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#so that when the Court DOES reappear years later
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Inheritance Cycle + Game of Thrones Writing Prompt
So I had the thought of what if the Targaryen dragons are the result of them selectively breeding those who would only respond to those of Valyrian blood. The original dragons are pretty much that of the Inheritance Cycle series, with only a few of the original eggs remaining (at least two, no more than four).
Many many years later, Jon Snow finds the eggs (at least two). Maybe one is gray with purple tints and the other is red. The gray one ends of hatching for him and he gets the dragon rider mark (and he proceeds to have to hide the dragon from everyone). The dragon is also able to speak (much like how Saphira could). Game of Thrones continues as expected (except Jon no longer wants to go to the Wall and wants to travel with his dragon) but when the king comes to Winterfell, Myrcella somehow ends up hatching the other egg. A secret friendship occurs between the two (which I found to be ironic: the prince raised as a bastard and the bastard raised as a princess… please note that they remain friends/siblings (Jon being the big brother Myrcella wished she had)) with Jon promising to watch over her dragon when she returns to King’s Landing (they also begin to learn Inheritance Cycle magic, although Myrcella is better at it then Jon).
The show continues, except Jon does not join the Night Watch. When Myrcella is sent to Dorne, she ends up jumping ship via dragon (her dragon becoming just big enough for her to ride). She either ends up helping Sansa and/or Tyrion escape (not sure which one is better. Either way, they don’t know it’s Myrcella).
Not sure of what else (except maybe Jon and Myrcella finding the truth about themselves much sooner due to Jon traveling instead of joining the Night Watch or because of them learning magic). Another idea is when Jon (who still manages to become King of the North, with Davos as his hand with Myrcella being another advisor (eventually becoming the new Hand due to having more experience in court)) goes to Dragonstone and is denied help unless he bends the knee, Myrcella shows her Lannister side and ends up making it so that all their people leave Dragonstone while her and Jon are ‘hostages’, all the while having them take the dragon glass is secret. Tyrion, during this, is surprised that his niece is alive. Eventually, when enough dragonglass is mined, Myrcella decides to be dramatic and jumps off a cliff in front of Daenerys. Jon either does the same or waits until Myrcella reappears over the edge with her dragon (flying away) before his dragon lands for him to climb on. Drogonn may give chase but using magic, they manage to escape.
That’s about it with this idea…
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triviareads · 26 days
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ARC Review of The Lady He Lost by Faye Delacour
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Rating: 3.5/5 Heat Level: 3/5 Publication Date: April 2nd
Premise:
Everyone is shocked when Lieutenant Eli Williams seemingly returns from the dead after being lost at sea in a shipwreck, no one more so than Jane Bishop, who was his friend and secretly loved him despite his prior engagement to her cousin.
My review:
This is Faye Delacour's debut novel; it's a friends-to-lovers romance by way of unrequited love (I wouldn't really say there's an enemies aspect, especially if the enmity is so one-sided). Jane had feelings for Eli which she thought he did not reciprocate back in the day, then he was caught in a compromising position with her cousin and they were engaged before Eli was lost at sea. I'm gonna be honest: I did not expect the level of resentment Jane showed Eli once he reappeared, but here's my thing: Eli does not owe Jane anything. All he ever did was treat her like a friend before he was caught with her cousin (regardless of what he tells Jane later in the book about his feelings for her before the shipwreck, which I did not find very convincing), and what more, the cousin ultimately married someone else and Eli obviously doesn't feel anything for the cousin anymore. I'm very careful when it comes to checking my biases regarding "unlikeable" heroines or unlikeable things heroines do, and look, unhappiness over unrequited love is natural (though I'm always a bit annoyed when heroines are insecure about their appearance and compare themselves to other women like Jane constantly does with her cousin), but I'd be equally irritated with a hero if he behaved in a similarly rude manner towards his heroine, as if she owed him something.
That being said, I did find it funny when Jane's resentment towards Eli took a turn and she actively started questioning what he was up to during the years he disappeared and was ostensibly kidnapped by pirates, purely out of spite. Does she come across as a narc? Yes, but it's also kind of hysterical when she's interrogating him in front of his navy boss or a bunch of society ladies and he's anxiously trying to communicate through his gaze for her to Shut Up. However, her words do end up having actual consequences, namely, him getting court-martialed for possible desertion.
Eli and Jane begin a no-strings attached affair by the middle of the book, however, Jane is still under the impression he could never want her long-term, and that she will always be seen as second best to her cousin (who also fans the flames with her constant need to put Jane down and her insistence that Eli still has feelings for her), which is admittedly rough to read. There is also the ladies gambling club that Jane is trying to start with a friend, but I feel that subplot was mostly set aside as Jane became entangled with Eli once more.
The sex:
There are actually two instances of the rare male masturbation scenes in historical romance in this book; the second one immediately follows dry-humping and Eli can't wait anymore before jerking off in front of Jane. The good thing is, he reciprocates very thoroughly afterwards. There is also some surprise virgin rep.
Overall:
While this book wasn't quite for me, I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a friends-to-lovers historical romance that is very much a slow-burn as far as feelings go.
Thank you to Sourcebooks Casablanca and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.
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liyingrourou · 1 year
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揉揉再现神威,天时地利人和二赴大连抢救生命成功
揉揉再现神威,天时地利人和二赴大连抢救生命成功----霍老师隔空指挥弟子抢救危重患者纪实分类:
Rubbing and reappearing the divine power, Tianshidi Renhe successfully went to Dalian to save lives ---- Teacher Huo commanded his disciples to rescue critically ill patients through the air
Rubbing and reappearing the power of God, the time, place, and people went to Dalian to save lives successfully -- Teacher Huo commanded his disciples across the sky to save critically ill patients
The 53 year old pillar was about to collapse. His hooded daughter-in-law and her daughter begged for help. Last night, the apprentice arrived in Tianjin by taxi. He shivered at the airport until more than 7:00 in the morning. If the nucleic acid results were not uploaded, he would be refused to board the plane and isolated. Fortunately, the mayor's hotline was called, and the Third People's Court of Hebei Province passed the paper inspection results to him
The following is the patient's body state before kneading. The swelling and water accumulation are serious. The patient lies at home with vague consciousness.... The situation is very critical...
4.13 Comparison after the second visit to Dalian
After the first kneading, the patient urinates. Very good effect.
On April 13, 2022, Teacher Li Ying went to Dalian again for rescue
The patient stared at me in an emergency. I took my time to command Li Ying from afar in an orderly manner. I told Li Ying not to panic, to calm down, to ask her family members to prepare moxa to save her life, and to tell her that she would be ready in a few minutes. She was really conscious in a few minutes. When the patient was able to sleep quietly, her family members asked me, why are you so calm and unhurried? I said that I have seen too much. If my mood is chaotic, many things will be wasted... In fact, many deaths of critical patients have a lot to do with the panic of their families and improper rescue of 120, but you don't know many secrets
Last night, both of them were rescued. At present, both of them are stable. One patient is a renal tumor patient with acute hematopoietic dysfunction and massive dialysis hemorrhage who gave up treatment in Hebei Provincial People's Hospital. One was a patient with severe heart failure and rolling eyes who gave up treatment in a hospital in Dalian. After midnight manipulation and moxibustion, he slept soundly in the middle of the night and had removed the oxygen generation equipment in the morning. Curious, why does the plane take off and land more than half an hour in advance? Thanks to the advance, otherwise it would be useless to arrive in Dalian
In this medical case, besides the magic effect of kneading all the time, what is more magical is that the time, place and people are in harmony mentioned in the title of the medical case. First, the flight chosen by teacher Li Ying is arranged in the dark. Take off early and land early, which provides precious time for patient rescue. Otherwise, the patient will face unpredictable results. The full trust and expectation of the patient and his family have contributed to the miracle of this miraculous kneading rescue of critically ill patients. Later, we hope that the patient will recover as soon as possible with the help of kneading.
Apprentice Li Ying reports his illness:
Dalian patient turned from emergency to safety
Rescue from the previous night
Until yesterday, there were many hiccups, farts and sneezes
I had four meals yesterday
Three meals of millet congee
A Steamed Egg Soup
Good food, good sleep, good urination
Hiccup, fart and sneeze very loudly
Yesterday, the patient asked for today's big stick bone stewed with pickled cabbage and soybean stewed with pig's hoof
I spent four or five hours playing small videos last afternoon and evening
The cold below the knee and the cold and hot hands
The swelling of hands and feet basically disappeared
The symptoms of sweating are gone
No difficulty breathing
I took off the oxygen pipe yesterday morning
The patient talked with us for many days yesterday morning, afternoon and evening
Speak forcefully and humorously
The family's hanging heart finally relaxed
Rubbing is incredible
It's really invincible
Thank you for your praise!!!
As stated in the Song Dynasty's "General Record of Sacred Aid", "If you feel a little uneasy, you must massage and resist, so that all the festivals can be profitable and evil spirits can be discharged."
The following picture is the rescue record on WeChat
At 12:00 on April 14, 2022, Mr. Huo continued to instruct his disciples to carry out follow-up treatment and kneading
On April 15, 2022, Dalian patients have stepped out of the danger zone
twenty million two hundred and twenty thousand four hundred and sixteen
Kneading is neither traditional Chinese medicine nor western medicine
Rubbing is the best way to protect human life
If Western medicine is green
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Rubbing is
Experienced
See
Only then can we know how powerful it is to infuse enthusiasm into life
-------Li Ying
Right hand unblocking and left hand welcoming
Press firmly without loosening
Qi Transportation Dantian Walk between Fingers
No distractions to save lives
Cosmic assimilation energy accumulation
Surprise the sky and move the gods secretly
One thought of good and evil determines life and death
The technique is just to follow the shape
Huo Chunqiao
The desire of the practitioners is very important. Ordinary massagers are thinking about whether they can get a card for them while massaging, and whether they can add a charging item. If they just wander around in their small minds, what will be the effect? Each of my disciples first contacts the critically ill patients. The first is to practice bravery and the second is to practice nihility. The key is to remove all distractions. The technique is not important. The problem of money is not for the disciples to participate. They only know that they are dedicated to the patients. Anyway, you are indispensable. As long as you are greedy, someone will be there immediately
- Mr. Huo
Li Ying's heart is too pure, without any distractions
Qigong World is called Mind
Buddhism is called Faxin
Common people call starting point
Politicians call motivation
Invisible energy
Always better than tangible
No comparability
- Mr. Huo
For critically ill patients, the hospital only conducts intravenous infusion (the added trace elements are not enough to destroy and consume diuretics).
Teacher Huo's kneading really replenishes people's yang
Really and quickly help patients recover their own immune system and self healing ability
Hospital diuretics destroy human ecological balance
Teacher Huo's kneading reshapes human ecological balance
How close are you to the doctor in this life?
some people
Go around
It's destiny to be a doctor
Zhu Danxi and Fu Qingzhu
Later, Zhang Xichun and Yue Meizhong
some people
Sick bed
Shuttle hospital pharmacy
Prolong one's life with illness
some people
Medicine Aristocratic Family
Every family member is a doctor
Love hate entanglement that cannot be solved by medicine
This is only because, hit that one
揉揉再现神威,天时地利人和二赴大连抢救生命成功----霍老师隔空指挥弟子抢救危重患者纪实
53岁的顶梁柱要倒塌了,他蒙圈的媳妇带着女儿求救,昨晚徒弟坐出租车到的天津,在机场瑟瑟发抖的冻到早上七点多,核酸结果没有上传要被拒绝登机并隔离,还好打通了市长热线电话,河北省三院把纸质的检查结果传过去了……
以下是患者揉之前的身体状态,浮肿积水严重,患者躺在家里,意识模糊。。。。情况十分危急。。。
4.13二次到大连揉后的对比
第一次揉完之后,患者就有了小便 。非常好的效果体现。
2022年4.13日李英老师再奔赴大连抢救
患者危急时刻大瞪着眼不动了,我不慌不忙有序远程指挥,告诉李英不要慌乱、要稳住情绪,叫家属准备艾条救命,告诉家属,一会儿就好了,果然几分钟有知觉了,等患者后来能安静的睡着了家属才问我,老师你咋那么稳如泰山、不慌不忙呢?我说我见的太多了,我的情绪要是一乱,好多事都会前功尽弃……   其实好多危急患者的死亡,都是跟家属慌乱、120的不当抢救有很大关系的,只是好多秘密你是不知道而已……
昨晚两位抢救,目前都还算稳定 一位是河北省人民医院放弃治疗的肾肿瘤急性造血功能障碍、透析大出血的患者。一位是大连某医院放弃治疗的严重心衰、翻白眼患者,经过半夜的手法、艾灸抢救,后半夜睡觉安稳,早上已经撤掉了制氧设备。好奇怪,怎么飞机还有提前半个多小时起飞、降落的情况?多亏提前了,否则就是到了大连也没用了……
本医案中除了揉揉一直以来的神奇效果外,更为神奇的就是医案标题 中提到的天时地利人和,首先是李英老师选择的航班冥冥之中安排好的一样。提前起飞,提前降落,为患者抢救提供了宝贵的时间,否则患者将面临不可预测的结果,患者与家属对霍老师的充分信任与期待,促成了此次神奇的揉揉抢救危重患者的奇迹再现,后续我们希望患者在揉揉协助下早日康复。
徒弟李英汇报病情:
大连患者由急危重转危为安
从前天晚上的抢救
到昨天一直很多有打嗝放屁打喷嚏
昨天吃了四顿饭
三顿小米粥
一顿蒸鸡蛋羹
吃的好睡得好拉的好尿的好
打嗝放屁打喷嚏打的非常响
患者昨天要求今天吃大棒骨炖酸菜黄豆炖猪蹄
昨天下午加晚上刷了四五个小时小视频玩
膝盖以下的冰冷的和双手的冰冷热乎了起来
手和脚的肿胀基本消失
一身一身冒汗的症状一点都没有了
呼吸困难没有了
昨天上午就摘掉了氧气管
患者昨天上午下午晚上都跟我们聊了很多天
说话铿锵有力幽默的很
全家悬着的心终于放轻松了……
揉揉不可思议
真可谓天下无敌
感恩恩师赞叹揉揉!!!
宋代 《圣济 总录》所言 “ 凡小有不 安 , 必 按摩 接捺 , 令百节通利 , 邪 气得泄。 ”
以下图片为抢救纪实微信记录
2022年4月14日 12点 霍老师继续指挥弟子进行后续的治疗揉揉
2022  4.15大连患者已经走出危险区……
20220416
揉揉既不是中医也不是西医
揉揉能为保护全人类生命的一种最好方式
如果说西医是绿皮
中医是️
揉揉就是
经历了
见识了
方知它对生命灌注热情的威力有多大
     -------李英
右手疏通左手迎  
按压有力不能松  
气运丹田指间走  
心无杂念救性命  
宇宙同化能量聚  
惊天秘密动神明  
善恶一念定生死  
手法只是走外形
    霍纯桥
做手法者的愿望很重要,普通按摩者,一边按摩一边想着能不能给他办卡、能不能加个收费的项目,光在小脑子上转悠了,哪会有什么效果?我每个徒弟都先接触危重患者,第一练胆,第二练虚无,去掉所有杂念才是关键所在,手法不重要,钱的问题不叫徒弟参与,只知道一心一意为患者着想就可以了,反正也少不了你的,只要一动贪念,马上有人……
      —霍老师
李英的发心太纯正了,没有一点杂念
气功界叫意念  
佛教界叫发心  
常人叫出发点
政界叫动机  
无形的能量
永远胜于有形的
没有可比性
   —霍老师
重症病危患者,医院只会静脉输液(补充的微量元素,还不够利尿剂摧毁消耗的)。
中医霍老师的揉揉真正补充人的阳气
真正快速帮助患者恢复自身免疫系统,快速恢复患者的自愈能力
医院利尿剂摧毁人体生态平衡
霍老师的揉揉重塑人体生态平衡
你与医的这一世情缘有多深?
有些人
兜兜转转
命中注定,要一世为医
前有朱丹溪、傅青主
后有张锡纯、岳美中
有些人
病榻常卧
穿梭医院药房
带病延年
有些人
医药世家
家亲眷属个个为医
与医解不开的爱恨纠葛
这只因为,命中那一颗
『天医星』
究竟何为天医星
天医贵人是八字神煞之一,是掌管疾病之事的星神。
命逢天医贵人,为喜用且得生旺,主一生身体康健,并适合在医学、哲学、心理学等领域任职。
天医贵人的查法
正月生见丑,二月生见寅,三月生见卯,四月生见辰,五月生见巳,六月生见午,七月生见未,八月生见申,九月生见酉,十月生见戌,十一月生见亥,十二月生见子。
以月支查其它地支,见者为是。如农历三月出生,八字中见地支“卯”,即为命带天医贵人。
图片来源:素问轩
命带天医的人,有三种结果:
一、自己长大成了医生;
二、家里的近亲有医生;
三、自己是个老病号,老是要去看医生。
八字天医贵人是四柱八字的神煞不直接参与吉凶,它是一种古人的哲学思想,是一种神秘事物的向往和另一种吉凶的描述;断命吉凶是看五行生克制化,那么天医星入命的人什么样呢?
天医星入命的人的特点
1、对学习医术方面有天赋
天医者,顾名思义,命带天医的人,对学习医术方面有天赋,在这方面学习能力强,容易成为名医或者良医。
就算不从事医师行业,命带天医的人其实不少,但是从医者并不多。不过有许多命带天医的人对医学有特殊偏好。而且其出身家族、家庭,从医或从事敎育工作者不少。
2、天医的衰旺决定身体健康状态
四柱逢天医,如不旺,又无贵人吉神相扶,不是常患疾病就是身弱无力。
若生旺又有贵人相生助,不仅身体健壮,而且特别适合医务工作及心理学,哲学等。
3、容易成为医术高明的医生
命书曰:“天医拱照,可作良医”。命带天医贵人者,大都与医院颇有缘份。
如果天医贵人所临地支为八字喜用,且得生旺,命主不但身体健康少病,而且很可能会成为一名医术高明的医生,同时对哲学、心理学或命理学特别感兴趣,有可能会从事这方面的工作。
4、天医临地支为忌且被刑冲克害
但如果天医贵人所临地支为八字所忌,且被刑冲克害,则命主一生体弱多病,经常会跟医院打交道。
5、根据天医择日
天医贵人也可用以择日,假如日逢天医贵人星,这一天特别适合去求医问药,可遇良医、良药。
例如天医贵人在戌,便可向西北偏西的方向去看医生,如果医生又属狗,则效果会更好。
天医的吉凶不是固定的,要看天医在命局中的旺衰(另看神煞与日主之生克)
如月支是丑土,那么子水就是天医,若命局中只有一位子水,其他干支都不是水,且都克子水、耗子水、泄子水,那么这个天医肯定弱极,说明命主不是常患疾病就是身弱无力。
再比如,月支是酉金,其他三支中有申金,申金是天医,若命局中土金多,申金得生扶,则命主身体健壮,并且适合医务工作及对心理学、哲学感兴趣。四柱逢天医,如不生旺,又没吉星相助,主身体不好疾病多。若生旺有贵人相扶,适宜做医务工作,或从事心理学哲学工作。
在历史的长河中,我们发现天医星对人的一生确实有一定的影响作用。比如确实有许多医家因幼年体弱多病,而立志于岐黄仁术,无论古代还是近现代都有,如古代有孙思邈、李时珍、胡慎柔等,近现代有岳美中、刘度舟等。
对于学医的朋友,可以通过天医星来判断,自己是否有成为名医的机会,自己在这方面是否天赋异禀,还是要靠努力来勤能补拙;
生病的朋友,也要通过查看天医星,方便找到一个能治好你的好医生!
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creepy-crowleys · 2 years
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Final story for now. This one from Knappert’s previous book. It meanders a bit at points, but I’ve included the entire section for future reference if needed. 
Eloko the Bogyman
The Lianja cycle of stories is something of a novel, a family chronicle. Each chapter fits in its proper place, though very often the student has to search in the earlier chapters to find the first hidden roots of the drama that later develops.
Nevertheless, the myths of the Nkundo people will always remain a subject of discussion among mythologists. There are so many mysterious characters, whose reappearance at a later stage in the narrative makes their significance only more puzzling. 
The word Eloko (pl. Biloko ) denotes a race of semi-real forest- dwellers, who can kill and be killed but are not wholly human. 'Bogymen' seems the best rendering in English, although they also resemble the Scandinavian trolls.
Yendembe is the most human of all the characters in the great Lianja romance. One of her very human aspects is that she always seems to attract ill luck. Being spoilt by her father is clearly considered the origin of all misfortune. Being bewitched by her grandmother is a blemish that never wears off. Becoming an unmarried mother is a terrible disgrace in Africa. Giving birth to a pair of albinos is even worse. 
Likinda appears to be an experienced magician. He can be transformed into a delicious fruit and let himself be eaten by his enemy, while still preserving his spiritual identity. To eat one's enemy does not mean his end, as one might suppose. If the enemy possesses magical powers he will kill his eater from inside. This is why extreme precaution should be taken by everyone not to eat dangerous fruits. A man can eat his death. To open the bowels is one way of getting rid of the evil spirit, but a clever spirit will manage to stay inside and eat his victim from within. Thus does Likinda, the grandson of Death. 
We have already seen how Yendembe, who is born as one of the many daughters of Lianja I, became the first human being to suffer the evil effects of witchcraft, and all because her royal father spoilt her. Her maternal grandmother was banned from court for her sake and was never heard of again. Later, Yendembe was mysteriously made pregnant by an unknown god or spirit and gave birth to the first white people.
When this first white couple moved out of Nkundoland in their iron craft, their grandfather Lianja went out in search of them. He did not find them that first time, for he was confused, and wandered aimlessly in the forest. He had a vision of his father Ilelangonda, and of his mother Mbombe (Nsombe). 
He heard a voice calling him, but searched for the caller in vain. He consulted the great war-wizard Bongenge who, as usual, knew the answer: 
The one who gave you visions, ngelinge ,  Do not say it is Bongenge, ngelinge , It is the owner of the bedsteads, ngelinge , And of the hidden sleeping-places, ngelinge , It is Eloko and his servants, ngelinge , The master of voices and visions, ngelinge . 
This was the first apparition of Eloko the Bogyman, and old king Lianja was the first to suffer from his visitations. Later in the history the bogy spirits return. 
After the birth of the albinos Yendembe was married off to a prince of the Ngombe, a rather hostile people, but her father Lianja I probably considered this a wise political move. After six  years of life with that foreign people she returned home for good, not having borne her husband any children, and never having seen her two albino children since they had left her. 
After the death of her father, Lianja I, the elephants greatly increased in numbers and began to destroy the fields. This was also blamed on Yendembe, because it was revealed in a dream to the wife of one of the diviners that the elephants were bewitched and wanted to kill Yendembe, whom no one could give orders to. 
This happened in the same night in which Yendembe had died grieving for her father and was subsequently brought back to life by the magic powder. After that time, her brothers Likinda, Lianja II, Boketsu, Itonde II and Lontsinga 'the Fly' were increasingly engaged in hunting elephants. One day Likinda and Itonde killed an enormous elephant. They went to find Lianja and his men to help them carve the body up and divide it. 
After Likinda and Itonde had left the body of the elephant, all the elephants of the forest gathered on that spot in order to revive their brother with magic means: they took large branches and beat the body with them, but without success. When Lianja's men arrived, they simply chased away the big animals. When they had carved up the body of the dead elephant, Lianja decided to make a thanksgiving to the forest god for this successful hunt, at the ceremonial place where their forefathers had previously sacrificed to the god.
