#waning crescent hotel | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ghostradiodylan · 2 months

Note

So, it's one year after the night at Hacketts Quarry. And everyone's kind of freaking out because, that's what trauma does to you. So basically what would everyone do that night?

Also, thank you for keeping this fandom alive

Ooh this is a fun ask!

Sorry this took so long! I had to chew on it for a bit and then I forgot it in my drafts!

Okay, so it's August 22nd 2022. The moon is cooperating by not being full (it's a waning crescent, to be precise). It's also a Monday and it could be the first day of college/university for anyone going, but let's imagine they all go back a little later since that seems to be the case in the game itself.

We'll imagine everyone survived because otherwise there are fewer of them to talk about and everyone is way sadder. I think one thing they're definitely not doing is going back to Hackett's Quarry in some kind of misguided Until Dawn style return to the scene of the trauma trip. Even if the werewolves are gone, there's still a ghost out there and that's how horror movie sequels get made!

They might do a quick zoom or hit up the group text just to check in, but I don't think they'd necessarily all get together. It would be a little intense for an anniversary, I think.

Max & Laura are endgame, so obviously they're still together, and I'd like to imagine they'd plan a little getaway for themselves (preferably one where Max doesn't have to drive). They'd want it to be something completely unlike the woodsy setting they spent the night in last year. Maybe they'd book a nice hotel for a long weekend not too far from home, just to have a break. Or maybe they'd do something big like take an Alaskan cruise. (Can they afford that as two grad school aged students whose lives just got turned upside down a year ago? Probably not, but it's a nice idea! Maybe if there was a victim's compensation fund or they sold their story to Netflix...) Water all around means zero werewolves! Max will keep comparing their accommodations with those of the North Kill jail, as he will do on every vacation now. ("Look honey, the toilet's in its own room and not an open concept bathroom like the last place we stayed!")

Emma talks about how she wanted to go to the spa after camp in one variation of her scene in the lodge basement, so maybe she'd have a nice pampering session for herself. Mani/pedi, facial treatment, massage, then chilling at home in a fluffy robe and slippers. Kat @itscomingupaces headcanoned Emma acquiring a tiny dog postcanon, which I love, so she probably has a tiny dog in her lap too. Maybe she'd do a brief vlog to reflect on her progress over the course of the year, assuming her viewers have a general idea that something traumatic happened to her and it wasn't all covered up. She'd throw on a comfort movie like Tangled or Singin' in the Rain and get her beauty sleep.

Nick would probably like to forget this anniversary, but I doubt he'd be so lucky in just a year. He has a lot of guilt about the way he treated Abi, though he wasn't really in control at the time. He'd probably try to do something that made him feel good about himself, like volunteer work. I could see him working on a Habitat for Humanity house or walking dogs at an animal shelter. He's almost certainly apologized profusely already, but if he's living anywhere close to Abi, he might offer to take her to dinner. If not, maybe it would be a good time to send her a card. Or an email.

Abi has definitely channeled some of her trauma into her art, so she might take the day to work on a new piece, maybe something a little less based in realism and a little more based in emotion. Maybe she'd incorporate some mixed media or sculpture into it. I go back and forth about shipping her with Emma or with Nick (or neither, or both) but maybe she'd get a manicure with Emma if she's not getting dinner with Nick (she wouldn't be up for the full spa day, though, that's just too much of strangers touching her and talking to her). Or maybe she'd do both, though that would be a lot of doing for our little introvert!

Jacob & Kaitlyn have hopefully patched up any bad feelings stemming from Jacob sabotaging the van because as childhood friends, I think they'd want to help each other when difficult anniversaries like this one come up. I forget who originally suggested it but I now strongly believe the headcanon that they are longtime karaoke buddies and they probably go get a private karaoke room and scream-sing away their angst while getting really embarrassingly drunk. It's fine, they'll get an Uber back to Kaitlyn's and eat an entire pizza later.

Ryan would want to go pay his respects to Chris, Kaylee, and Caleb Hackett. He has very complicated feelings about the family and their role in everyone's nightmare a year ago, but he still has affection for them and feels a duty to remember them as they were when they weren't transforming into flesh-eating monsters. I think he'd want to go visit their gravesites back in North Kill, take them some flowers, and clean off the headstones if the other Hacketts aren't around to do it. I'd like to imagine that he and Dylan would have figured their shit out by then, but whether they're a couple or not I think they'd definitely be in touch and Dylan would probably offer to drive Ryan out there and keep him company if Ryan would let him (if they still haven't gotten together, they probably have some things to talk about).

Dylan picks up some food on his way home, takes an edible, curls up with his cat, and watches the original 80's version of Cosmos with Carl Sagan. It's got a retro futuristic vibe that's very comforting. Some people get anxiety thinking about the vastness of space, but Dylan finds it oddly soothing to think that his problems are actually very small in the grand scheme of things in an ever-expending universe. Ryan can come too, if he wants (he probably does).

18 notes · View notes

sister-cna-reader · 3 months

Note

Imagine older Bill has a protocol for the family for when Becky has her period. And has already made plans when their daughters reach woman hood too.

*cough* Anon you don't know the plot bunnies you've caused.

Muscle💪 and Beauty💅 Family my beloved💕

A resident of Berlint had to remember: An Imperial Scholar had to be well rounded, and not just a one trick pony.

At first glance, Imperial Scholar Watkins was merely an athlete, all of his accolades sports based and not a light bulb between those bespectaled eyes.

But the students knew better. Bill Watkins was both brawn and brains. One of the most mathematically inclined of their grade band, his Stellas divided between athletics and his top placements in math.

Becky Blackbell knew Bill even better than that. She knew he was a straightforward type of guy, earnest, honest, respectful (it took a few years to get on a first name basis from him) and above all: A massive nerd.

Everyone had their own niche, special interest, passion -whatever you wanted to call it.

Anya’s was Classical Language and decoding.

Becky’s was television and movie production.

And Bill’s was pattern recognition. His grand project for Eden was disproving the connection between discipline spikes and the Full Moon. He was 3 years deep into it, and still had a year to go, his methodical data collecting now reduced to a mere 20 minutes twice a week.

He was getting bored with it and Bill craved the intellectual stimulation.

Then they had biology class on the reproductive system.

Eden was disciplined and detached the way they presented the lectures, dry as field rations and so detailed that they were more stressed about the tests surrounding it over the impact on their social lives.

It was complicated.

And Bill loved every moment of it. The way hormones peaked and waned, cyclical in nature by design or by fluke. It spoke to his number bent mind. He absorbed the information like a sponge and was more then happy to volunteer his time to tutor on the subject.

The girls in his hall were just grateful this translated into their everyday life by his readiness with discreet period supplies in his sports duffel at their disposal if they were ever in need. Pads, tampons, and even some individual chocolates were in their hands with a mere code phrase.

Becky had mostly forgotten about this, a mere quirk of their school days she had dismissed as a passing fancy. And as they were in two different halls, she never quite understood the impact Bill had on Wald Hall’s female expectations for their future partners.

But then she found the calender in his office when they were dating.

It was a notebook agenda flipped open to the previous month, the moon stages denoted in symbols and a rainbow of other symbols in red, green, blue, and purple scattered throughout the boxes.

She found a Saturday, one they had gone out to a date on. The moon was crescent, accompanying it was a red heart, a smiley face with a dash on either side, and a blue X.

Becky recalled the night, she’d been in a good mood, talking his ear off about the production she was on and they’d had a wildly passionate night in a nearby hotel.

The next Saturday the moon was nearly full, and they had another date, but he’d cut the night short- citing a stomach ache. The Red Heart had an X through it and a blue O.

She looked at the date of their most recent outing, and the Heart was without an X again but the Blue mark was now a question mark.

What in the world was he tracking?

“I’m ready if you are.” Bill’s voice said from the doorway, startling Becky something fierce as once again his silent steps and uncanny stealthiness caught her red handed.

His eyes flickered to the notebook calender and his cheeks turned a bright red.

“What is this?” She asked lightly, a giggle coming from her throat.

“You weren’t supposed to see it.” was his only answer.

“... Were you tracking our dates?” she rallied, keeping her tone gentle- if not humorous.

The broad statured man shuffled on his feet, twisting his fingers together in embarrassment. “Among other things…” he mumbled.

“Like what?”

At that he covered his face with both hands and she knew exactly what he was keeping track of.

“Did you bail on that date because you thought I was on my period?” she stabbed, if only to get him to confirm. “Because I wasn’t you kn-”

He let out a strangled groan and shook his head. “Opposite actually. I think.”

This made Becky’s face flare into a blush. “Bill!”

“I didn’t mean to!” He almost wailed, mortified and rattling his defense, “It was just an idle thing when I was bored but then I got interested in it! I didn’t mean any harm by it! Promise!”

He took a deep breath, and she could only look on in fondness as his words flowed on.

“I just wanted to be sure you were comfortable, and we hadn’t talked about birth control. I didn’t have any protection on me that night and I didn’t want you to be disappointed- so I bailed. Then I thought it’d be a great idea to keep tracking it just in case so I’d be prepared and you must think I’m the worst…”

Oh my giant nerd. She wrapped her arms around his waist and let her head drop against his chest. “You’re not going to sell my health information to creeps are you?”

