phasing in and out of being. As if existence were defined solely by the presence of self. And who was to say that it wasn't? No one, any more. It was after this that the unease started. The restlessness. A nagging voice in the back of his mind reminding him at all times that he was dead and that he should do something about it. But what could be done? He'd argue with himself that he (they?) just had to wait. To wait for what? To wait and see. To just wait. When boredom got too much and he decided to leave the refuge, he'd take no more than a handful of paces beyond its open front before a howling, primal fear forced him to retreat to its safety. A screaming in the soul; not his screaming, but the very voice of creation assuring unending torture to any who dare defy its warning. He felt enough to believe. He'd lost count of the number of times this had happened, always forgot the intensity of the feeling before he set out again and always instantly remembered as he scurried quickly home. Home. Because this was where he lived now. Well, not 'lived', but... But there should be a system. This thought would flash into his mind in fits of agitation, when the gently crashing waves and rolling clouds failed to salve his thoughts; failed to perform the very play for which this box - this amphitheatre - had been constructed. There should be a system where he was told what was going on, what he was supposed to do and how he was supposed to do it. But there wasn't. There wasn't a messenger or an angel or a light or a tablet or a handbook. It was just this. Being trapped - sometimes contentedly so, admittedly - in a small section of a much larger everything. Life was unfair, uneven and confusing. So was death. But getting angry about things changed nothing. Wasn't that what he'd always said? He had no idea. It sounded like a philosophy, and in the absence of anyone to rail against it was certainly proving to be true. No, the plan was just to wait. To think. To grow? To hopefully be here for whatever came next. Some conversation might be nice, although when the people were in here lately with their bright clothes and glowing hand-tiles, so might some peace and quiet. No. He was good at waiting. That would be enough. If he'd ever been able to reach the back of the stone building, the rough-hewn brick wall facing away from the cliff-edge, he'd have seen a double-sized engraved block bearing the legend:

FOR PETER. TAKEN TRAGICALLY FROM US IN A MASONRY COLLAPSE WHILE BUILDING THE SHELTER IN THIS, HIS SPECIAL PLACE. MISSED BY ALL, ESPECIALLY ELIZABETH & ANN 1881

Although if Peter ever managed to read that, it would no doubt spark the memory that it was his own daydreaming and absent-mindedness while he was supposed to be working which caused the wall to come down in the first place. C'est la vie.

#horror #writing #horror writing #horrorwriting #ghost story #ghoststory #ghoststories #ghost stories #cliffs #sea #ocean

4 notes · View notes

friendship-ended-with-pokespe · 4 years

Text

Kirby and the Big Race in Dream Land! Chapter 9

Kirby made it back safely to the clifftop. Everyone surrounds him in a clamor. “Great job, Kirby!” “We have to treat them quickly!” “Please step back, everyone. I will take it from here.” Ordered Kurron.

His words and attitude have an undefiable force. Everyone watched him and Kizario with their breath held. Kurron began chanting in a low voice. With it, a strange thing happened. Having laid down with its consciousness lost, Peperon’s enormous body began shrinking little by little. It is getting smaller and smaller. A body that was as large as a huge tree became the size of a cow, then a dog, and finally, a mouse.

Seeing the shrunken Peperon, everyone was wide-eyed in amazement. “A bear......?” “It’s a tiny little bear, just like a plushie. So cute.” “The identity of that ferocious monster was......this tiny bear?” Kizario, who was embraced by it, was thrown down to the ground. Kurron ceased his incantation and murmured. “This will do. Peperon has reverted back to its normal size. Next is to treat Master Kizario.” Seeing such a strange event, everyone was dumbfounded, but came to their senses from Kurron’s words. “Right, we’ve got to treat the young master.” “Have him spit out water. Check his breathing!” “It’s okay, he hardly swallowed any water. It’s because we were quick in rescuing him. With their efforts combined, the staff massaged Kizario’s body and treated him. Kizario regained consciousness before long. Everyone sighed in relief and called out to him. “Are you awake?” “You alright? How do you feel?” Kizario was in a fog for a moment and gazed at everyone's faces. He asked, his consciousness finally cleared. “What about Peperon? Where’s Peperon?” “No need to worry, sir. If you’re talking about that bear, it became tiny and......” Said the staff, and looked around. But Peperon is nowhere to be seen. “......Huh? What happened to that bear?” Hearing that, Kirby and the others also realized for the first time that Peperon was gone. Everyone searches around the shade of the trees and behind the rocks, but cannot find it. “That’s weird. It shrank and got to be lurking around here somewhere.” “It disappeared while young master recovered his senses.” “Don’t tell me......” One of the staff looked beneath the cliff. “Did it fall down again? With how small it became, while no one paid attention to it......” “It wasn’t fully conscious, you know. It might’ve staggered and fell off.” “No way!” Kirby sped up his ending in a panic and flew down the cliff. He searched even to the lower reaches, but couldn’t find Peperon. “No good......it’s not anywhere.” Having returned, Kirby removed Jet and reported. Kizario then started sobbing with his shoulders trembling. “That jerk......why did he try to save me......and I said all those horrible things to him!” “You still don’t realize it, sir? How foolish.” Kurron said in a stern voice. “Hasn’t Peperon always been by your side? Ever since you were a small child.” “......” “To you, Peperon may have only been a pet, but to Peperon, you were the one and only friend of its.” “Friend......” Kizario sidled up to the edge of the cliff. Everyone had to hold him back, where he seemed like he could plunge into the rapids at any moment. “Peperon......! What happened do you. Peperon, come back......I’ll make sure to cherish you dearly this time......” Kizario sank down and wept like a small child. His sobs continued for a long, long time, where Meta Knight said right when it came to an end. “Explain to us the whole story of what you’ve done, Kizario.” “That is the only way to apologize to Peperon, sir.” Added Kurron as well. Kizario raised his face smeared with tears. He looked miserable, completely different from his usual snobby self. “Peperon is......a miniature bear that I bought many years ago for my birthday.” “A miniature bear?” “Yup. It’s a bear small enough to hold on your palm. Its size doesn’t change even as it grows, so it’s very popular in my star as a pet.” Kizario at last wiped his tears. “Me and Peperon were like best friends. We would always play together. But......one day, I felt very ashamed after talking with my friends.” “Ashamed?” “All my friends had cool-looking pets. You know, big and strong ones like Hornhead or Fire Lion. They laughed at me, saying that a miniature bear is for girls. I was so frustrated that I couldn’t stand it. So I thought of making Peperon a big and strong bear.” “How?” “I asked Kurron, of course.” Nodded Kurron, and said. “I am a babysitter for Master Kizario.” “Don’t say babysitting. I’m not a kid anymore!” “Simply put, I have been continuing to look after him.” “Kurron has a certification in using magic.” “Why, I am but a beginner.” Kurron shook his hands in humility. “I only wanted to make it huge with Kurron’s magic, but he refused.” “Of course, sir. As it is against the law to enlarge a living creature.”

“So I secretly read his magic book and tried using the magic myself. It went smoothly......too smoothly. Peperon grew even bigger than I expected.” “Peperon ran away, where its whereabouts were unknown. As a result of a great search, we came to learn that it took refuge in Dream Land. “Why to Dream Land......?” The residents were perplexed, where Kurron then answered calmly. “By nature, Peperon has an optimistic peace-loving heart. I dare say that it was drawn to the most carefree atmosphere in the universe that Dream Land was filled with.” “I was planning to find Peperon before Kurron does and undo the magic. Thinking that I would be bawled out by Kurron if I was beaten to the punch. But it’s no use with my strength alone. So I......” “Cooked up a plan to get the people of Dream Land involved.” Said Meta Knight, and Kizario lost heart. “......Uh-huh. I thought I could get the people involved and have them run around Dream Land to lure Peperon out if I were to produce a program......” Kurron was the one to continue off. “Even so, it became a huge topic before he knew it and couldn’t pass it off as a lie. Master Kizario therefore sent for the staff and had to produce an actual program. I am late in saying this, but Master Kizario is the son of the CEO of Comet TV. To put it another way, he is the son of a prominent family.” “My mom is the CEO. Since I love TV, I have some experience from asking my mom to let me make shows several times.” “Although they were nothing but terrible shows.” Whispered one of the staff. Kizario became irritated and talked back. “I can’t help it! I’m the heir to the CEO! I’m more fit for managing a company than producing a show, you know!” “And, well, we staff were called because of that and were to make the program. Although Young Master Kizario was the one to come up with the contents of the race.” “It was all a plan to track Peperon down. The super spicy gourmet has the special seasoning blended from me reading the magic book in secret. By eating that, you were sure to have gained strength several times more than usual. It was a strategy to power you guys up.” “It seemed to have an opposite effect as there was way too much.” Said the staff. Kizario was let down once again. “......Well, you know. The next singing challenge was for what I remembered from reading the magic book, “Spell of Awakening.” Once hearing the spell, the magical creature would get aroused and start running wild. I thought it would be able to lure out Peperon in hiding......” “That was very foolish of you, sir. Thanks to that, the meek Peperon began rampaging like such......” Told harshly by Kurron, Kizario became more and more crestfallen. “The next chocolate challenge was as I explained. Peperon loves chocolate, so it would get sleepy after eating lots of chocolate. That’s why I had you all smeared in chocolate.” “What an awful plan!” Chef Kawasaki was the one to lose his temper. “I was nearly eaten by that thing!” “Peperon only eats sweets, so I thought that there wouldn't be any danger......” Right when Kizario made an excuse: With ding, ding, ding, ding......a low sound was heard. Taking out the communication device in his pocket, the staff talked about something in a low voice. Cutting the communication right away, the staff informed Kizario. “It’s a message from the HQ, sir. The front-runner will reach the goal shortly, so please make haste......they said. Since the award ceremony can’t start without young master......” “......Eh?” Everyone was stupefied. “The top runner? Who do they mean?” “But all the athletes are gathered here.” Kirby shouts abruptly. “Ah......! It’s Waddle Dee! Waddle Dee isn’t here!” “Whaaaaaaaaaat!?” Yelled King Dedede.