On their way back they ran into a gang of Eloko's servants, the bogymen. They started fighting and killed all Lianja's men. Lianja, left alone, met Itoli, the grass-starling, who helped him with useful advice. Itoli told him to collect mbole -fruits, make a mash of them with salt, and place them in the path of the bogymen, Lianja first revived his comrades with his magic powder, then told them to collect the mbole -fruits. As soon as the eloko - spirits found their favourite dish waiting for them on the path, they fell on it and forgot the war with Lianja. The latter surrounded them with his men, and killed all the bogymen---except one
Itoli, perched on a branch, warned Likinda: 'You did not kill all the Biloko , you omitted the little Inkankanga, the wizard, and his wife. They ran away in time.' 
Likinda asked: 'Give me a charm to have them too.' 
Itoli said: 'You have it and you know it.' 
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bigskydreaming · 3 years
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The truly annoying thing about the Night of the Owls movie is how damn EASY it would be to rewrite it as being about Dick instead......just change the timeline to having it set when Dick first comes to live with Bruce and early on into him becoming Robin, and bam, have Cobb (instead of Lincoln March) and the Court make their move then and try to appeal to Dick as belonging with them instead of Bruce.
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sirthisisa-wendys · 3 years
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hi hi! i hope you’re doing good ❤️ do you write for south terano by chance? 👀 he’s been invading my mind lately and i just wanna request something along the lines of meeting south for the first time and getting courted by him!! have a good day 🥰
Nocturne: South Terano x Fem!Reader
wc: calculating
tw: fluff
masterlist
song recommendation:
South Terano never came to school.
Not only did he not see the point, but he never had time. And for that reason, you were always surprised to see him show up in the orchestra room after hours.
You and a few of your friends would practice by the piano, your fingers swiping across the keys while they would play the violin, viola, and cello. It became a routine for the four of you to appear right after school, and for South to come waltzing in later, his blue eyes observing the various other members of the orchestra as they practiced.
But he never came with an instrument, nor any sheet music.
He would bum a bunch of sheet music off of one of the kids he intimidated, then would read it along with you.
"Shouldn't that be forte?" he chimed in one day, attracting attention from everyone in the room. His blue eyes slid up to the faces of his classmates and then locked with yours from across the room. You don't say a word at first, but then you grumble,
"Well, if you're so good at reading sheet music, why don't you just join the orchestra instead of creeping around like you actually belong here?"
South doesn't flinch at your words, but he does get up - dwarfing the rest of you with his broad and tall stature - and walk out, gripping the thieved sheet music in his right fist.
You don't see him again for the rest of the week, but when you arrive in the room on Monday, there he is, tuning a violin with concentration.
It startles you how skilled he is at actually playing it - you all assumed he would never reappear because he did nothing but get in trouble and play around with gangsters.
But he's there, and is there for the rest of the year, playing along with you and your friends like he belonged there.
_____________________________________________________________
It's been years since that day - but as you play the piano in a similar orchestra room with middle schoolers who are eager to learn, you can't help but think of South. Had he done anything with music? Did he graduate and go to college? Or had he slipped back into his old ways, preferring to be around gangsters and delinquents, still?
Your question goes unanswered for months. Well, until you're in a music store, picking up your bulk purchase of sheet music for the orchestra when you hear a familiar, deep voice over your shoulder.
"You'll need some help with that, I'm sure."
You turn to face South Terano - still a hulking figure - and stare into his blue eyes, thoughts escaping you as his face breaks into a small smile. He still looks like he did before - blonde, wide-eyed, tall - and you offer him a smile as well.
"How have you been, y/n?"
"I'm doing well," you reply, and South nods, looking over your shoulder at the box.
"Let me help you with that." The tall man carries the box to your car, depositing it in the passenger seat before closing the door gently. He turns back around to you, crossing his arms and leaning back on the car, a question in his eyes. "I should thank you," he begins. "Without you, this store wouldn't exist."
You look at the storefront for a moment, then back at South, whose lips quirk up. "This is yours?"
"All mine. We offer lessons here, sell sheet music, and even rent instruments to students. When you told me to go get an instrument, it took me forever to find something to play. Now, kids like me won't have to go far." Your mouth dries up, and you swallow hard, wondering how many of your students came to South for what they needed. "And when I saw your name on the order, I knew I had to come and thank you."
"I..." You trail off, unsure of how to respond. You'd been an asshole at that time, and the only reason you'd said what you said was to get rid of him. But now...
"Let me take you out to dinner, yeah? As a proper thank you."
You can't do anything but agree.
_____________________________________________________________
Music.
The classy restaurant is full of music and finery. You've never been in a place like this, but it's apparent that South frequents the spot.
"Mr. Terano," the woman at the podium greets him warmly. "Table for two?" South nods once, holding your arm in the crook of his elbow. The woman walks the two of you to a small booth close to the instrumentalists, just how you imagined South liked it.
"You look stunning," South whispers in your ear as he pulls your chair out. Something inside of you quivers with excitement at his words, but you push it down, offering him a small "thank you" as you sit.
All during dinner, you're serenaded by the music and South, his hands running up your leg a few times, or his mouth opening to comment on your beauty compared to the music playing. It's all flattering, and you have to admit, no one's made you feel like this in a very long time.
During dessert, you find yourself a little tipsy on the good wine and conversation, but you try to keep it all under wraps as you consume the chocolate cake slowly. Unfortunately, the fork in your hand drops when South's fingers touch your knee and you grimace.
"No worries," South replies, picking up his unused fork. "This should do the trick."
He cuts into your cake, sliding it onto the fork and then bringing it to your lips. Your mouth immediately opens, and you maintain eye contact with him as you slide the cake off his fork. South exhales slowly, pupils dialating, and fingers clenching into a fist as he whispers,
"I have to get you out of here. It's late."
You wonder if you went a little too far with your actions as he walks you to his car, leftovers in his other hand. You slide into the seat and then wait for him to get in and start the car, but he pauses, large hands on the steering wheel.
"I want to kiss you," he grunts. "But it's too soon, I think."
"Too soon," you echo, nodding even though you didn't really believe that in your heart.
"I might not be able to stop at just kissing you," he adds.
"We have to have self-control," you mention. There's a short pause as you both consider what would happen if you just... did what you wanted to do.
"Fuck it."
South leans over the console and turns you toward him, kissing you deeply and eagerly, as if he'd been waiting for this moment for years. And you kiss him back with just as much excitement, holding his dress shirt in both hands and moaning into his mouth. Your tongues dance around each other and you lose yourself in South's arms, praying that this moment would never end.
But then South pulls away, whispering "slow down, slow down" as you both catch your breath.
"I should get you home."
And he does, reaching over to hold your thigh in one hand, humming along with the classical music on the radio. When you arrive at your house, South walks you to your door, then pulls you against him to give you one last kiss.
"I'll call you tomorrow," he whispers against your lips, giving you another kiss before you go inside, heart beating faster than a metronome.
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ahtsumu · 4 years
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目送 ; oikawa tooru
「alt. title: five times oikawa didn’t look back and the one time he did」
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↳ pairing: oikawa tooru x f!reader
↳ synopsis: you spend a lifetime watching him go, sometimes with your stomach tied in knots, sometimes with tears in your eyes, but always with love.
↳ genre(s): angst, fluff, basically an emotional rollercoaster, non-linear storyline
↳ warning(s): profanity, depiction of a panic attack, suggestive themes
↳ length: 5.4k words
↳ a/n: hq fam how we doing after 402 ?? LOL anyway this is my birthday gift to oikawa tooru: my sun, moon, and stars, second to none, yadda yadda. the title is taken from a book with the same name, in case you were wondering. please pay attention to the roman numerals ahead of each section!! enjoy!
v.
“This is the last call for Japan Airlines flight 717 to Buenos Aires, now boarding at gate number twelve. This is the last call…”
Goodbyes are hard when you know they’re forever. Or at least a while.
The clamour of Haneda airport dims to a faint buzz as the two of you continue standing with touching shoulders–– facing the jetliner instead of each other–– in futile hopes of delaying the inevitable.
Oikawa knows that you’re holding in your tears by the light tremors running through your body. Permitting himself to steal a look at your side profile, he notices the familiar tensing of your jaw and hard-set look in your red-rimmed eyes.
Tch. You said you wouldn’t cry.
Impulsively, he unzips his backpack and pulls out a familiar turquoise banner. It feels like just yesterday the team handed him the silk fabric with everyone’s farewell gifts wrapped inside.
Out-of-sequence memories of the Spring High qualifiers flash through your mind. The orange-haired Karasuno player’s spike ricochets off Oikawa’s forearms. The numbers on both sides of the scoreboard slowly inch up like they’re taking turns. Oikawa’s white knuckles against the metal basin. Red eyes. Heaving chest. Something soft against your skin. Rule the Court.
And just like the last time, he gently drapes it over your shoulders, brushing his fingers against your neck as he does so. God, how he wants to kiss you.
“But it’s yours,” you protest weakly, making no move to give it back.
“It won’t be for a while.” His voice cracks when he speaks. But it will be mine again when I come back for it.
He wants to kiss you. One last time.
He wants your mouth against his like absolution to a sinner because he knows that what he’s done to you, what he’s doing to you right now, is comparable to desecration. But he remembers the look on your face that night he broke the news to you. How your megawatt grin caved into a wince when the length of his contract with Club Athletico San Juan finally registered in your mind.
You swallow your feelings of betrayal. You knew what you were getting yourself into.
“Five years is an awfully long time to be apart,” you say after a while.
Oikawa bites his lip. He doesn’t have the heart to say that five was just the starting number. If he does well there, he’ll probably stay longer. He’ll probably do well there. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
Seconds drag into minutes. The cavity in his stomach festers as he waits for your response, but he has a feeling that he already knows your answer.
So instead, all he can do when your floodgates finally burst open is cup your face in his calloused palms and wipe away some of your tears before offering you his own watery smile.
Through your blurred vision, you watch as the boy in front of you steels his resolve and disappears from your life through the jet bridge, ignoring his heart as it begs for one last look over his shoulder.
Oikawa nods numbly when the old man sitting beside him asks if he’s leaving home for the first time. Home, he realises, isn’t anywhere with walls, isn’t an address, isn’t even a person. When someone says they want to go home, it’s not a space that they yearn for, but rather, a time.
He watches Japan grow smaller through the window and feels himself yearn for the time he still had your heart in his hands. It felt like he was holding the sun.
i.
You wouldn’t consider July 21st to be a special day. Nothing special happened earlier that morning when you woke up without your usual alarm. Nothing special happened when your friends texted you four simple words–– come to Azukihana beach!–– during breakfast. But (and this will come to you much, much later) something special happened when said friends left you to guard their things as they dashed to the supermarket for more snacks.
For now, it’s just July 21st, and you’re lying with your back against a towel on the first day of summer break, soaking in the sun, peacefully flipping through a book.
“DON’T FUCKING DO IT, YOU COLOSSAL PIECE OF SHIT!” The familiar voice tears through the beach. Was that Iwaizumi? You set the book down and sit up to check.
And suddenly, the yellow and blue volleyball that had been leisurely rolling your way halts perfectly before your toes. Behind it jogs a shirtless brunet you’ve definitely seen around school.
Oikawa Tooru stops right behind the runaway volleyball and peers at you through half-lidded eyes. “Sorry about that,” he says, flashing you a charming smile.
After casually picking up the ball with one hand, he flexes his abdominal muscles as he straightens back up. Chestnut irises attempt to discreetly sweep over your features but you catch his gaze in the act, quirking an unamused brow. You also catch the intrigued twitch of his lips that follow.
You’re not stupid. Despite having never met him, you know a lot about the Grand King (as many call him). He’s the constant subject of Iwaizumi’s ire and you’ve heard a lifetime’s complaints about him at joint-family luncheons.
But here’s what’s important: you know that he tears himself apart to be the player his team needs him to be, that he sometimes makes Iwaizumi wish he’d passed the Shiratorizawa entrance exam, and that he fiddles with hearts like origami and sets fire to those beautiful fragile trinkets right after.
And in the interest of self-defence (but against what the devil on your shoulder begs), you choose to not place your most prized possession on the table.
A simple “no worries” passes through your lips. You return to your book. A page turns.
Oikawa Tooru is dismissed.
Though your gaze is trained on the page, you can feel his presence at your feet for a few seconds longer. You wonder what his next move is. Much to your surprise, instead of trying to strike up another conversation, he simply lets out an airy hum and strolls back to the sand court where he came from without a second glance.
Iwaizumi wonders why Oikawa is smiling so victoriously after watching the whole ordeal, but your tan family friend has, unlike the calculating Grand King, failed to notice one important detail:
your book is upside down.
And, as if in a trance, your eyes have followed Oikawa all the way back to his sandy kingdom.
Once the sun has set, Iwaizumi checks his phone and notices a text he’d missed in the afternoon. It’s from Y/N. Unease digs itself in his chest when he realises it can’t possibly be for anything except…
hey what was that about?
This can’t be good. Thumbs rapidly typing a response, he races to quash any interest you may have budding in Oikawa. You… you’re good. Nice. Smart enough for UTokyo. A bit naive, but he’s been around your overbearing parents long enough to see it’s not entirely your fault. And even though you run in different circles at school, he feels obligated to protect you from monsters that hide beneath pretty surfaces. He’s known you since the two of you were in diapers.
just trash being what it is
Iwaizumi watches the three grey dots on your side appear, disappear, reappear, and disappear again. And that’s when he realises that he cannot help you. The villain in this arc of your story has already sunken his teeth in your tender, unsullied flesh.
trash?
He sighs.
oikawa
It isn’t a surprise to Iwaizumi when summer break ends and Oikawa’s chestnut eyes start hunting for someone in the cafeteria during lunch. He doesn’t raise a brow when he hears that the second-year captain has been sneaking into Class 7, sometimes with flowers in his hands, and strolling out with a dazed look on his face. He slaps his teammates out of shock when Oikawa mentions his troubles with pursuing some girl–– but not before slapping himself first. Because the Oikawa he knows is not a chaser.
“Her name’s Y/N,” the brunet says, suddenly realising that he has never introduced any of his temporary interests to the team. But it’s been well over two months and he’s starting to think he’s been friend-zoned. Or worse. “I think she hates me.” He laughs melodically, then cocks his head in contemplation. “Is it weird that I kinda like that?”
Iwaizumi hides a satisfied smile behind a sip of water. Oikawa’s revelation has cleared the unease your name brought to his chest. Just a little. Perhaps he’d misread you. You have a bite of your own.
iii.
It’s routine for Oikawa to slink into Class 7 with a dazzling grin during morning break, but he’ll sometimes show up with flowers instead just to remind you that his affections, along with his modus operandi–– haven’t changed since he first started visiting you in September.
The girls in your homeroom have grown used to seeing the six-foot-tall volleyball captain hovering around your desk like a butterfly. Most treat him as part of the scenery nowadays. To them, Oikawa Tooru is no longer the mysterious, out-of-reach deity the rest of the school still paints him to be.
So when he strolls into class on a chilly January afternoon with your name a tune on his lips, they leave him be. Recently, the ladies of Seijoh have focused their attentions on some fellow on the swim team, anyway. Oikawa doesn’t feel as upset as he thinks he should about his shrinking fan club, but when his gaze finds yours already steady, expectant, utterly adoring on him, he understands why.
“For the lady,” he says like he does every time. A cluster of yellow flowers wrapped in brown kraft paper plop onto your desk. He pulls a chair up to your side, purposely ignoring, again, how two certain grooves in the wooden floor keep growing deeper with his visits.
You remember the first time he started bringing you flowers.
A posy of pink flowers sits awkwardly on your desk, untouched.
“I tell you I’d rather take your serve to my face than attend the bunkasai with you and your response is to give me weeds?” you reply with your chin in the palm of your hands, amusement blossoming over your features.
“Stop being a tease, Y/N-chan, they’re flowers,” he huffs, crossing his arms on your desk. “And I know you want to take them. The florist even said I have immaculate taste.”
“Really? Then what do these mean?”
Oikawa falters.
“Hmm?”
“Pink camellias,” he finally says, carefully enunciating the flower's name, “means that you’re a fucking tease. And that you should come to the bunkasai with me.” You snort and tell him to quit volleyball and join comedy club, feeling a strange warmth in your chest when he laughs.
The two of you fall into the same rhythm as always, talking a little bit about this and that, throwing in witty remarks where they belong, never passing up the chance to make fun of each other’s little idiosyncrasies. He’s enraptured by the way you string words together to describe the story behind your class’s bunkasai performance and all the gears in your brain whirr when he explains the strategy he’s using against the team Seijoh’s playing later that day.
When the bell rings, he reluctantly drags his chair back to the desk he stole it from. Just before he slinks back out the door, though, you tell him with a stern gaze that the Ushiwaka from Shiratorizawa he just spent the break shit-talking doesn’t hold a candle to Seijoh’s Grand King.
It’s like you had just stepped under a new light. Oikawa pauses in front of the doorway, trying to decipher what it is that’s different about you. And suddenly, the roses in his cheeks are in full bloom. Delighted and puzzled at his own realisation, he turns around without a second glance your way and strides back to Class 5. Oh, man, he muses as he passes through the emptying corridor. Oh, man. Iwa-chan is going to love this.
Your phone buzzes later that evening.
seijoh v. shiratorizawa 1-2, the text reads, quickly followed by, GAH.
Your lips twitch, though it doesn’t reach your eyes. Tapping your fingers against your phone screen for a response that’ll cheer him up, you suddenly remember a phrase Oikawa said earlier that day. It drew a laugh from you when it came out his contorted face.  He was obviously still hung up over with the words of the opposing team’s ace. Hopefully, it makes him feel something else coming from you.
you should’ve come to shiratorizawa, you send, grinning.
His response is immediate.
l m f A O
what flowers would you like at your funeral?
And then you’re reminded of his petalled gift on your desk, now comfortably sitting in a glass vase at your bedside. Pink camellias, he said? Curious, you open your laptop and type in the name for its meaning.
Longing, you remember, watching your boyfriend chatter about something–– probably aliens–– animatedly. The yellow flowers on your desk, you realise, are ones you’ve never seen before.
“Oikawa, what’s the name of these?” you suddenly ask. He stops in the middle of his sentence (he was definitely talking about aliens, by the way), and grins smugly.
“Jonquils,” he says with a mischievous glint in his eyes, “spelt J-O-N-Q-U-I-L-S, means that your boyfriend’s going to colonise Mars one day. And if you’re lucky, you can be the first queen of Mars. How ‘bout that?”
It doesn’t mean what he says it does, by the way.
ii.
Splashes of pink and orange have already settled into the blue sky above when you step onto the rooftop of Seijoh’s humanities building. Despite the breeze that has swept through the air, the flame of curiosity in your stomach burns just enough for you to turn a cheek to the cold.
Come to the rooftop at 6 PM.
It’s 5:59. Impatient, you study the note in your hand again. Maybe you’ll be able to glean something from the laconic letter this time.
Much to your irritation, no one had seen the author of this note. They had expertly placed the unsigned card on your desk with a single rose and Hershey’s chocolate kiss on top during lunch. Elegantly scrawled, their seven words have had your brain running circles all day around their identity. Could it be…? No–– he seemed completely normal earlier today. Still, you can’t shake your suspicions. They borderline hope.
Who else…
You inhale the cool air deeply and lean back against the rooftop railing, eyes burning a hole into the metal entrance. The door swings open with a high-pitched groan. Your breath catches in your throat.
… if not him?
Time briefly stops when Oikawa Tooru steps through the entrance, still in his volleyball uniform, sweaty from practice, cheeks the same colour as the setting sun. There’s an unusually tentative look on his face, though it’s immediately wiped off and replaced with the realisation that this is real when he sees you slightly slack-jawed, blinking once, twice, three times before letting out a breath.
“You look surprised. Expecting someone else to confess today?” he asks, crossing his arms in front of his uniformed chest. Despite how his features are contorted by his poorly hidden jealousy, you can’t help but feel a flood of blood rush through your veins, lighting every inch of your skin on fire.
Because whether he knows it or not, Oikawa, the Grand King of the Court, prettiest boy in all of Miyagi, has skipped the table and placed his heart straight into your hands.
“Of course not,” you retort. “I just didn’t think you’d… well, do something like this.” And I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Iwaizumi’s words still find their way into your mind sometimes. I didn’t want origami made from my heartstrings.
Oikawa’s demeanour changes and his eyes dart away from your face. Shoving his hands into his windbreaker’s pockets, he admits, “I’ve honestly never done something like this before.” A faint blush spreads across his cheeks.
“Really? You’ve never stepped foot in the fourteenth shrine of Sendai?” you tease, referring to how Seijoh students have claimed this very rooftop as one of the God of Love’s many temples. You both know he holds the school record for the number of visits to this rooftop. At this rate, he could be one of its caretakers.
“That’s not what I meant,” he replies with a scowl, though the awkward tension between you two dissipates. And it feels like the two of you are back at your desk in Class 7, snickering uncontrollably while throwing playful jabs at each other. Sensing the change in atmosphere, Oikawa finally steps forward to join you by the railing.
Humming softly, he rests his elbows on the metal bar, props his head up with his hands, and sets his gaze on the lowering sun.
It’d be unfair to say that you didn’t at least try to enjoy the moment of peace with the boy beside you. But there’s a burning question on your mind that you can’t put off asking any longer.
“Why me?” you finally blurt out. “You could have any girl in this school. What made you choose me?”
The brunet whips his head around, disbelief written all over his face. “You think I chose to chase after the most annoying girl in all of Miyagi?” He laughs. “Ridiculous. I’d never willingly put myself through that unnecessary angst.”
You scoff and cross your arms.
“I think that when you like someone, it’s harder to explain why,” he quickly adds. “‘Cause it’s not supposed to make sense. I bet that the inability to explain your feelings is a prerequisite for true feelings, actually. It’s logical to say that you’d date Person A because they’re smart, or Person B because they’re hot, or Person C because they’re rich. But I’m pretty sure that that’s not… that’s not falling for someone. When you fall for someone… you just do. No logic required. You weren’t an option I ultimately settled on, Y/N. One day I just woke up and thought, if not you, then no one else.”
A beat passes. A flurry of words floods through your brain, only to evaporate when the devil on your shoulder decides that words aren’t quite adequate for what you want Oikawa to hear.
So instead, your feet take you one step closer into his space. Impulsively, your fingers find their way to his nape and your eyes flutter shut and suddenly–– suddenly, your parted lips brush against Oikawa’s. Instantly, he deepens the kiss, soft lips surging against yours like a pulse under pressure. You barely register his arms snaking around your waist, tighter and tighter until the space between your bodies is completely closed off.
Breathless, you finally detach your lips from his. Oikawa, who still has you encircled in his arms, pouts at the loss of contact, though he sulky façade only lasts a second before it gives way to a grin that stretches from ear to ear. He looks magnificent. Cheeks red, lips flushed, chest heaving, eyes wide with excitement. You want to kiss him again.
“One more.” It’s as if he read your mind. “To celebrate that last one.”
When Oikawa finally detaches himself from your lips, it’s to respond to the buzzing in his pocket. Noticing your raised brows, he explains that it’s an alarm for practice. The Spring High Prelims are just around the corner and he doesn’t plan on graduating without never having taken his team to Nationals.
“That’s my cue,” he states with a warm–– read: not apologetic–– smile. He doesn’t grab your hand or look imploringly into your eyes in hopes that you understand, never mind that you just shared your first kiss, never mind that you just became his girlfriend.
If Oikawa’s looking for any sign of your objection, he won’t find any. Instead, you step out of his space with an acquiescent nod. You knew what you were getting yourself into.
“Play well,” you say softly.
But before he heads for the creaky rooftop door, he presses one last kiss to your lips. And then he turns around, whistling as he goes, leaving you beaming behind his back with the light of a thousand suns.
iv.
When Matsukawa hands you the turquoise “Rule the Court” banner after the team lunch with a shit-eating grin on his face, the only resistance you offer is a resigned sigh.