She could feel the indignation in the way his ribs expanded with a gasp. He clutched her close, his large hands hot against her back. “I’d never do that to you.” he growled.

“Are you tracking anyone else’s?”

“No!”

“How long have you been doing this?” She couldn’t help but ask.

He hugged her tighter, “Only two months.”

Bill kissed the top of her head and softened a little. “You get so tired during your periods, and I just wanted to be helpful and not push you or do something stupid.”

“So you’re tracking my period.”

“Yes”

She couldn’t stay mad at him for very long- at least for something so odd. “I don’t even bother to track my period so closely.”

“It’s not like I have reliable data from two months anyway,” he mumbled, embarrassment still evident in his tone. “I can toss it.”

“Alright Smarty Pants, I’ll let you know when it starts getting creepy.” Becky pulled herself up and gave him a kiss on the lips. “So are we good for this date now?”

The next lady who became a beneficiary from Bill’s ultra prepared personality was not Anya - for she had long been a recipient of supplies and food since childhood, nor was it his daughters- they were still too young.

It was his oldest son’s study partner, Victoria.

No one could blame her for asking which drawer in the spacious bathroom had the feminine supplies. It was bound to happen eventually for a young lady to need the stash. Upholstery could be washed and the uniform was black, so really it was just a mortifying experience- not world ending.

Wanting to be sure he wouldn’t motify her any more, Robert seeked out help while she was in the power room.

But Lily was adamant that her older brother should’ve been more of a gentleman and initiate Protocol Luna.

The Protocol that had been in rotation since before any of them were born.

“Lily, can you help Victoria find something to wear?” Robert wheedled to his baby sister.

Lily, in true little sister fashion crossed her arms and gave her best harumph. “She’s your girlfriend. You ask Mom for clothes she can borrow.”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” he hissed. “We’re just studying for finals! She won’t look me in the eye ever again if I bring it up!”

“If you don’t do it, I’ll tell Dad it’s a Code Luna.”

“You wouldn’t”

“I would.”

They stared each other- daring, neither wanting to back down. The Boys learned to never pull in their parents to their disagreements, having learned long ago that tattling would earn them burpees and enough laps to make them want to collapse.

The girls had recognized this behavior and turned it into the most nuclear option.

One- two- three heartbeats and Lily was out the door careening down the hall from her brother’s bedroom. Her speed overcame any difference between their heights as the little girl tore down to the study where their Father sat reading the paper.

With a mighty jump, she landed into his strong arms, crumpling the sport’s section in her haste.

“Daddy! Robert’s girlfriend has a Code Luna!” she panted.

Bill blinked and readjusted his glasses. “And why am I being told this?”

“You little gremlin-!” Robert panted, finally arriving- winded from his sprint. “She’s not- my - girlfriend!”

“A very serious accusation.” Bill nodded, eyeing his son with a smile. “Should I go help her myself?”

The thought of his giant, honest to a fault father talking to his tiny, timid classmate about bodily functions was the stuff of social nightmares. Victoria might actually short circuit from embarrassment.

(And never talk to him again)

“DAD!” Robert moaned in frustration. “That’s worse!”

Thunder cracked overhead, rattling the windows. The rain that had been pouring all day intensified.

Wrapping an arm around his daughter, the father of the house stood.

“If she isn’t taken care of by the time I get cookies in the oven, I’ll make you twice as embarassed. And I’ll tell your mother you’ve started dating without telling her.”

Lily smirked, curling up like a cat in her father’s arms. Got you.

“You’re all the worst!” the teen hissed with no real heat behind it.

A scant half hour later, Bill arrived with a plate of cookies. They were still warm from the oven, laden with dark chocolate chips and chewy oatmeal.

Robert could see the light behind Victoria’s eyes brighten as she marveled at the size of the treats. He grabbed one out of courtesy and pushed the plate towards her side of the coffee table.

“Have as many as you want.”

“Of course, she’ll have to stay the night!” Becky said later at the dinner table, feeding her youngest bites. “The rain is just awful, isn’t it dear?”

Bill nodded. “She’ll take the guest room with the adjoining bathroom of course.”

“Oh I’ve already imposed enough,” the meek guest said, looking tiny in both personality and stature amidst the Waktin’s brood. Her borrowed outfit from Becky looked good, but she held herself stiffly, afraid to stain the garments like she had her uniform.

Robert did his very best not to hang his head in mortification. “Don’t worry Vicky, there’s enough space for all of us plus the Desmonds.”

Victoria still sported a faint blush that had been present ever since she had arrived.

“So are you a tea or coffee person? Waffles or Pancakes? Do you have a milk intolerance?” Mrs. Watkins already had a writing pad out, jotting down everything she could think of for an overnight guest. “Of course, I’ll let you have the pick of some pajamas for tonight…”

“I’m so so so sorry for being such a hassle.”

Victoria had found him in the hall, blessedly empty of other family members. Robert hesitantly put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. It startled a “meep” out of her and he snatched it back.

He attempted to reassure her in another way. “If you were a hassle, Dad wouldn’t have offered for you to stay over. And, like- he’s such a stupidly prepared person! I don’t think anything you do will shock him.”

She fidgeted with her fingers and her lip quivered ever so slightly. “So they won’t mind if I come back?”

Sometimes he forgot that Victoria was a dorm kid and didn’t have much contact with her guardians. “I promise they won’t mind. They’ll welcome you back any time I’m sure.”

Just down the hall, around the corner, and out of sight of the teens, Becky stifled her squeal behind one hand and slapped Bill’s chest in excitement with the other.

16 notes · View notes

writer-k-pop · 3 years

Text

The Prince (y.j.h.) - Waning Crescent Hotel

Please read this (W.C.Hotel) if you this is the first post of this series that you see. Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of death, mentions of abuse Genre: Angst, Hotel Del Luna AU, Choose your own adventure, SVT x Fem! Reader Staff: Yong (Spirit General Manager) / Jiwoo (Human General Manager) / Soon Bok (Room Manager) / Mun Hee (Front Desk Receptionist) / Shin (Grim Reaper assigned to Waning Crescent) Word Count: Ending A - 4.6k / Ending B - 4.7k

W.C.Hotel | Seventeen Masterlist | Masterlists

Running through the halls, my heels click at the pace of a speed typer. My hands grip my bunched up dress tighter and I startle many guests in my hurry to the lobby.

"Woah, slow down there." Jiwoo manages to grab my arm and essentially stop me in my pursuit.

I turn and glare at him while trying to continue on my way. Jiwoo flinches slightly when my eyes land on him but his feet stay rooted to the ground like the tree in my garden.

"Let go of me." I tell him, not having any of his attitude.

"Relax." Jiwoo nearly rolls his eyes at me. "Yong's still showing him around."

I narrow my eyes into daggers at him for telling me to relax. Jeonghan's finally here and Jiwoo has the nerve to tell me to relax.

"Did you just tell me to relax?" I drop my dress skirt and rest my arms at my sides, dumbfounded.

Jiwoo nods, "Yeah, I did. Because you need too." He glances around the hall, "You're making our guests nervous."

I yank my arm from Jiwoo's grasp and roll my eyes. I continue on my way to the lobby, slower this time, and with Jiwoo next to me.

"Why is Yong showing him around? Where's Soon Bok?" I wonder.

"Soon Bok had to settle a dispute with a couple about their rooms." Jiwoo informs me as the hallway opens up to the lobby's second floor balcony overlooking the lobby floor.

"A dispute?" I look over at him as we reach the railing.

Jiwoo looks down at the guests. "Something about how they needed to be in the same room with each other. Something about how they're soul mates or something. I dunno, I left before I could understand it fully."

I shake my head and chuckle, "Ah, did they not hear the part where this is the last stop for their soul and tomorrow they'll have another life crowded their small brains?" I watch as some guests chat together while others hurry to the beach or the swimming pool.

Yong walks out of the outdoor beach entrance with Jeonghan following her. I take in a breath and hold it as he stuns me just like always. He's wearing black slacks and a white button up shirt. His hair looks freshly washed and fluffed down over his forehead. With hands clasped behind his back, he listens intently to everything Yong says and looks at the places she points out.

"He look the same?" Jiwoo asks and I can hear the smile on his lips.

I glance down at my hands gripping the railing tightly, then back at Jeonghan, where Soon Bok is bowing and introducing herself.

"His face does. Though when I knew him, he was a prince." I tell Jiwoo.

"Wow, like an actual prince?" Jiwoo leans his forearms on the rail, looking at Jeonghan, "Like crown and everything."

I give a single nod, "Crown and everything."

"No, honey, that was ridiculous the way she treated us!" A female voice shrieks behind us. "Where did she run away to? HAS ANYONE SEEN THE ROOM MANAGER?" She then full blown yells into the lobby.

I turn to the right and at the top of the stair case stands a very upset female and her very embarrassed husband.