”That prick disregarded me and is in the lead!? He’s got nerves for a subordinate!” “Don’t tell me that Waddle Dee will win!?” “No, that’s not possible.” Said Kizario. “That athlete didn’t meet the condition of the final checkpoint. That is to say, he didn’t encounter Peperon.” “I see. So Waddle Dee is disqualified then.” The athletes were in relief. “Can’t sit here like this. The race will resume.” “Alright, I ain’t losing!” “I’m gonna win~!” The athletes got onto each of their machines and started running. The TV staff also boards the wheeled vehicles for staff use. Kurron called out to Kizario standing still on the edge of the cliff. “Let us go as well, Master.” “......Sure.” Unwilling to give up, while looking over his shoulders several times, Kizario finally left that area.

Previous chapter

Next chapter

Table of contents

#kirby novels #kirby of the stars #light novel #translation #kirby #waddle dee #king dedede #meta knight #walky #meta knights

24 notes · View notes

dhiabori · 4 years

Text

STRANGE HUMAN ―

my first little drabble with elsie/the saker fey! he was a hunting pet who was crippled by his mistress to stop him getting away, and has since been abandoned in the london underground. elsie was inspired by @wildfaewhump, especially the potential for wing whump >:)

TRIGGER WARNINGS ― starvation, dehydration, disability as a result of injury, screwy ‘i deserve to be punished’ mindset

TAGGING ― @doveotions

“Elsie, come on, we’re going to be late!” The woman tugs her chick along, dragging her into the maw of the metal snake as it thrums and hums.

Elsie. Saker burbles softly, his voice low and cracked from dehydration; Elsie. Elsie, Elsie, Elsie, he murmurs, shuddering in the shadows. Testing it, twisting the word around his tongue and through his teeth, crowing it, cooing it, sounding it out. Nice. It’s nice. Of all the things humans call each other, it’s pretty, simple.

He decides he’ll take it, just as he takes discarded food. Just as he takes coats from lost property, piling them into a pitiful, dirty nest. Elsie. Nothing like the name he’s long since lost claim to, a name that sung and roiled like the splash of sea spray, like the whistling of wind over his clifftop home -- but Elsie is small and contained. Elsie fits the corner of the platform he’s curled himself into, the stuffy, stagnant air that’s cracked his dehydrated lips. Even licking them does nothing but fill his mouth with the taste of blood.

The crackling intercom cuts through his ears, a hissing of static that makes him rear back. Retreating into his nest, Elsie has to drag himself with his hands, wings draped around him like a shield. They’re beginning to ache from underuse, drooping, almost begging for a strong breeze to flutter their feathers -- but all he gets is hot gusts as the metal snake screeches away.

Flopping down onto his nest, he watches the humans hurry by through lidded eyes, blinking sleepily. If only he could sleep; if only he could find some refuge from the clenching hunger that twists his stomach, the dull, insistent pain in his hips. The bright lights, the sounds, all stabbing into his awareness like Mistress’ lightning-stick.

He keens softly, tucking his head under a wing to try to push out the insistent thrum.

Hungry. I’m hungry. It can’t be ignored, as hard as he tries.

With an effort, he drags himself into a crouched position, whimpering as pain flashes through his legs. Elsie doesn’t know what Mistress did to them, but the ache is deep and grinding; even biting at the flesh does nothing to chase it out.

Still, the ache comes second to his hunger. Cocking his head, Elsie blinks at the steady stream of humans. Food, food -- he’s grown tired of sharp-tasting, nasty little rats, pigeons that flutter just out of his reach, taunting the uselessness of his drooping wings. If only they worked, then he’d be free of this place. Free of the food, free of the corner, free to return to the sky.

A flash of plastic catches his attention, eyes flicking to focus on a bag in a human’s hand. Humans are so particular about keeping their food clean, contained; Elsie prefers his messy, ripped entrails and blood smeared around his mouth. Still, it’s food. He’s desperate for it.

The human comes closer, closer, as another metal snake slithers into the station with a rush of stale air. Shifting, Elsie shuffles forward, trying to use his wings as support. Pain sparks from the pressure, only worsening the agony in his twisted, trembling legs.

Closer. Closer. Elsie’s fingers dig into the tarmac, breath coming in ragged gasps.

Closer. His favourite part of the hunt: the moment before the kill, when he’s taut, wound tight and ready strike. Back home, when he could hunt on the wing, the wind would be rushing past him, plucking at his hair. The sea would be rushing up to kiss him, salt-spray burning his eyes.

Closer. Close enough?

Elsie springs forward, snatching the chips from the human’s hands and darting away. Success.

“Hey!” Their shout stops him, wobbling on unsteady legs, gazing up at them with wide, fearful eyes. That’s Mistress’ shout, the sharp one that cuts like his collar, the one that says your fault, your fault. Elsie still doesn’t understand quite what fault means, only it always comes before punishment. It always means he’s been bad, heralds Mistress’ lightning-stick and harsh words.

He cowers, feeling his heart hammer in his chest as the human approaches. No, no, please, no no no no no -- the words slip from his mouth, aching wings fluttering up as paltry protection. Elsie knows he’s worthless, knows he deserves it, a pathetic hunter who’s become the hunted, but he can’t swallow down his frantic fear.

“Hey,” Repeats the human, softer, crouching in front of Elsie. Too close; they don’t look like Mistress, they’re rounder, skin as dark and smooth as a pebble, hair oil-slick black and coily, but they speak like Mistress, sugar-sweet and threatening.

He’s too weak to scramble back in time, so he drops his head instead, gulping down terrified rabbit-breaths as he waits for the blows to come. If he’s lucky, they’ll only snatch their food, but he knows he can never be lucky. Luck is a human word. The closest his tongue can come is fortunate in hunting, fortunate in finding, things he can never be with the pain that makes his breath catch.

“Please -- please, no, n-no - no, don’t --” Don’t means stop, Elsie knows that. Mistress called him good when he finally figured that out; he clings to it, his best offering, a kill to toss at the human’s feet.

The human tilts their head -- curious. He likes that word; it tastes of shellfish, salty and fresh.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m not going to hurt you--” Holding out their hand, the human leans forward.

Liar. There’s a human word, too, a cutting one: Elsie shuffles back, eyes fixed on the outstretched hand. It looks harmless, but he knows he deserves punishment. Knows it’ll come, forced down his throat despite its bitter taste.

“Alright, alright. You’re alright.” The human leans back on their haunches, reminding Elsie of the foxes he sometimes used to see, slinking around the clifftops. “You know what? Keep them.”

“Keep?” Mistress said that once or twice, but it feels painfully strange in Elsie’s mouth, no matter how many times he swills it around under his breath, “Keep keep keep keep--”

“Yes, keep it.” The human chuckles softly, a smile crinkling at their warm, brown eyes. “You need it more than I do.”

“Hurt?” Elsie has to ask; Mistress liked it when he asked, laughed like the warble of a songbird. Yet he can’t help glancing down at the chips, their warmth bleeding through his hands. Perhaps they’re bad, like the chicken he scraped off the platform -- his stomach growls, reminding him that he doesn’t have much of a choice.

Choice, his language has a word for that. A feeling: the freedom of the sky, coastline stretched out below him, a ribbon of golden beaches caressed by the sea.

The human laughs again, rough and pealing. They laugh like the grating ding of the station announcements, making his headache whine -- but they laugh nothing like Mistress.

“No, no, you funny thing. I said, I won’t hurt you. Take them.”

Elsie cocks his head, hardly understanding their sudden kindness. Offering them one last chance to punish him; he’s bad, after all, a hunter who can no longer catch his prey. He should starve.

All they do is watch.

He doesn’t give them a chance to change their mind, but shuffles away, whimpering as his damaged legs flare.

They don’t get up til he’s safe in his nest again, shoveling chips into his mouth. Strange human. All the landpeople Elsie knows are cruel -- as they should be, to him. He doesn’t even have the strength to bite them like true fey; nor does he have the right to call himself fey. Even his kin won’t want him now, nothing more than a discarded pet. Not even good enough to eat from Mistress’ hand.

Yet this human gave him food. This human didn’t hurt him.

Strange, Elsie thinks, repeating the word aloud a few times as he settles back down, shivering.