“I’ve been dating Oikawa since we were second years,” you say flatly.
“Sorry, Y/N-san, but it’s the team’s hazing ritual,” he replies, not appearing sorry at all. “And you’re the only one who hasn’t done it.” He jerks his head at the blonde girl standing a little farther from the group with Hanamaki. “Emiko-san did it at the last game.”
“Plus, it’s the Spring High qualifier semifinals!” Kindaichi adds. “It’s an even bigger deal for you to do it now, especially since you had to miss our games on the first two days for school.” The team murmurs in agreement.
You shudder at the thought of your impending distress. Sit in the front row of the cheer squad and raise the banner with a scream every time your boyfriend serves? Fleeing from the Sendai City Gymnasium back home in an expensive taxi suddenly becomes very appealing.
Seeing the expectant and hopeful looks on the rest of the team’s faces, however, you begrudgingly place the banner in your backpack, signalling your acceptance of the horrible, cringe-worthy tradition.
“Where is Oikawa-san?” Kindaichi asks, rotating his turnip-shaped head around rapidly. “He was just at the team lunch. Iwaizumi-san’s missing too…”
Kunimi shrugs, pulling out his copy of the team schedule. He starts herding the team towards one of the courts. “Our game against Karasuno starts about an hour, so we should start warm-ups in around fifteen minutes.”
Worry creeps up your spine. For the past few days, all Oikawa has talked about is this match against his bratty kouhai’s team. And in the past two weeks leading up to today, you haven’t been able to even catch a glimpse of his face outside of break or lunch. To suddenly go missing before warm-ups doesn’t seem like Oikawa. You’re about to ask the team if he’s ever done this before, but your phone starts ringing a familiar tune and the question is set aside.
“Iwai––”
“Third-floor bathroom by the orange pillar. Come alone. Don’t tell anyone. Emergency.” Through his harsh and abrupt tone, you pick up traces of fear.
“What––”
“It’s Oikawa.” The call is cut before you can ask any more questions. Heart suddenly racing, you tell the team that your mother just called with questions about your new smart blender and excuse yourself to “explain what the manufacturers mean by salsify”. No one sees you bolt towards the nearest set of staircases with Oikawa the only thought on your mind.
There are very few things in this world that scare you. Stray hairs in the bathroom, the dark, essays longer than three pages… but the terror that short-circuits your brain when you find your boyfriend in the bathroom–– knuckles white around the sink, chest heaving violently, frenzied pupils surrounded by broken blood vessels–– trumps any fear you’ve faced before.
Iwaizumi stands helplessly beside him.
“Is he having a panic attack?” you question, still unable to move your feet. You’ve never seen Oikawa like this before. He’s the Grand King who hums while he walks, who spams your phone’s camera roll with peace-signs and funny faces, who winks and flirts and teases without regard. But watching the long-deified setter crumble like a measly human before you, you realise that Oikawa is also the guy who tore his meniscus from overexertion, who trades sleep to study his opponents play, who works his body to the bone just to stay a hairline above a certain Karasuno setter.
“A scout for the Schweiden Adlers said that Kageyama will soon surpass Oikawa in skill.” Iwaizumi explains how they had overheard the conversation lowly in your ear. “I got us into this bathroom just before he completely lost it. 5-4-3-2-1 isn’t working. And he won’t listen to a word I say.” What’s 5-4-3-2-1? Well, if it isn’t working then don’t focus on that right now.
Your eyes dart to Oikawa’s quivering body again. “I don’t know how to pull someone out of a panic attack.”
“The goal is to ground him. So use physical touch, make him feel something with texture, and get him to talk,” he responds instantly. Mechanically. Like he’s all-too-familiar with this set of instructions. A heaviness grows in the pit of your stomach when you realise what that means for Oikawa. And yet, from that very dread sprouts strength.
Slowly, you tread over to Oikawa and place a hand on his arm. His muscles tense under your touch but when you murmur over and over that it’s “Y/N, your girlfriend, the most annoying girl in Miyagi”, his fingers loosen ever-so-slightly from the metal basin. He lets you lead him to the bench by the door. He lets you drape the Seijoh banner over his shoulders like it’s armour and wrap your arms around his waist. He lets you press your cheek to his sweat-drenched back.
Get him to talk.
“Remember that quote you showed me from that interview of yours? What was it again?” you question softly.
No response.
“If you’re going to hit it, hit it until it breaks,” you say into his ear.
Through the mirror, you see his eyes widen with recognition. In the brief moment of lucidity that washes over Oikawa’s glistening face, you repeat the original question again, followed by his own quote.
Again and again.
And Oikawa finally says back.
“If you’re going to hit it, hit it until it breaks.” Focus re-enters his gaze. He blinks as if just waking from a spell.
“That’s right,” you say as firmly as possible. “So don’t you dare break first, Tooru.”
An unreadable blend of emotions scrawls itself over his features. While Oikawa washes his face with cold water, you remember rumination and resolve but can’t decipher the rest, giving up anyway when Iwaizumi pushes open the bathroom door. When the light washes over Oikawa, his face shows no signs of the episode he just had. It’s just like how the sky moves on after a storm, how the sun beams to say, “I’m here now. The rain has gone.”
But sometimes it still rains in spite of the sun.
A sunshower. It sounds so beautiful. But it’s wonderfully sad.
The three of you wordlessly make your way to the court where the rest of Seijoh is likely getting ready to warm up. What are you supposed to say after that? What can you say?
Once the smell of air salonpas and sweat finally greets your nose, Oikawa slips the Seijoh banner off his back and hands it over to you. Guessing that’s your cue to leave, you tell him to play well like you always do before starting to head for the upper deck. Softly, Oikawa asks you to wait.
“Stay for warm-ups,” he adds. “Please.”
From your spot behind the Seijoh divider, you carefully watch for any signs of another breakdown. To your relief, he goes the entire half-hour without a single crack in his disposition, exchanging laidback grins with the team, bantering with Iwaizumi. At one point he even has the audacity to taunt the Karasuno setter Tobio-chan, as Oikawa often says with a sneer.
Sunshowers, Y/N. Sunshowers.
Just before the referees call for the teams to line up at their ends of the court, Oikawa jogs over to you, eyes folding into thin crescents when he smiles.
He pulls the Seijoh banner out from your hands and gingerly cloaks it around your shoulders. Oikawa presses a quick kiss to your lips and murmurs, “Thank you.” Something in face tells you that it’s supposed to mean more than gratitude. Before you can read more into it, he turns back around and jogs to the line where his team awaits. Oikawa grins ferally.
Knowing that your luminous eyes are fixed to his back like his own set of wings, the monster crows on the other side suddenly look more like humans.
vi.
Oikawa isn’t surprised that his text is still unopened. At twenty-seven years old, he’s had his fair share of dead-ends when it comes to love. But he hadn’t expected radio silence from you of all people.
After closing all the tabs of Team Japan’s latest matches, he powers off his laptop and checks his phone again to reread what he wrote to your old number one last time. Still nothing. It’s highly probable you’ve changed phone numbers at least once in the last nine years, but the disappointment’s still there after he powers his phone off for the night. Tomorrow’s a big day and he’s not the same victim of self-destruction he had been in high school.
Or so he thinks, realising that texting the last person he loved the night before the 2021 Olympics volleyball finals might have been slightly irresponsible on his part. A thought arises in his head, though he quickly quashes it. Asking Iwaizumi to pass the message along would be a little overboard, wouldn’t it? Oikawa chuckles, imagining he response he’d get from his best friend (and Team Japan’s team trainer, that traitor).
“Go the fuck to sleep or I’ll put you to sleep, you dumbass simp,” he hears in Iwaizumi’s gruff voice.
He convinces himself that you’ll be there like you’ve always been. After all, he’s spent a lifetime with your pair of watchful eyes on his back. Satisfied, he drifts into a dreamless sleep.
The volume in the Ariake Arena is astronomical. Blood pounds against his ears as he sets the ball in the air, a monstrous grin carving into his face when his teammate José spikes the set straight down the net, drawing a wave of oohs and aahs from spectators on both sides.
Iwaizumi rolls his eyes at the flashy Team Argentina setter and finishes taping up Ushijima’s arm.
Oikawa turns haughtily towards the opposite team, gaze zeroing in on Team Japan’s raven-haired setter and the shrimpy ginger beside him. It’s been a while since he last saw them this close in person–– the chance encounter with Hinata in Brazil happened well over three years ago and he hadn’t had the time earlier in the tournament to say hello. Of course they’re the final boss in this arc, he muses, though the thought is void of vexation. Instead, begrudging pride blossoms in his chest. Truthfully, he had expected nothing less from his kouhai.
And he expects nothing less than finally tasting the ambrosia of victory against that monster–– no, an entire generation of monsters–– today. Monsters who happen to be the kids he grew up beside.
He wonders what you’d say at the sight of Japan’s greatest players all gathered on one court. On instinct, his eyes dive into the bleachers, searching for your face. Knowing he’s not likely to find you like this, he tsks, deciding to look for Iwaizumi instead. Maybe he knows where you are.
The referees signal for both teams to line up at their ends of the court. As he steps onto the white boundary line, he notices Iwaizumi’s gaze transfixed on someone in the upper deck on Team Argentina’s side. The neutral expression on his face morphs into shock, then recognition. And then he glances at Oikawa.
The latter’s brows furrow before everything clicks in place.
Who else…
All your memories together hit him at full force–– your face shimmering with tears in front of gate twelve in Haneda Airport, the feeling of your shallow breaths against his neck, the savvy lilt to your voice as you speak.
… if not her?
For the first time in his life, Oikawa Tooru looks behind his shoulder.
And there you are, leaning against the railing with the old Seijoh flag draped over your shoulders, a tender, splendid smile on your lips.
“Play well,” you mouth.
And Oikawa feels the sun rise back into his hands.
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vigilantsycamore · 2 years
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On the Batman thing, for a lightning round of the more oddball Deep Cuts, Condiment King, The Eraser, Ten-Eyed Man, Orca, Professor Pyg, the Penny Plunderer, Bat Mite and Mr Bloom.
Thanks for the ask!
Buddy Standler always wanted to run his own fast food restaurant. When he finally got his life's dream, he celebrated by changing his name to Mitchell Mayo. Mitchell's restaurant was an independent business, and he found it hard to compete with major brands like Big Belly Burger. Most Gothamites didn't even realise his restaurant existed, he struggled to get the word out, and it looked like his life's dream was over... until he hit upon a unique advertising strategy and became a supervillain.
More specifically, he became the Condiment King, naming his supervillain persona after his restaurant's name and basing his costume on his own mascot, and began committing condiment-themed crimes - usually just misdemeanours, like condiment-based vandalism. The worst crime he ever actually committed was property damage.
Somehow this plan worked and made his restaurant a success.
---
The Eraser is one of my favourite obscure villains, because he's one of those villains whose whole deal is basically helping other villains and I love that kind of comic book villain. In this AU, Leonard Fiasco was a high school classmate of Bruce Wayne's, and while he was intelligent, he was also a troublemaker. He was expelled after it was discovered that he'd been altering report cards and permanent records for students in exchange for money. A few weeks later, one of the other students from his old school, Celia Smith, got in contact with him and asked him if he could alter a criminal record as well. Specifically, hers. He did what she wanted, she paid him for it, and this marked the start of Leonard's own criminal career. Over the years, he made a name for himself in Gotham's criminal underworld as The Eraser, someone who could get rid of any records or evidence of a certain crime - in exchange for a fee, of course.
During Batman's first year of fighting crime, the Ace Chemicals Syndicate hires the Eraser to get rid of the evidence incriminating them, which he does, allowing the syndicate's leaders to escape justice. This leads to an arc during Batman's second year where he investigates what happened and discovers that someone called the Eraser is behind it. He does eventually discover the Eraser's identity, but the problem is that Leonard's been careful to erase the evidence of his own crimes too, so it takes a while longer for Batman to actually prove Leonard's guilt. I'm actually considering giving him a role in the Court of Owls arc.
---
Philip Reardon was a soldier during the Vietnam War, but was blinded by an explosion during combat. After the war ended, he was one of many veterans who were abandoned by their own government. Reardon grew disillusioned and joined a group of thieves, intending to help them rob a warehouse he'd worked in before the war. The heist went wrong, and the thieves ran away to escape - right into Slaughter Swamp. Most of the crew were found days later, terrified and refusing to talk about what happened in the swamp - but Reardon never reappeared. That is, until decades later, a vigilante called Batman entered the swamp while investigating the origins of one Solomon Grundy, and discovered a man living there with eyes on his fingertips, and some strange form of ESP.
So yeah, in this version, instead of Philip Reardon becoming the Ten-Eyed Man through an experimental surgery, he became the Ten-Eyed Man because of an extremely haunted and kind of eldritch swamp. If you saw my Poison Ivy post, this is what I meant by "if you go in alive, you're lucky to come out with every body part in the right place."
---
After Barbara Gordon was paralyzed (through different circumstances than in the Killing Joke story), she joined a support group, where she met Grace Balin, a marine biologist who works at Gotham Gate College and uses a wheelchair. Since she's been a wheelchair user for much longer than Barbara, she helps Barbara adjust.
Grace grew up in the Narrows, and this is part of why she cares a lot about doing what she can to help underprivileged people. She works at a soup kitchen and funds several non-profits in neighbourhoods like the one she's from. Aside from this, she also works on developing a type of gene therapy based on cetecean DNA, similar to another scientist's work with bat DNA years earlier. She notes that if she does make this gene therapy work, it could be used to regenerate spinal tissue regeneration and could potentially cure her own paralysis, though she's not sure if she would cure herself if given the chance.
Then one of the League of Assassins' attacks on Gotham is more successful than usual and the city falls into chaos. While Grace helps out at a shelter for people displaced by the attack, she sees how much superheroes like the Bat-Family or the Justice League are able to do to help the city recover. She also sees how various corporations and millionaires take advantage of the chaos to buy up property and gentrify it, evicting the people who lived there previously in the process. All of this inspires Grace to use a modified version of her gene therapy to transform herself into the vigilante Orca. (Also worth noting, both versions of the treatment are temporary, so even the non-modified version requires multiple injections.)
Her first target as Orca is Camille Baden-Smythe, a billionaire who gentrifies the neighbourhood where Grace grew up. Orca steals a six-million dollar necklace from Baden-Smythe, sells it, and uses the money to fund a soup kitche, a rehab clinic, and a daycare centre. After this, Orca continues her crusade for justice.
I admit I'm tempted to give her a romance with Killer Croc like in the Injustice comics.
I also know that she'll have a few team-ups with Catwoman.
---
In the near future, 18 years after Bruce Wayne retires from being Batman, one of the biggest threats to Gotham is Professor Lazlo Valentin, AKA Pyg. (I'm considering calling him Pyg the Dollmaker, since from what I've read of Dollmaker, his schtick is a similar kind of nope, and, you know... there's the doll thing.) Pyg is the leader of a cult obsessed with perfection, and to that end he operates on his most loyal followers to transform them into his "Dollotrons," who then wreak havoc on the "imperfect" people of Gotham
Because the Batman comics already have a difficult relationship with mental health, and schizophrenia is one of the conditions most likely to be portrayed in media as a "scary bad guy disease," this version of Pyg will not be schizophrenic.
---
Joseph Coyne was a cashier at a department store. Between the customers and the managers, he eventually had enough and decided to become a penny-themed supervillain and rob every cash register in every department store in Gotham, calling himself Penny Plunderer. After his first crime spree, he gets caught and sent to Blackgate, but as the AU goes on, him breaking out and robbing a different department store would be a running gag - he's going to keep doing it until he actually robs every cash register in every department store in Gotham. Also, every time he pulls off a successful robbery, he gives most of the money to the minimum wage workers at the store he robbed.
Basically, I asked myself "what would make someone become a penny-themed supervillain?" and... yeah, based on everything I've heard about what working retail is like, especially in the US, this would do it.
---
I'm not sure whether Bat-Mite would actually show up in this AU, but if he does, he'd basically be a stand-in for me, since... well, his whole thing is being a reality-warping Batman fan. If anyone can warp reality, it's writers, and I'm definitely a Batman fan.
If I do use him, I have a few possible ideas for how (like, maybe I'd use him for meta references and stuff, or maybe he'd be a sort of non-interfering observer who occasionally shows up to comment on things to the audience) but my main one is this:
Since Bat-Mite is a 5D being, his reality warping would be him moving things around in five dimensions instead of just our three, which in this case means he can move things across time and across timelines - so if I want an excuse to do a time-travel or multiverse-travel story and I don't want to come up with an actual plot reason, I can just use Bat-Mite
---
Mr Bloom is another future villain in this AU, like Pyg. I'm not that familiar with him, so I had to look him up to actually check what his deal was, but after reading his fandom wiki page for a bit, I settled on this: Mr Bloom's true identity and origins are unknown but somehow he got infused with nanotech that allows him to shapeshift, create nanotech-based spikes and "roots", and activate metahumans' abilities using special nanotech "seeds." When he uses his seeds on a metahuman, he can turn that metahuman's powers on or off at will and can also send those powers into overdrive. His actual motivation is as mysterious as his identity and origins, but he talks a lot about Gotham being his "garden," again like in the comics
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elkian · 3 years
Text
i lied it’s more ATLA Time!
Specifically an idea that came to me last night: one where Zuko does not survive the blizzard after the Water Tribe sibs retrieve Aang.
Let to freeze? Katara hit that much harder? Refused aid while conscious and ended up dying?* You decide.
The key here is that post-Yue, Iroh is increasingly frantic trying to retrieve his surrogate son before the locals’ good favor runs dry. Pakku agrees to look because you don’t have time for this, Iroh, Dragon of the West, get out! And Iroh agrees.
And receives correspondence.
If Zhao survived the fish, he sure as hell does not survive Iroh.
(Remember, he was running when Zuko waylaid him, forcing him into a fight and essentially stalling him.)
Iroh is a smart man, and a wise man, now. He grieves.
He does not lay the blame, truly, at the feet of children forced to defend themselves.
Iroh goes home back to the Fire Nation, and deals with the one who is to blame.
Now we have a world with no Ozai, just Iroh and maybe Azula (Azula survived Ozai’s court - it seems safe to assume she’s smart enough to know whether she can survive Iroh’s). I’ll come back to Azula later.
Iroh takes the throne. What else can he do?
So now the world is thrown, the Fire Lord suddenly dead, the new one being the Dragon of the West and also suing for peace.
Does Iroh, the White Lotus Grandmaster, think of the Fire Nation as he moves forward? Or just of the world?
And, of course, for world balance what do you need? That’s right! The Avatar!
So the Gaang, likely short a Toph but plus a few invested adults, goes to the Fire Nation! Yay?
(They may not have really known him before, he may have just been a sidenote in Zuko’s attacks, but they slowly recognize him and you can SEE the dread sinking into them.)
Bonus: The Gaang flitting about the countryside (far from court), only to find that huh, Fire Nation citizens are people, too. And huh, some of them have been hurt by the war just as badly as anyone else**. And huh, things haven’t, um. Really improved for them. But the world’s in better shape! But also the Gaang finds themselves passing out cash and food to kids younger than them in what they thought of as an enemy nation, but world balance, but-
If Azula wisely bounces that leaves potential for her to come back and try to murderlize Iroh at any poetic point (neither the Eclipse nor the Comet have happened probably, after all). Even if you don’t subscribe to Azula caring about her brother at all, I think she’d still be pretty damn mad - in canon she doesn’t really seem to care about actually ruling so much as what it means for her and her family situation (she’s better than Zuko; and Ozai approves). I think she has plenty of impetus for some really creative revenge plots.
*This last option is best for Zuko possibly reappearing later down the line (and Pakku not finding a body means more for an Iroh who’s aware of just how borderline unkillable his nephew is...)
**While ppl from the other nations definitely suffered in great numbers and greater trauma, a world and perpetual culture of war is harmful even to people who seem fine (just look at Azula in canon.... She’s exactly what the Fire Nation and Ozai made her to be, a weapon in a 14-year-old’s form, and we know what happens to her...)
#angst warn ig#death mention#elk text#1st#September#2021#September 1st 2021#atla#ive been reading muffinlance's Towards the Sun recently btw#which has def influenced the tone of this#personally i think azula cares for her brother as much as she's able to care about anyone after her completely messed up childhood#becoming the perfect tool for a megalomaniac warlord doesn't leave much room for sincere emotional connection!#iroh saying 'she's crazy and needs to go down was supposed to be more about how zuo shouldn't think iroh wouldn't stop HIS own sibling#but he truly seems to lack any care for his niece in canon#although i can understand him prioritizing saving zuko#he really couldn't have helped both at the same time#without erasing ozai anyways#also!#thinking about that death scene!#i feel like sokka would be the most aware of how the cold kills and that you shouldn't leave someone to die like that#i feel like there's something i've read abt like#either finish the job or help them but don't just LEAVE them#and if you can't finish the job you DEFINITELY shouldn't leave him#yes zuko was a threat but still#also think about how Aang feels about any of the actual death options#he might have to live with the fact that his best friend and crush is also a killer! :)#probably remorseless at that! :)#im not saying she's cold but i can't see her regretting the death of someone she thought was 'evil' after he kidnapped Aang IN A BLIZZARD#now if she learns more on the other hand...#of zuko himself or just that the fire nation has real people in it .... :)
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writeblrfantasy · 3 years
Text
here it is!
my pride and joy, the piece that has completely hijacked my brain and my life for the past 24 hours. this is the prologue, some might say, to TDOSA, featuring the vibes of an endless, sunny summer, the sense of floating through time and space, and a lot of lesbian yearning and projection, i present: the summer of seret ashling.
cw implied sex, blood
word count around 6300
one time tags of interest @ashen-crest @ettawritesnstudies
tdosa taglist (lmk to be added/removed) magic-is-something-we-create @hysteriwah @imjustalonesomewriteblr @a-forgotten-dusk @bronwennjames @metanoiamorii
Lysandra Fleming’s summer begins like this: a lonely night in Briar Bar, sipping a warm mug of cherry syrup. Not because she is cold—the heat in Vashiri Valley does not begin with summer, nor does it end there. Cherry syrup is vile and bitter and sweet at the same time, made worse warm, but the smooth way it goes down reminds her of childhood, the strange days when she actually liked this stuff.
Not home. She has not had a home since she was a child, when the supposed charm of the palace still worked on her. What were once silky ribbons in her hair became the invisible chains and rules of her parents, tying her down.
Lysandra, you can’t do this, it will reflect badly on us, or Lysandra, you can’t speak to that person, can’t smile at them, can’t see them, don’t you know what they did ten years ago? Don’t you know who their parents are? Vashiri Valley is struggling for power enough without you mucking it up.
Lysandra stopped smiling altogether.
Now, she comes to Briar Bar to be left alone with her cherry syrup, to melt into the crowd, to be normal, for once. Instead, others smile at her the way her parents always encouraged she smile, fake, polite enough, with an ulterior gleam in their eye. So many eyes watch her in want, but she does not feel seen at all by any of them.
The room’s quiet conversation dims and dissolves into whispers, prompting Lysandra to glance over at the reason. The reason is facing away from Lysandra, wearing a tall black hat and a black suit that nearly blends into the darkness of the walls, if not for the white shirt the woman is wearing underneath.
Lysandra didn’t see her come in, and all eyes turn to the tall, dark stranger, wondering the same thing. Her companions across the room point her in Lysandra’s direction, who braces for another meaningless smile, another delighted to meet you, Highness.
The woman turns, and Lysandra sees brown skin, black hair falling in long, loose curls, a subtle, close mouthed smile that draws her attention instantly. Brown eyes meet Lysandra’s green.
“Seret Ashling, my princess.” Seret Ashling leans down, never breaking eye contact, and kisses the top of Lysandra’s hand, holding her fingers delicately, but not like she’s glass. She treats Lysandra like she knows, instantly, her boundaries, how far she can safely push, what Lysandra can take—which is a lot more than most people guess.