"There! You! Room Manager lady!" The female spots Soon Bok standing with Jeonghan and Yong. The entire lobby goes silent and all eyes are on the female at the top of the stairs. When I look at Soon Bok, I can tell she's extremely annoyed and will probably explode soon. Her face has 'I will kick you' written all over it.

Jiwoo and I silently watch as the female races down the stairs with her husband in tow. In just a few seconds, she is standing in front of Soon Bok who's hands are clasped behind her back in an attempt to keep herself from wringing the female's neck.

"You have to treat us like guests!" The female says loud enough for the entire lobby to hear. All the guests in the lobby just stare at the outburst or nervously glance around.

"Like I mentioned before, we aren't allowed to room people together becaus-"

"Because of policy, blah, blah, blah." The female interrupts Soon Bok. "Screw your policies, we are the guests here and you have to cater to your guests. And we want to room together. Where's your manager?" She suddenly asks and I see Yong smile.

"I'm the general manager here." She says.

"Oh, good, fire this bitch. She's no good here. Doesn't even listen to the guests." The female points an accusing finger at Soon Bok.

"I understand, however, our Room Manager has told you the truth. We are not allowed to put guests together in a room." Yong says calmly, facing the fiery female with her steeled front.

"Now you won't listen to us?" The female shrieks, "What good are you here then?" She asks and my blood boils. It's one thing to treat one of my staff poorly, but it's a whole other thing to treat Yong poorly.

I push back from the railing, "And I'm the one making people nervous." I mutter to Jiwoo as I pass him on the way to the stairs. Jiwoo stifles a small laugh behind me.

Through the silence, my purposefully heavy steps echo off the stairs and catch the attention of everyone in the room.

Soon Bok looks at me and silently asks for help. The same look is in Yong's eyes as well though her's is harder to distinguish through her front. I avoid Jeonghan's face for fear of faltering even the smallest amount.

"And you are?" The female stood her ground as I approach though her husband cowers away from me, as he should.

"The CEO." I say, bored and unamused with her attitude.

"Oh, would I like to have a word with YOU." The female points her finger at me.

I bat away her finger, and hand, and cross my arms.

"I think the word you should be saying is 'sorry.'" I stare at her.

"Excuse me?" The female questions like she's been offended in the worst possible way.

I place my hands behind my back and lean towards her, "I said you need to apologize to my employees."

"Why would I do that?" The female asks.

I smirk, "Because the policy is in place for a reason. And that reason is because tomorrow your past life will also be living inside of your memory. So will his. Your past life may not even like his type of personality. You could end up being arch enemies stuck in the same room."

The female stutters, trying to form a sentence.

"We should have told you about it when you arrived." I continue, "I'm sure our purpose was fully laid out for you, wasn't it?"

The female nods, slowly, "It was."

I lift up the side of my mouth in a side smile, "Then there should be no problem here and you two should be able to carry out your stay in separate rooms." I straighten my back, "Unless you would like to wake up with a man who you have only have memories of but your previous life leads you to accidentally kill him because you simply despise him?"

The female looks down at the floor in shame.

"I thought so." I smirk, knowing I have won. "Now go away. My staff have other guests to attend to." I wave my hand, indicting that she should shoo.

Her husband understands immediately and drags his wife away. When the lobby stays silent, I glance around and the guests immediately pick their conversations back up.

"Mr. Yoon, our CEO." Yong introduces us.

"A pleasure." Jeonghan greets me in a bit of an awe.

"I do apologize for the disruption." I lower my head in apology, slightly upset that his visit had to be interrupted so rudely. "Soon Bok?" I turn to her and motion for her to continue showing Jeonghan to his room.

As Yong and I turn to walk away, Jeonghan blurts out a question.

"Sorry, but do I know you?" Jeonghan asks, searching my face for any signs of familiarity.

I smile softly and shake my head, "Not from this life, no." I tell him and leave him no time to reply back, walking away with Yong by my side.

"Which room?" I ask Yong as the elevator doors open.

"410." She answers as we step inside.

She presses my office floor while I ask, "How many days?"

As the elevator doors close, I catch Jeonghan still staring at me. And for a second, just before the doors fully close, he meets my gaze and an electric shock runs down my spine.

Yong sighs before answering, "Four."

My heart stays on the lobby floor as the elevator carries my body higher. I had expected him to live many many lives but the Gods apparently had other plans for him.

~The Fourth Day~

I sip champagne from my glass in an attempt to prepare myself to meet the Jeonghan I left all those years ago.

My time with Jeonghan wasn't crazy adventurous but it wasn't dead boring either. However, leaving him was the hardest out of all thirteen. It's not that I wanted to stay with him more than the others. It's the fact that he had his entire kingdom's army at his disposal. So when I left, he was constantly sending out patrols in search of me. I had to watch every where I went, and there were times when he got close but I always got away. Those nights, I would hear his cries. I could hear his heart break and it only broke mine further.

Shaking my head to get rid of the sad thoughts, I finish off the glass and set it on the table. Turning the glass between my fingers, I watch as the moonlight refracts through the glass and shines into my eyes.

A knock at my door pulls me out of my spotlighted daze.

"Come in." I call out, looking towards the door.

Yong opens the door and sticks her head in, "Jiwoo is taking him to the garden."

I nod, "I'll be there in a few minutes."

I stare at my empty glass for a few more minutes then rise out of my chair and make my way to my garden. Where Jeonghan waits for me.

Just as I reach the doorway leading to him, Jiwoo stops me.

"(y/n)," He runs over with a box in his hands, "This just came for you."

I scrunch my eyebrows together and open the box. Sitting inside sits a beautiful crown and a crown that I recognize immediately. It's the crown that Jeonghan wore during his first life. The one he loved and cherished because it was his grandfather's.

Along with crown is a note. Picking up the note, I read the simple sentence aloud.

"I believe this belong to one of your guests." It reads, and is signed simply as 'Gods.'

"Is it his?" Jiwoo asks, curious beyond curious.

I pick up the crown and let my muscles adjust to it's familiar weight. "It is." Then I sigh, turning the crown side to side, "The Gods really know how to fuck with me."

"It's beautiful." Jiwoo comments, ignoring my pass at the Gods.

"You should've seen it in the living world." I smile at him, "Thank you, Jiwoo."

He nods and takes his leave obediently while I walk down the passageway, crown in my hand.

When I arrive, the usually hidden bench is placed between the entrance and the center tree. Though instead of sitting with his back to me, Jeonghan stands facing the tree and his hands are tucked into his pockets. He's still in the black slacks and white shirt but they look freshly washed and pressed.

"Do you think it's alive?" He asks somehow sensing my presence but he doesn't turn around to face me.

I walk towards him while answering, hiding his crown behind my back. "It's like me. Somewhere between life and death. Just waiting." I reach his side and copy his body position facing the tree.

"How long have you waited?" Jeonghan questions.

"Long enough." I breathe out. "I hope your stay was comfortable."

Jeonghan nods, "It was, though I wish I could be in my normal clothing in front of you. They tell me those clothes were unobtainable."

"Unfortunately, the world we are in now does not suit the clothing of our world." I explain, then bring the crown out in front of me. "Though I believe I can still give you this back."

I face Jeonghan and I watch as his eyes light up in recognition. He gingerly takes it from my hands and sits down on the bench. I follow suit.

"I thought this was stolen by thieves and sold in parts." Jeonghan says and runs his hands over the jewels secured in the gold frame. "But you had it."

I shake my head, "I wish. I think the Gods were holding on to it. I just received it a few minutes ago."

"Uh huh," Jeonghan smirks at me, "Sure you did."

I shove his shoulder, "I'm serious."

Jeonghan chuckles then lightly places the crown on his head. "How do I look?" He asks, posing slightly.

"Princely, as always." I tell him with a smile.

He laughs, removes the crown, and places it on the bench next to him. Leaning forward, he rests his forearms on his thighs.

"We had fun, didn't we?" He asks, glancing back at me.

I nod, "We did."

"What happened?" Jeonghan asks, opening his body to face me, one elbow on his thigh, holding himself up. "To us."

I rub my hands together nervously, "I just couldn't stay." I say.

"Why not?" He pushes, "What stopped you from staying?"

I point towards the sky, "The Gods. They told me I had to leave and when they tell me something, I have to listen."

"Part of the curse?" Jeonghan ponders.

"Yeah." I say sadly.

"You know that I looked for you?" Jeonghan tells me, leaning back against the bench. "I looked for years and years."

I nod, staying silent.

"Can you tell me if I was ever close?" He asks.

I chew on my bottom lip wondering if I should. On one hand, it could give him a sense of relief. But on the other, it might make him regretful that he didn't try even harder.

"I just want to know if my efforts were done in vain." Jeonghan continues, literally answering my questions.

"You always could do that." I chuckle.

"What? Read your face and know exactly what you're thinking?" He answers with a smile. "Yeah, I used to think that it was my super power."

I laugh, "And yes, you did get close a couple times." I answer his original question then take a breath. "After the first two years though, I was more careful and you never came close again."