“Strange human.”

#whump #whumpblr #starvation tw #injury tw #nonsexual masochism tw #pet whump #fae whump #discarded whumpee #disabled whumpee #neurodivergent whumpee #oc: elsie #oc: jacqueline

11 notes · View notes

bretongirlwrites · 4 years

Text

tes ocs and their favourite places

JULIANNE

‘The sea!...

‘There are people in Cyrodiil who have not seen the sea, and that - that is what makes me lucky, that is what renders my wonder incomprehensible to all those who do not know it. The people of Bravil like to pretend Niben Bay is the sea, even if it is flat as a mill-pond, and the water is fresh, and on a clear day you can see the opposite shore; the inhabitants of the City like to pretend that Rumare is vastly superior, when they can’t even begin to imagine -

‘I can stand on the cliffs at Anvil, and see to infinity, that vast sparkling expanse, disappearing over the horizon; - when you have seen how immense and magnificent and overwhelming Nirn is, beyond our tiny shuttered civilisation, that is when you know your place in the world, that is when you can look with true awe upon it. The sea, the ocean! what beauty, what intense beauty resides in its glistening waves, in how very big it is, in the knowledge that it has so many secrets within its depths, that it has consumed so many who were too bold, that it is infinitely more mysterious and powerful than any of the wilds on land -

‘I cannot resist its lure; when I lived in Anvil, I would spend half my time upon the cliffs, feeling insignificant, knowing then what powers resided above me, how small I was…

‘Oh! but that is not your question, is it? - My answer, then, is that my favourite place is the clifftop at Anvil. There is scarcely anything in Anvil that fails to evoke some kind of wonder - but oh! the cliffs, and the sea, Divines, the sea!...’

CORINNE

‘There’s something very comforting about the notion of home, isn’t there? I didn’t value it very much, when I lived in Anvil. When I moved to the City, I missed our house in Anvil more than I care to admit, though the City grew on me a lot, and I came to call it home. A title it shared at length with Cloud Ruler Temple. Yes... I think Cloud Ruler Temple is among my favourite places. Perhaps it is an easy answer, for a Blade, but you must know that it is where I met my wife, and where we spend most of our time together, and nothing makes a place feel like home so much as being with the love of one’s life. - I am getting soppy, and Julianne will laugh, but I do mean it, and very much so.’

MARIANNE

‘Heavens, it’s a difficult question, isn’t it...

‘Not that I don’t have favourite places... but all of those which I regard with the most love, and now the most nostalgia, were in Kvatch...

‘When I was a young apprentice in the Guild - the Thieves’ Guild, I mean - I never saw the city as particularly beautiful, it must be said. I don’t think any of us did. You can’t, when you think that every other person you see would spit on your face, if they had the nerve. That’s the life of the beggar, the thief, the desperately poor. But I did have one refuge - the Chapel.

‘I don’t know if you ever saw the Chapel, before the Crisis. A good deal have seen it since: people are so bizarrely curious when it comes to disaster, and the Chapel being one of the few parts of the city left standing, they flock to it in their little crowds...

‘Before the Crisis... Well! it must be said it much resembled the other chapels of Cyrodiil. All vaults and carvings, and the dappled rainbows of the stained-glass windows. But a place cannot become one’s favourite without sentiment, and the sentiment I felt, on entering it - still felt, later on - was one of peace. There, I would not be trodden underfoot, I was equal, respected. There, people listened. There, the gods listened... Or I hoped they did. Even then, when I despised so much of humanity, I yet clung to the gods as virtuous...

‘And so the Chapel became a sanctuary, a true sanctuary, as if I had spent days wandering in the bitter thankless cold, in a blinding blizzard, only to come by a welcoming doorstep and a warm fireplace. But unlike any mortal sanctuary, it would reign eternal, and would always be there for me, where I left it, how I left it.

‘It’s... it’s difficult to talk about Kvatch, for one thing. And for another, it’s difficult to talk about the gods. I revere them beyond words. If I have a favourite place in this world, it is as close as I might get to their breast, and oh! I never felt closer, than when I found the light, in Kvatch, in that beloved Chapel...’

LUNETTE

‘I don’t value places as they are found in the world. Even more than people, they do not last, and even if they do endure, by some miracle, they change so much as to be unrecognisable. No, I shan’t name a favourite place, for fear that it not be the same, even since I last left it. That’s how you end up hopelessly nostalgic.

‘That being said...

‘Have you ever been to Solstheim? - I don’t much care for the fort there, or even for Raven Rock, which I almost came to see as home - that being a mistake of sentiment, I think - but the wilds of the island are quite the most remarkable thing. Nowhere in all of Morrowind, or Cyrodiil for that matter, can one feel so exterior to society. Even among the Skaal - especially among the Skaal! - Certainly it’s dangerous, to wander alone, where creatures and witches and disease all pose an immense threat, but it’s quite the experience.

‘I have spent my life trying both to change society, and to fit in, to have influence within it. That was shaken a little, it must be said, when I first ventured into the wilds of Solstheim. I think I seriously considered donning furs, finding myself a cave, and being a true anarchist for the rest of my life. There is nowhere I have felt such absolute liberty. The Skaal swear by their harmony with nature, and I very much understand that sentiment. One cannot but, when one has spent a few hours in such extraordinary peace.’

JULIENNE

‘Certainly I have a soft spot for Bruma, and for Whiterun, the two cities I can call home. Bruma is all pretty timber beams and snowy roofs, and the inns are the best in Cyrodiil, and once you’ve clambered up to the top level of the city, you have the most magnificent view towards the Jerall Mountains, and down into the valley. You can see the Imperial City on a clear day. Whiterun is in a slightly different style, but reminiscent of it, and the people are so lovely, it’s such a nice place to be.

‘But I should also say that there is no place quite like Ivarstead. I had much occasion to go there, perhaps more than I should have liked, when I was busy fulfilling a certain godsdamned prophecy: but Ivarstead was always welcoming, the people were always lovely, and oh, Divines, it’s so pretty... By day you have the Throat of the World beyond, and before it, the crystal waters of the river, and the little mill; by night, it is unfailingly bathed in the cascading aurora, and oh, the sky is so clear out there, so unbelievably clear; and it’s quite something to see the shadow of the mountain against the infinite sky, and the constellations, and, oh! it’s just delicious, I can’t put it into words. I thought I should come to associate it with bad memories, but I never did, and truly, if it were not so remote, I would go and live there, truly I would. Perhaps I would anyway. I wonder what Marcurio would think of it?’

#elder scrolls #tes #morrowind #oblivion #skyrim #oc:julianne #oc:corinne #oc:lunette #oc:marianne #oc:julienne

10 notes · View notes

greyvvardenfell · 5 years

Text

Fictober Day 21 // “Enough! I heard enough.” // The Arcana (Nadia Satrinava x Kodori Yazakh) // Rating: T (canon-typical violence) // 982 words

——————————————————————————————

We tried not to hurt innocents. When I was responsible for our contracts, we didn't. But he tended to believe what he wanted to believe, and anyone can be cast as the innocent when enough money changes hands.

My people raised me to see the truth, not fall for fanciful deceptions. There will always be a tell, something that rings false to the well-trained ear, a sour note in a chord packed too tightly for others to hear. I can hear it. It is not boastful to say so. This was to be my primary duty, to sift through lies for honesty. But by the time I came of age, there was no longer a need. Those who lied had already won, bringing ruin to our city and famine to our farmlands. They turned to slaving to pay their debts, though they called it by a euphemistic title and touted its benefits to those who had fallen through the cracks. It stank of deceit. My aunts and uncles gathered those of us who had survived and we ran before we could be run into the ground.

City life does not prepare one for anything but. One does not learn how to find food or water in the hills, or how to sharpen sticks into stakes and spears, or how to navigate by starlight. One does not learn how to tell the coming weather from the direction of the wind or how to build, start, maintain, and bank a fire. All of this and more we learned within the first month. Our city was isolated at the foot of vast mountains, far taller than these, at the mouth of a river and the shore of a sea. Had we thought before walking blindly into the dark, surely we would have skirted the sea in search of refuge, but instead we struck inland, south across the foothills. It was only a matter of time before the first of us perished.

I asked her if she was okay, and I knew she was lying. Even the others could have said she was lying. She was old, and weak. That she made it as far as she did is miraculous. It is not cruel to say so. We buried her hands and her head beneath a flat stone on the sunlit side of the last hill she climbed and left the rest for the wildcats that screamed at us from the clifftops. They stopped protesting as time went on: their bellies grew too full.

We found a city eventually, those of us who were left. We were hardened and impoverished and strangers to everyone we met, and I believe we lost so much getting there that we lost each other as well. I felt no more kinship to the people who had been my family than I did to the merchants and guards eyeing me with disdain at every turn. Every time they had promised it would only take one more day, that we would be better off away from our city, that tomorrow our luck would change, the lie sizzled in my ears and turned my trust in them to poison. I did not miss them when I left. Nor did I think twice about joining Lucio when he gave me the opportunity to go.