Already, Lysandra likes her.
Lysandra is not her princess. She knows the name of every person in this valley, and she knows she’s never even seen Seret before. Even the name is foreign to her. Seh-reht.
That makes it all the better.
She moves her stool a little farther from the empty one beside her, raising an eyebrow in an invitation Seret accepts, removing her hat and tucking it under her arm to smoothly mount the stool. Seret sits with a straight back but ankles curled around the legs of the stool, adding enough humanity to her presence to make Lysandra smile.
She does not prop her elbow on the table, she does not order anything, but she does stare at Lysandra like she’s the most interesting person in the room. Lysandra can tell, somehow, that this gaze is genuine, not hastily crafted and practiced to impress her.
She offers to buy Lysandra another mug of cherry syrup, and Lysandra lets her.
***
Everywhere Lysandra goes, Seret seems to find her. She’s the talk of the valley, enrapturing them with her tall, dark, handsome aura, her small smile, the way the sun shines off her hair.
Finally Seret takes the leap and asks her out to places in Vashiri City Lysandra has been a thousand times, but somehow Seret’s presence paints color to her world again instead of the dull greens and golds the valley has become.
Their connection is instant, from Briar Bar to the lane of potion shops to the muffled awe in Seret’s face when she sees the Academy. At some point, Seret takes Lysandra’s hand, and they stroll through the town like they are not a princess and the new obsession of Vashiri Valley.
Everyone has been asking Seret about herself, where she’s from, what family she has, but she slips out of answering like a snake from a trap. Her smile is quite persuasive. Lysandra doesn’t even try to pry the answer out of her, though she might be the one person to succeed. Seret still looks at her every time like she’s the sun and the moon and the stars.
Lysandra’s heart thrums with nerves every hour before their dates, afraid of messing things up and driving Seret away, but the moment Seret enters the room, her heart calms. Seret gives her a warm hug that envelopes her whole soul, tells her she missed her dearly, and Lysandra wonders why she was ever worried. Seret seems impossible to offend.
“I am going to buy you a gift,” Seret announces on one of their dates in town, in a tone which makes it clear this is non-negotiable. Lysandra only nods. Seret pauses between two shops, one being the most popular jewelry store in the city with a line out the door, the one across the street being an adorable but little known competitor.
Lysandra waits for Seret to get in line for the popular jewelry store, but instead the woman lingers in front of the door of the other shop before opening it. “Don’t peek,” she says with a little smile, shutting the door and triggering the little bell. Lysandra stands there gawking like a fool until Seret emerges ten minutes later holding a little square box.
When Lysandra opens it with trembling hands, she finds a little heart shaped necklace, gold with a silver center on a golden chain. The gold probably isn’t real, probably just paint, but the pink paper wrapping the necklace and the little thank you card inside the box make her smile when the shop across the street wouldn’t.
The plain red and blue shelves in the windows of the other shop, where her family’s jeweler gets his jewels, have nothing on the soft pinks, greens, and browns of the cheap shop owned by twins. They keep flowers in their windows, pink carnations, and prices written in loopy court script.
“Do you like it?” Seret asks nervously, and Lysandra realizes she hasn’t said a word.
“I love it. Thank you.” She offers it up to Seret to clasp around her neck. Seret’s warm fingertips brush the back of her neck, and shivers run down Lysandra’s spine. This is special, her heart keeps telling her, like she doesn’t already know. This is different.
“How did you know?” Lysandra asks.
“Know what?”
“That I’d like this better than the shop across the street.”
“You’re a princess, you’re used to expensive jewelry, and you’ve publicly and loudly denounced royal life. Also, I’d rather give my money to them, seems like they actually need it. Don’t you agree?”
Lysandra has to take a deep breath to keep from blurting out something stupid. “Yes. I agree.”
Their first kiss a day later is a ray of light and a shadow of darkness, colliding and exploding in a glorious show of white and black, settling as ashes and debris into serene, calm gray. They are not the sun and moon. Lysandra is too sharp to be the sun, Seret too dim to be the moon.
It is the death of something. The birth. Lysandra can’t define what.
***
When Lysandra asks, Seret says she came to Vashiri Valley to visit and experience its delights, after which she meets Lysandra’s eyes and kisses her hands.
Lysandra hangs around the city apartment Seret rents. It’s close to Wynn’s cabin where she sleeps. She hasn’t slept in the palace in months. The layers of security and scrutiny she has to pass to enter are not worth the temporary comfort of a soft bed and her favorite meals.
She’s sleeping beside Seret before long, unable to bear being apart from her for that long, wondering how she behaves during such a precious time. Seret’s arms are even warmer around her under cool sheets, and in the morning, Seret brings her coffee before disappearing behind a white door.
She reappears in a cloud of steam, smelling like sweet flowers and honeysuckle. Lysandra gets to kiss her good morning and wonder how she got so lucky.
They’re invited to plays, the nights at the bars for amateur bards, the travelling witches who perform at the amphitheater. Lysandra has been to every event in this valley at least once, usually at the request of her family, but Seret loves going. Like the city and the shops and the Academy, experiencing Seret’s joy secondhand is intoxicating.
Everywhere they go, every table they sit at, whether it’s the theater or the bar or a café for a simple breakfast, people are fawning over Seret. The entire valley is enamored with Lysandra’s new lover.
Seret seems to find it amusing, the way they pat her arm and show a comical amount of interest in everything she has to say, just waiting for an opportunity to ask questions that they must know will go unanswered.
Lysandra sits quietly, burning from the way Seret entertains them, smiles at them in her private way. She wants Seret all to herself. She’s used to sharing things with the public, she’s had to share herself her whole life, but Seret is different. Lysandra doesn’t care if it’s selfish, Seret is hers.
When everyone finally seems like they’ve gotten their fill of Vashiri’s new inhabitant, Lysandra takes her to the edge of the forest and the dead tall grass fields beside it. She gets to watch the exact moment Seret falls in love.
Seret has never grinned, never raised her voice louder than a murmur, but her hitch of breath and the way she reaches for Lysandra’s hand is all she needs. Pride blooms in Lysandra’s chest at the realization she’s learned Seret’s little tells like that.
“It’s just a field,” she laughs. She’s laughing more, now, thanks to Seret. Stoic, cynical, unpleasant Princess Lysandra, laughing. This is why she hasn’t let Arlin near Seret yet, she’d never hear the end of it.
“No, it’s not,” Seret breathes, radiating darkness and mystery in a way that is curious, enticing, instead of harmful. Lysandra just wants to follow her into the shadows where no others can see them, hurt them, touch them. “Can’t you see?”
Lysandra strains her neck, but it’s not the fact that Seret is taller than her that’s the problem. “No.”
Seret pulls her along and begins running instead of answering. Lysandra yelps in surprise and stumbles along, staring enviously at Seret’s long legs—long legs, long arms, long face, long fingers, everything about Seret is long. She sweeps Lysandra up in her arms and spins her around, feet in the air, Seret’s strong arms keeping her up.
Seret is grinning for the first time, showing perfect white teeth, her joy the only reason Lysandra doesn’t scream in shock. She trusts Seret utterly, she realizes in a paralyzing moment of clarity, the sun warming her back, the wind blowing through her hair. Seret has never given her a reason not to.
“What’s the matter with you?” Lysandra asks, though she can’t keep the joy out of her own voice. Seret is infectious. Anything she feels reflects on Lysandra.
“We had fields exactly like this in the city where I grew up. I can’t believe I haven’t seen these yet.” She finally sets Lysandra down and immediately kisses her, as has become a habit the last week. Lysandra gives in, gives over entirely.
She has twisted and forced a key into the lock of her heart, but now, she hands the broken key to Seret and wishes her lucky trying to fit it in the rusty, damaged old lock. Lysandra knows she’ll unlock it fast, her eyebrows pinched and frowning in concentration, long fingers working quickly.
She doesn’t tell her that, of course.
Even then, Lysandra knew.
***
They find a cabin at the edge of the fields and the forest which they quickly move into, abandoning Arlin and the boys and Lysandra's family and Vashiri Valley for themselves. Lysandra has no remorse.
Seret shows her how to live in darkness, in quiet, in peace. They prepare coffee in the mornings before the sun floods the fields with light, arms brushing and using only using their sleepy voices when they need to, not wanting to disturb the holy peace of the morning.
They bathe in the evenings indoors where the fading sun doesn’t reach, sitting close in a tub of river water that Lysandra heats.
They spend all day laying on their backs in the fields, one of them lying on the other while someone’s hair is stroked and someone speaks over the wind.
When the afternoon heat turns the sunlight from pleasantly warm to scorching, they move to the shade of the big oak tree near their cabin to eat.
The shadows are their friends in this haven, where no one and nothing else exists but them. Seret trusts them like they trust each other, content to close her eyes and lay her head back against the trunk when she’s done eating.
Lysandra loves the warmth of the sun, but she hates the harsh white spotlight of her family, the prickly rules tying her down, the sense that she can’t ever escape their restraining eyes. She can hide in the darkness from Seret. They’ll never catch her.
Lysandra has never been so invincible, light enough to be picked up on a cloud every time the wind blows. Seret is the only magical thing she’s met that doesn’t have a drop of magic within her.
Seret is ineffable. Unknowable. Larger than life. Lysandra can never hope to understand her fully, but she can try, she can watch and observe, attempt to learn the inner workings of Seret’s mind.
“Seret?” Lysandra asks one afternoon just like every other, where the peace and warmth of their retreat cannot be broken. “Where are you from?”
It is the first time she has asked. She holds her breath, waiting for Seret’s answer, which takes a long time to come. Seret chews on her lip, her expression as guarded as always, until she finally smiles. “Wherever you want me to be from. North, south, east, west, I’ve visited them all. Pick one and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Lysandra’s chest opens to swallow an ache of emptiness. “Maybe later.” It’s not what she wanted, and they both know it. Lysandra inches mere breaths away from Seret’s side, but it won’t go unnoticed. She thought Seret might actually tell her. She rubs the small gold heart between her fingers and sighs.
“Hey,” Seret says, turning Lysandra’s chin towards her. “It’s not because I don’t trust you, because I do. I trust you more than I’ve trusted anyone, more than you know.”
“Then why won’t you tell me?” Need, embarrassing and whiny, sneaks into Lysandra’s voice, but she ignores it. She’s entitled to this answer, at least.
“I don’t want to shatter your world.” Seret sighs and shifts to take Lysandra’s hands in both of hers. “I am from the south. I ran away from home at a young age to travel because my upbringing was hell, and I’ve never stopped since.”
Lysandra breathes out.
“None of that changes how I feel about you,” Seret continues, pleading, the most passionate Lysandra has ever heard her. “I have never met anyone like you, even with everywhere I’ve been. I do not want anyone but you.”
No one has ever said anything like that to Lysandra, and hearing it now gives her pause. The way Seret’s eyes burn on her skin with their dark intensity is exquisite. Lysandra will never get used to it. She does not want to.
“I would not want this with anyone else.” It does not mean the same thing, but Seret smiles, close mouthed, anyway. At times like this, Seret’s secretive nature makes Lysandra’s blood boil, unvoiced screams rise in her throat. She has given so much of herself already, why can Lysandra not know of her past, her family, her ugliest emotions?
She never wants Seret to treat her like glass. The first day they met, Seret got it right. Lysandra can’t bear the thought that Seret is any less perfect than she thinks, that would shatter her, not knowledge of the world beyond the valley.
Lysandra has gotten all she will today. She is content to sigh deeply and lay her head on Seret’s arm. Seret will stroke Lysandra’s hair, and the wind will ruffle her own, and Lysandra’s urge to push it back will fight the warmth settling into her bones. They are fine. They will be fine. Nothing more.
***
On lucky occasions, Seret shares stories of her travels from who knows when, who knows where. She has been everywhere, she said, and Lysandra believes her. She asks about the north, the far east, the west, and Seret’s homeland, the south.
The south could mean any number of things. Lysandra has never been out of Vashiri Valley, and her family have always been vague about what lies beyond their mountains, but Seret describes an actual ocean, the cold water wrapping around her ankles, the hot sand burning her feet.
She takes Lysandra to a desert in her mind, great, sprawling cities, icy lakes and snowy mountains to the north. To the east, she says, more ocean with great brown ships. Lysandra doesn’t care if she’s lying.
She lays in the grass on her side and lets the wind blow her skirts while she travels the world in her mind. Seret closes her eyes and traces mountains, rivers, canyons on her spine, unconsciously pointing in those directions. Lysandra’s breath catches in her throat.
Seret opens her eyes briefly to ask, “Am I boring you?”
Never. You couldn’t if you tried.
Lysandra shakes her head. Seret’s slow, easy smile returns, and the warm fingers on the skin revealed by her backless dress whisk her away to a thousand new worlds so big she can’t even imagine them.
***
“Does it ever bother you that I’m a princess?”
Seret smiles. “That isn’t something that would bother most people in my position.”
“I’d disagree. As the lover of a princess, you have no privacy, there’s expectations, rules you have to follow, harassment…I suppose a better word would be faze. You met and introduced yourself and spoke to me as if I were normal.”
“I called you my princess. the day we met.”
At Lysandra’s withering look, Seret chuckles. “Who said you aren’t normal? You didn’t have any control over what family you were born into. I would still feel the same if you hadn’t rejected your family and your role, if you were princess first and person second. It would be a bit harder to get to you, though, in that stronghold. To me, in that bar, you were just the prettiest girl in the nicest dress with the most captivating eyes. They told me you were a princess—so what? I love you anyway.”
Lysandra’s cheeks burn hot, and she chokes on saliva. The wind picks up, and she feels like she’s falling. How can Seret just say things like that and expect Lysandra not to explode and melt into the sun? “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
Seret smiles again. “I’m not looking to get anywhere. I’m not like those people at the bar when we met. I’m not trying to be like anyone. I’m not not trying to be like anyone. I’m not looking to impress you, honestly. I’m just being honest.”
Lysandra’s breath catches in her throat like a branch stuck in a river, unfazed by the powerful oncoming waves.
Seret is clearly not looking to hear it back, but Lysandra gathers all her courage and quietly says, “I love you, too. I--”
She shies away from Seret’s intense gaze, burning on the back of her neck. “I’m not good at, uh. Saying things like this. Like you. But I want you to know that you’ve changed my life. I don’t know how to thank you for all that you’ve done for me, given me. This place is nothing short of perfect. Every minute we’ve spent together has been nothing short of perfect. I’m sorry I haven’t given you anything back.”
“My dear, you are quite mistaken. You’ve given me the ultimate gift: yourself. The opportunity to know your heart, your mind. You’ve let me in when I can tell you have trouble doing so.”
She kisses the back of Lysandra’s hand, looking up at her through her eyelashes, as she often does. It still makes Lysandra’s entire being heat like the sun itself came down to lay its rays gently onto her, powerful but careful with her.
“You are my entire world,” says Seret, the sun. “The most precious creature in all the places I’ve visited, all the creatures in this valley alone.”
Lysandra smiles. “You haven’t met Wynn Scylla’s dragonlings.”
Deflect. Defend. Dismiss. Seret sees through it.
Lysandra lays their lips together, hoping to convey without the painful process of words said aloud just how much Seret makes her hurt. Seret makes her burn and ache in the best of ways, like a satisfying stretch after waking up from a stiff nap.
Seret challenges her to face things she loves shying away from, things like the swelling of her heart which she hasn’t felt in years. Seret is terrifying, all consuming, but Lysandra can’t imagine a world without her. Much of her allure comes from her mystery, however infuriating her secrecy is.
Hours later, when they’re full and sated from dinner, after they wash the dishes side by side at the river and after they’ve bathed in the tub in the house, Lysandra hears a faint hum, high and low, continuous, lulling and soft. She turns her head and discovers it’s Seret, humming to herself as she drapes the wet towels out to dry. “What’s that you’re humming?”
Seret pauses her sweet melody. “Hm? Oh, just some music from the east. If I had the proper instruments, I would play the tune.”
Lysandra chokes on air. “You can play music, too?”
Seret smiles. “I can do many things.”
“Oh?” Lysandra doesn’t know where her sudden burst of courage comes from. Perhaps she’s the one looking to get somewhere. She raises an eyebrow and crooks a finger, hoping a low tone will convey her point. “Come here and show me.”
Seret is quiet, face blank. Lysandra wonders, belatedly, if she does in fact have unknown boundaries.
When Seret desperately searches her eyes for consent, Lysandra realizes it was shock and not disgust that rendered her speechless. “You mean—” Seret asks, hoarse, never breaking eye contact. Lysandra shivers. She had that effect on her?
“Yes.”
They stare at each other for a long, silent moment, Seret’s hungry gaze fixed on Lysandra’s pale shoulders, the towel wrapped around her middle. Then they’re both moving at once, mouths moving in the same pattern of Seret’s melody, a symphony of hearts beating in time.
If Lysandra is Seret’s world, Seret is the center of Lysandra’s.
***
At long last, Lysandra’s family gets wind of Seret. Lysandra doesn’t want to know how. Maybe Wynn and Petrus spread it around by accident—she loves those boys, but they couldn’t keep a secret if they tried. Maybe it was Arlin, who Lysandra finally let meet Seret.
All she does know is that her family is demanding to meet their middle princess’s lover, which means they’ll clarify if they’re allowed to be together or not.
“I’m sorry,” Lysandra whimpers, on the edge of tears in Seret’s arms. “I don’t want them to touch us with a ten foot stick, but if we don’t go, they’ll send someone out here to find us and disrupt our world. I’m so sorry.” Something about her family interfering in her and Seret’s affairs makes Lysandra boil like nothing else.
“It’s okay, my princess,” Seret murmurs into her hair, cupping the back of her head, rocking them back and forth. “We’ll go, I’ll tell them what they want to know, we’ll come right back here. It will only be a few hours. Their opinion won’t change how I feel about you, but I’ll do whatever you feel is best.” The sorrow in Seret’s tone implies too much.
Lysandra pulls back. “Don’t you ever think I’d leave you for my family. Right now, I’m thinking much the opposite.”
Seret purses her lips. “What objection would they have to me? The whole valley seems to like me, why wouldn’t they?”
“You’re not a noble, you don’t have a title, you have nothing to offer them, you won’t even tell anyone where you’re from, and you’re the lover of their middle child.”
Her voice is bitter, matching her heart. Seret’s arms tighten protectively around her. Lysandra switches from bitterness to anger to guilt in a second. How dare her family do this to them? What makes them think they have this right?
They control Vashiri Valley, but Lysandra can’t remember the last time they appeared in public, and their power is distant at best.
They control Vashiri Valley, but they can’t control her.
“No matter what they say,” Lysandra says into Seret’s chest, “I am never leaving you. You’ll have to pry me away. Whatever polite, diplomatic accusations or insults they throw at you, ignore them. You don’t have to tell anyone, especially them, about yourself. You’re with me because I love you, and that’s all we care about. Okay?”
“I’m not sure I’m the one who needs reassuring, Lysandra.”
“Shut up. I’ll be fine.” She pulls back from warmth to wipe her eyes, hot shame from crying coating her face, but Seret pulls her back in.
“There’s no shame here,” she whispers, kissing Lysandra’s temple. “Comforting you is my pleasure, though I wish you didn’t have a reason to cry. Everything’s going to be okay, my princess.”
Lysandra breathes.
She wears the gown she wore when she and Seret met, soft pink with a low neckline, tiered ruffles reaching down to her ankles, frilly short sleeves. Maybe familiarity will give her some comfort, whether that’s Seret’s hand on her thigh or this dress pinching her arm.
Seret wears the same black slacks, white shirt, and black jacket she always wears, thoroughly combs her hair, but leaves the hat at home.
At the dinner, she is perfect. she speaks only when spoken to, sits with that straight, enviable posture, praises the food like it’s the substance of heaven itself, the best she’s ever had.
She’s gracious, thankful, answers every question they ask. If she had a title, Lysandra knows her family would be simply begging them to marry.
Things start out pleasant, her family treating Seret with the polite, arm’s length attitude Lysandra expected. Finally, the dreaded question comes.
“So, Seret,” Lysandra’s mother asks, folding her hands, “where are you from?”
Lysandra clutches her necklace, the one Seret gave her, and prays. Please don’t let them be the first ones you tell. They don’t deserve that.
Seret smiles. “This soup is delicious, Your Majesty.”
“Yes, thank you, you’ve said so already.” Her mother is reaching the end of her patience—Lysandra has been on the other end of that short patience dozens of times. Her blue feathered hat and perfect red lips cover up a much nastier woman. “Please tell us about where you live.”
“Well, Lysandra and I have been living next to the forest all summer. The fields there are positively peaceful, you should visit them sometime.” She pauses to let horror sink into the hearts of luxury groomed royals. Lysandra bites down on a smile. “But I am technically still renting an apartment in the city.”
“Where you came from,” Lysandra’s father adds, sharp, on the end of his patience as well. Lysandra wonders how much Seret prepared for this. Seret is smart, she must’ve known she couldn’t wiggle her way out of the question with her usual tricks. “Maybe who your parents are.”
Seret appears to consider the question. “I’d rather not say,” she says, stirring her drink with her spoon. Silence falls onto the room. Lysandra holds her breath.
Her mother nods her head tightly. “Very well. In that case, we’re going to have to insist you stop seeing our daughter.”
Seret bows her head in humble acceptance, but Lysandra stands up, every fiber of her being filling with inexplicable rage. She told herself she wouldn’t display a reaction, she would just accept the denial and then ignore it, like Seret will, but hearing it so frankly from her mother’s lips is different from imagining it.
“You don’t have the right to tell me who I can and can’t see just because you feel like it,” she spits. “I’m an adult. I haven’t lived here full time or done the duties you ask of me for years. You should disown me. Save yourselves the trouble of dealing with me any longer.”
Seret’s hand lands firmly on her knee as if to say no, don’t. Lysandra captures her hand and holds it above the table for the whole family to see.
“You’re the one who chose to come here,” Lysandra’s mother says.
“Yes, because I knew you’d hound us if we didn’t.” Lysandra can feel her chest being ripped open from the top down. Seret’s fingers squeezing hers is the only thing tethering her to herself. She pulls tightly on Seret’s fingers, who takes the hint and stands. They walk out without another word, without a glance back.
When they get back to the cabin, Lysandra sinks onto the couch in their living room face first, and immediately begins to cry. The seconds it takes for the door to click and Seret’s boots to march across the wood are far too long, until warm arms wrap around Lysandra’s back and Seret buries her nose in the back of her hair. “I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, which only makes Lysandra sob harder.
“I don’t know why it still matters. I knew this was exactly what they’d say. I didn’t want it to affect me. I want to move on from them.”
Seret stays quiet, just letting Lysandra exist and holding her through it. They don’t speak about it again.
Things are different after that. The fields and the cabin have been tainted with mere mention of the royal family’s presence. The spell has been broken.
The wind comes less, the sun seems to burn in a way it didn’t before. Lysandra doesn’t treasure dawn and dusk the way she used to, and baths are just baths. The only thing that hasn’t lost its magic is Seret, as kind and loving as always.
A week later, Seret begins taking trips into the city to gather everything from her apartment and bring it to the cabin, everything of Lysandra’s from Wynn’s cottage.
No matter how many times Lysandra offers to help, Seret insists she’s fine, she doesn’t want Lysandra to come into the city and get hounded and harassed by the usual people dying to meet the princess.
Arlin and the others come to visit a few times to keep her company while Seret’s gone, to speak about the upcoming Academy year, their last year, to learn the place Lysandra disappeared to the entire summer.
She’s happy to see them, happy for the company, but her heart never stops aching for Seret, wondering what she’s doing. Arlin and the boys stay for dinner well after Seret’s back, so she’s never given a moment alone to think.