Cockily, Jeonghan intertwines his fingers behind his head, "At least I almost got you."

I shake my head at his comment before diving into my own question, "My turn."

He looks at me from the corner of his eyes, "Alright."

"When did you know you loved me?" I ask, studying his face for details that have changed.

Jeonghan sucks in a breath and releases his hands. "The exact moment? Let's see." He puckers his lips and his eyes wander aimlessly as his thinks.

My hand twitches with the desire to push his lips back down like I used to do but I collect myself before I can move.

"I don't think there was an exact moment but more of one particular night." Jeonghan finally answers. "Do you remember the night of my sister's 18th birthday?"

I faintly remember the big party and nod.

"Do you remember what happened?" Jeonghan asks.

I clear my throat, "I remember something happened at the party and then you tried running away but I think I somehow stopped you."

Jeonghan chuckles, "You could say that."

"Why? Did it not happen that way?" I ask, worried that I'm remembering a different love.

He shakes his head, "No, it happened that way. You just remember the general events."

I lean closer to him and smile sweetly, "Then tell me the details."

Jeonghan wags his finger, motioning me to scoot closer. I follow his instructions and when my knees hit his legs, he swings them over his legs and wraps an arm around my shoulders.

"We were in the middle of the party." Jeonghan begins and I just watch him retell the tale while securely tucked in his embrace. "And my sister's idiot ex decided to show up uninvited. I was pissed. No, I was beyond pissed. So without thinking, I went up and gave him a good punch to the face."

"In front of everyone." I add, starting to remember the events.

"I didn't care." Jeonghan shrugs, "He had hurt my sister and he was going to pay for it. Of course though, once I hit him, he got cocky and fought back instead of walking away. So we tussled and fought in the middle of the party for a few seconds before the guards pulled us apart."

I still as the memory surfaces and flashes through my mind. The grand ball room. Jeonghan's scowl of disgust right before he briskly walked over and socked his sister's ex in the face. The way my body froze, unable to do anything to stop the fight that then occurred. The yells of the royal guards as they pulled the two apart. Jeonghan's sister yelling at her ex to get out and leave. Their father, the king at the time, barking orders at the guards.

"My dad was so mad." Jeonghan continues, "The guards dragged both of us out of the ballroom. You know, I don't really know where you disappeared after I left."

I smile at his lapse in knowledge, "I think I was still frozen in place."

"Why were you frozen?" Jeonghan asks, a laugh sitting behind his lips.

"I don't really know." I admit, "I just didn't expect you to do that in front of everyone."

Jeonghan barks out laughing, pulling a giggle out of me.

"It's not that funny." I manage to say between laughs.

"It is that funny." Jeonghan replies still chuckling.

I hit his chest with a pout, "So what happened after you were dragged away?" I ask, but I already know the answer.

Clearing his throat, Jeonghan continues the story, "I don't really know what happened to the other guy, I'm guessing he got booted out though. I, on the other hand, got a good scolding from my father." He runs his hand through his hair while blowing out a breath.

"I heard." I tell him, remembering how I hovered outside his father's office behind the closed doors.

"You did?" Jeonghan asks, looking at me.

I nod, "I don't think I heard all of it, but I heard enough."

Jeonghan's eyes fall slightly, "So you heard all the talk about you?"

I silently nod, snuggling closer to him.

"And the things he said about me?" He continues.

I nod again, sadly remembering the terrible things his father threw into his face.

"And you heard what he did?" Jeonghan asks slowly.

I shakily nod my head. I close my eyes as the echo of his father slapping him rings in my ears. It was one of the sounds that haunted me for a long time.

Jeonghan sighs before continuing the story, "Well, after my father stormed out, I didn't really know where else to go cause every room in the palace seemed to anger me. Even my private studio. So I ran. I ran out into the back gardens and just kept running until the land dropped away and I had to stop. And then you found me."

I look up at him and meet his gaze.

"You know I didn't want to be found." Jeonghan continues, "But you walked up to me with a bag and just waited with me. I don't know what you were thinking but you stood there, silently." He readjusts his position and tilts his head, "You know, while we're here, how did you find me?"

I gaze around the garden, thinking back to how exactly I did it. "I just tried to think how you would think. If I were in your shoes and my father had just berated me and my love, where I would go. I knew you weren't staying in the palace. Everywhere you went there were reminders of who's control you were under. So then it just became a game of where did you start running and where did you end up." I explain, "I found you on my first try." I smile up at him, proudly.

"That. That was the tipping point." Jeonghan says. "You found me when I didn't want to be found but needed to be. And you found me almost immediately." He rests his cheek on top of my head and continues, "The fact that you didn't say anything and just stood with me. And just let me feel what I needed to feel. That was the night I knew I loved you."

"That was probably the most adventurous night we had together." I comment on the story.

"You think?" Jeonghan asks, "What about the night you swore you could get a deer to let you pet it? Or the night you challenged your guards to a game of foot volleyball? Or-"

I cover his mouth with my hands, "Stop," I whine, "Why did all our adventures involve me thinking I could do something?"

"Not true." Jeonghan counters, "I did the dumb things on horseback. Or those little games that I always somehow lost to the palace children? Or, or that time I suggested we go cliff jumping?"

I giggle, "That was the most terrifying yet most exciting day."

"Agreed. Though I never did it again." Jeonghan sighs at the memory, "Your turn."

"My turn?" I give him a questioning look.

"When did you know?" He reiterates his statement.

I drop my mouth open in a little 'oh' of realization. "Uh, the same night actually."

I feel Jeonghan hesitate under me and I'm quick to continue, "Not in the way you think. It was after it all happened." I take a breath, "After I found you in the forest. When you let me treat the injuries you had. The way I could tell what I was doing hurt you but you stayed as still as possible. You would constantly watch my expressions and it was almost like if I worried for even a split second, you would adjust so the worry would go away." I tell him, "That's when I knew."

"You noticed all that?" Jeonghan asks.

"I noticed everything." I say and look up at him again, "Everything."

Jeonghan gives me a small smile before leaning down and presses a kiss to my lips. Before pulling away completely, he pecks me on the nose. Something he habitually used to do.

"What kind of king were you?" I wonder, still looking at him.

He raises his eyebrows at me, "You mean to say that you didn't stick around?"

I shook my head, "It was better to move away. It would hurt less."

Jeonghan takes in a breath, "Well, I like to think that I was a good king. Kind, courageous, and righteous. Though I didn't leave much of a legacy."

"I'm sure you did if you were kind, courageous, and righteous." I reassure him.

"I didn't leave any heirs." Jeonghan corrects himself.

Then he launches into his life. What he did. Why he never married. The battles he had to overcome as king. The reforms he created. The lives he changed. Everything I have only read and heard from the wind.

The sun begins to dip in the sky, illuminating his features in a bright orange hue. As I silently wish the hue away, Jeonghan understands what the time means before I can even admit it to myself.

"So is this when I take my leave?" Jeonghan asks the air around us.

I only nod, not trusting my voice.

Jeonghan moves my legs off his and slowly rises up. He takes a breath as if to steady himself before offering his hands to me.

I reluctantly grab his hands and he pulls me up. Once I'm on my feet, he uses one hand to grab his crown while the other stays locked around my hand.

"Where do I go now?" He asks as we walk out of the garden.

"A car will take you to the afterlife where your soul can rest." I explain and every word feels like vomit, "I will stay here and wait for the others to arrive."

"Will you have to wait long?" He asks, worried about my constant waiting.

I shake my head, "Hopefully not."

"That's a relief." He sighs before we fall into a silence for the rest of the way to the backyard forest where Shin waits next the car.

When the dusk air hits my skin, I get immediate goose bumps but not from the chill, from the finality of the area. There never will be a chance when Jeonghan's soul will mistakenly appear at my hotel's front door. There won't be another run in with one of his lives. This is the end.

Shin stands next to the car, waiting with his hands resting at his sides.

"That my ride?" Jeonghan asks, nodding towards the idling car.

I nod.

"Well, they could've at least given me a grand carriage or one of those, oh, what are they called? Oh! Those limo things." He tries to lighten the mood.

"Where did you learn about limos?" I wonder.

"That receptionist you have really likes to talk." Jeonghan simply says as we step up to the car.

I smile at Mun Hee's special talent.

"Your highness." Shin greets us and opens the rear passenger door.

Jeonghan faces me with his crown between his hands.

"Would you keep it? So you remember me?" Jeonghan asks, holding out the crown for me to take.

"I can't take it. It belongs to you." I tell him sadly and his shoulders droop.

Jeonghan sniffles but stands a little taller, "Then will you put it on me one last time?" He asks.

I nod, "I can do that." I take the crown from his hands then he lowers himself slightly so I can actually reach the top of his head. Setting the crown in its place, I rest my hands on his shoulders.

With a small smile and tears in his eyes, he kisses me hard, making sure the last is the most memorable. He pulls away and a few tears have managed to slip out but he chooses to ignore their presence on his cheeks.

Without another word, he dips into the car and Shin closes the door once he's securely inside. As the car drives away, I clasp my hands together and grip them tightly while Shin moves to stand next to me.