He strolled into the covered market like it already belonged to him. Perhaps the jewelers and outfitters and blacksmiths and butchers were merely renting from him, their lord. Of course, it was a lie. Most things about him were. And yet he was confident in his ability to stand in his lies and own them. Everything from his name to his accent to his left arm was fake and did not pretend to be anything else. I had never seen anyone like him before. And, more importantly, he had never seen anyone like me.

Lucio was, and I'm sure you'll agree, first and foremost an opportunist. He became a mercenary out of convenience. He married you for the same reason. He had his goals, certainly, but no set plans to accomplish them. His life was dictated by serendipity from the start. He needed direction. And he found it with me. It is not exaggerating to say so. I secured us contracts and allies. I organized supplies. I advised him on the intrigues around certain issues. I became what I had always intended to be, under a banner I would never have seen had I not left and left again.

But he was easily swayed by gold and blood. I could not always stop him. The greatest regrets in my heart are the times he spurned my advice or never sought it at all. The lives of the people he slaughtered rest heavily on my shoulders, since they never seemed to weigh on his. Nopal. Karnassos. Vesuvia itself...

------

"Enough! I have heard enough, Yazakh."

"Nadia. I displeased you."

She rubs her temples, crimson eyes blazing distress. "I… no. It is difficult, to hear of my ex-husband, and that you took such responsibility for his actions, but I am saddened, not displeased."

Yazakh bows their head. "I understand, my lady. I will not speak of this again."

"No!" Nadia leaps to her feet, the teacup in her lap tumbling to the floor and shattering. "Kodori Yazakh, I will not be another burden for you to bear!" She flies across the parlor, sinking down next to Yazakh's armchair and folding their hands in hers. "I must know that you understand this, my love. Your past, the things you have seen and lost, I will carry them with you. You need no longer be simply my head guard, no more than I your lady." She smiles. "We could be partners."

They're quiet for several moments, yellow-gold eyes shifting rapidly between hers. "I have never had a partner before."

"Would you like one?"

"Yes."

#fictober19 #the arcana #otp: all you need is someone to trust #rey writes things

9 notes · View notes

jones-friend · 5 years

Text

An Updated Reference for Multi Lands (in Building a Budget Manabase)

Colorless of Note

Reliquary Tower

Geier Reach Sanitarium

Ghost Quarter

Tectonic Edge

Arch of Orazca

Detection Tower

Arcane Lighthouse

Field of Ruin

Zhalfirin Void

Buried Ruin

Sequestered Stash

High Market

Isolated Watchtower

Temple of the False God

Maze of Ith

Mystifying Maze

Dual

Orzhov - Orzhov Basilica, Orzhov Guildgate, Scoured Barrens, Foresaken Sanctuary, Tainted Field, Salt Flats

Isolated Chapel, Godless Shrine, Shambling Vent, Concealed Courtyard, Caves of Koilos, Fetid Heath

Dimir - Dimir Aqueduct, Dimir Guildgate, Dismal Backwater, Salt Marsh, Submerged Boneyard, Frost Marsh, Jwar Isle Refuge, Dreadship Reach, Tainted Isle, Waterfall Cavern, Rootwater Depths

Drowned Catacomb, Watery Grave, Choked Estuary, Sunken Hollow, Fetid Pools, Underground River, Darkwater Catacombs, Sunken Ruins, Morphic Pool

Golgari - Golgari Rot Farm, Golgari Guildgate, Foul Orchard, Jungle Hollow, Tainted Wood, Pine Barrens

Woodland Cemetery, Overgrown Tomb, Hissing Quagmire, Blooming Marsh, Llanowar Wastes, Twilight Mire

Rakdos - Rakdos Carnarium, Rakdos Guildgate, Urborg Volcano, Cinder Barrens, Bloodfell Caves, Akoum Refuge, Molten Slagheap, Tainted Peak, Lantern-Lit Graveyard, Cinder Marsh

Dragonskull Summit, Blood Crypt, Foreboding Ruins, Smoldering Marsh, Canyon Slough, Sulfurous Springs, Shadowblood Ridge, Graven Cairns, Luxury Suite

Boros - Boros Garrison, Boros Guildgate, Stone Quarry, Wind-Scarred Crag, Scabland

Clifftop Retreat, Sacred Foundry, Needle Spires, Inspiring Vantage, Battlefield Forge, Rugged Prairie

Azorius - Azorius Chancery, Azorius Guildgate, Coastal Tower, Meandering River, Boreal Shelf, Sejiri Refuge, Tranquil Cove, Calciform Pools, Cloudcrest Lake, Thalakos Lowlands

Glacial Fortress, Hallowed Fountain, Port Town, Prairies Stream, Irrigated Farmland, Adarkar Wastes, Skycloud Expanse, Mystic Gate, Sea of Clouds

Selesnya - Selesnya Sanctuary, Selesnya Guildgate, Elfhame Palace, Tranquil Expanse, Arctic Flats, Graypelt Refuge, Blossoming Sands, Saltcrusted Steppe, Tranquil Garden, Vecc Townships

Sunpetal Grove, Temple Garden, Fortified Village, Canopy Vista, Scattered Groves, Brushland, Sungrass Prairie, Wooded Bastion, Bountiful Promenade

Simic - Simic Growth Chamber, Simic Guildgate, Woodland Stream, Thornwood Falls, Skyshroud Forest

Hinterland Harbor, Breeding Pool, Lumbering Falls, Botanical Sanctum, Yavimaya Coast, Flooded Grove

Izzet - Izzet Boilerworks, Izzet Guildgate, Highland Lake, Swiftwater Cliffs, Caldera Lake

Sulfur Falls, Steam Vents, Spirebluff Canal, Wandering Fumarole, Shivan Reef, Cascade Bluffs

Gruul - Gruul Turf, Gruul Guildgate, Shivan Oasis, Timber Gorge, Highland Weald, Kazandu Refuge, Rugged Highlands, Fungal Reaches, Pinecrest Ridge, Mogg Hollows

Rootbound Crag, Stomping Grounds, Game Trail, Cinder Glade, Sheltered Thicket, Karplusian Forest, Mossfire Ridge, Fire-lit Thicket, Spire Garden

Triple Lands

Shards - Seaside Citadel, Crumbling Necropolis (Crypt of the Eternals), Arcane Sanctum, Savage Lands, Jungle Shrine

Khans - Sandsteppe Citadel, Frontier Bivouac, Nomad Outpost, Opulent Palace, Mystic Monastery

Multicolor

Command Tower, Transguild Promenade, Rupture Spire, Gateway Plaza

Exotic Orchard, Forbidden Orchard, Reflecting Pool, Pillar of the Paruns, Primal Beyond, Mana Confluence, Ancient Ziggurat, City of Brass, Grand Coliseum, Haven of the Spirit Dragon, Ally Encampment, Rainbow Vale, Sliver Hive, Spire of Industry, Undiscovered Paradise, Unclaimed Territory, Path of Ancestry

Vivid Grove, Crag, Creek, Marsh, Meadow

Fetches

Basic Land

Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Myriad Landscape, Panoramas

Land Type

Bad River, Flood Plain, Grasslands, Krosan Verge, Mountain Valley, Rocky Tar Pit

#mtg #deckbuilding #edh

37 notes · View notes

happydaysandersen · 5 years

Note

Hi love! I'm white/asian, have long wavy dark brown hair and brown eyes. I'm 20 years old. I love nature, hiking, collecting herbs, weaving, reading and spending time with loved ones. I'm quite introverted and reserved when meeting new people. I'm bisexual, so I can't really decide, if that's okay 🙈At the moment I'm on a high mountain pasture with my cows, at a height of 2200m above sea level. And the first thing I do when I go down to the village and have internet is checking your blog 😂❤❤

Okay so that last be is the sweetest 💖 I'm sorry I don't post much anymore.

I ship you with

Ivar

Reason

You mentioned being introverted.

I believe deep down if Ivar didn't have so much too prove he would enjoy the luxury of being introverted.

He would be in awe of how you just internalised everything, it would be rare you would let it slip how you felt, or to what degree.

He would find comfort in having you by his side, a constant reminder of how he doesn't have to give into the anger.

You also love the cliff and I presume sights of nature.

The pair of you would enjoy how small everything looked from the clifftop over looking kattegat.

Situation

Ivar would learn how to manage his anger from you, what warrented an outburst.

More important what else could be done to avoid an outburst.

Of course constant reasuring would be needed, you would be the only one to see how much he needed telling he was doing a good job.

You would spend nights and early mornings watching the sunset and sunrise from the cliffs.

Feeling so far away from the demands of ruling he would appreciate a human side to simple things.

He would take refuge in having you by his side, you wouldn't have to say anything.