This continues for a month.
Arlin and the boys become as intimately familiar with the cabin, the fields, the river, and the forest as Lysandra was with Wynn’s cottage on the forest’s other side.
Lysandra flies toward the end of summer in a haze, perpetually afraid to break the peace, shatter the dream, feel the cold seep into her bones once more. She has grown so used to the wind in her hair, the sun on her skin, the safety of Seret’s arms and her soothing voice.
Seret is never too loud, never jarring. Seret seems to float on the wind; sometimes her mind is lost to Lysandra as she stares into the sky at nothing.
Seret is—
Seret is many things. Nothing at all. Everything all at once.
Ineffable.
On what Seret says will be her last day of moving, she kisses Lysandra’s cheek and says, “I’ll be back,” like always. Lysandra thinks that’s rather silly—of course she’ll be back, that’s a given—but it’s sweet.
Arlin and the boys won’t be over since they have to collect their books for school in two weeks and otherwise prepare. Lysandra spends the day in the river, letting the water suck all the thoughts from her head.
By the evening, as Lysandra waits on the porch with dinner ready, Seret is still not back.
She probably got held up with the loading carts she’s been using, Lysandra tells herself as she gathers her shawl, puts on a dress fit for the town’s eyes, and begins the long walk there. She stopped to have dinner, or something. Maybe she met Wynn’s dragonlings at last.
Seret would’ve run back here herself to tell Lysandra she wouldn’t be back until later because of the dragonlings, or she would’ve sent a magical letter, or something. Seret has told her over and over how much she hates to see Lysandra in pain, and how she’ll never, ever be the cause of even the slightest worry.
Dread sits heavily in Lysandra’s chest.
The area near the school is in chaos, looking for her. No one she meets will tell her what’s going on, why they refuse to meet her eyes, why they offer faint smiles in place of explanations.
When Lysandra is shown the rooms in the Academy Seret broke into, the bizarre circles drawn on the floor in chalk, the thick books lying open, the blood splattered all over the floor, and finally, Seret’s body lying on the floor with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes closed, Lysandra falls to her knees and doesn’t get up.
Her entire being is shattered with a force she didn’t know existed, with waves of invisible pain too strong for this realm. Everything feels empty and quiet, but not quiet in the serene way of Seret’s.
She screams, and it rips her open. It rips every part of good out of her and replaces her with numb, muffled, faint feeling. Later the waves of pain will come back, the longing for Seret’s warm arms to wrap around her and make everything all better, but now, she’s able to look at the body with only thin trails of tears streaming down her face.
Seret’s white shirt is soaked through with a circle of bright red blood. The whole scene is almost unreal. If not for the blood and the cold feel of her hand, Lysandra’s Seret Ashling looks the same. Her hair is neatly arranged, her face free of the splattered blood.
Death is too simple a word for what happens to Seret.
She is gone, says a voice, Seret’s voice, her smiling face haunting Lysandra behind her closed eyes. The ghost of Seret’s fingers cup her jaw, stroke her cheekbones, brush soft lips over her forehead, push her spectacles up.
I love you, my princess, Lysandra hears when she touches her ear to the floor, soaking the front of her dress with her blood, such a cruel reminder of Seret’s humanity. She was brutally, unfortunately, unbelievably human. She may have reached beyond this realm to grab a fist of love for Lysandra, a greater capacity than any human could hold, but that couldn’t save her from her own humanity.
I’ll be back. Seret’s last words to her.
She wasn’t just going into town to move.
Lysandra clutches the necklace Seret gave her and squeezes until it hurts. It fits easily in her palm, hangs right over her heart. The death of Seret Ashling is going to hit Vashiri Valley like the rare storms, unforgiving and violent, bringing destruction that takes years to recover from.
Lysandra squeezes the necklace, closes her eyes, and breathes slowly, steadily. The storm will wipe her out faster and harder than anyone else, but she’s the one who has to control it singlehandedly, and that will be about as easy as trying to capture an actual storm from the ground.
She won’t survive this, but she’s known for months that if anything ever happened to Seret, she never would. She can only submit to the darkness—the bad kind, this time—awaiting her, return to reality behind this door.
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xsamuu · 3 years
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HEYYYYY!! I saw your ask box was open and I was wondering if I could request a headcanon? Where the reader is in a massive fight with a friend they haven't seen for like 3 years and the friend takes it too far by saying something like "That's your boyfriend? How gross" "Ew why does he look like that? Couldn't grab someone better? Ugly ho" or whatever you come with? Tendou, Bokuto, Kenma, Kags, Nishinoya please, if you will?
I screeched when I saw this omg thank you I hope this is up to your standards bebs 😼👍🏾 but uh I should say some did come out a little bit like scenarios but I tried to stick to headcanons sorry for that still hope you enjoy 🎃😼
~Admin Rizzo
Tendou Satori
-you was minding your own business walking through a park your hands intertwined with your lover when a ✨m u s t y✨ old friend you knew had decided to share there unwanted opinions
-Tendou could see how uncomfortable you was and wanted to remove you from the situation but as he went to walk around the obstacle you stopped dead in your tracks
-“That’s who your with oh my god that’s fucking gross, I guess you’ll hook up with anyone you thot”
-It’s safe to say that tendou had come up with thousands of insults by the time the slur left there mouth
-Who even was this person?— WAIT WHO THEY CALLING A THOT?!
-you wasn’t a very confrontational person but nevertheless you wasn’t about to let this person who wasn’t even in your day to day life anymore talk smack about your man
-you went to retaliate when a big arm swooped around your shoulder catching you off guard
-“Babe lets go I wanted to bring you to the park today not a circus” 🤡
-Needless to say your ‘friend’ was shocked and maybe a little intimidated
-You on the other hand had to summon all the strength in your body not to laugh in there face
-With his arm still wrapped around he moved you away from the situation the both of you quickly changing the subject to something more important
Bokuto Kōtarō
-Bokuto loves spoiling you
-your the love of his life and he will make sure you know this not only through his words but also his actions
-this however works both ways there isn’t something you wouldn’t do to show him how much you support and love him
-You was sitting in the crowd at one of his games it was a very important one winning this match would definitely get him recognized by some powerhouse teams
-every time he would score a point for his team he would look up at you and every time you would be there imitating his celebration “HEY HEY HEY THATS MY ACE” You felt only pride and absolute infatuation with this man
-you was cheering your heart out when you suddenly felt someone bump your shoulder (a little too hard to be an accident—)
-You swung your head around only to come face to face with an old friend from middle school they looked bitter asf and your conscience was telling you to just ignore them
-“Oh you have nothing to say to me now Huh? I see your at another one of these boring ass games I thought you didn’t have time for people?”
-It’s true at one point you did say that but you didn’t think you’d loose one of your closest friends because of it even so you continue to ignore them hoping they’d get the message and leave
-they didn’t.
-“So you and number 4 are together I’m assuming. I guess ugly attracts ugly”
-immediately you saw red but you couldn’t ruin this for bokuto important people were here. As if he could sense your distress he shot his eyes up to where you were in the stand
-He called a time out, and started running out the gym everyone was confused but when he reappeared in the stands you knew all to well that he had caught on
-“Babe I just noticed your supposed to be closer to the match your an important guest” he smiled you mouthed him a thank you and gathered your things walking a few rows closer to the front
-Thankfully Akaashi was there looking up at you distracting you. The owllike man glared at your old friend “I don’t know what you did to Y/N but you better leave before you have another problem”
-When you looked back your ex friend was nowhere to be seen you giggled as bokuto gave you a big kiss before returning to the court
Kozume Kenma
-Kenma isn’t a contentious person in fact he would much rather settle an issue in the most inconspicuous way possible
-Even so if he feels that him or his partner was disrespected in anyway he will not hesitate
-You and Kenma was at a gaming convention you had been planning since the beginning of February (it’s now late April)
-You had sat through the entrance ceremony and was walking around admiring all the stalls and you were both having so much fun
-Kenma had left you for a split second to get someone’s autograph it was the animator from a game he played religiously you didn’t mind you stayed put and was scrolling through your phone
-“Long time no see y/n” you lifted your head to the sound of your name being called and made perfect eye contact with an old ‘friend’
-If you were being completely honest you hated them all they did was make you feel like an inferior insect whenever you two were together you hummed a ‘yo’ before going back to your phone
-“Still a quiet freak eh LuLu I guess you here on your own or something”
-Lulu was the name of a magical girl from a cartoon you used to love but upon finding out people would use it to mock and degrade you
-you was gonna walk away the ridiculous nickname when you heard a familiar voice
-“no y/n is with me and you are?” It was a genuine question but anyone who didn’t know Kenma would take his pack of expression as bored or sarcastic
-The person scoffed and pointed accusingly at Kenma “That’s who your with LuLu you couldn't do any better HE’S JUST AS LIFELESS AS YOU ARE”
-You tugged on Kenma sleeve motioning to just leave as you felt uncomfortable but Kenma wasn’t having it you had been so excited to be here and with him and this nobody came out of nowhere and started harassing you
-“Listen um going to say this in a way you could understand— he smirked at you and then opened his mouth again
-What escaped his mouth next left you shocked, scared, a little embarrassed for him even but mostly touched
-he cleared his throat
-“lifeless. I’m not lifeless in fact I have a burning hatred for you right now. And that why I feel no guilt in what I’m about to do.”
-You gulped and held on tighter to kenma’s sleeve mentally preparing yourself for what he was about to do
-“YoU HaTe LuLu’S tRanSforMatiOn sOng?!” He practically shouted. Instantly a horde or gamers, writers, weebs and more bombarded the area shouting and screaming and causing a scene
- From all the commotion it’s sounded like your ‘friend’ was ok but some of the words leaving the mouths of the mob were kinda cruel
-you smirked and Kenma led you away
-You know he doesn’t like being the center of attention but he still protected you and for that you’d be sure to thank him for that
Kageyama Tobio
-Kags never really liked leaving you behind when he had to go to different countries
-without you it made him anxious and you would reassure him that you’d be fine and eagerly awaiting his return
-Including the return of his big, fat juicy—
Ahem heart 🙂
-You had been sitting in a café Face Timing him
-You’d often have dates like this and you both enjoyed them you was talking to him when someone took up a seat next to you
-“Hey Y/n funny running into you here” a familiar voice echoed
-A w k w a r d you hadn’t seen or heard from this person since a fight you had a couple years ago why now?
-You had nearly forgotten about your boyfriend on the other side of your iPad screen until “Oh you bought a friend y/n”
-you was at a loss for words but before you could answer the unwanted annoyance to your left answered for you
-‘We’re not friends y/n cut me off because she’s toxic” it took kageyama a solid 10 seconds to realize that this wasn’t a real friend and that you were silently asking for help
-You rested your head in hand obscuring the person from kags field of vision therefore blocking there vision of your face and boyfriend
-hoping they’d get the message without you having to vocalize it
-they stood up and you let out a breath you didn’t know you was holding
-“I wasn’t checking out your friend don’t worry he isn’t my type I prefer cute boys” they spat
-Before you could even assess the fact that they pretty much called your boyfriend ugly you was already pissed at the fact that they referred to kags as your friend
-you stood up abruptly and it’s like they were waiting for you to loose your cool all hope was lost when you heard him clear his throat
-“[there Instagram name] Damn you was easy to find. I liked you post”
-You felt a tinge of confusion race through you but watching all the blood in there body rush to your friends face made you curious
-“DELETE THAT RIGHT NOW” people were definitely looking in your direction
-“Leave then I will” Now you was curious what the help did he do?
-seconds, literal seconds. The annoyance was nowhere to be seen
-“Kags..wha—”
“I shared there IP address in the comments :p”
- “PFFT kAgS!”
Nishinoya Yū
-Noya made sure that you felt like the only person in the world before he asked you out, so when you started dating you didn’t think he could get any more protective over you
-You was sitting in the cinema with him both smiling and listening on to the movie
-He fidgets a lot in his seat but you dont mind you know he cant help it besides you find it cute he is just so full of energy
-“Babe imma go to the toilet be right back” he kissed your cheek and left
-you continue to watch the movie until you feel someone slither into the seat next to you and hearing the voice your your temples irks and your expression one of annoyance
-One of your ex friends for how many years ago had to be in the same theatre at the same time on the SAME FUCKING DAY
-they didn't seem like they were moving so you just spoke first
- “can i help you.?” 
-No response :/
-You were even more irritated than before
-Noya came back a few minutes later and noticed another person had sat right next to you 
-Noya is dense VERY VERY DENSE he assumed you ran into one of your friends so he didn't question it
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-After the movie finished you grabbed your things and rushed to get out of that situation
-The same person had finally said something after a whole hour
- “That’s who you came with.. You really know how to pick em an annoying toddler really Y/n your honestly pathetic--”
-It didn’t bother Noya he has been called short all his life this isn’t any different but this rando was obviously upsetting you and he would NOT have that
-Noya would step infront of you and confront the person they get a warning 
-one fucking warning 
-If they don’t take it i shit you not noya is going for the ankles periodt
- “I DONT KNOW WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE BUT YOUR UPSETTING MY PARTNER THE FUCKING DOOR IS BEHIND YOU SO TURN AROUND”
-Noya looked like the aggressor and its safe to say he may have caused a scene but he would be a fool not to step in and protect you with all you got
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Text
Here For You Part 8 (Final)
Fandom: Chicago PD / One Chicago
Series: Here For You
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5 // Part 6 // Part 7 // Part 8 (Final)
Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader
Warning/s: none
Word Count: 1,211
Summary:  Y/N’s world spun out of control after she got pregnant, uprooting her life and moving to Chicago only for her brother to get involved in a murder trial. Little did she know that that had been the beginning the beginning of the rest of her life. Now, 5 years later, still side by side with Jay in the life she fought so hard to build, she couldn’t be happier as she enters into the next chapter of her life, in more ways than one. 
Tags: @sesamepancakes​ //
Note: I feel like this is a better end to the series that the original one, open ended because I felt like it needed to be more of a beginning than an end, if that makes sense, enjoy!
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5 years later 
“Are you ready for this?” Jay asked, holding out his hand for you as you took a deep breath, stepping out of the court house you’d been in many times over the years. 
Tommy had tried to again to worm his way into Lucas’ life, but he’d been declared unfit to parent around the same time he was locked up for armed robbery. To this day, you still couldn’t believe how lucky you’d gotten, you’d dodged a major bullet with Tommy, and ended up with Jay instead. 
Jay, who had been your rock, your light, your family.
And today, finally, after a long road and a minefield of paperwork, Jay had officially adopted Lucas. 
Not that he hadn’t always been Lucas’ father, ‘dad’ had been his first word, a fact that still made you as emotional to think about, realising at that moment just how blessed you’d truly been. 
Lucas had hold of Jay’s other hand, dressed in his best shirt and a cute little bow tie, beaming as he jumped down the steps two feet at a time. You were going to celebrate with lunch, back at the cafe where your water had first broke. 
It was a tradition with your little family, even after you’d moved out of your old apartment building, finally giving your brother Henry his space back when Lucas was around two and a half. You and Jay had bought a house together, with a nice garden and plenty of space for your son to spread his wings. 
Even so, there was something nice about coming back to that little cafe, especially since the waitress, Edna, had become a family friend. Lucas always got free cake or cookies whenever you visited, despite insisting it really wasn’t necessary.
“I like her,” Lucas announced happily after Edna had brought you out your food, fussing over Lucas and leaving him with an extra large slice of his favourite cake to commemorate the big day, “she always gives me free food.”
You laughed, tossing one of your chips into your mouth, “well, you were nearly born right on that seat,” you told him, gesturing to the chair he was sitting on. Well, it probably wasn’t the exact same chair, but you did always sit at the same table, so close enough.
He pulled a face, “ew, gross mommy,” he said, earning a laugh from Jay as he went back to eating his food happily. 
“I’m officially his dad,” Jay said to you with a proud smile, the fact still sinking in as he rested one arm on the back of your chair.
You put a hand on his leg and gave it a squeeze, “you’ve always been his dad,” you reminded him. When Tommy had reappeared a couple of years ago you’d... done your best to explain the situation to Lucas. It wasn’t fair to him to do anything otherwise, especially when you’d had to return to court, but it hadn’t been easy, and although he understood a little more now, he’d still barely asked about Tommy, he wasn’t the man who’d raised him afterall. 
The whole adoption had been hard to explain too, even though he was a little older now, his mind still couldn’t quite grapple with the fact that Jay wasn’t his biological father. He’d always asked how Tommy could be his dad, when he’d never met him, never bought him a father’s day present, never taken him to parent/teacher day... You and Jay had tried to find a way to explain it, but it had only made him upset, sleeping in your bed with you both for the better part of a week afterwards incase someone came to take Jay away, he’d explained. 
You would have done all this years ago, if Tommy hadn’t technically still had parental rights, but as soon as he’d lost those you’d petitioned to have Jay adopt Lucas, and never looked back. 
“Does that mean I get to have your last name?” Lucas perked up, lifting his head from where he’d been messing with the police badge Jay had given with him when he was younger. Some children had comfort toys or blankets, your son had a badge. It always melted your heart to see him with it, he said it always kept him close to Jay when he was at work. 
“What about me?” You asked, actually a little offended, “you don’t want to keep my last name?” You’d obviously never given him Tommy’s, and he hadn’t brought it up before the adoption, you actually hadn’t thought about whether he might want to be a Halstead instead.
Instead of answering, he look to Jay, an odd sense of accomplishment on his face that he always had when he did what he was told. 
You looked to Jay, puzzled. Had they talked about this without you?
“Well... if Luke wants to take my last name, I guess maybe you could take it too?” Jay suggested, a smile forming on his face as he waited for you to catch on to his meaning. 
You sucked in a breath, heart skipping a beat as you understood, Jay slipping his hand into his pocket and pulling out a small velvet box. 
Lucas was grinning from ear to ear, drumming his fingers on the table and swinging his legs in excitement. “Ask ask ask,” he whispered giddily.
 You looked from your son to Jay, who was moving off of his chair to kneel on one kneel, slowly opening up the box to reveal a beautiful ring that glinted in the sun. You stared from it to Jay in shock, your mouth practically hanging open.
“Y/N, we’re been there for each other since the day we met,” he began, taking a shaky breath to steady his emotions and nerves, “it hasn’t always been easy, but I love you, I love our family, our life together, with all my heart, and I think we’ve waited long enough. Y/N, will you marry me?”
"Yes, yes, always yes,” you blurted the second the question was out of his mouth, standing at the same time as Jay to meet him in a kiss. He clumsily slipped the ring on your finger when you broke apart; it felt right on your finger, exactly where it was supposed to be.
“I love you,” he told you, returning the sentiment yourself as he wrapped you in a hug, tears of joy slipping down your cheek. 
You heard sniffling from somewhere behind you, spotting Edna wiping his eyes from where she stood in the cafe doorway, a handful of other patrons offering you claps and congratulations.
Lucas gave out a squeal of excitement, rushing from his chair to where you and Jay were hugging, wriggling up in between the two of you as you hugged. Laughing you both bent down and scooped him up, sandwiching him in another hug, giggling as you kissed both his cheeks.
“This, right here,” Jay said, meeting your eyes, “this is all I need, just the three of us.”
You looked between your son and... fiance, with so much love and admiration your heart could hardly take it, your free hand ghosting subconsciously to your stomach.
Little did he know... three was about to become four.
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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years
Note
Indruck hunt nsfw!!! I'm so excited you're doing fills again, they're always so good!
Thanks so much, and here you go! Duck’s form is based on a Green Wrasse, and Indrid’s is based on a Flamboyant Cuttlefish.
Go along the trenches they said. It’ll be easy they said. 
Duck’s been here for two hours, trawling the spot where the sea bed and reef give way to deeper water in search of black moon oysters. It’s courting season in Kepler, and if he can find a few he’s certain at least one of the two mers he has his eyes on will agree to a date. But at this rate, he’ll be bringing some of his model ships as his gifts for his first year of courting, and that’ll be embarrassing. No one wants to date a mer with such a boring hobby.
So here he is, far from where most reef mers would even think to come, searching for a shellfish notorious for it’s shadowy color. At least there aren’t any deep sea mers around to see him repeatedly get hissed at by the same eel because he keeps losing his bearings and checking crevasses he already searched. He’d rather not have an audience.
---------------------------------------------
Indrid cannot believe his luck. Weeks of hunting, of hunger, with barely any food to be found, and now a tantalizing, green tail dangles near his hide away. No mer in these parts has such coloration, so it must be a very big fish indeed.
His foresight is half-obliterated, so he must rely on skill to earn his prey. He camouflages as best he can along the rockface, creeping along beneath the ledge where the tail keeps disappearing and reappearing. If he lunges too soon, he’ll miss and scare off dinner. 
Almost...almost…
He pushes up in a burst of speed, grabs the tail, and propels back into his lair, his prey putting up a remarkable fight. He doesn’t notice his error until it punches him in the eye.
“OW!!”
“What the fuck?” The merman spins, lashing out again but missing him in the dark.
“I, I am so very sorry, I thought you were a fish!”
“I look like a damn fish?” His unwilling guest gestures angrily at his upper body. 
Because his eyes are adapted to dark water, Indrid can clearly see the muscles in his arms, the round belly and charming face. Now he wants to sink his teeth into him in an entirely new way.
Oh, right, he’s waiting for an answer.
“From down here you did. I assumed all reef mers stayed far away, and thus missed the obvious explanation for the size of your tail. I, ah, am not the sharpest when starving.”
The wary, annoyed expression softens, “Ain’t there food down here?”
“Yes, but it’s fast, poisonous, or fought over, and I’d like to keep all my tentacles attached to me.”
The merman points at the cave ceiling, “The reef is just up there. We got plenty to eat.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t, they’d recognize me as a deep water mer and be frightened.”
“I could vouch for you. Assumin you don’t plan on grabbin anyone else.”
“Of course not” He flicks all his tentacle tips, trying to hide how hurt he is by the suggestion.” 
“Then you can be my guest. There’s a festival tonight, so the grub oughta be good.” 
“You mean it?”
“Yep.” He nods, black hair swirling around his forehead. 
“Thank you so very much! I, is there something I can do to repay you?”
“Well…”
He mentally crosses all fingers and tentacles, hoping for an answer along the lines of “kiss me” or “hold my hand on the way there” and he flickers his lower body an appealing yellow to sweeten the deal.
“...you got any clue where to find black moon oysters?”
“Yes” he cocks his head, “why?”
“Wanna give ‘em as a present to some mers tonight.”
“Ohhhh” Indrid nods, understanding and trying to hide his disappointment, “a courtship gift. Of course, right this way…Duck.”
The mer starts, “How’d you-”
“-Know your name? Foresight, though it’s severely diminished right now. He smiles, holds out his hand, “I’m Indrid. Now, let us find you those oysters.”
---------------------------------------------------
Duck never expected a deep sea mer to be so chatty, but as they weave their way between rocks in search of their quarry, Indrid talks amicably about all manner of things, often swimming backwards so he can ask Duck questions about his life on the reef. Listens intently as Duck tells him about his time studying coral health, demanding details as they float across a deeper trench. 
Still, Duck feels like he’s not carrying his conversational weight, and when Indrid peers into another empty crag he asks, “hey Indrid, what kind of fish only comes out at night?”
The other mer blinks his glowing red eyes, “What kind?”
“A starfish.”
A slower blink, and then Indrid snickers, “I didn’t know we were in the pun timeline.”
“Sorry, know it’s silly-”
“Why was the shark worried after eating a clownfish?” Indrid wiggles his tentacles.
Duck smiles, “no idea.”
“Because it tasted funny!”
He giggles, “that was awful.”
“Precisely!” Indrid beams, then pulls Duck flush against the cliff-face. In the darkness beneath them, he can just make out something immense swimming along the trench. Indrid doesn’t release him until it’s out of sight. 