"Why didn't you keep the crown?" Shin asks, genuinely curious.

"Because it would've disintegrated soon after he left." I tell him as the car's taillights disappear into the fog. "And I couldn't bring myself to tell him that."

I stare into the fog and silently bid Jeonghan farewell.

As a tear slides down my own cheek, back in my garden, one chrysanthemum withers and dies. Shin leaves me alone. He leaves me so I can collect myself before I head back inside to wait for the others who are on their way.

Return to the Navigation Page (Waning Crescent Hotel) to choose the next guest.

"I was told when the sun sets that you and I have another destination to head towards." Jeonghan says, tucking my hair behind my ear. "Somewhere our souls can rest."

I smile, "Since you arrived, I'm free from my binds. We can go and let our souls rest."

We untangle ourselves and rise to our feet. Jeonghan picks up his crown and places it on my head.

"Just as I suspected," He comments, taking a step back and looking at me fully. "The king's crown looks so much better on a woman."

I laugh, "Maybe cause it was made for me."

"That it was." Jeonghan agrees, takes my hand, and we walk away from my garden.

We walk hand in hand to the lobby where Yong, Mun Hee, Soon Bok, and Jiwoo stand solemnly. I slide the crown off my head and hand it to Jeonghan before walking over to my staff.

"So this is it?" Mun Hee asks with tears in his eyes. "This is the day you leave us?"

I wrap him up in a hug, only a tiny bit annoyed that he's being so sappy. "Maybe I'll get punished again and be back here by the end of the year." I try to joke but Mun Hee abruptly pushes back from me.

"Don't you dare say that. You better not return here." He says angrily through his tears.

I chuckle, "I won't come back. I promise."

Turning to Soon Bok, I thank her for her service and her amazing work. Something I never did and should've done more.

Next onto Jiwoo. I also thank him for his and his entire family's service then I unclip the bracelet that has held him to this place.

"When you leave today, you won't be able to find this place again." I inform him, "I hope that you'll be able to go and live your life happily."

Jiwoo nods, "Thank you for letting me work with you. I won't ever forget you."

I smile sadly, knowing that he will, in time, forget me. "Thank you."

Finally I reach Yong who is sniffling and trying so very hard not cry.

"You'd think after all these years of waiting that I'd be prepared for this day." She says through sniffles.

"Thank you, Yong." I rests my hands on her shoulders, "For everything. Thank you."

With lips pursed together, she leans forward and wraps me in an unexpected hug. But I soon wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tightly.

We pull apart after a couple seconds and I wipe the few tears that have escaped from her eyes.

"Keep this hotel running beautifully." I tell her before Jeonghan grabs my hand again.

With final waves of goodbye, Jeonghan and I walk out to the foggy forest that will take us to our resting place.

At the edge of the forest, Shin stands next to an idling car, a somber look on his face.

"(y/n)." He says when we reach him, "It has been an honor working with you. I wish you both a peaceful rest." Shin bows his head and I pat his arm.

"The honor was mine." I tell him with a smile. Now the tears start to line my eyes as the realization fully sets in.

I'm free. I have served my years of punishment and now I'm free to let my soul rest.

I turn back towards the hotel and look up to the top where the rooftop patio is outlined with bright string lights. Then to the mid floors where random room lights are turned on, some guests staying in while others opting to experience the hotel's many services. Then to grand base where guests would be milling around, waiting their turns to leave this world.

"(y/n)?" Jeonghan softly asks pulling my attention to where he sits just inside the car, "Are you ready?"

I take one last quick look at the hotel before turning away from it. "Yeah, I'm ready. Let's go."

I lower myself into the car and Shin securely closes the door after I am completely inside. As the car begins to drive forward, Jeonghan securely grabs my hand and I let his warmth guide me towards our final destination.

In the garden, the final chrysanthemum withers and dies so that no more stand at the base of the bare tree.

#kpop imagine #seventeen imagine #seventeen jeonghan #seventeen jeonghan imagine #jeonghan imagine #yoon jeonghan imagine #yoon jeonghan #jeonghan #waning crescent hotel #writer-k-pop

34 notes · View notes

kilisworld · 5 years

Text

for people who make late night reservations at a hotel. Here’s some info you might need.

Making a reservation for the 27th at 3am doesn’t guarantee a room for you at 3am. People from the 26th are still there, and possibly sleeping, and definitely haven’t checked out.

So when I tell you, “I’m sorry, we are sold out.” and “I can’t check you in right now.” Getting mad at me is still not going to get you that room.

Check in starts at 3pm for a reason.

#Hotel Shenanigans #Night Shift Shenanigans #Hotel Problems #customer service #srsly #people are stupid and i can't believe i had to explain that #what is tonight?#a full moon?#waning crescent?#it feels like a full moon

14 notes · View notes

un-romancible-npc · 5 years

Text

Chance

Chapter One: Dancing in Silence

3631 words

Original Idea:

::You are here::Part 2::Ao3::

The cacophony of night that most coastal cities had was entirely lost on the quiet, lonely streets of Gotham. It wasn't a silent city by any means, but its citizens had learned a long time ago that nighttime was not their domain, and as fantastic as some of those night-liers were, Gotham knew it was best to leave the night to its own, and let the bats do their hunting.

Most of Gotham knew that, anyway.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng, President of the class in the French foreign exchange program, fashion genius, and proud owner of at least 3 brain cells, was lying wide awake at 2:30am in a bed in a luxury hotel room at the heart of Gotham City, desperately trying to figure out if cereal was a soup and feeling remarkably as though she had been lied to her whole life.

The hotel room, which she was finding she disliked more and more the longer her brain went without sleep, was a mess of creams and browns and golds when the lights were on, but in the dark, with only the faint street light filtering through the balcony doors' curtains, everything was the same vague gradient of grey to black. She much preferred it like that.

Marinette lay on her back, sheets tangled at the corners of her bed after hours of tossing and turning, her arms and legs splayed out in a manner not unlike a starfish that had been asked for a high-five, and her black hair flopped out of the two now virtually-useless buns perched atop her head, loose strands sticking uncomfortably to her wide-eyed face.

She had half a mind to wake up her roommate, Chloe Bourgeois, who had been asleep for the last hour and a half, and ask her opinion on the matter. Even considering what 'the wasp', as Alya had taken to calling her, was going through physically at the moment, and that she'd put Sabrina in a choke-hold for almost a full minute last time she was disturbed--with precise details of how she would personally destroy anyone who dared bother her nap again--and only let go after she'd given Sabrina and everyone who saw the incident one (1) more chance to live.

It probably wasn't worth it.

Unfortunately, Marinette was about to die from over-internalization, and she was genuinely considering putting her life on the line for answers.

Mari shifted to her side and stared at the gap in the curtains, one of the narrow slices of light that leaked through them leaving a stripe of color down her face and abdomen, illuminating her plain black sports-bra and green basketball shorts she'd stolen from Adrien after accidentally ruining her own fuzzy Pj bottoms mere hours before. If anyone else had been awake, they would have also seen the light glinting off the peculiar, vein-like markings that spiraled around her torso, their lines intertwining with themselves and leading up to two small marks just above her shoulder blades.

Marinette openly scowled at the double doors to the hotel balcony.

'I'm going to go insane.'

With a sigh as quiet as she could manage, Mari sat up, climbed to the foot of her bed, rifled under her dresser for her suitcase, and fished out her specially altered red-and-black hoodie, the matching pair of black leggings with red spots, and a pair of sneakers. Sliding into them in almost total silence--she doesn't count the muttered French that may or may not have been cursing when she stubbed her pinkie toe on the end table--she opened the glass doors at the end of the room and slid outside for some fresh air.

Stepping out onto the small balcony, Mari inhaled deeply and stared at the city. The lights were loud, even though the noises weren't, but the colors outside felt better, and she found she could think more clearly without the suffocating blackness of the room surrounding her, glaring at her with thinly veiled chartreuse and belly-hair-brown.

Mari looked up, the waning crescent moon sending a crooked smile her way as she did so, and she smiled right back.

The sky looked different in America.

She turned, mouth twisting into a knot, and stared at the 'french' doors that led back to her room, having half a mind to just go back inside… but her designer's heart craved a better view, and the stifling heat of her bed was exactly the kind of thing that would keep her awake longer.

Nodding resolutely, Marinette marched toward the doors, and leapt up precisely as high as she needed, fingers gripping the ledge above it with a strength that belied her small stature. Hooking her foot over the top of the door frame, she hauled herself up and began scaling the building, using every ledge and window she could. Her seemingly delicate hands were covered in calluses after years of sewing accidents and other... extracurricular activities, so the rough concrete and brick was nothing she hadn't dealt with before.

Chloe liked to 'joke' that she probably didn't have fingerprints anymore, and could definitely get away with murder. Marinette snorted, smiling to herself as she pulled herself over another window ledge, her brain temporarily distracted from cereal soup by that particular conversation that had kept the three of them awake far past curfew.