#viking ship #requested by anon #ships

3 notes · View notes

aihgndlhro · 3 years

Text

Get Books Fixing Landscape: A Techno-Poetic History of China’s Three Gorges

cherchez-vous ce livre? The Wife's House By Arianne Richmonde

Book Excerpt :

The perfect house or the perfect lie?The moment my husband showed me Cliffside?a sleek and modern glass home perched on the edge of the jagged Big Sur clifftops?I fell in love. And right there and then I made a pact with myself. I am never leaving this house.But when my husband was killed on the perilous roads leading up to the house, weeks after we moved in, I had a decision to make?leave the home I love and start a new life or stay and shut myself off from the world? I am never leaving this house.As I pieced together my shattered life, my mind began to play tricks on me. Footsteps along the beach, leading to my home, then blood-red flowers left on my doorstep with a note that read Looking at you. So I retreated back to the safety of my glass refuge once again. I am never leaving this house.But now, as I stare out of the towering windows of my perfect home, I know there is someone out there staring back. I know that they are watching my every move, waiting to make me pay for my past

>>> START READING NOW

"This book is available for download in a number of formats - including epub, pdf, azw, mobi and more. You can also read the full text online using our Ereader."

#BESTBOOK, #PDB, #BESTBOOK2020

0 notes

salamandersofftheclock · 4 years

Text

The Island That Humans Can’t Conquer

Text by Sarah Gilman Photos by Nathaniel Wilder

A faraway island in Alaska has had its share of visitors, but none can remain for long on its shores.

St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska. Marooned in the Bering Sea halfway to Siberia, it is well over 300 kilometers and a 24-hour ship ride from the nearest human settlements. It looks fittingly forbidding, the way it emerges from its drape of fog like the dark spread of a wing. Curved, treeless mountains crowd its sliver of land, plunging in sudden cliffs where they meet the surf. To St. Matthew’s north lies the smaller, more precipitous island of Hall. A castle of stone called Pinnacle stands guard off St. Matthew’s southern flank. To set foot on this scatter of land surrounded by endless ocean is to feel yourself swallowed by the nowhere at the center of a drowned compass rose.

My head swims a little as I peer into a shallow pit on St. Matthew’s northwestern tip. It’s late July in 2019, and the air buzzes with the chitters of the island’s endemic singing voles. Wildflowers and cotton grass constellate the tundra that has grown over the depression at my feet, but around 400 years ago, it was a house, dug partway into the earth to keep out the elements. It’s the oldest human sign on the island, the only prehistoric house ever found here. A lichen-crusted whale jawbone points downhill toward the sea, the rose’s due-north needle.

Compared with more sheltered bays and beaches on the island’s eastern side, it would have been a relatively harsh place to settle. Storms regularly slam this coast with the full force of the open ocean. As many as 300 polar bears used to summer here, before Russians and Americans hunted them out in the late 1800s. Evidence suggests that the pit house’s occupants likely didn’t use it for more than a season, according to Dennis Griffin, an archaeologist who’s worked on the archipelago since 2002. Excavations of the site have turned up enough to suggest that people of the Thule culture—precursors to the Inuit and Yup’ik who now inhabit Alaska’s northwestern coasts—built it. But Griffin has found no sign of a hearth, and only a thin layer of artifacts.

The Unangan, or Aleut, people from the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands to the south tell a story of the son of a chief who discovered the then uninhabited Pribilofs after he was blown off course. He overwintered there, and then returned home by kayak the following spring. The Yup’ik from St. Lawrence Island to the north have a similar story, about hunters who found themselves on a strange island, where they waited for the opportunity to walk home over the sea ice. Griffin believes something similar may have befallen the people who dug this house, and they sheltered here while waiting for their chance to leave. Maybe they made it, he will tell me later. Or maybe they didn’t: “A polar bear could have gotten them.”

In North America, many people think of wilderness as a place mostly untouched by humans; the United States defines it this way in law. This idea is a construct of the recent colonial past. Before European invasion, Indigenous peoples lived in, hunted in, and managed most of the continent’s wild lands. St. Matthew’s archipelago, designated as official wilderness in 1970, and as part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge in 1980, would have had much to offer them, too: freshwater lakes teeming with fish, many of the same plants that mainland cultures ate, ample seabirds and marine mammals to hunt. And yet, because St. Matthew is so far-flung, the solitary pit house suggests that even Alaska’s expert seafaring Indigenous peoples may never have been more than accidental visitors here. Others who’ve followed have arrived with the help of significant infrastructure or institutions. None remained long.

I came to these islands aboard a ship called the Tiĝlax̂ [TEKH-lah] to tag along with scientists studying the seabirds that nest on the archipelago’s cliffs. But I also wanted to see what it felt like to be in a place that so thoroughly rejects human presence.

On this, the last full day of our expedition, as the scientists rush to collect data and pack up camps on the other side of the island, the pit house seems a better vantage than most to reflect. I lower myself into the depression, scanning the sea, the bands of sunlight flickering across the tundra on this unusually clear day. I imagine watching for winter’s sea ice, waiting for it to come. I imagine watching for polar bears, hoping they will not. You never know, a retired refuge biologist had said to me before I boarded the Tiĝlax̂. “I would keep my eyes out. If you see something big and white out there, look at it twice.”

Once, these islands were mountains, waypoints on the subcontinent of Beringia that joined North America and Asia. Then the ocean swallowed the land around the peaks, hid them away in thick summer fogs, made them lonely. With no people resident long enough to keep their history, they became the sort of place where “discovery” could be perennial. Lieutenant Ivan Synd of the Russian navy, oblivious to the pit house, believed he was first to find the largest island, in 1766. He named it for the Christian apostle Matthew. Captain James Cook believed he discovered it in 1778, and called it Gore. The whalers who came upon the archipelago later called it, simply, “the Bear Islands.”

Around the winter of 1809–1810, a party of Russians and Unangans decamped here to hunt bears for fur. Depending on what source you consult, many of the Russians died of scurvy, while the Unangans survived, or some or most of the party perished when the sea mammals they relied on moved beyond the range of their hunts, or all were so tormented by polar bears that they had to leave. Indeed, when naturalist Henry Elliott visited the islands in 1874, he found them swarming with bruins. “Judge our astonishment at finding hundreds of large polar bears … lazily sleeping in grassy hollows, or digging up grass and other roots, browsing like hogs,” Elliott wrote, though he seemed to find them less terrifying than interesting and tasty. After his party killed some, he noted that the steaks were of “excellent quality.”

Even after the bears were gone, the archipelago remained a difficult place for people. The fog was endless; the weather, a banshee; the isolation, extreme. In 1916, the Arctic power schooner Great Bear ran afoul of the mists and wrecked on Pinnacle. The crew used whaleboats to move about 20 tonnes of supplies to St. Matthew to set up a camp and wait for help. A man named N. H. Bokum managed to build a sort of transmitter from odds and ends, and climbed each night to a clifftop to tap out SOS calls. But he gave up after concluding that the soggy air interfered with its operation. Growing restless as the weeks passed, men brandished knives over the ham when the cook tried to ration it. Had they not been rescued after 18 days, Great Bear owner John Borden later said, this desperation would have been “the first taste of what the winter would have brought.”

US servicemen stationed on St. Matthew during the Second World War got a more thorough sampling of the island’s winter extremes. In 1943, the US Coast Guard established a long-range navigation (Loran) site on the southwestern coast of the island, part of a network that helped fighter planes and warships orient on the Pacific with the help of regular pulses of radio waves. Snow at the Loran station drifted up to around eight meters deep, and “blizzards of hurricane velocity” lasted an average of 10 days. Sea ice surrounded the island for about seven months of the year. When a plane dropped the mail several kilometers away during the coldest time of year, the men had to form three crews and rotate in shifts just to retrieve it, dragging a toboggan of survival supplies as they went.

The other seasons weren’t much more hospitable. One day, five servicemen vanished on a boat errand, despite calm seas. Mostly, the island raged with wind and rain, turning the tundra to a “sea of mud.” It took more than 600 bags of cement just to set foundations for the station’s Quonset huts.

The coast guard, worried how the men would fare in such conditions if they were cut off from resupply, introduced a herd of 29 reindeer to St. Matthew as a food stock in 1944. But the war ended, and the men left. The reindeer population, without predators, exploded. By 1963, there were 6,000. By 1964, nearly all were gone.

Winter had taken them.

These days, the Loran station is little more than a towering pole anchored by metal cables to a bluff above the beach, surrounded by a wide fan of debris.

On the fifth day of our week-long expedition, several of us walk the sagging remains of an old road to the site. Near the pole that still stands, a second has fallen, a third, a fourth. I find the square concrete pillars of the Quonset huts’ foundations. A toilet lies alone on a rise, bowl facing inland. I pause next to a biometrician named Aaron Christ, as he shoots photos of a pile of rusting barrels that shriek with the scent of diesel. “We’re great at building wondrous things,” he says after a moment. “We’re terrible at tearing them down and cleaning them up.”

And yet, the tundra seems to be slowly reclaiming most of it. Monkshood and dwarf willow grow thick and spongy over the road. Moss and lichen finger over broken metal and jagged plywood, pulling them down.

At other sites of brief occupation, it’s the same. The earth consumes the beams of fallen cabins that seasonal fox trappers erected, likely before the Great Depression. The sea has swept away a hut that visiting scientists built near a beach in the 1950s. When the coast guard rescued the Great Bear crew in 1916, they left everything behind. Griffin, the archaeologist, found little but scattered coal when he visited the site of the camp in 2018. Fishers and servicemen may have looted some, but what was too trashed for salvage—perhaps the gramophone, the cameras, the bottles of champagne—seems to have washed away or swum down into the soil. The last of the straggling reindeer, a lone, lame female, disappeared in the 1980s. For a long time, reindeer skulls salted the island. Now, most are gone. The few I see are buried to their antler tips, as if submerged in rising green water.