“Apologies, but there was a non-zero chance of that being an aggressive shark.”
“Glad you were here watchin my ba--holy fuck!”
Only Indrid’s eyes are the color they were a moment before. The rest of him, even his hair,  is the same speckled grey of the rocks.
“Indrid that’s, that’s incredible! I know mers who can color change a little, but nothin like this.”
“It’s mainly for survival purposes, but I am glad you, ah, you like it” Indrid returns to his usual color, save for his tentacles, which flash pink on their way back to silvery-blue. 
“Can you control it?”
“To a degree; some of it is subconscious expression of emotion, but much of the time I can manipulate it as I need. See?” He holds one tentacle out in front of Duck’s tail, matching it perfectly.
“That’s so fuckin cool.”
“I, ah, would be happy to show you some more” the pink flashes are back, “but first…” he pulses up to small ledge, slips three tentacles inside, and retracts them with a flourish a moment later, each hold a pitch black oyster, “let’s get you to your party.”
---------------------------------------------------
In spite of there being no timelines where Duck reneges on his end of the deal, Indrid remains nervous most of the way into town. Then the other mer stops, reaches into a stand of kelp and produces a scallop, “here, you were hungry when we met and you put off eatin to help me, seems only fair to get you a snack before you get there.”
Indrid grins, rips open the shell, and downs the mollusc in what he hopes isn’t a completely horrifying way. It’s been so long since someone shared a catch with him. 
“Do you still want to see more camouflage?”
“Hell yeah.”
They pass the rest of the journey to the town square with Indrid changing color, the two of them laughing as Duck comes up with increasingly ridiculous things for him to match. He adds in extra effects, hoping to dazzle Duck, and he’s having so much fun he’s almost sad to arrive at the party. 
Then he sees the buffet, and it’s difficult to be that upset. Better still, Duck doesn’t immediately leave him in search of his potential lovers. Instead he guides Indrid to a cluster of other mers his age. Juno, Aubrey, and Dani all welcome him into conversation and help him navigate some of the unfamiliar foods Duck gathers from the large stone tables. 
Deep sea mer courtship is very goal focused, but up here the custom seems to be unhurried, as much a chance to catch up with friends as find a mate. There’s even dancing, which he’s drawn into when Aubrey coaxes Duck onto the dance floor and the merman offers Indrid his hand. They spin and flit about each other, Indrid initially taking care not to brush him with his tentacles. When it happens on accident and Duck responds by thwacking Indrid back with the tip of his tail, Indrid takes to touching him whenever the dance allows. 
Since none of the reef mers swim screaming away from him, he and Duck even join in on the group dances. Indrid shows off, changing colors to match his partner because he catches Duck smiling whenever he does. 
The first of Duck’s crushes arrives, though Duck stays, dancing, with Indrid.
“Are you supposed to wait until a certain time to offer your gift?” 
“No. I, uh, I’m just a little nervous. I’ve never done the whole courtin thing before.”
“Understandable. Though if you ask me, I’d say you have a great deal to offer.” He nudges him with a tentacle. Duck takes a deep breath, then swims away after the other mer. Indrid hasn’t even made it to the table when Duck is once again beside him, saying they weren’t interested and would Indrid like to keep dancing?
He would, and they do, trading jokes and stories as they turn in slow circles around each other. They alternate between the dance and recharging with their friends until Duck’s other crush swims into view, having gotten to the party rather late. Duck’s approach is more confident, and Indrid encourages him along with the others. After ten or so minutes, Duck catches his eye and gives a thumbs up. Indrid returns the gesture and watches that stunning tail swim away. 
Indrid stays, continues talking and eating with his new friends. He’s even approached for courtship twice, demurring both times. It’s not long before he regrets this choice, because his foresight keeps showing him flashes of what Duck is getting up to with his new partner and getting his hands and mouth on another mer might be a welcome distraction. He finishes the last of his meal, waves goodbye to his friends with a promise to come see them again, and swims home alone. 
----------------------------------------------------
Duck hums as he swims over the edge of the trench, carved coral box in hand. Indrid left Dani directions for how to visit him, so Duck’s no longer concerned about swimming into the wrong cave and getting eaten. 
The front of the cave is empty, and the scant light still filtering in doesn’t show him much beyond it, so he floats further and calls, “Indrid? You home?”
Red eyes appear in the dark, followed by flashes of pink and yellow, “Duck?”
“Didn’t see me comin?” He grins, swimming up to greet the other mer. 
“There were only a few futures where you visited so soon after the party. Is something wrong? Does your new partner need more oysters?”
“Nope, came ‘cause I wanted to see you. Is, uh, is that okay?” Nerves creep up his tail; maybe Indrid was only interested in their exchange yesterday and not in him. 
“Of course. I, ah, my lair is rather messy but if you come this way I have some lights.” He motions for Duck to follow him. As they swim deeper into the cave, bioluminescent kelp and algae flicker to life, revealing walls covered in elegant, detailed carvings. They turn left, coming to a room filled with yet more carvings, a large, comfy looking hammock, and a floor scattered with shells. 
“You did all these?” Duck touches a lovingly rendered carving of a ray.
“Yes. They help me capture visions from time to time, or are simply images I enjoy.” That same light pink is coursing up through his tentacles and occasionally racing through his hair.
“Oh, that reminds me, here” Duck holds out the box, “seemed like these were your favorite last night, so figured you’d like some more.”
Indrid studies the crab rolls in their neat lines, “Oooh!” His tentacles wiggle, “thank you. That was very sweet of you.” He swims over to a small table, sets the box atop it, and then begins searching a rock shelf. “But I insist you share some of them with me, assuming you don’t have anywhere to be.”
“Uh-”
“Where are those blasted plates-”
Duck rubs the back of his neck, “Indrid?  Is, uh, is that a yes or a no?”
The other mer turns, flashing bright blue, “To...oh, oh my, really?”
“Future just tell you I’m courtin you?” 
“Yes. I, but I thought you made your choice last night?”
“That ain’t really how this works. I mean, I had a great time last night, might see her again, but I ain’t made any kind of choice about bein exclusive. Besides uh, I, uh, if I’m bein honest, mer I thought the most about last night and today was you.”
“Oh.” Indrid says much more softly as Duck swims to him and brushes his tail along a tentacle. 
“It’s okay if you ain’t interested, I can back off and we can have dinnerAHfuck” he laughs as Indrid uses all available limbs to pull him closer with a delighted chirp. 
“The answer is very much yes, Duck Newton.”
“Thank fuck” Duck leans in, kissing him eagerly as two tentacles tease up and down his tail. 
Then he can’t see a fucking thing and Indrid curses, “Of all the time for my kelpalabra to die. One moment, let me find something so you can see.” He pulls back, red eyes and kaleidoscopic lower half the only thing in Duck’s vision, achingly alluring even as he mutters around the room. 
“We, uh, we can keep it like this.”
“You’re certain? I thought you couldn’t see in these conditions.”
“Can see what matters.” Duck opens his arms and Indrid chuckles, swimming into them.
“I’m amazed you were not swarmed by admirers last night.”
“Flatterer” Duck kisses his cheek.
“I am being entirely truthful. You are so charming, and so very handsome…” Indrid strokes his face as his tentacles glide up his chest and down his tail, “mmmm, I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I saw you.”
“How, uh, sensitive are these?” Duck lets one tentacle curl around his fingers, brings it to his mouth for a kiss. 
“About the same as my hands, but far more flexible.” Two tease just below his hips, his scales beginning to ripple and part at the stimulation. The surrounding darkness heightens each grope and stroke, his body having little to no warning of where the next touch might come from. His world is nothing but Indrid’s hands and tentacles on his body, that little voice and moonlight smile illuminated by the colors of his affection. 
“Fuck, ‘Drid, this is so fuckin nice.”
Indrid hums, pulsing a warm yellow as he coaxes Duck open, kissing his neck and nibbling his ears. Duck winds his fingers into his silver hair, gives a testing tug and gets a moan in reply. 
“Again.”
He growls, pulls harder as his cock emerges, scrapes his teeth up Indrid’s neck and discovers that makes him practically scream in delight. 
“You wanna be in me, or should I fuck you?” 
“Ah, beg pardon?”
“Wait, fuck, do you not have-”
“I have this” smaller tendrils emerge from beneath a fold between his front tentacles, “there isn’t really room for anything to go in, and while I can get some shape from it” he demonstrates by twining three into something close to Duck’s dick, “it is unlikely to be the method you’re used to. My kind mate by sort of, hmm, mushing them together? My, that sounds deeply unattractive when I say it that way.”
Duck licks his lips, “They look pretty damn dexterous.”
Indrid’s eyes glow brighter, “The are.”
“Get over here and show me.”
The other mer comes to him so forcefully they’re propelled back into a wall. Duck barely registers the collision, too busy moaning as tendrils curl around his dick, stroking and sucking so elegantly he’s pretty sure he’s never going to be satisfied with a blowjob again.
Okay, except for one form the mouth currently devouring his own with kisses. Indrid moans and squirms in his arms, tentacle and fingertips caressing him from cheek to tail. 
“May, may I try something?” Indrid pants in his ear. 
“Long as you don’t stop what you’re already doin, ohfuck,” He bucks his hips as more tendrils push into the slit under his dick, Indrid purring as they do.
“Ohhhhhgoodness, you feel wonderful Duck, please, please say we can do this again?”
“Damn, ain’t even made you cum and you’re already beggin for a next time?” Duck teases, kissing the corner of his mouth. 
“Yes, pleaseplease” tentacles tighten around him, trapping him against Indrid as the other mer frantically fucks him, “I’ll can make you feel so good, I want to, please”
“Mission fuckin accomplished” Duck yanks on his hair and Indrid yelps with joy, cumming inside him and across his dick. The orgasm makes him lose control of both his colors and his tendrils, meaning he shimmers like the inside of an abalone as tugs and twitches along Duck’s dick. The touches draw his own climax from him with a groan, and he buries his face in Indrid’s neck, mouthing kisses along it as he spills into the water.
Slowly, all tentacles and tendrils relax and withdraw, leaving only Indrid’s arms around him.
“You asleep?” It’s only half a joke, as Indrid is going limp.
‘Mmmhmm. A perfectly wonderful mer just robbed me of all my energy in the best possible way.”
“Heh, funny, most stunnin mer in the ocean did the same to me.” He swims them over to the hammock, guiding them down onto their sides as Indrid looks sleepily up at him. 
“In that case, would the wonderful mer like to join me for dinner after we nap?”
Duck kisses his nose, nestles closer as Indrid’s tentacles shift to match his tail, “Yeah, he would.”
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stiltonbasket · 3 years
Note
How does Lan Wangji feel about Wei Wuxian's new title, Xinhua-jun?
The first time someone addresses him as something other than Honored Master Wei during an assembly, Wei Wuxian barely registers it.
But in his defense, he’s been up all night for a week straight, hurrying to get his irrigation talismans finished in time for the planting season, and the first batches have just been shipped off with a handful of Lan-trained shidao cultivators accompanying them to supervise.
All Wei Wuxian wanted to do was sleep, after that. It’s a wonder that he stayed awake long enough to  attend the conference at all, which is why he doesn’t realize what the petitioners from Moling called him until he takes a soak in his bathtub that night and asks Lan Zhan to rub his shoulders for a while.
“How was the assembly?” Lan Zhan asks, while Wei Wuxian raises the temperature of the bathwater until the washroom fills up with steam. The ability to take long, hot baths without harming his cultivation is the only good thing that came from losing his golden core, and Wei Wuxian made sure to bathe in heated tubs as often as he could after his resurrection; he used to envy the Jiang shimeis in his childhood, since heat only benefits cultivators with excess  yin energy, but now...
“Wei Ying?”
“Oh!” Wei Wuxian sighs and straightens his back before reaching up to pat his husband’s arm. “It was fine, I suppose. The Su cultivators presented their case, Uncle and I went through it, and then we agreed to all their demands except the one about Moling receiving a sixth of Gusu’s tax revenue.”
“A sixth?”
“They don’t have enough noble families living within their borders,” he says absently, making a small sleepy sound of approval as Lan Zhan pats the tension out of his neck. “The Lai and Xu clans relocated to Qinghe last year, and the Liao family—you remember that clan whose little mistress proposed marriage to Jingyi this spring?— they moved to Laoling the year before that, and they all paid enough taxes to keep the Su clan comfortable.”
Lan Zhan’s hands withdraw from his neck and reappear in his hair a moment later, covered in the sweet-smelling hair soap Wei Wuxian makes from the lotus pond in the back hills. “Did they—treat you well?”
It’s a sensible question, Wei Wuxian supposes, even if the worry in his husband’s voice makes his heart ache with love for him. “Better than most Moling cultivators usually do, Lan Zhan. It was all Xiandu this and Xinhua-jun that, until—”
“They called you Excellency?”
The conversation comes to a swift end at the realization, because Wei Wuxian accidentally swallows a mouthful of foamy water and chokes on it until Lan Zhan helps him cough it up. And then they have to get ready for dinner, and coax the children into finishing it before they fall asleep in their bowls, which is why Wei Wuxian doesn’t think about the conference again until after hai shi. 
When the truth of Su She’s association with Jin Guangyao came to light—as Wei Wuxian recalls when Lan Zhan and the little ones are safely asleep—most cultivators from Moling Su seemed to detest Wei Wuxian more than they did while he was dead, if Jiang Cheng’s spies were to be believed. As a matter of principle, none of them even attended Wei Wuxian’s wedding, and offered nothing but flimsy excuses when Lan Xichen traveled to Moling to deliver the invitations in person; and since then, they preferred to keep their distance from him, and would likely have continued to do so if Xichen hadn’t been in Baling for the month to see his new baby grandson.
But today’s petition had been urgent, so Wei Wuxian had to stand in as Lan-zongzhu by proxy while his husband and brother-in-law (not to mention A-Yuan and Jingyi, who accompanied Lan Xichen to Baling) were occupied elsewhere, and none of the Su cultivators were discourteous to him in the slightest.
Oh, no,” he groans, as Lan Zhan tries to hush him with a kiss. “This can’t be good, Lan Zhan. They ordered their city magistrates to send word if I crossed the Moling border, and they turned Xichen-ge down  again  when he invited them to Chun-bao’s hundred-day feast—you don’t think they’re planning something, do you?”
Lan Zhan only gives him a fond look and kisses him again. “Go to sleep, A-Ying,” he says gently. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
*    *    *
When Wei Wuxian married into the Cloud Recesses nine years ago, the question of his formal title remained unsettled until after the month before his and Lan Zhan’s first wedding anniversary. If he were a woman, the cultivation world would have known him as Lan-furen, and that would have been the end of it: but Wei Wuxian was a man with no title save that of the Yiling Patriarch, and even Lan Zhan was at a loss when his uncle asked what he should be called following the wedding.
“Third young master Lan?” Wei Wuxian suggested, absently petting Xiao-Yu’s fluffy hair. “Or Wei-gongzi? It doesn’t really matter, Shufu.”
“Third young master Lan is unsuitable,” Lan Qiren pointed out, plopping another baby rabbit into Xiao-Yu’s lap. “Xichen is the sect leader, and Wangji is the Chief Cultivator. Neither of them can rightly be called gongzi any longer, so the titles of first and second young master must pass to Sizhui and Jingyi.”
They settled on Lan-san-gongzi in the end, mostly because everyone already knew that Sizhui and Jingyi were the first and second heirs to the Lan sect, but then Lan Xichen (who remains the best brother-in-law Wei Wuxian could ever have hoped for) came to bring Wei Wuxian his lunch one afternoon while he was working in the produce field, and laughed himself silly at the sight of his difu  talking to a particularly stubborn lotus bloom in an effort to get it to grow.
“What a happy flower, to be so doted upon!” he chuckled, passing Wei Wuxian a wet cloth so he could clean his hands and sit down to eat. “Xinhua-jun, xiao-hua, be good for A-Xian and grow, won’t you?”
And then a strange excited grin spread across his face, right before he dropped the lunch boxes into Wei Wuxian’s arms and ran back towards the main compound as fast as his legs could carry him.
Wei Wuxian’s students have called him nothing but  Xinhua-jun  ever since, even though it was more of a pet name than a  title. But it never caught on outside the Cloud Recesses, since most of Nie Huaisang’s court is much older than he is, and Yunmeng still knows him as Wei-zongzhu from the year he spent leading Yunmeng Jiang before he and Lan Zhan were married; and the less said about Lanling Jin the better, even if Jin Ling and Mianmian have been ferreting out the last two sect leaders’ supporters ever since A-Ling succeeded Jin Guangyao.
The thought of his title becoming common knowledge in  Moling of all places gives Wei Wuxian a chill down the spine, and he says as much the next evening while going over the reports of young women’s education rates from Gusu’s subsidiary sects.
“Who could possibly have told them? It’s very suspicious,” he grumbles, answering a plaintive letter from a particularly pompous scholar who insisted it was far too much work for his colleagues to teach the boys in the morning and stay three hours longer to teach the girls in the afternoon. Teach them both in the same class, Wei Wuxian writes back, snorting at the man’s foolishness as his daughters climb into his lap to peer curiously at the scroll. If any of the young ladies’ parents prefer their daughters be taught separately from the boys, the Cloud Recesses will send a delegation of lady tutors to Xibei and have a second school built.  
“Suspicious?” Shuilan pipes up, before pointing to one of the characters on the scroll. “That’s part of my name! It says shui!”
“Very good!” Wei Wuxian smiles, kissing the top of A-Lan’s head. “Chun-bao, can you find any?”
Chunyang nods shyly against his neck. “A-Chun see cloud,” the baby says, happily smudging the  yun  in  yunshen buzhichu with her little hands before snuggling down into Wei Wuxian’s silky robes. “A-Die, eat? A-Chun is hungry.”
Wei Wuxian glances up at the sky and cries out in dismay as he notices that night has nearly fallen. “Come, come—but A-Lan, sweetheart, put your socks on first! It’s cold in the kitchen, and I don’t want to leave you here all alone.”
“I’m a big girl,” A-Lan complains, as Wei Wuxian laughs again and slides a pair of soft slippers onto her dimpled feet instead. “Can’t I stay with gege?”
“Gege’s taking a bath,” Xiao-Yu shouts—from the bathroom, naturally, since he spends his afternoons getting delightfully muddy in the produce field and moseys back home by sunset with grubs and leaves and rich black earth clinging to his clothes. “Be a good Lan-bao and go with A-Niang.”
At twelve years old, Xiaohui has finally settled on a course of cultivation study, surprising everyone but his parents by deciding he wanted to learn natural cultivation instead of following the martial dao, and he and Wei Wuxian have been working on agricultural talismans together for the past two years; Xiao-Yu even had a hand in the talismans Wei Wuxian just sent out for the border territories, since Wei Wuxian relies on his son’s spiritual energy to activate them. He is so very proud of Xiao-Yu, grubs and mud and all, and Wei Wuxian throws back his head and laughs when his tall son rolls into the kitchen half an hour later with his hair pinned up in a damp knot at the back of his neck.
“Is supper ready, A-Niang?” Xiao-Yu asks, while A-Lan sits at the table with one of her brother’s many, many cats purring in her lap. “Should I lay out the bowls?”
“Yes, please, A-Yu,” Wei Wuxian yawns, swaying back and forth with Chunyang on his hip as he stirs chili paste into his pot of soup. “And fetch a shawl for A-Lan, her clothes aren’t warm enough.”
“A-Niang stir more,” Chunyang tells him, pointing down at the pot. “Not done.”
Wei Wuxian does as she says, breaking up the last chunks of paste just as A-Yu comes rushing back in with a warm shawl to drape around A-Lan’s shoulders. After that, he puts a broad wooden lid over the pot and leaves it to boil, moving from cauldron to cauldron with one hand keeping Chun-bao in place and the other wielding his ladle: a weapon almost as effective as his sword, if A-Yuan’s condemnation of his cooking at the Burial Mounds is to be believed, though Wei Wuxian learned how to cook without covering everything with chili oil during his brief stint as Sect Leader Jiang ten years ago.
“I love A-Die’s food,” Shuilan declares, squeezing Heimao (named, quite literally, for his smooth black fur) in sheer delight when Wei Wuxian plops a bit of hot tofu into her mouth. “If Papa doesn’t come home in five minutes, can I eat everything?”
“A-Lan can eat as much as she wants,” Wei Wuxian promises, because A-Lan is only five years old and eats less than half of what Lan Zhan does. “Come help Yu-gege serve the rice, and then we can eat.”
Lan Zhan comes home late that night, after Lan Yu and Wei Shuilan have finished their dinners and gone to bed. He went to Lanling to help Jin Ling oversee a trial just after mao hour, and his early return is a pleasant surprise; Wei Wuxian nearly weeps with joy when his husband opens the door to the  jingshi and sweeps him and A-Chun up into his arms, carrying them to the long divan in the receiving room to kiss them to his heart’s content, and fussing over A-Chun until she toddles away and comes back again with the little bowl of hot soup that Wei Wuxian left on the table with a warming talisman.
“Papa eat,” she says adoringly, curling into a chubby pink ball against Wei Wuxian’s stomach and watching with big eyes as Lan Zhan raises the bowl to his lips. “A-Niang cooked!”
“Your A-Die always cooks dinner,” Wei Wuxian says, kissing the tip of her sweet pink nose. “Remember, Chun-bao?”
“Papa breakfast, and A-Niang dinner,” the little girl agrees, before drifting right off to sleep between her parents with one tiny fist curled around the end of Lan Zhan’s forehead ribbon.
Jiang Yanli used to fall asleep like that, Wei Wuxian remembers, safe in Jiang-shushu’s purple-draped bed with him and a toddling Jiang Cheng curled up next to her on either side, and she always stayed asleep no matter how often they squirmed and kicked and whispered over her head.
“Sweetheart?”
“I missed you,” Wei Wuxian sighs, without mentioning where his thoughts had gone—the pain of his shijie’s passing will never heal as long as he lives, but it has been easier to bear with Lan Zhan beside him, if only a little. “Will you have to go again next week, Lan Zhan?”
His husband shakes his head and gives him a lingering soup-tasting kiss on the soft dent over his mouth. “It is finished, my heart. Forgive me for coming home so late?”
Their faces draw together again, yearning towards one another like two mated butterflies forcefully parted as Lan Zhan shifts A-Chun to the crook of his arm and lays Wei Wuxian down on the divan to kiss his cheeks, and his forehead, and then caresses his hands with heart-breaking tenderness, as if he were holding a treasure beyond price. In turn, Wei Wuxian reaches up to touch his husband’s face, tracing the smooth lines of his brow and chin until Lan Zhan catches his fingertips with his lips and pulls him upright to keep Chunyang from getting squashed.
“Let’s put this little lotus to bed,” Wei Wuxian whispers, though it turns into another yawn before he gets to the end of the sentence. “Come with me, xingan?”
His husband—his beloved, precious, perfect husband—goes with him without a word, coaxing their daughter into her sleeping gown and laying her in the middle of the bed without waking her. “I heard some news in Lanling before I left,” he says, while Wei Wuxian helps him take off his Chief Cultivator’s headpiece and put away his waist-pendants. “I investigated the issue with Moling Su, since I feared that they might have a greater grudge against you than we thought, and Jin Ling informed me that the minor sects have begun to address you as xiandu of their own accord.”
Wei Wuxian feels his jaw drop. “What?”
“You have been taking over the portion of my work that cannot be solved by night-hunting,” Lan Zhan points out, as they slip under the covers and tuck A-Chun in between them to keep her warm. “The schools, the trade conferences, the farming failures in the south and the northwest. These matters are resolved by letters written in your hand, not mine, and petitions written to the Chief Cultivator are taken to court by the Chief Cultivator’s husband.”