Chloe scoffed from her perch on the largest bed, tossing her head to flip her white-blonde braid over her shoulder as she dipped the little brush back into the fingernail polish container.

"Oh course I'm not talking about actually murdering anyone, Bumble-Bug." She said, delicately coating her pinky fingernail in pearlescent midnight-blue polish. "All I'm saying is that if, hypothetically of course, somebody, nobody in particular, at say… the school, happened to end up dead in a ditch somewhere," she dipped the brush again. "And there happened to not be any fingerprints, the police couldn't pin a thing on you. Ask Sabrina, she's doing an internship at her Daddy's place."

Shaking her head, and biting her lip to keep herself from laughing, Mari turned her attention back to applying her own rose-gold polish.

A few specks of Gotham's finest hotel were unintentionally scraped off the border of a window and tumbled to the pavement below. Mari grunted, adjusting her grip on a gargoyle-like figure near the edge of the roof to better secure herself so she could find another foothold, unintentionally scraping her palms in the process. She grinned.

"Y'know Ladynette," said Adrien, his mop of sunshine-blond hair coming into view as he sat up from where he had been lounging on the floor, still waving his hands in an attempt to dry the sloppy black and green nail polish he had insisted he do himself. 'We just have to take it off before I go home! Father won't know if we don’t tell him!' "Bee's got a point. I'm not saying I would appear as Chat to give you the best alibi in history, but I'm also not saying I wouldn't." He tapped the side of his nose, effectively smearing the nail polish on his index finger all over the inside of his eyelid. "You're the star student, after all."

Marinette couldn't take anymore, and collapsing into a giggle-fit, accidentally spilling the rose-gold nail polish all over her fuzzy pajama pants in the process. It took far too long to calm down, but when she did, Chloe and Adrien had already found replacement pants for her.

Mari returned to the present as she, with a final shove, found herself on the roof of the very prestigious hotel her class was staying at during their 3 month exchange program. Her entire class.

'No one in particular my foot.'

Mari stood near the opposite edge of the roof from where she'd climbed up, letting the cool, damp midnight breeze play with her hair, as she breathed a deep sigh.

Cereal was soup.

…

Kwamiis, she'd been hanging out with Adrien too much.

Her thoughts stilled for a moment, though her mind continued at breakneck speed as memories of her loved ones filled her up to bursting. She closed her eyes and let the images chase themselves in circles for a little, drinking in the feeling of the night and the faint smell of coastal rain that sank into her bones.

Gotham was officially her second favorite city.

The mood was briefly soured as her brain, still dutifully chugging along as the speed of light now that she had nothing else to think about, began turning to darker subjects. Mari sighed, her whole body sagged in exhaustion and her fingers twisting around the ponytail that was wrapped around her wrist as said darker thoughts began playing on repeat in her head, the face of at least two thirds of her misery laughing at her misery, though she wasn't on the roof to laugh at her.

‘Lila.’

Marinette's fiddling with the ponytail ceased as she began bouncing her leg, her hands moving up to readjust her buns in a vague hope of making them slightly less disastrous.

‘Oh boy, Lila…’

Liar and life-ruiner extraordinaire.

The reason her only friends were suddenly transferred to new classes even though she herself had tried a dozen times over to do just the same.

Mari sighed, tugging at a nasty tangle the ponytail-holder had somehow created with her bun.

At least she still had Alix and Kim. As much as she loved Chloe and Adrien, Adrien couldn’t do anything to rock the boat without his father forcing him to quit public school, and since Chloe’s father had finally been replaced as Mayor, she didn’t have nearly as much power as she used to. Besides, the class was against her to begin with, and it had only gotten worse as Lila began to spin her web.

Alix and Kim on the other hand, while they couldn't convince many people of Lila's schemes, they could punch people in the face. Mari actually cried when they told her they both got suspended for a week after doing just that the day they found out Lila was nothing but a liar, (Alix did the punching and Kim cheered her on) and while she insisted they never do that again, she brought them 'thank you' goodies every day for six months after that.

Her thoughts cheered up significantly after a few forceful topic-changes and as they continued to wander, a tune bumbled its way to the surface and, having nothing better to do at the moment, she began humming it. What the song itself was called she didn't remember, maybe it never existed to begin with, but the melody was quiet enough to be soothing, and it was calming, if a little haunting.

A few measures into her strange melody, Mari found herself half dancing-half fidgeting to the beat of her imaginary song, incomprehensible words playing through her mind as the night dragged on and Gotham continued on in semi-silence.

Mari was midway through one of the ballet moves Chloe had dragged her to classes to learn, when the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Mari cut her movement off mid-flow and stood stock still.

Someone was on the roof with her.

Years of constantly living life on the edge of both a mental breakdown and a life-or-death battle was the only thing keeping her from blindly round-house-kicking whoever it was in the face and running off into the night. Fight and flight instincts could fudge a delicate situation, and whoever was up here could simply be getting some air, like her.

Maybe she should have let her instincts run the show.

She barely had time to register she was still humming--being forced to communicate in the most dire of circumstances had made the moments where she couldn’t shut herself up more often than she’d care to admit--when an arm that felt as though it was made of steel and iron was pinning her left arm to her back as a knee, which she assumed belonged to the owner of the steel and iron arm, slammed into the middle of her back and began forcing her to the ground.

In the split second before her face made contact with the gravel on the rooftop, Mari had one single thought racing through her head.

She knew this hold.

She’d done it a thousand times in the back alleys of Paris on odd nights.

This was the hold that would break your arm if you struggled.

The hold designed to keep the victim still and in pain.

The hold to intimidate and contain.

The hold made for criminals.

Hah.

No.

Faster than even she expected, Mari twisted her body completely around and successfully out of his hold, eyes narrowed in determination.

C R A C K

‘Well.’ Mari rolled away from her attacker, clutching her broken arm to her chest. ‘That’s going to be hard to explain to Mlle. Bustier in the morning.’ Mari recovered quickly--She'd felt more pain than a broken arm and won a fight before: and a non-functioning arm wasn't going to stop her now.--and regained her footing just in time to see a young man, probably about her age, in a truly shocking outfit with the most bizarre color coordination she had ever seen-- Okay not the most bizarre. She'd fought Akuma after all, and some of those deserved to be taken down on their fashion sense alone--pull out a katana from seemingly nowhere.

‘Wait…’ She thought as she dodged the katana swipe and dropped to the ground in attempt to swipe his feet out from underneath him. ‘Him and his traffic-light costume look familia--’

“Robin!”

Marinette froze as none other than Batman--The Actual Honest To Goodness Batman--swung onto the roof just behind her attacker.

Mari would’ve fangirled if she wasn’t so high on caution juice.

“Father,” apparently-Robin said, not breaking eye-contact with her, the blade of his katana less than an inch from her throat now that she wasn’t fighting back.

‘Wait… wait, isn’t that called adrenaline?’

“Robin, why were you attacking a civilian.”

‘Oh glory Batman is speaking to Robin, he’s speaking with Robin and they’re talking right in front of me--’ Mari blinked. ‘Civilian?’

“Tch,” Robin’s lip curled slightly, though otherwise he didn’t move. ‘Oh. Right. I’m not wearing my mask. “Father this isn’t another civilian.”

‘I mean he’s right, but I’m right here--’

“She’s clearly a villain.”

‘Okay WHAT?!’

“And what makes you say that?” Mari’s mouth moved in her own defense before she’d formed a proper argument.

‘FrICK.’

Silence.

Silence punctuated by Batman’s stare.

Which of them he was looking at was a mystery, but he punctuated the lack of noise nevertheless.

‘I’m sorry Batman: One of us is going to die tonight and it’s probably going to be me if your son doesn’t say something soon.’

“Tch.” Robin’s head rolled slightly to the side; an exaggerated eye-roll if she’d ever seen one. “You’re up here, alone, ballet dancing, and humming a stupid creepy tune.” Mari blinked at him incredulously. “It’s highly unusual in Gotham for anyone to preform their own... musical theater routine, at 4 in the morning mind you, unless they’re extremely unbalanced and have a bomb planted sixty feet below the mayor’s office.”

“You…” She took a deep breath in, moving her broken arm as carefully--and casually--as she could. “You tried to knock me unconscious, fight me, and potentially take me to a police station for questioning... because I was awake at 4am.” Well, if Batman’s stare wasn’t burning holes into Robin’s head before, it sure was now. Robin, to his credit, relaxed his defensive stance slightly, even as a scowl darker than any she’d expect on his face dragged whatever hope she had of reasoning down with his mood.

“Robin?”

Batman had said 9 words since his first appearance, and somehow Mari knew he was on her side.

She and her motor-mouth could learn from him.

Robin snorted softly and stuck his nose in the air, though any fool could see it was over a sense of wounded pride rather than genuine haughtiness. Or, anyone who’d been friends with Chloe for more than a week, anyway. He finally relaxed his fighting stance, however, and stood with his back ram-rod straight and his arms crossed over his chest.

“It isn’t my fault she was being stupid.”

“And it isn’t my fault you couldn’t just use basic human communication to inquire as to my true intentions.” Being starstruck is overrated.