Life here grows back, grows over, forgets. Not invincibly resilient, but determined and sure. On Hall Island, I see a songbird nesting in a cache of ancient batteries. And red foxes, having replaced most of St. Matthew’s native Arctic foxes after crossing on sea ice, have dug dens beneath the Loran building sites and several pieces of debris. The voles sing and sing.

The island is theirs.

The island is its own.

The next morning dawns dusky, light and clouds stained sepia by smoke blown from wildfires burning in distant forests. I spot something big and white as I walk across St. Matthew’s flat southern lobe and freeze, squinting. The white begins to move. To sprint, really. Not a bear, as the retired biologist had hinted, but two swans on foot. Three cygnets trundle in their wake. As they turn toward me, I spot a flash of orange porpoising through the grass behind them: a red fox.

The cygnets seem unaware of their pursuer, but their pursuer is aware of me. It veers from the chase to settle a couple of meters away—scraggly, gold eyed, and mottled as the lichen on the cliffs. It drops to its side and rubs luxuriantly against a rock for a few minutes, then springs away in a possessed zigzag, leaving me giggling. After it’s gone, I kneel to sniff the rock. It smells like dirt. I rub my own hair against it, just to say “hey.”

As I continue on, I notice that objects in the distance often appear to be one thing, then resolve into another. Ribs of driftwood turn out to be whale bones. A putrid walrus carcass turns out to be the wave-pummeled rootball of a tree. Unlikely artifacts without stories—a ladder, a metal pontoon—occasionally jag from the ground, deposited far inland, I guess, by storms. When I close my eyes, I have the vague feeling that waves roll through my body. “Dock rock,” someone will call this later: the sensation, after you have spent time on a ship, of the sea carried with you onto land, of land assuming the phantom motion of water beneath your feet.

It occurs to me that to truly arrive on St. Matthew, you have to lose your bearings enough to feel the line between the two blur. Disoriented, I can sense the landscape as fluid, a shapeshifter as sure as the rootball and whale bones—something that remakes itself from mountains to islands, that scatters and swallows signs left by those who pass across.

I consider the island’s eroding edges. Some cliffs in old photos have fallen away or buckled into sea stacks. I look at the few shafts of sun out on the clear water, sepia light touching dark mats of kelp on the Bering’s floor. Whole worlds submerged or pulverized to cobble, sand, and silt, down there. A calving of land into sea, the redistribution of earth into unknowable futures. A good place to remember that we are each so brief. That we never stand on solid ground.

The wind whips strands of hair out of my hood and into my eyes as I press my palms into the floor of the pit house. It feels firm enough, for now. That it’s still visible after a few centuries reassures me—a small anchor against the dragging currents of this place. Eventually, though, I get cold and clamber out. I need to return to my camp near where the Tiĝlax̂ waits at anchor; we’ll be setting course south back over the Bering toward other islands and airports in the morning. But first, I aim overland for a high, gray whaleback of ridge a few kilometers away that I have admired from the ship since our arrival.

The sunlight that striped the hills this morning has faded. An afternoon fog descends as I meander over electric green grass, then climb, hand over hand, up a ribbon of steep talus. I top out into nothingness. One of the biologists had told me, when we first discussed my wandering alone, that the fog closes in without warning; that, when this happened, I would want a GPS to help me find my way back. Mine is malfunctioning, so I go by feel, keeping the steep drop of the ridge’s face on my left, surprised by flats and peaks I don’t remember seeing from below. I begin to wonder if I have accidentally gone down the ridge’s gently sloping backside instead of walking its top. The fog thickens until I can see only a meter or two ahead. Thickens again, until I, too, vanish—erased as completely as the dark tracery of path I left through the grass below soon will be.

Then, abruptly, the fog breaks and the way down the mountain comes clear. Relieved, I weave back through the hills and, on the crest of the last, see the Tiĝlax̂ in the placid bay below. The ship blows its foghorn in a long salute as I lift my hand to the sky.

#long post #tw long post #travel writing #not mine #wilderness #inspiration

0 notes

luninosity · 3 years

Text

2020 fic round-up - original / published fic!

Time for the original fic overview, from this year! There’s a LOT, but some of that was written (at least mostly) last year, and only published this year. So let’s see...

Original Fic (at least mostly written and published in 2020) (Character Bleed, E, 254,099 words. **Pretty much all of this was written in 2019, so I'm not really counting it as 'new words' - but all the editing - and the publication!!!! - happened in 2020!** THIS STORY, YOU GUYS. I love it and these characters so much. It's the most ambitious thing I've ever tried to write, that whole story-within-a-story, being about actors filming a Regency-era gay love story, and falling in love themselves. I'm just looking at it all...and I'm in awe...and the response to this, oh wow. I've been so amazed and so grateful and so thrilled - the art, the trailer, the comments, the people thinking about these characters and loving them along with me - I'm so lucky to have all of you. *hugs everyone* And now you can buy it! As three volumes - Seaworthy, Stalwart, and Steadfast! Available via JMS Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and everywhere!) Character Bleed Bonus Scenes, E, 84,125 words, which means 58,428 new words! Also there're at least three special bonus scenes that *aren't* on AO3, only included with the published books! (Conversely, there're at least two bonus scenes that will only ever be on AO3, for all of you reading there!) So that's probably an extra, oh, let's say around 5k words. Cinnamon and Strawberries (A Character Bleed Story), E, 12,169 words. My Jason & Colby holiday novella! Full of celebrations, love, moving in together, and interesting uses for holiday ribbon... Cadence and the Pearl, E, 60,097 words, About 30k of it written in 2019/2018 (Was this really also published this year? I had FOUR novels out this year? Gosh.) I really love this one, honestly - historical, paranormal, pensive, ocean magic, a fairy tale. The Arch-Mage's Firebird, E, 11,220 words. A spin-off story in the Kitten & Witch universe! (I really ought to write the third part of the main story...) A runaway firebird, and an Arch-Mage in hiding, and a beachside town. One Night in London: Robert & Anthony, E, 29,247 words. My part of the fabulous collaborative three-part novel, with @turtletotem and @thebestpersonherelovesbucky ! <33333 You can buy the collected version here - they're more fun to read together, since our characters interact, but they can technically stand alone. Regency m/m romance, ballrooms, scandals... (I also wrote the prologue for the collected edition, so, + about 5k words!) Eventually there'll be a print version of the collected edition! We had so much fun - perhaps we'll do it again sometime... :D :D A Demon for Forever, E, 13,752 words - surprise! I thought I was done with the Demon for Midwinter universe - but JMS did a submissions call for stories celebrating LGBTQ marriage, and, well - I'd written the proposal story for Kris and Justin, so...we should get to see the wedding, right? With Justin in a wedding dress. A sparkly one. This story is also available as part of the JMS Books 2020 Top Ten Anthology! The Demon's Choice, E, 19,365 words - extra surprise! I'd had to cut this whole subplot from an earlier Demon story, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, so...I finally wrote it as a bonus story! Hurt/comfort, Justin confronting his heritage, and of course a happy ending. Refuge at Clifftop, E, 17,262 words. Third in the Extraordinary superhero polyamory series! Lots of hurt/comfort in this one, near-death self-sacrifice, tons of heroic love! Leather and Tea in London, E, 20,909 words - the third of the Leather and Tea stories! Written for the JMS Books BDSM collection call. Simon's brother needs a favor. So Ben and Simon head to London, bringing Ben's retired-spy skill set and also some fun toys for enjoying themselves. This story is also available as part of the JMS Books Hurts So Good BDSM Trio Collection! A Penny for Your Thoughts, E (but mostly implied / discussed - those darn truth-telling coins!), 3,981 words. A original-fic rewrite of an Evanstan drabble, expanded somewhat - and I really love these characters! A magician, his hero, mutual pining, and love confessions. Of Starlit Balls and Starship Captains, T, 6,596 words. M/F, with bi/pan protagonists - my attempt at mixing space opera and Regency romance! Technically I'd written an earlier version of this a couple years ago for a contest, for which it was not chosen, so this isn't all new writing, but substantially so. Statuesque, E, 3,491 words - some lesbian erotica! Short and kinky - established Dom/sub relationship - and loving. Honey Witch, E, 4,032 words. More short lesbian erotica! A witch and her princess, finding each other. Original Fic (written/heavily revised in 2020, publication contracts signed but not yet published) A Sonnet for a Thunderstorm, M, 3,202 words. An expanded original-character version of a several-years-old Cherik drabble - 18th century historical, thunderstorms, a poet and his pirate. Probably out in April/May 2021. (Frost & Raine, expanded version - the version that's still on AO3, which I'll have to take down, is about 31k - the published version, coming in February 2021, is currently 40,020 words. So...8,141 new words!) Original Fic (written in 2020, not yet under contract or published other than on AO3) In Focus, which is the Character Bleed spin-off, Leo's story - still in progress! it's up to 68,458 words, so that means...52,947 new words in 2020! Not bad. Whumptober 2020 - Original Fic Edition, E (overall; individual chapters vary), 13,271 words. All the Whumptober fics for my original fic - fanfic for myself! A couple of the Character Bleed-related ones might make it into publication, as well as the Jamie/Brendan story, eventually, I hope. Ember and Serenity, E, 23,170 words currently - I added chapter 5 in 2020, so that's 2,418 new words! I do have plans for this one. Oh yes. My librarian-magician and his book-thief...yes. And if you're wondering who hired Serenity, well, there already has been a clue... :D Spells and Sensibility (working title), aka the Mystery Project I'm working on with @thebestpersonherelovesbucky - which involves Regency-era magicians, and is currently 35,546 words!