He pauses to brush their noses together, and then:
“It has been so since you married me,” he says, with a smile that melts Wei Wuxian’s limbs into jelly. “Did you never notice, Wei Ying? It is well known that Hanguang-jun follows the jiandao, and goes wherever the chaos is, and that Xinhua-jun sees to the everyday matters that must be put right for a sect to thrive. Even the clans who would have dared speak against you know it now, and give credit and praises where they are due.”
“I can’t just  become the Chief Cultivator by sharing your work,” Wei Wuxian snorts, rolling his eyes fondly as Lan Zhan leans over to blow out the candle on the nightstand. “I’m your husband. What else would I do?”
“I have not yet heard your sister-in-law being called Jiang-zongzhu,” Lan Zhan returns, with a bright spark of mirth in his sweet voice. “Though I suspect your brother would not mind, if she was.”
“Yes, I suppose—but Lan Zhan, surely the minor sects can’t just  decide to call me Chief Cultivator? You were chosen for the position by vote.”
“They chose me for Chief Cultivator ten years ago, did they not? And now, since there is no law that two people cannot share the title, they have chosen you. Nie Huaisang will support it, since he lives in fear of me stepping down and making  him succeed me as Excellency, and so will Jin Ling. And Jiang Cheng.”
“...I’m never getting out of this, am I?”
“Do you wish to stop?” Lan Zhan inquires, with some concern. “You have done more good than I could ever have dreamed of, but if you do not want—”
“Let’s talk about it in the morning,” Wei Wuxian begs, thoroughly overwhelmed at the thought of it. “Come hold me, er-gege.”
And Lan Zhan does, hugging him so tightly that all he knows is the sharp scent of sandalwood on his husband’s clothes and the soft-smelling lotus of Chun-bao’s hair until he falls asleep.
*    *    *
  Nanhai Cheng, Baling Ouyang to the Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan
  Senior Wei,
      When did you become the Chief Cultivator? Jingyi and A-Yuan want to know, but they can’t write at the moment because A-Qing put them on diaper duty. Is it true? Or was A-Ling just making fun of us?
      Best wishes,  
            Ouyang Zizhen.  
    P.S.—make sure to bring Lan-xiansheng for A-Chen’s full month party! You haven’t forgotten about it, have you?
*    *    *
  The Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan to the Unclean Realm, Qinghe Nie
  Nie-xiong,  
      If I ever find out that this Excellency business was your fault, I’ll steal all your grandchildren and hide them in the jingshi. What in Heaven’s name were you thinking?
    Suspiciously yours,  
            Wei Wuxian.  
*    *    *
  The Unclean Realm, Qinghe Nie to the Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan
  Brother Wei,  
      My, such accusations! I really can’t say. But have fun with all the paperwork, Wei-xiong—it’s the best part of the job!
      Your (best) friend,  
            Nie Huaisang.  
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purble-turble · 3 years
Note
God, just imagine MK's reaction after his kid's kidnapped. Mei calls everyone in a panic and Wukong zooms over to comfort MK. Meanwhile, Red is dealing with whoever has taken over his court while he was in the calabash. The kid is completely terrified in another room, getting changed into some fancy but too-big pajamas and weird golden bracelets. Red tucks her into bed, ignoring her pleas to take her home, too busy trying to figure out where MK is now.
First of all, Red isn’t going to have to figure out where MK is. When MK got that frantic call from Mei he would lose his freaking mind! What ever the obligation he was attending to that made it so Mei had to babysit is getting abandoned because MK is going to take his staff and pole vault right through the ceiling of whatever building he’s in and head straight for the Fiery Mountains.
Meanwhile, when the mysteriously vanished Demon King Red makes a sudden reappearance back in his court after over ten years, all the demons are going to be shocked (and probably a little bit panicked) ..whatever sad sack was sitting on his throne when he walked in would either scramble off the seat the moment he saw the king stride through the throne room doors (giving it a quick dust off and bowing deeply as he retreated into the crowd, hoping to become anonymous) or, if he was dumb enough to stay in the seat by the time Red reached him, he’d just end up a pile of cinders. Either way, Red takes up a stance in front of his throne, one hand still holding on tightly to the wrist of this little human girl, and announces to his court that he’s disappointed none of them were able to figure out he was trapped inside the calabash and free him from languishing in a false reality for a decade. He had to be rescued by a human. This human, in fact, and he pats the girl’s head affectionately, and she’s no ordinary human either: she’s the daughter of the Monkie Kid. So they’re all to treat her accordingly... At this, all the demons present just start groveling, partly in fear because King Red is terrifying and just said they all failed him so there’s definitely going to be consequences (if not now in front of the child, then later for sure) and partly because they know if they don’t show the proper reverence for someone King Red just announced is MK’s daughter, they’re going to make their punishment even worse.
Red then takes the girl back into the palace and has some very surprised looking servants bring him a nice set of clothes for this new human girl.. Red notices that they’re much too big for her and calls in the palace’s tailor. He leaves the two of them to get her fitted saying he has one more gift for her, he’s just going to go fetch it and he hurries off. The kid is terrified out of her mind but doesn’t fight.. she’s sure her father is going to come rescue her soon. Auntie Mei saw her get kidnapped so it won’t be long. She does notice that the tailor actually looks almost as scared as she does and his hands are shaking as he takes her measurements... anyway, King Red comes back a while later once her clothes are all pinned and fitted more nicely and he puts on her wrists a pair of gold bracelets. He doesn’t explain what they are beyond saying they’re “just a precaution.”
I think that’s when she starts crying. She’s been holding it in for awhile now but she’s just so out of her element and frightened by being surrounded by all these demons that she can’t help by get a bit hysterical and she sobs asking for him to please let her go! She wants to see her dad, she misses him!! Red pulls her into a hug, one she actually returns because she’s feeling so miserable and the physical reassurance of a hug probably feels nice, and he says there’s no reason to be afraid. No harm will ever come to her here, because this is her court. She’s going to be his little princess! When she looks really confused by all of this, Red goes on to explain that he and MK are engaged, which makes her his family too. He promises he’ll give her anything her heart desires and that he’ll cherish and love her and her father for the rest of time and he can’t wait for MK to arrive here so they can all be together as a family! And so... this girl is like eleven or something, so she has just a very basic understanding of romance and love and what relationships mean and stuff, so when someone says they’re engaged that must mean it’s... good. Right?? So this demon knows her father and they’re in love????? That does kind of explain the way he’s been acting. She does question why he was trapped in a vase on her auntie’s shelf if he’s supposed to be marrying her dad. At that King Red does start to look a little angry and he says that the Dragon Girl never approved of them, and must have hid him away so he and MK could never be together. But she rescued him! And that wicked dragon and the others who would stand in his way won’t keep them apart anymore, he’s going to make sure of that.
MK’s daughter doesn’t quite pick up on the sinister tone of that last statement. She’s still kind of sniffly, but she’s managed to stop crying by this point.. she’s kind of been calmed down by the idea that her dad knows this guy and they’re getting married. She does like weddings... but it’s suspicious that her dad has never mentioned him before. And that Auntie Mei (who she likes) didn’t approve of him. Well, either way she doesn’t have much of a choice other than to obey as he takes her hand and leads her back out to the throne room. The one throne has been replaced by three, one of them notably smaller. He sits her down on the small throne and then takes up the one in the middle. Then one by one, a bunch of Red’s old advisors are marched up to the thrones and prostrated in front of him, they beg for forgiveness that they didn’t save him themselves and they’re so SO sorry!! Red looks unamused and turns to the girl and says that these demons are also responsible for keeping their family apart for so many years, and he asks his princess how she thinks they should be punished.... and again, this kid is like eleven, so she shrugs and says they should be sent to their rooms?? Red just nods and says that’s an excellent idea.. and he orders them to be chained up in the dungeon for a thousand years. A few other demons who he feels have wronged him are dragged in front of Red and the same pattern ensues.. he asks her what she thinks and she gives a very innocuous, child appropriate answer and Red twists it around to mean something terrible. (“Uhh, they should have to do extra chores.” “Excellent idea, princess. You heard her: put them to work in the mines doing hard labor for the next century.”)
This is starting to freak her out and she’s starting to get a really bad feeling about this King Red guy again. Just as another demon is being carted off to be buried alive up to his neck or something, MK bursts through the throne room doors with a fury no one present has ever seen. His daughter hops off the throne immediately and sprints to him for a hug. To everyone’s surprise, Red does nothing and lets this happen. MK returns her hug, never taking his eyes off the King on the opposite end of the room.. seeing that he hasn’t moved since MK came in and is just staring and smiling (that horrible, manic smile he had hoped he’d never have to see again) MK just scoops up his daughter and turns to make a run for it. He doesn’t even make it to the gate at the end of the courtyard before suddenly his daughter is pulled out of his grip and onto the ground by some invisible force. For some reason he can’t seem to lift her and her wrists are pinned seemingly by nothing... of course it only takes MK a moment to recognize the gold bands she’s got on, as Red had tried to fit him with those things so so many times back in the day. He looks back and sees King Red has followed him out and is smiling maniacally lovingly down at the two of them and he just laughs quietly and asks MK if he really thought it was going to be that easy? No, if he wants to continue being a father to their daughter, he’s going to have to stay here with her.
Whatever MK decides to do from there it will feel like a loss.. he could surrender and allow Red to trap him and his daughter within his court, hoping to find a way to escape together or be rescued by Mei and the others... or he could run, leaving his daughter behind with the promise that he’s going to come back with the rest of their family and free her. It’s a tough choice. He’s been through the trauma of being captured by Red before, and that time he wasn’t able to escape it for nearly six months. He’s not keen on going through that again.. but also, he doesn’t know for sure what Red is going to do with his child. He gets the impression that he won’t actually harm her, but how could he let her go through the same trauma that he did?? It breaks his heart just thinking about it. The third option is, of course, to try and fight Red right then and there.. but that wouldn’t go over too well. He’s in the heart of the court surrounded by Red’s demons who will dogpile him and allow Red to attach another set of immobilizing bracelets on him too.. so really fighting is the same as surrendering.. it’s a tough call and I’m honestly not sure what MK would end up doing in this no-win situation.
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thecandywrites · 3 years
Text
Blood For Gold Part 11
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Woo, so while I'm in a mad rush to clean my house in preparation for new windows TOMORROW. While I've been cleaning, this story WENT OFF in my head and I was, in a mad dash to get it all down on my breaks. Oh the storm is a- brewin! And if you don't at least want to scandolously and in an outrage and a gasp- yell 'You bitch!' at the end of the chapter, I will have failed you. Becuase I was yelling that writing it.
Thank you to @kriskukko for letting me borrow her regency era orc art and to @punkhorse96 for your amazing feedback. Hehehe.
Blood For Gold
Part 11
“So what can you tell me about Charlotte?” Zax pressed as he helped pick out jewelry for you to wear for dinner among your jewelry that had been brought from your home and that had just recently been given to you, looking for more of your Kilan style pieces.
“I’ve only known her for a couple of days, she’s very nice, so far at least.” You answered.
“And what can you tell me about Jane?” Ocearian posed as he finished getting dressed himself, smoothing out his clothes and appraising how he looked in the full mirror as all three of your brothers converged in your room while their own rooms were getting prepared.
“Oh don’t you start anything with her. She’s a very sweet, kind, but very innocent girl. In England women are kept purposefully naive and ill informed and powerless and are practically property of their fathers, brothers and then husbands. Her parents are monsters. More vicious than any wolf or viper that would make the most stone cold dragonborn moura in the Qing Dynasty or every devil in hell consider returning to a path of righteousness to the Creator. They are very abusive to her, mentally, emotionally and physically and the only reason it’s not sexually too is because her virginity is considered sacred. They hurt her to control me when I had to live with them at Broadcove when they found they could not hurt me all the ways they wanted to. English custom and culture demands that she is never to be left alone with any man for any reason except her own father, who is the most dangerous of all. All she has to keep her from ruination and disgrace is her own innocence and honor and virginity which all dangles precariously by a thread. Her parents hate me. They despise me and have made my life worse than any hell in existence since I came here and it is only because I have leverage and blackmail on them that I’m surviving them so far.” You revealed adamantly.
“Oooh, blackmail? What kind of blackmail?” Axal asked as he came over and practically sat in your lap at your vanity in the room before he touched up your makeup again from his vantage point.
“Spill, I need it. All of it.” Axal insisted.
“Ramsey has five mistresses and several illegitimate heirs and his favorite mistress is Audrey Rogers at The Red Velvet Rope which is a moura whorehouse here in London Towne that he goes to on a weekly basis.” You informed him.
“No not on him, I mean that does make things fun for me, but on the Morrigans.” Axal prompted.
“No, I’m not playing my ace just yet. Not unless I need to.” You shook your head no.
“So it’s an ace. That means it’s very solid proof.” Axal grinned triumphantly.
“It is and it’s substantial.” You allowed.
“Ace of spades then.” Axal surmised.
“Ace of spades.” You confirmed to Axal before turning to Ocearian again.
“But Jane is way too sweet and innocent for anyone to mess with her and I will go down swinging to protect her, she’s the closest thing to a real friend I’ve had since I came here. All my other friends in the last year I had to pay to be so. Jane suffers enough from the hands of her parents, she deserves better than anyone trying to toy with her.” You insisted again.
“I would never toy with her! She’s divine. And there’s mutual attraction, genuine mutual attraction.” Ocearian insisted as you resigned yourself with a sigh because you could see his feelings in his eyes.
“Then court her properly, according to English culture and customs because nothing else will do. But again, her parents will shoot you down. She is their pawn and they are not about to let her go to Dorierra of all places, they probably want her to stay on the English Empire side, not anywhere else. She has a little brother who is to inherit everything and even if her parents were to be struck by lightning tonight, he would then have say in everything and he’s been brainwashed by his parents to hate me too and hate all mouras in turn.” You warned him.
“Even with your ace of spades? They wouldn’t reconsider?” Axal prodded.
“No. And it’s because of that ace of spades that they probably never will either.” You answered.
“Is the ace of spades also the reason you’re a shakan now?” Axal asked as your brothers paused to hear your answer.
“...yes and no, it’s very complicated.” You reluctantly answered before you noticed the time.
“Come on, we need to finish getting ready and go down to dinner.” You told them, not wanting to talk about it any further.
Demsey’s jaw fell to the floor when you and your brothers came to dinner just a few moments later than everyone else, all of you wearing color coordinated and matching outfits as you were clearly dressed in a style he had never really seen before as he barely noticed that Calla and Bennie and their brothers had done the same, choosing to don the style they were most comfortable in of their own cultures and quarters.
You had a little top on, that barely covered your breasts but your middle was bared as was your back but you were wearing a sheer shawl and to see your gold moura marks on such intimate parts of your person, he still couldn’t help but remember Aurdra Draft’s marks. But he was sure that yours were even more luxurious and numerous than hers had been and your skirt was very poofy and full but the embroidery and the fabrics used as well as the clearly moura ethnic jewelry, had you looking like a foreign princess yourself and had himself ready and willing to pledge himself to you and follow you to the ends of the world and forgetting every rule of decorum as he couldn't help but stare longingly and desirous as he dared and one coy look and smile from you and he swooned as he practically elbowed his way to sit next to you at the table which delighted you that he would do so.
“Oh Father, since we are expecting Audra’s family the day after tomorrow, in only three days, the Midnight Peacock has it’s Volto Masqurade, I thought we should all go and attend.” Ramsey insisted to his father.
“Oh absolutely.” Gregori agreed.
“Also, it was suggested we have an official Kamoba battle.” Ramsey added as Axal let his pinky graze the outside of Ramsey's thigh and grinned when Ramsey subtly squirmed but clearly had a physical reaction to his advance before Ramsey reached under the table and grabbed Axal's knee and tried to give it a warning grip but all that accomplished was Axal becoming emboldened even more.
“Oh that sounds magnificent, Darling you must agree to such a request.” Yalin urged Gregori as she uncharacteristically sat to his immediate left while Ramsey sat to his immediate right.
“It has been a very long time since the palace of Windsor has seen a Kamoba battle, we will have to do all we can for a proper one.” Gregori readily agreed.
“What’s Kamoba?” Demsey asked curiously.
“It’s a mix of several games. Do you have a game where it’s like- capture the flag of an opposing team?” You answered from your place next to Demsey since Axal had taken your former place as you sat next to Yalin per her request as Zax was sitting on the other side of Axal and Charlotte sitting next to him as the two were immediately taken with each other as Jane sat on the other side of Charlotte with Ocearian on the other side of her as Jane as Rian was practically fawning over her and she was with him as well, as shy and reserved as she was but you were worried for her because you knew that the moment her parents would reappear, she’d be stripped from him and it was almost cruel to let anything to blossom between them, as natural as it seemed to be.
But you yourself would be lying if you didn’t enjoy Demsey sitting so close to you. Before it was always across from him. He still smelled good, like fresh, clean laundry and his own spicy personal musk filling your nose and making your feminine folds squish with essence of desire. You of course partially blamed yourself for perhaps projecting your preference for Demsey Draft onto the good Duke and tried to reason with yourself that they were probably two very different people, one was a harlot in a whorehouse and the other was an upstanding Duke of nobility and besides a similarity in looks and voice, probably shared little else in common. But the message didn’t seem to reach your body from your brain because your body was reacting to him the same way it had reacted to Demsey Draft.
Also from this proximate distance, Demsey could smell your luxurious and alluring perfume and your scent in general which was still sending him into a tizzy. He could feel the heat roll off of you in waves and feel your full skirts brush against his leg as he wanted nothing more than to reach down and hold your hand under the table, or better yet, dig his nose into you and find all the sources of those amazing scents. You smelled both clean yet perfumed and decadent and opulent, alluring and divine and if he could bottle this scent, he would, in heartbeat. But he would never sell such a treasure, he would hoard it forever.
“Oh yes of course, it was a favorite of mine as a child,” Demsey nodded.
“Well it’s like that, only it’s also fencing, but the swords and other weapons are superheated so that once you spit oil onto them, so that you more or less breathe fire onto them, then you fight with flaming weapons. But you have to wear special leather armor that’s meant to keep you cool so you don’t burn up or drop from heat exhaustion. Also the Kamoba battle arena is an obstacle course with anywhere from three, to five to seven capture points, or beacons as they’re usually called, and once you capture them, you ignite the charge and they explode into flames and color, like a firework, with colored smoke. And you can either fight one on one or in teams of equal number or even among the sexes, women against the men.”
“But that is never fair because women usually win, like 9 times out of 10.” Axal praised from his spot across from you as he appraised how affected Demsey was by you. You weren’t even really trying that hard to ensnare him and Demsey was clearly already smitten, if you just put out just a bit more effort, you’d have him right where you would want him.
“What?” Demsey asked, not thinking he had heard that right.
“Moura women are fiercer competitors, usually quicker, stealthier and frankly better in every way because women communicate much better with each other and work better together and coordinate beautifully and while the men are usually fighting and arguing with each other about who takes the lead, who does what, while the women have already figured that out and are onto the second or even third or fourth beacon by that point.” Axal explained.
“And nothing will show a moura’s colors better than a round of Kamoba, you’ll see even the sweetest, gentlest moura, show a fierceness and ruthlessness and competitiveness usually only reserved for gladiators but within the Kamoba arena, even the most battle hardened veteran is not match for a moura woman agent. I remember watching Yalin fight Kamoba with.. Oh I forget her name, it was something viper, desert viper of some kind, Yalin had been nothing but sweet to me, but her ruthlessness in that arena sealed the deal for me.” Gregori praised as Yalin giggled gleefully at the praise.
"Loreiris," Yalin supplied.
"Loreiris Amaharas? The Saharan Viper?" You asked, knowing that name well as your brothers also inclined their ears to hear that name.
"Yes, the very one." Yalin Confirmed.
"That's my grandmother on my mother’s side." You revealed before your brothers confirmed that.
"Is it? Oh I didn't realize! How is she?" Yalin asked.
"Still teaching Kamoba. She is a master, I have seen her take on teams of 15 all by herself, she’s usually only armed with a boomerang, a bow and a sword, the fastest round in the records was won by her, less than three minutes." Axal proudly informed them.
"Oh there's no way I'd win a match against her now then." Yalin giggled.
“And Audra is her greatest pupil yet.” Axal praised.
“Really? Oh I knew there was a reason I instantly loved you.” Yalin cooed to you proudly as you blushed bashfully, knowing that in England, women were rather forbidden from taking up the martial arts as you worried about Demsey being put off by such a thing since he was very proper.
But on the contrary, Demsey was now fantasizing about you in full armor swinging a flaming sword and suddenly every fantasy with a battle maiden in his own orcish culture was becoming fulfilled, all he needed was to put your face in his mind’s eye and he was ready to just fall to your feet and propose. However highly improper that would be.
“I have not held a sword in two years, I don’t think my skills have kept that well.” You allowed.
“Oh it’s like riding a griffin, you never really forget.” Yalin waived off.
“And of course it’s always fun to gamble on the teams. I made Yalin’s bride price for the bet I made on her, really I went with my brother to the stables for him to pick out his queen among the favorites and being the third younger brother to the future king, they only allowed me to have the generalley bride price, which the generalley brides are fine but I was on the hunt for extraordinary and low and behold here is Yalin, with her sisters, all of which were in the imbraturi class which is the imperial class that usually only reserved for emperors and kings and the like, which is of course Yalin was in that one so I bet the whole sum on her since she was already set to duel with the Saharan Viper that if she won, and I won the bet, that I would use those winnings to buy her outright, which is of course what happened and betting on you my dear has always been my best investment of my life and one that I will always repeat.” Gregori praised as you sat there in adoration because clearly they loved each other dearly, Gregori and Yalin were proof that the system could lead to happiness and satisfaction in everything while Ramsey felt ill as he looked at you. Because he couldn’t and didn’t feel the same about you. You were a last resort, his last chance at saving grace and you kept yourself withdrawn from him while Axal on the other hand was threatening to unnerve him completely. The way Axal was dressed, had him wanting to rip his clothes off and find the source of that cologne with his mouth into every crook and cranny on Axal and really show Axal not to start anything he wasn’t ready and willing to finish as Ramsey’s touch had only stroked up Axal’s thigh to try to pay back to Axal what Axal was currently doing to him and to feel the thick, heavy bulge along his thigh, made him weak and his pucker was practically winking in anticipation.
“Oh stop. How do you know I didn’t beg Loreiris to lose on purpose to me just so that you could take me home? I was and still am madly in love with you, I was desperate to leave with you one way or another.” Yalin waived off bashfully.
“Because such a thing is one against the rules and would have resulted in an automatic forfeit and two against the code of honor. I’m sure your love for him gave you the fuel and all the power you needed to win.” Axal flattered which got Yalin to preen proudly.
“Well I suppose you’re right, of course one can’t forget the verbal component because while you’re fighting each other with flaming swords, you’re also supposed to be battling wits and trash talk and insult each other in the most artful of ways of course, all while set to music so that your words and actions compliment everything else. There is no greater spectacle than a Kamoba battle, but it will take a few days to prepare such an arena.” Yalin said.
“So wait, it’s capture the flag, but with fencing, but the swords are on fire, while on an obstacle course and the “flags” are fireworks that you have to set off, all while battling with wits all set to music?” Demsey asked as he counted each component on a finger and almost running out of fingers.
“Also while wearing another full body leather suit to save you from the flames but each person or each team rather, depending on what kind of flame oil is used, will leave a mark. So it’s usually black versus white. So one side will wear black leather, the other white. But whenever you get struck, there will be a mark, and depending on the kind of oil and the kind of pigment used, you could get any number of colors marked on you and depending on where you get those marks, it’s points. And usually when playing in teams, there will usually be an archer on either side which sends burning arrows at you from across the arena.” You informed him.