“If you were really a villain you’d take advantage of that.” He snapped, glaring at her.

“If I were really a villain,” Mari retorted with a scoff. “I wouldn’t be stupid enough to dance out in the open in celebration of my latest unfinished scheme.” Mari crossed her arms. ‘Owowowowow no that’s bad don’t move broken arm that hurts--’ “Especially not when it’s nighttime and the Batman Squad are out and about. Besides, you can be physically prepared for an attack while still brokering a deal. It’s how being a superhero is supposed to work, isn’t it? Get the villain talking so you can assess the situation and the threat without potentially risking any civilians in the way?” ‘I just back-talked Robin. And by extension, Batman.’

Mari could feel her blush burning her skin to ash.

‘Batman please take your son and leave so I can die in peace I’m--’

“You’re very correct, Miss.”

‘S a y f r e a k i n g w h a t n o w.’

Mari whipped around, her loose hair smacking her in the eyes as she did so, to see The Actual Freaking Nightwing standing on one of the rooftop gargoyles and grinning at her.

Her heart had stopped functioning a long time ago, and it appeared her lungs were now bent on doing the same.

“Being a superhero is about more than just punching crime in the face. Though I gotta admit that’s the fun part.”

“Until crime punches ya’ back,” the ghost of Marinette’s soul replied through her somehow still-living body. “Then you just have a black eye, injustice, and a whole lotta paperwork.” Nightwing burst out laughing, and slid off his gargoyle to walk over and give her a clap on the back.

“It’s official,” he said, his grin wide and friendly. “You’re my second-favorite civilian.” Mari’s soul transcended to the next dimension. “What’s your name, kid?”

“I-I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng, monsieur.” ‘I’m Freaking Nightwing’s Second Favorite Civilian. How in the ever-loving hECC, did I end up here? How has my life come to this? Is this where I die?’

“A pleasure to meet you Marinette,” Nightwing said with yet another grin, as he stuck out his hand to shake. “I’m sure you already know who we are, but based off your French accent you probably aren’t from ‘round here: I’m Nightwing.” He gestured to Batman’s looming figure. “The silent Night is Batman, and--”

“I suppose Traffic-Light boy is Robin, then?”

‘MOUTH WHAT THE HECK YOU CAN’T OPERATE WITHOUT EXPLICIT PERMISSION FROM THE BRAIN WHAT ARE YOU DOING GOING ROGUE LIKE THAT YOU’RE OFFICIALLY ON PROBATION--’

“No-- wait I'm sorry I didn’t mean it like that I swear--”

It was too late.

Robin had frozen in place, his face a mixture of shock and an emotion she couldn’t place.

Nightwing was doubled over with laughter.

Batman’s face seemed to always be an emotionless, impenetrable mask in the short time she’d known him, but Mari could’ve sworn she saw the faintest of smiles. It was gone in a moment, but it was there.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng had made Batman, actual honest to goodness Batman, smile.

Well, if she wasn’t dead before, she was now.

“We’re sorry for the trouble Miss Dupain-Cheng,” said Batman when it seemed like Nightwing wasn’t going to recover anytime soon. “I hope Robin didn’t hurt you too badly.” Marinette welcomed the distraction, though she was still redder than her hoodie. She waved her non-broken arm dismissively.

“He didn’t, Monsieur Batman. Je--err, I, am perfectly fine. I’m sorry to have disturbed your patrol.” Batman gave her the tiniest of nods. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think I'll get back to my room. It’s very late after all.”

“Enjoy your evening, Miss Dupain-Cheng.”

“You too, mon--err, Sir.” Marinette started walking toward the side of the building to climb back down, when a door in the center of the roof caught her attention.

Oh.

She paused halfway to the entrance, gnawing at her lip.

Mari turned around sharply.

“Robin?” The three caped crusaders paused. The boy in question gave her a sidelong glance, shooting her a quizzical look that may or may not have been laced with faint distaste. Not that she blamed him. “I’m sorry for any trouble I may have caused.”

He stared at her for a moment, his face expressionless for a moment.

“I’m sorry too. I hope I didn’t hurt your arm too badly.” he nodded to her curtly. “Have a good night, miss.”

And then they were gone.

A wave of exhaustion hit her like a truck, and she had the sudden realization she was supposed to be asleep at 4:30 in the morning.

She turned and opened the rooftop door, thanking anything and everything that the door was unlocked, and closed it softly behind her, leaning heavily against it and biting back her groan of pain.

Hiding a broken arm was painful.

Mari stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, absorbing everything that had happened.

Her face split into a joyous beam.

Adrien and Chloe were going to go berserk tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BONUS:

Nightwing: “Hey, B-man. Bat-guy. Bro-man. Bat-dad. Can we please keep her? Please?”

Batman: “Not that it’s up to me, but we can’t. At the very least not unless she can fight.”

Robin: “Father, she broke her arm getting out of my hold and didn’t bat an eye at it.”

Nightwing: “The bean did what now.”

(also have a sketch i did. i’m sorry it’s not great but i just... i lov her okay?)

::You are here::Part 2::Ao3::

1K notes · View notes

zamgoods · 3 years

Text

Sunday 9.5 September 5th Waning Moon Crescent. on 9.7 the moon is completely black.

Just like Billie's concert/movie, the moon is called the moon of Death. It's the end of the month. Seems like the foreshadowing of Death. She even has a song called everybody dies and her virtual self walks though a Grave yard.

Hollywood Bowl in LA,CA. Letter to LA. I wonder if it's a 4 page letter. Like Aaliyah whose video "More than a Woman" riding around LA. Los ANgeles. The ANgels. Many call Aaliyah an Angel. Is she in anyway writing to her. August 31, 3 days before the release of Eilish's movie. Date of Aaliyah's Funeral and Marriage to R. Kelly.

I didn't change my number.-Eilish 2nd song in the movie.

Age Aint nothing but a Number-Aaliyah's 1st album and 2nd single

@7:40 They show a dark sky. no Moon. @11:47 LA night sky, no moon The Song called "MY FUTURE" is telling that. Prediction. Her animation is up high over the city, Beverly hills, Roosevelt Hotel.

She even has a scene walking through the arch in the Red and Black like Romanoff, Britney approaching us in animation. Is She a red sparrow, Black widow?

Her movie follows Aaliyah Animation before she died. For Disney to be the one to draw her traveling in a Scorpion car. Is she a Scorpio Moon? or Rising? Born Dec 18th, 2001 we can see her natal chart for more details. But it's obvious they plan to associate her with death.

Even at a point they show her die and go to the sky with clouds and wings. Like Aaliyah, Angel. She ends up in an empty theater. No Audience.

Different than most others in this ritual, they end up at the ground zero, or zero point fighting goons and confronting an audience.

She talks about giving the Devil an NDA at 17 when she says she got her initiation of sorts in her song NDA.

SHe thinks therefore she IS. She exists. YHWH. A highly academic philosophical maxim. I think therefore I Am.

so long for now. movie is Beyonce ish. And is filled with occult, chanting, and symbolism. Despite its dry and monotone themes. About separation for someone. Estrangement. Social distancing, being alone, solo, at the same time One. It's alchemical stage is in the black, the red, and her hair is white. Negrito, Rubedo, Albedo.

Will speak more about this, because there are many Easter eggs.

so long for now. arivaderchi

#Billy #Billy Eilish #Aaliyah #Billy Eilish Animation #Aaliyah Animation

6 notes · View notes

cor-are-they-stars · 4 years

Text

A Silver Lining

In nature, there is a constant struggle between those who seek the comfort of shadows and mists, and those who seek the brilliant light of the celestial heavens. It isn’t necessarily a battle of night and day, though often it is phrased as such. It is a great struggle that dapples the sky with lighting and clouds and gives personality to the great blue dome that serves us as a roof in our Earth home.

All this to say, Tsuki found it highly ironic that she, the moon kid, had to go head to head with a cloud boy.

Irony always seemed to find her.

She hadn’t really done any research on him; she hadn’t had the chance. Having had just arrived a few hours before on the train, fresh from Japan and her foster home with the Spellmans, she had been hoping she would be met by her sort of? sister at the station, but apparently this whole student versus student debacle had been happening. Welcome to Taiyuu, now go steal an orb and beat someone up while you’re at it.