That’s a lot of words! I feel Accomplished. Looking forward to more words in 2021 - and sharing them all with all of you, without whom I’d’ve never had the courage to try to publish stories. Thank you - you’re why I do this. <3333

#writing #2020 #such words! very wow!#2020 round-up

23 notes · View notes

upstartpoodle · 7 years

Text

Mirror Worlds

Summary: The fourth chapter of my George x Elizabeth magic AU, in which Elizabeth is a magician and George is a fairy. This chapter: George seeks refuge from his pursuers in the human world and Elizabeth and her father find something of interest at the site of the latest attack.

Previous Chapter

Chapter 4: Snakes and Deer Skulls

The first thing that Mac an Rìgh a' Bhàis noticed when he emerged from the winding tunnel he had been hurled into when he'd stepped through the portal was the sound of waves crashing against rock far below him. He was immediately alert, tempted to shrink back into the strange structure the tunnel had led up to--a peculiar thing, clearly built by humans with some kind of chimneypiece sat atop of it. That sound rarely meant anything good in Faerie--they had all come to recognise the particular resonance of the noise that accompanied the waves reaching the cliffs at high tidecoming. Still, he could not remain hidden in this strange little place for long--he had no idea how long his makeshift barrier might hold, and if the guards were to follow him through, he wanted to be well hidden by the time they did. With that in mind, he took a deep breath and stepped out of the shelter he had found for himself and out onto the clifftops.

The wind was strong, catching in his hair and under his folded wings, still largely concealed by his cloak, as he squinted his eyes to shield them from the worst of it, but it was nowhere near as powerful as the storms he was accustomed to. There were also very little clouds in the dark sky, filled with tiny pinpricks of light that he knew in theory to be stars but had never actually seen before. Hanging amongst them was a moon, white rather than red, and small compared to that in Faerie, nothing but a thin, crescent-shaped slither in the sky. He blinked, staring at the unfamiliar vision above him, and felt a prickle of unease deep in the recesses of his mind.

Shaking himself, he turned his gaze downwards wit no small amount of dread--down towards the sea. As he regarded it, he felt a sudden jolt of shock. He could only presume that this land's tide as currently at its highest, for the water was right up against the cliffs, waves foaming and frothing and breaking against the jagged stone, and yet... And yet it was so...low down. The water was nowhere near the clifftops, the waves roiling at their base rather than surging and crashing right over onto the land above them. Without warning, Mac an Rìgh a' Bhàis was hit by a sense of unreality, as if he were dreaming, and is mind were making sport of the surroundings he had grown up with, twisting them into strange, unfamiliar shapes before his eyes. He swallowed nervously, the sudden realisation that he was alone in a land he ultimately knew very little about a sharp pang in chest. No Uncle, no Cousin. Not even his various names meant anything here...

If he had thought he could have risked it, he might have remained there for Gods knew how long, staring at the strange view and fretting about the situation he had suddenly found himself in. However, he was all too aware that his makeshift barrier would not hold forever, and he could not afford to be out in the open should the forces of his no longer father break through into this world. As such, he spared the sea one last wary glance, turned to face the silvery, moonlit land behind him, and Shifted.

Changing one's shape was a fairly common skill amongst the fae, and Mac an Rìgh a' Bhàis--or rather the now nameless fairy who could no longer claim the title of the man he had spurned in his escape--had always been adept at it. He allowed the Shift to wash over him and he shrank, assuming the pale, elegant form of a barn owl that he typically favoured. Then, he took to the air, regarding the empty land below him warily.

As he flew, he sailed over many of the humans' strange above ground dwellings, but didn't dare stop to observe any of them properly. From the soft lights glowing in the peculiar gaps that he could only suppose were there to allow the humans to look outside--he, after all, had never lived above ground--he guessed that their inhabitants must be awake, though not all the dwellings were lit from the inside. He flew past all these places as quickly as he could, not daring to linger despite his disguise.

Eventually, he began to tire, the rush of adrenaline that had kept him sustained through his flight from Faerie having abated, and he began to look for somewhere where he could rest. That was when he came across it--the grim silhouette against the dark, star-filled sky. It must have been one of the humans' dwellings, he supposed as he circled it cautiously, and a grand one at that, being significantly larger than the somewhat unimpressive structures he had passed by earlier. Or at least, that was what it must have been before the forces of Rìgh a' Bhàis had been unleashed on it, for from the charred, broken skeleton of what had once been a home, he recognised the work of the lower echelons of his foster father's army all too well.

As he gazed upon the sight, having paused to hover in mid-air, a thought occurred to him. This place had already been attacked by Rìgh a' Bhàis--and they certainly hadn't done the job by halves--so there was no reason for any of his forces to return there, and even less reason for any humans to come here at this time, when everyone seemed to be tucked up safely in their own homes. It was morbid, perhaps, and it would have been a lie if he'd said he were in anyway comfortable in resting where Gods knew how many humans had been killed, but beggars could not be choosers, and his options were frankly few and far between.

That decided, he soared down to the structure, landing at its very top, surrounded by what remained of the walls, vicious, crumbling chunks pointing up towards the sky like enormous stone fingers. As he Shifted back to his own form, he shivered slightly, not daring to go deeper into the building for fear of finding something...unsavoury. As such, he resigned himself to finding shelter in the remains of what must have been the top floor of the dwelling. With a sigh, he lay down, curled up with his wings draped around him, more for comfort than cold, and closed his eyes.

It was early the next morning when Elizabeth and her father headed out to what had once been the country seat of the Bassets, both grim-faced yet equally determined. Not wanting draw unwelcome attention to themselves or where they were going, they had decided to leave Cusgarne at some time around dawn, when any who might remark upon their destination would likely be tucked up safely in their own homes. This, unfortunately, included Mrs Chynoweth who, having figured out exactly what they planned to do, had made her icy disapproval known over dinner the previous evening. Oh, she hadn't spoken on the subject--Elizabeth knew that her mother considered such talk to be inappropriate for mealtimes--but the pinched, fierce glare she had been sending each of them over the table had said it all. Later, Mrs Chynoweth herself had said it all in a loud angry voice to her husband, his heated responses muffled by the closed door of the parlour, once they had thought Elizabeth had retired for the night. However, much to her mother's dismay, no amount of lecturing about what was seemly could dissuade either of them from their self-appointed task.

As such, the pair of them had crept out of Cusgarne like thieves that morning, rushing off quietly as possible (which, when one was on horseback, was admittedly difficult). Once they were out of hearing range, they allowed themselves to ride as hard and as fast as they could, determined to get this over and done with. This afforded no opportunity for conversation, and they remained silent as they rode, each lost in their own thoughts.

Those thoughts were quickly pulled into harsh, unpleasant reality, however as what remained of the Bassets' home came into view. Elizabeth slowed with a gasp, her mount, sensing her agitation, tossing his head and whickering in distress. She reached out to soothe the animal, vaguely aware that her father had come to a stop beside her with a faint whisper of "my God", but she only had eyes for the horrible sight before her. Of course, she had seen the aftermath of these sorts of attacks before, what with them having become all too frequent in these past months, but none of them, for all that they had been bloody, and vicious, had been as ruthless as this.

What had once been the proud country hose was in utter ruins, the roof caved in, huge gaps in the walls, fragments of glass and wood splintered and shattered over the remnants of the building. Everything was blackened, marred from the fire, leaving the once pale stone a dark, fragmented mass against the still pink-streaked sky. The land around it too bore the scars of the attack, a faint gust of wind filling her nostrils with the acrid smell of burnt vegetation. Her eyes stung, and she blinked, the sudden tears that had formed under her lids by no means jut the product of the stench.

"My God," her father breathed for a second time, his face ashen. "I thought the previous attacks were bad but this..."

He trailed off, shaking his head grimly.

"This is nothing so mundane as a simple raid for resources," he said. "Nor is it mindless violence. This was done with the express purpose of obliterating any who were inside at the time..."

Elizabeth, with a bleak look at their dismal surroundings, couldn't help but agree. But still, the question remained: why?

"Those poor souls" she murmured, more to herself than anything, but her father nodded along with her nevertheless.

"We can only hope that, if we find out the reasons behind these attacks, we might be better placed to prevent anyone else from meeting this fate" he said darkly.

That served as a stark reminder of why they were here in the first place, and they both shook themselves before setting off to work. They dismounted, tethering their horses at a nearby tree--twisted and blackened like everything else in the vicinity of the house--and approached the building cautiously. Once they were confident that nobody remained to present a danger to them, they turned their attention to the place itself, looking for something--anything--that might provide them with any clues as to what the creatures' aims had been.