“My head is spinning just thinking about it, how in the world do you manage it all? I’m overwhelmed just thinking about it, I can’t imagine how overwhelmed I would be trying to play.” Demsey confessed which you found comforting that he would be so modest and humble in his own abilities.
“Well that’s why it’s the Dorierran national sport and why the Dorierran army has never seen a complete defeat, because if the games are that intense, imagine how intense we would be on the battlefield or much less any other place where performance is key.” Axal practically purred as you blushed at Axal’s implication because you could also see Axal practically clawing up Ramsey’s leg as he said it and Ramsey blushed and squirmed ever so slightly and you wanted to shake your head by how hard and fast Axal was onslaughting Ramsey and appreciated that Demsey was much more subtle and appreciated subtlety in turn. You had come to realize and appreciate how perhaps Lady Kate Whiteale was maybe a little to forward, a little too direct and insistent. Men did like to chase, not necessarily liked to be chased. But Ramsey was surprising you because he was giving Axal that look. That look that said ‘keep it up and I promise you, I’ll torture you with bliss’ look and Axal was giving him an equally heated look.
In your early stable days, you would have discerned that Ramsey would have wanted such an approach and two years ago, you wouldn’t have hesitated in giving it to him, hell even a full year ago, you would have been desperate to do so. But now, you were happy to be more reserved, more thoughtful, more watchful and discerning.
“Really?” Demsey asked in surprise.
“Oh yes. There was only a handful of times the Dorierran armies were somewhat defeated on the battlefield, defending Dorierra and it’s walls but when they met the walls, the whole country can be boobytrapped and it’s the Dorierran women who defeated those armies that had tried to overcome the soldier men and the walls in turn. Moura men can rise and fall, but it’s the women who are the backbone of society and run the country as well as they do. Dorierra is very much a matriarchal society. Whereas here it’s clearly patriarchal. There is no soldier, warrior, gladiator alike more devastating than a moura mother protecting her child.” Axal explained.
“Well, yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Demsey had to agree.
After dinner, Axal and Ramsey practically disappeared while the rest of you retired to the gardens to get an evening stroll in, where Axal and Ramsey’s absence didn’t appear to be noticed by anyone before you asked Amara to go with you to tour the gardens and chose a far corner near the front door where you noticed a discrete carriage was pulled up before you noticed Axal and Ramsey depart from the house, both of them wearing rather unremarkable clothes in the English style as you realized that Axal must be wearing Ramsey’s English clothes because Axal didn’t have any English clothes to speak of, so that they would blend in with any crowd on a busy street, both of them practically giggling giddily as you asked Amara to hang back while Ramsey looked almost like a deer caught in the headlights when he noticed you approaching as his cheeks flushed cherry before Axal said something to him and Ramsey got in the carriage so that Axal left his side to meet you half way.
“Where are you to off to?” You asked Axal as Ramsey was getting anxious as Axal left his side to join yours while Amara stood back as well, to give you and your brother privacy.
“To the Red Velvet Rope to meet Audrey myself.” Axal grinned.
“Oh, well in that case, have fun, actually…” You paused.
“I have a susceptibility there, you must protect me in this respect, I need to know how much that could affect me.” You murmured to him, with a pleading look.
“Of course, anything, what’s his name?” Axal asked.
“Demsey Draft, he looks and sounds almost exactly like Duke Demsey Voyambi, you can’t miss him. But oh is he exquisite, but in English society, it’s technically forbidden.” You praised.
“Consider it done,” Axal kissed your cheeks and winked and left your side to rejoin Ramsey as you did the same with Amara.
“Where are they off to?” Amara asked.
“Oh they’re going out, Axal wanted to see London and Ramsey’s giving him a mini tour apparently, I asked Axal to try to get to know the real Ramsey for me. Because surely with four brothers, who they are when they are with friends or doing whatever it is they do in gentlemen’s clubs is not who they tend to be when they’re around their families.” You explained.
“Of course. You want to see what Ramsey is really like, because you do not think that the person he shows you is the real him?” Amara surmised.
“Exactly. Men especially in English society seem to have a different facet of themselves, one for business, one for socializing, one for family, one for friends. Just like we do I suppose. But I must confess that I pulled you aside for something rather serious. I have so few friends and even fewer people I trust to have their confidence and discretion.” You began.
“Please, count me as one of them, what do you need?” Amara asked. Eager to do whatever she could to help.
“In only a day or two, my family is coming here. And while I’m happy to see them, I don’t trust that the reason for their visit is to purely reunite with me. I have reason to believe that they’ve been invited to come to pressure me and coerce me into accepting a possible proposal from the Dauphin. And I want and need you to know right now, that I will not willingly accept such a thing. We are mismatched and the Dauphin and this castle, while a loving home for Ramsey, would be a gilded cage for me. You see how Yalin and Gregori love each other unconditionally, and I know Ramsey wishes for the same for himself. But I do not care for Ramsey, I have no attraction to him or desire for him, let alone any appetite for him, even if he were the Crown Prince of England, it would not sway me to either have, or find or make up any kind of attraction or affection for him, and I can not bear to enter into another loveless marriage. Broadcove was my prison while I was there. And I do not wish for any other place, even a palace such as this to be my next one. I would rather be penniless and living in a hut on a mountain top but happily married rather than be a Dauphine of Windsor but have no respect for myself or love in my life.” You professed.
“Of course. I have far too many friends who have done nothing but find the richest suitor so that they can live a comfortable life, but there is no peace, or kindness or affection in their comfortable homes. Very few are lucky enough to find love and material comfort, and many have to choose one over the other.” Amara sympathized.
“So if I need to flee from a possible marriage to Ramsey, would you help me?” You asked.
“I would, in a heartbeat. Tell me what you need me to do and I’ll do it. I’d even consider going with you if Kate Whiteale’s brother John, who I loathe almost as much as I do Kate were to try to insist on his own addresses to me. I know this sounds crazy but if Storren were to ask me to follow him back to Dorierra, I would probably do it.” Amara confessed.
“Except if you do that, you’d be going to Dorierra as a servant to another moura woman. You could be anything from a laundress, to a cook to a farmer or...any number of things. Because Storren is only a chef in the kitchens back in Dorierra.” You tried to gently caution her.
“I would rather farm vegetables and be happy than be a duchess and unhappy.” Amara insisted herself.
“I’m happy we agree then. Your brother Demsey has offered to assist me if such a measure needs to be taken. But I can not be seen going to his room, nor he- mine without a benign reason, even if it is to keep anything there that would indicate that I would flee, I can’t keep such things in my room, or in the rooms of my siblings. Because they will tell my parents who then will tell Gregori and Yalin, much less the stables or the royal family, but you can not say anything to Storren, because he would most likely report it to Bennie who I wouldn’t put it past her to use that against me and against your family because moura brothers are sadly information pumps for their sisters, as you will see that Axal is for me with Ramsey and I don’t want you to suffer from knowing this and if you told Storren, or anyone else, I would be done for. Ramsey already is trying to entangle my griffin Heavencrest with Charlico and is having them stall together so they will become a true mated pair. If I were to try to fly her away, Charlico would either alarm the stable that Heavencrest was leaving or try to leave with us and I would be seen as stealing Charlico and a bounty would be put on my head and Charlico’s price would skyrocket, so much so that there would be no way for me to pay it, with anything other than my marriage hand or my life. I am trying to talk Axal into getting Ramsey to sell me Charlico so that if I need to flee, I can flee with both of them. But I don’t think Ramsey, let alone Gregori and Yalin would agree to it because it’s just another tie for them to keep me here. But I would rather deal with a heartbroken Heavencrest rather than being in another gilded cage.” You murmured.
“I understand, so how can I help exactly?” Amara asked.
“No one would think anything if I gifted you a trunk full of “gifts”, and no one would think twice about Demsey going to your room and simply moving those “gifts” or putting things from your room to his and if I disguise my fleeing things in a trunk of other gifts, that your brother would then move to his room and no one would think anything of Demsey moving things to the stables, because he is a gentleman and a guest and if he wanted to go for an evening ride, no one would stop him, whereas I would never get even that far without alarming at least the servants.” You proposed.
“Oh of course.” Amara readily agreed.
“And your brother has also offered that if I need to flee, if I send word to him of where I’ve ended up, he’s offered to send me the rest of my belongings. But legally giving him access to any of that is nigh impossible, that is why I want to name you my heir and successor, should I have to flee, I would formally give up all ownership to everything. But I can name you my heir as close friend and confidant. And it would be accepted by the English courts since you are a duchess and of nobility and once you have ownership of my property, can I trust you to return it to me wherever I find myself? Could I count on you for this?” You asked her.
“Absolutely, what do I need to sign?” Amara asked.
“I will write something up tonight and I will give you a trunk full of gifts as well for doing this huge favor for me. But the second trunk will be for my possible fleeing.” You proposed before you hugged each other.
“I wish I was as brave as you, willing to give up a Dauphin, knowing you would be wealthy but unhappy.” Amara murmured.
“And I wish I was like you, knowing what you want immediately upon being introduced to it and not holding back from trying to obtain it.” You offered.
“However, before you decide to follow Storren back to Dorierra, has he explained to you how Dorierra works? And why Dorierra is called ‘The Stables’?” You asked her.
“Uh, not, not really. We haven’t discussed anything like that yet.” Amara confessed.
“Forgive me for being forward, but do you know how sex, conception and thus babies, are made?” You asked.
“Of course I do, my mother has instructed me about such things.” Amara assured you.
“Well then you’re the first non married Englishwoman I’ve met who knows such things then. But there is more you need to know then. Before you get too attached to Storren, you should know that Dorierra has the name- The Stables- for a reason. Every moura wife who lives in Dorierra, is a broodmare, and every moura man is a stud. I’m sure you’ve noticed how it is only Axal and myself that look like true siblings, and that’s because Rian and Zax are only my half brothers. While my parents are married, it is the stables who dictates who has sex with you on any given moment of any given day and the stables has the business of conceiving down to a flawless science, to the point that women know they are pregnant within five days of missing the first day of their courses and they can pinpoint exactly what day and probably the time of conception because it’s all recorded.” You began.
“Every month, the conceive week is spent having sex at least three to five times a day, once upon first waking up and then after every meal and then again right before sleep, where if your husband is not who the stud is, he is removed from the house and sent to sleep somewhere else, usually across the country so there is no chance that his own seed will take root that month, and it is repeated each month and depending on how valuable the genetics that are passed down to possible offspring, either the whole week is spent with the intended stud or the week can be seperated by halves, thirds or fifths, where you have five different studs having sex with you at least five times a day for a week, most moura women pray for pregnancy so that their cunnies don’t get rubbed raw by such vigorous activities, the best studs can cum within a minute so that the woman doesn’t have to endure too much but usually the female orgasm is reserved for the last sex session before bed to promote better sleep for her.” You explained as Amara’s eyebrows practically went up into her hair line in surprise.
“Only when a moura mother is pregnant, is she allowed to enjoy only her husband for the duration of the pregnancy but while she is pregnant and no longer subject to spending her days and nights with others, her husband is still a stud and he will still spend most days and nights either working secularly for the stables or sexually for the stables, so prepare yourself that because you would be a forign wife and therefore, not subject to the stables way yourself and Storren could enjoy your own fidelity, Storren would never be able to give you the same. His genetics are too precious and the reason why moura men are rarely ever allowed to leave Dorierra is to preserve them for moura wives exclusively. Right now the stables are working on creating a pastel version paradise orcs and robin’s eggs orcs out of the current paradise orcs and Storren already has several children by several different ladies, it’s just in the culture there, but the only protection is that mouras are immune to sexually transmitted diseases, but I would fear for you because you have no such protection in your body, and Storren would have to use the very harshest soaps that are made to cleanse the male genatalia to keep from passing anything over to their wives and it’s always used on moura studs when their wives are pregnant to ensure the safety and health of the baby.” You warned her as she looked shocked and almost alarmed, if not a little gutted.
“It is why I wanted to leave Dorierra, because seeing my house father, because there is a distinction between house father and heir father, being sent away from the love of his life for a week every month when she was not pregnant was very distressing but it is just the way it is for moura mothers in Dorierra, and the entire country would collapse because Dorierra needs all the moura brides it can create to sell on the world market like any other broodmare or heffer at an auction.” You furthered as she seemed to take that into account.
“But it’s not like moura brides fare much better. Depending on where you end up, you could be in a harem, sharing a sultan or a shah or sheik with hundreds or maybe even a thousand other women. But in Europa, even a queen rarely has a king all to herself, usually there will always be other mistresses but having to share him with a handful is better than sharing your husband with tens or hundreds of thousands of others at Dorierra. It’s why my own desire for my complete fidelity and the complete fidelity in a mate makes no sense, not to any moura or any other from Dorierra, even here in England, there are whorehouses, and courtesans and mistresses a plenty. But it is why I agreed to marry Edward, because never in his life had he ever had a mistress and he never once used a whorehouse. But moving forward, I don’t know if I could expect the same for anyone else, but my mother blames that on all the fairytales I’m so fond of as a child because a moura- there is supposed to be little to no emotional attachment between lovers, it’s all supposed to be business, but I don’t have the heart or the stomach for such business. I was crushed when I was a little girl and realized why all these men who were not my house father were coming to see my mother and why I didn’t look anything like my house father. And my hier father is one of the most popular studs in Dorierra, he can cum in about two to three pumps and while he’s a charmer and a flatterer and I like to believe that he has some kind of fatherly affection for me, he was more proud of the high bride price I brought in rather than anything else. He has thousands of children and not once has he tried to address me by my name, it’s always pet names, like dearest or darling or sweetheart. Dorierra is probably oversaturated by his genetics, but one can’t argue with these results.” You explained as you looked at the gold moura feather marks on your arms pointedly as Amara did the same, looking at them in a whole new light now.
“But Demsey has never used a whorehouse, at least to my knowledge, he is above such things as is Tzane, Sierge on the other hand, not so much. And my father would never do my mother the dishonor of having any other than her in their marriage bed, while it is true that in the past, orcs were seen to be very promiscuous, now in modern times, we’ve thankfully left that behind, at least in polite society.” Amara insisted.
“Well, keep it to yourself, but that’s probably why I prefer Demsey to Ramsey then.” You hinted which made her happy but you could tell that your word of warning had shaken her a bit.
“I don’t wish to scare you off of Storren, I really don’t, he’s perfectly wonderful and he would treat his future wife like she was a goddess and he’s capable of such things, house wives and house husbands have emotional fidelity, and his figurative heart would be yours and only yours for life should that relationship go in that direction but I feel you should know the whole truth about Dorierra and its culture, if you ever want to make it your home.” You felt compelled to try to clarify.
“Oh, don’t apologize, I thank you very much for telling me. In polite society, we don’t really talk about such things and when I hear about Dorierra referred to as ‘the stables’ I think most of us didn’t have an inkling that it was like that for the whole country, just the moura bride part but it seems the whole country is consumed by it. But as a friend, if you hadn’t told me, I think it would be in a rude awakening if I were to follow him home and get hit with that out of nowhere because Storren hasn’t even hinted at such things, should I tell my sisters about it?” Amara asked.
“If you feel there is a chance for them to form any kind of serious attachment, yes. I think such things are usually assumed. Because native Dorierrans, assume everyone else knows about it because Dorierra has that title, that it’s already implied and I think most don’t realize it’s the whole country, not just a tiny part of it.” You advised.
“But please don’t tell Demsey, or any of my other brothers, or especially my parents. Brothers can be so overprotective, at least English ones, they would demand that we stop all comradery or friendly conversation between us because they are all lovely and we’re just now becoming acquainted and barely even friends and I would hate for this to come between our friendship just because it’s a very stark distinction between cultures and Dauphin and Dauphine did say to keep an open mind. But I fear they would yank us away from them and they would do that just in an effort to protect us but it would be a kneejerk- overreaction, because Dorierran culture would most likely be seen as obscene by them.” Amara pleaded with you.
“Of course, I would think your brothers probably already assume the truth. English women, not so much and I would hate for any of your siblings, male or female alike to be deceived by ignorance.” You reasoned.
“Precisely.” Amara nodded.
“Come, you can help me pack for an escape now if you wish and pick out your presents yourself.” You offered her before the two of you went back into the house.
Meanwhile Benny was halfway through giving Sierge a blowjob, timing her strokes with every piece of dirt he offered on his brother.
“And..and uh, he...he’s used The Red Velvet Rope, it’s a moura whorehouse, at least twice now, he ahhh.” Sierge hissed lowly as he gritted his teeth in pleasure and gripped the armrests of the garden chair tucked neatly away inside the tall hedged with a vice like grip as the sweat of his brow beaded on his forehead with the strain not to make any other noises because every moan and keen he let loose, she stopped and pulled off and every time he stopped speaking she did the same and it was the most gloriously frustrating thing he’d ever endured, to be tortured by pleasure like this and his own pleasure chased away any guilt he had about telling Demsey’s secrets.
“He has gone there twice since he met Audra on the train a few weeks ago, he went there in search of a double for her, because he has been attracted to her since he laid eyes on her.” Sierge managed as Bennie masterfully stroked and fondled his testicles through his ballsack while her nose was buried into the thick forest of hair at the base of his dick as her breath in that area practically alighted with delight since even there, he was sweating.
“And. oh, oh ah, and, um, he found her, someone who looks remarkably like her there, according to him, even her voice was similar enough to induce a fantasy that he was fucking the real Audra and she even has the same nickname as Audra, only her name is Audra Draft,” Sierge panted as his butt cheeks were clenched so tight as he felt like she was sucking his soul out through his dick.
“And have you met her?” Bennie quickly asked before she got back to task.
“No, I’ve, oh, ah, I’ve, gods, I’ve tried, but she’s probably booked solid, the only one close there is an Audrey Rogers who works there, but she’s brunette and married to a minotaur that works there, he goes by “Draft” though. But he’s either not related or not affiliated with Audra Draft. Unless the Draft is an assumed name. Which is possible.” Sierge managed before Bennie decided that he had given her enough, for now before she doubled her efforts and in two minutes flat, he was emptying his extra large load down her throat as his eyes were screwed shut so he didn’t see how Bennie was rolling her eyes and almost glaring resentfully at his manhood for just the practically incessant pumping, it was practically a torrent of cum. He was such a sweaty, hairy thing and just like any other man she had ever manipulated in her life. Claiming to be a “gentleman” but when push came shove or kiss to suck rather, just like all the others, willing to sell out his own family for his own pleasure. No more honor than the average man and nothing remarkable at all in her opinion. And he was barely able to hold out for several minutes and that was her going torturously slow for the sake of pumping information, if she had gotten right to it and kept at it, he wouldn’t last two minutes. He wouldn’t really know how to please a woman at all, all he had ever wanted was his own needs and desires sated, no matter the expense. Typical. But at least she was getting somewhere with him. Calla was moving at a snail's pace and practically twitterpated with Tzane, it was like she was a lovesick school girl still, which didn’t make sense because they were the same age, had the same training, either that or Calla was playing ‘perfectly innocent’ to get his guard down. But still, not the real moura agent she was supposed to be, and not the real moura agent Bennie was.
“Is there any chance that the woman he met there was the real Sultana Audravienne?” Bennie asked once she popped off and appraised her work. Sierge was a sweaty, indisposed mess and she gauged that it would take him no less than half an hour to come back into himself. She practically sucked the soul from him. One of her easiest blows yet before she got up and straightened up.
“Not a chance in hell. No lady worth any kind of nobility would be caught dead in a whorehouse. Plus she’s been in mourning for count Edward Morrigan, the Morrigans would bury her alive if she ever did anything to tarnish the “Morrigan family honor”. And the way Demsey and Amara carry on, they practically tried already.” Sierge said as he managed to get set straight but his whole body felt spent and tired while his head was in those blessed clouds, he was in pure ecstasy, that was the greatest blow of his life.
Bennie giggled.
“Why is that so funny?”
“Audravienne? The Saharan Viper’s greatest protege to date, who if she had stayed in the stables would have been named The Golden Saharan Viper and been the top competitor in the world of Kamoba which is if ballet met the bloodiest, fiercest war ever who is as lethal as she is beautiful, the top bride in all of the Dorierran stables, the top fighter and performer in the stables, who’s more physically fit than any racehorse, who had perfect marks in almost every single category they test for including agentry which means if she wanted to be a damn spy, she could be, who is the gold standard still in the stables, being a victim of anyone? No. Audravienne is the most lethal, devastating and the epitome of the perfect moura bride. She is no victim to anyone, not unless she got way too soft way too fast. She had the potential to bring down empires. And you’re telling me, an aged couple from England? With no royal ties, got the better hand of her? No. Impossible. You know why? Because Audravienne, physically, has rarely ever seen defeat physically and if they tried to abuse her physically she could kill everyone in the house, maids and all and make it look like the plague, if they tried to poison her even, she is immune to every disease and every poison in the world, she’s a master at poisons even. You could line all of the poisons up in the world in shot glasses and she’d shoot them all like whiskey and she’d be able to tell you which was which and tell you exactly how you managed to get all of them and while she’d be drunk off her ass by the end of it she would do it perfectly without a single mistake. Audravienne’s other grandmother, The Jade Empress, who held the last Sultanate state in her iron grip, practically wrote the book on how to manipulate everyone around you to do your bidding with pleasure and do it with the thinking that it was their own idea to begin with and Audravienne excelled at it. She is no one’s victim. Now, would I put it past her to play the victim to your brother if he’s the savior type, is he?” Bennie asked as she sat down on the bench next to him.
“He is. Painfully so.” Sierge realized.
“Then there you go. She’s been working him for weeks, playing the damsel in distress type and getting thirty thousand pounds a year to do it, she’s already confided in me that she has blackmail on the Morrigans and that’s why they’re paying her double what Edward awarded her in his will, she may have even played a helpless damsel to them and let her believe that they can hurt her. But if I’m sure about anything, is that Demsey may only see what Audra lets him see. But now that you know the truth, watch them, if his attachment to her is dangerous in your opinion, you can make him see the facts and the light now won’t you? When we get a proper Kamoba battle, everyone will see Audra’s true colors everyone always does with Komoba. And if your brother Demsey is the proper English gentleman type, he should be put off because no gentleman wants to marry an agent and no orc wants to marry a warrior greater than himself in a world where such things are shunned and frowned upon. And as far as I can tell, then it’ll be done, Demsey will lose interest, Audra will come to her senses, go to Ramsey and you and I can continue naturally then won’t we?” Bennie offered. “As, natural as can be.” Sierge grinned triumphantly.
“Well if you think of anything else “useful” it will be rewarded even more so than this.” Bennie winked as Sierge looked like he was about to explode from delight and lust.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure to be seen somewhere else, wouldn’t want to infringe upon your honor or mine.” Bennie cooed before she got up and strutted away.
“And?” Yalin and Gregori asked as Bennie turned the corner.
“Well Demsey is rather boring, but he still has the fatal flaw every man seems to have, and once Audra becomes aware of it, she’ll come to and see sense. Nothing to worry about and nothing too complicated. No damage to be undone there. Just a passing fancy and Sierge will now be a barrier on Demsey’s end.” Bennie reported.
“Excellent.” Gregori praised.
“You have something.” Yalin gestured to her chin before Bennie wiped at her chin to see a drop of cum had escaped the corner of her mouth, she had thought she had gotten it before but this one was missed.
“Thank you, good night, I have a thread I need to tie.” Bennie excused herself from their presence.
“It’s a shame she’s an orc. If she was anything else, Ramsey should be going after her, she is of the right mind.” Gregori offered to Yalin.
“It’s because she’s an orc that she’s gotten that far with the Voyambis. Besides, let Ramsey have his fun for now with Axal, once we have that Komoba battle, Ramsey will see the light and come to his senses too. Demsey will be disenfranchised, Audra’s little play of damsel in distress will be over and things will go as they need to.” Yalin allowed as they watched Bennie’s frame shrink and vanish into the gardens.
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