Elizabeth wasn't sure how long they had been searching before her father called out to her, having stooped up to pick something up off the ground a little way away from the house. By the time she reached his side, he was staring at it with such a look of concentration that she thought he might do himself a damage if he tried any harder to discern some sort of meaning from it. However, when she got a look at it herself, she saw exactly why he had deemed the thing of interest.

It was a charred, frayed piece of black cloth, clearly having been ripped from whatever garment it had been part of. This in itself was not particularly remarkable. In fact, Elizabeth doubted that her father would have noticed it had it not been for the design printed on it in stark white--that of a stylised deer skull, it's antlers curving wickedly up to the corners of the cloth, with two twisted serpents coming out of the eye sockets in the shape of an upside down hook. Elizabeth swallowed nervously as she regarded it, her skin crawling uncomfortably.

"What do you think it means?" she asked her father.

Mr Chynoweth frowned.

"I suspect it is some kind of sigil" he replied.

"That of a rath king?"

Her father nodded thoughtfully.

"Probably," he said. "Though I could not possibly say which king it belongs to, nor how powerful they are. We shall have to do some digging in that library of ours--hopefully we might find a match amongst some of the older texts."

Even as he said this, he did not sound optimistic. There were no records of anything that had occurred in the fae lands neighbouring theirs since their peoples had fallen out back in the Middle Ages--the odd intrepid magician had tried to gather that information, of course, but none had ever returned. Thus it was to be expected that, given what little they knew of how kingship was passed on in fae society, very few of those who had been in power at the time that the texts sequestered away in her father's attic room had been written would likely not have remained so this long.

"Still, it can at least tell us something," remarked Mr Chynoweth. "It must have been ripped from one of the horde in the fight, and if they were wearing their king's sigil, that likely means they were fighting on their king's behalf. And if that were the case, we can only conclude--"

"That these were organised and deliberate attacks" finished Elizabeth, dread coiling in the pit of her stomach.

"Exactly," her father replied grimly. "The question, though, is whether they are the work of a petty king looking for a simple means of acquiring resources, or is there some greater purpose behind these incidents which we are as yet unaware of?"

He cut himself off, hissing in frustration and running a hand viciously through his hair.

"If only we knew what was happening on their side," he sighed. "It is no easy task to counteract something when you only have the vaguest idea of what is causing it."

Elizabeth nodded, shivering slightly as she glanced around at the scorched, decimated landscape. It was a grim sight, she reflected, and one that did not become any less unnerving the longer one lingered there. In fact, on top of the horrible connotations of the charred ground and the crumbling, broken building behind her, she now got the distinct impression that she was being watched--

Wait. What?

In an instant, she whirled around in alarm, staring intently up into the blackened structure. For a long moment she stood stock still, eyes narrowed, ignoring the look of concern her father was sending her. Nothing. And then--yes, there. A flicker of movement up in one of the empty window frames that had once belonged to the great house's attic that could not be attributed to a bird, nor any other animal.

"What is that?" she murmured.

The fairy who had once been known as Mac an Rìgh a' Bhàis but who now had no names woke up to a bright, painful burst of light searing though the closed lids of his eyes. With a groan, he curled in on himself, frowning as he tried to lessen the pounding in his head. What was that light? Had he been found--? That last thought was enough to make him open his eyes and sit bold upright. At which point he was practically blinded by a pale, burning light that could neither be attributed to moon, stars nor fire. Hissing in pain, he brought one hand up to shield his eyes, the other pressing into the floor below him to steady himself--

And immediately withdrew with an accompanying yelp, the palm of his hand stinging. Blinking, he tried to take a look at his hand, to see what had caused the pain, but his vision was swimming with white spots, everything blurred before his eyes. He pressed his middle finger and thumb to his closed lids in order to dispel the sensation, and eventually the patterns receded, leaving him with a clear view of his injured hand.

He was bleeding, he realised, from a gash cut diagonally across his palm. Perhaps he had leaned on something sharp. Frowning, he looked around him and saw several jagged, clear shards scattered across the floor. Glass... But there was so much of it. Why was there so much glass? In his own lands, glass was a rare commodity due to the dangers of travelling down onto the beach to collect sand, one which only those of considerable prestige and power could boast of owning in considerable quantities. His own father--not Rìgh a' Bhàis, but his true father; the one he had long been forbidden to even think of by his foster father--had been a glass blower--a considerable step up from his father, who had worked metal--and that had caught the attention of the Western Cliffs' previous king, whose name was now forbidden to be spoken throughout those lands.

Perhaps glass was not so precious here, he considered as he summoned a little of his magic, his fingertips glowing silver as he healed the cut with ease. Glancing around him, he found its source. One of those strange gaps in what remained of the walls was lined with wicked, clear fragments, and from the shattered pieces on the ground around him, he could only presume that it had once been an entire clear panel of glass. Given the number of gaps in the walls he had seen in this particular building, he supposed that whoever had lived here must have been important. But then, they must have been important to garner the attention of Rìgh a' Bhàis as well.

Then, all of a sudden, a noise below him caught his attention. He frowned, cocking his head to one side as he listened to the sound. Voices. Who would be approaching a place so thoroughly ravaged so soon after the event had occurred? He was instantly alert, fearing that the forces of Rìgh a' Bhàis may have found him, but as he listened, he realised that these people were speaking in the human tongue he recognised but did not understand. There were only two voices, as far as he could tell--a man's and a woman's. Surely they could not be that dangerous? With that in mind, he crept over to the gaps in the charred wall that he had observed earlier, peering out of it down to the ground below in order to observe the newcomers.

There were indeed two of them, as he had guessed. One was a young woman, perhaps the human equivalent of his own age. The other was an older man (her father perhaps?). Both were scrutinising something held in the man's hands, discussing it with perplexed and worried frowns on their faces. What were they doing?, he wondered. Was this normal behaviour for humans, or were these two just particularly peculiar?

After a short while, the woman glanced around her, clearly unnerved by her surroundings. He didn't blame her--this was hardly his favourite choice of lodgings either. Then, he saw her stiffen, and before he knew it, she had spun on her heel and was staring up at the structure, right up towards where he was hidden. The fairy panicked, ducking out of sight as quickly as he could. He had little more desire to be found by the humans than he did by his foster father's soldiers. Though he did not know much about this land, or its people, he was well aware that it had been a long time since they had been friends to his own kind, and he had no desire to discover what their reaction to him would be anytime soon.

He didn't move right away, hoping against all reason that the woman had not spotted him. That hope was quickly dashed when he heard two pairs of footsteps approaching his hiding place slowly, cautiously. Tensing, he drew back from the source of the sound, his wings drooping slightly as he let out a short sigh. There was nothing for it, then. Drawing in a deep breath, he closed his eyes and prepared to Shift.

"What was it exactly that you saw?" asked Mr Chynoweth as they cautiously ascended the crumbling staircase up to what had once been the attic of the house, only held together by copious use of spellwork on both their parts.

"I am not sure," whispered Elizabeth in reply from her place behind him--her father may have been enthusiastic in encouraging her to join him in things such as this but he was not about to let her leap into danger ahead of him. "Just movement in one of the windows--something bigger than any kind of animal that could get up there."

Mr Chynoweth hissed through his teeth, his star iron pistol drawn. She herself was ready to cast should they be attacked. Both tense and alert, they reached the top of the staircase, minds racing as they thought through the possibilities of what could be waiting for them up there. Her father glanced behind him and their eyes met. He gave a little nod and, with that, they stepped out onto the floor of the attic and--

"Nothing" her father muttered confusedly.

Elizabeth, emerging from the staircase a beat later, blinked, frowning at her surroundings. Her father was indeed correct. The former attic was empty, save for themselves. Nothing but splintered, burnt bits of wood, fallen stone and shattered glass.

"I definitely saw something though," she murmured, half to convince herself as much as her father. "There was definitely something up here."

"Oh, you are right about that, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth turned at the response to see her father crouched down over one of the shards of glass. As she came over to him, she spotted a fleck of red. Blood.

"It's still fresh," Mr Chynoweth remarked, moving to stand and glancing around them. "That means that there was something--or someone--up here. The question is: where have they gone now?"

Elizabeth frowned thoughtfully, pushing down the slight prickle of unease that was surfacing in the back of her mind. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a ghostly white shape soaring away from them across the fields. Turning to regard it properly, she saw a barn owl flying towards the woods rather faster and rather earlier in the day than was typically the custom of such a creature. Blinking, she stared at it, tracing its swiftly moving form with a slight frown on her face.

"What is it?" her father asked, coming to stand beside her and following her gaze.

Elizabeth's frown deepened.

"I could not say" she replied, watching as the owl was swallowed up by the trees.

Next Chapter: George is reunited with a familiar face, and plans are made.

#mine #my fic #mirror worlds #mirror worlds chapter 4 #george warleggan #elizabeth warleggan #elizabeth chynoweth #george x elizabeth #elizabeth x george #georgibeth #poldark #poldark au #fic #mw chapter

6 notes · View notes