Not that she was going to complain. She bounced from foot to foot, flexing her gloved hands and trying to ward off the bone deep tiredness that always found her around this time of the moon cycle, and especially after the long train ride. Her fingers tingled almost imperceptibly from constant erosion of waning crescent as she eyed him from one side of the lobby of the faux hotel that would serve as their arena the boy she would be fighting. All dark blue hair and wisps of fog, his floating on a cloud a few inches above the ground brought to mind images of old gods sitting contentedly upon clouds as they watched the world. She blinked her eyes a few rapid times, trying to flash herself into a higher functioning level. It was only mildly successful. That train had been irritatingly comfy. A sound like the hollow cry of a gong echoed across the fake city and alerted them to the match’s start. Before Tsuki could fully react, the boy scooped air into his hand. Thick grey tendrils of stormcloud gathered around his hand like hens gathering around a farmer sprinkling corn. Crackling and popping with electricity, the clouds turned on Tsuki with alarming speed and ferocity and shot towards her like great billowing bullets of the sky. Ah. So that was what “cloud quirk” had meant. Reacting on the instinct that had kept her alive for years, Tsuki dropped down behind a plush, impeccably white armchair. Lightning flickered briefly and with no break thunder roared in Tsuki’s ears as the clouds electrocuted the white chair. Well. Now she was awake. Head ringing, she made a snap decision and lept to her feet, grabbing a vase of plastic flowers from the small coffee table. The clouds flashed again, lightning spearing through her arm. A brief, awkward silence followed as the lightning passed through her highly see through arm harmlessly, as if it wasn’t even there, and scorching the wall. Kemuri-san looked mildly embarrassed and Tsuki grinned widely. She spread her arms, a few pebbles falling from the mouth of the vase and clinking on the floor. “Sorry, looks like I’m not all there today.” She vaulted over the chair, cackling and throwing a wide arc of pebbles and sad pretend flora as she dashed towards her opponent with her improvised weapon. As she swung at Kemuri-san, another crack sounded and the vase shattered in her translucent hands. The boy darted out of the way on his cloud, and Tsuki hit the ground with a roll, the scattered shattered pottery slicing open her cheek as she went over it. Getting back to her feet, Tsuki quietly marvelled over the boy’s excellent reaction time. If this was the kind of fighter this school boasted, she was proud to have gotten in. It was hard not to envy him. As she reoriented herself and prepared to charge him again, Tsuki noticed the boy’s gaze flicking toward the main feature of the room; a combination koi pond and fountain. And as her own eyes dissected the rippling patterns on the water, she saw what was in that fountain: a little orb, being cautiously nibbled by a large goldfish with an insatiable curiosity.

As if on a cue from an unseen director, the two dashed toward the water feature. Her legs were sure under her, even if her feet did sink nearly to the ankles in the floor. Tsuki had just started to pull ahead of the boy when she heard another crack and felt a searing heat on the small of her back as the lightning struck true. She stumbled and fell into the fountain with the fish. Cloud boy zipped past her and scooped the orb from the pond. Taking no time to gloat, he zipped to the stairwell to the first floor and freedom as if an invisible wind was pushing him. Tsuki’s body was abuzz, feeling like it was moments from vibrating apart. A drop of blood, brilliantly crimson against her fading out skin, billowed outward into the water to explore as she struggled to stand and shake off the paralyzing effect of the electricity. Now on her feet and buzzing more than ever, Tsuki’s focus sharpened. No way in heaven she was going to be beat on her first day by someone whose hero name might end up being Foghorn. Through the window, she could see Kemuri-san’s quick flight towards his goal line and her defeat.

Aw, heck no.

She sprinted toward the window, no plan in her mind but to stop his exodus.

Few things in life are more majestic than flight. A bird, wings outstretched as they glide. A cloud, meandering across the sky with the dignity of a monarch. An airplane, cutting a defiant path through the air as it carries lives to and fro.

A nearly invisible girl, dive bombing through a window yelling a battlecry.

Tsuki’s aim was near perfect. As she lept through the glass, fractures spread across its surface. It didn’t shatter, she wasn’t tangible enough for that. But a beautiful bullseye of cracks spread outward from her exit point. Her intangibility sent her flying right through him, a feeling that he would later compare to a convulsion and searing flash of dizzy confusion. Her gloved hands, unfaded like the rest of her clothing, wrapped around the orb as she hit the ground in a tuck-n-roll and came up on her feet again. With her newfound prize, Tsuki sprinted back down the sidewalk away from Kemuri-san, intent on the other end of the sidewalk where she was supposed to take the orb.

A cloud whooshed past her, dark gray tendrils and crackling lightning imminent as it positioned itself directly in her path, ready to intercept.

Uh, nope.

She took a detour, right into the hotel.

Running through the front door, she hurtled up the stairs to the lobby and up another and another, until she was on the fourth floor. Her footsteps made nary a sound on the knobby carpet as she ran at full speed toward an innocent cart of restocking towels. Tsuki dashed right through it, her slight tangibility managing to knock it over behind her. Not planned, but a pleasant bonus. She looked back to see Kemuri-san flying up the stairs and laughed triumphantly as he reached the impromptu barricade. That ought to slow him down.

He flew right over it.

Her laugh died on her lips and she refocused her energies on what currently mattered: getting away with the orb. Making a split second decision, she took a sharp left into a room and slammed the door behind her. Looking quickly to the side, she saw a small stack of papers.

From the hallway, Kemuri-san could see Tsuki's hand clip through the door holding a small sign that read "Do Not Disturb". She hooked it on the doorknob and retracted it through the wood. That ought to hold him. A small drop of blood from her vase-initiated wound dripped down her cheek, and she wiped it away. The red stain on her otherwise white glove was startling, and she paused a moment to admire it.

As the door flew open, Tsuki grabbed the first weapon she could think of. A pillow held defensively in front of herself, she assumed a stance that left her shielding the orb from Kemuri-san and his clouds. With a dismayed expression, she shook a hard-to-see finger at him.

"Didn't you read the sign?"

Kemuri-san let out a surprised bark of laughter, and Tsuki felt a tickle of satisfaction trace its way up her spine. The boy raised his hand, and a cloud flew towards her. The past few weeks of watching videos of baseball games to help her better understand the very American Spellmans gently took her hand and raised it in a batter's stance. With a solid whmpahf, she whacked Kemuri-san's cloud and also managed to clip the one that was keeping him aloft. The disturbance of the air dispersed the particles and Kemuri-san fell with a thump. In her few seconds of time, Tsuki threw her pillow at Kemuri-san, which he caught in surprise as he got to his feet. Tsuki grabbed the other plush pillow from the comforter-clad bed and brandished it. “Pillow fight. Me, you.”

Kemuri-san, finding absolutely no problem with this, came in swinging. She cackled in surprise and jumped away from the bed, wapping another cloud away. Kemuri-san’s pillow had an icy cloud wrapped around it, and every time their weapons connected Tsuki’s pillow grew colder. The slowly crystallizing and frostbitten pillow nipped at her fingers as she retreated from the onslaught of feather-stuffed cloth. Finding herself backed against the wall, Tsuki was caught off guard as a Kemuri-san got in a solid hit.

Apparently, he had forgotten her intangibility. She had too. The force was just enough to shove her through the wall, dropping the orb to the floor with a humble plasticky tmhp as she disappeared, pushed straight through the wall and into open air, four stories up.

Gravity refused to acknowledge her intangibility, and she dropped like a stone thrown into a lake, though she left far fewer ripples as she plummeted. From afar, she would’ve been hard to see. Merely a fast falling shimmer in the air. Air flew by her too fast to be breathed, and in the seconds of free fall fear became a good friend.

But then, like a quilt made of melancholy and discarded dandelions, a cloud wrapped around her and caught her in the air. Her brown eyes shot upwards and met the panicked blue of Kemuri-san’s. He was leaning precariously out the window, hand thrown towards her as a direction to the clouds. For a few moments she hung there, a dangling toy on a mobile. Her breath had abandoned her during the fall, but it slowly and sheepishly returned as the cloud slowly drifted back up toward the window.

Tsuki tumbled through the window frame, heart beating out a violent tattoo of fear against her head. She lay on the ground for a few minutes, waiting for her pulse to slow a little and thanking any and all gods who happened to be listening for solid ground. Kemuri-san looked breathless and terrified as his clouds slowly dispersed around Tsuki. “Are you okay? When you fell- I almost had a heart attack. I had no idea-”

Tsuki rolled over and got to her feet, pressing her hand against her chest. Her eyes darted to the corner, where the orb sat undisturbed. He hadn’t gone for it when she fell? Tsuki walked over and scooped it up, then turned back and offered it to Kemuri-san.

“Here.”

He had pulled her back in. Sent a cloud after her without a second thought for the orb or the competition they were in. He didn’t have to do that. Kemuri-san looked confused by her gesture, and she proffered it again.

“Take it. I, uh.” She circled a hand in the air, trying to find the words. “You didn’t have to help me. But you did. And, I appreciate that. It was just, well. Incredibly honorable. And sweet. I’m bad with words- just take it?” Kemuri-san’s expression was touched by understanding, but the concern wasn’t fully gone. He got to his feet as his clouds started to reform around him.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Tsuki waved a hand dismissively. “I will be. I just need a minute. It’ll give you a headstart.”

This was apparently good enough for him, and he took the lightly pulsing orb. Tsuki watched him hurry from the room and listened to his footsteps tthpm tthpm down the carpeted stairs as she caught her breath and berated it for ever leaving. As soon as her lungs were ready and her eyes had stopped spinning from fear, she jumped to her feet. Taking only a moment to pull a new, tangible pair of gloves from her pocket and discard the faded old ones, she ran to the door, then thought for a second before screwing up her face in concentration. Like the floor had fallen out from under her, Tsuki suddenly dropped down and out of sight.

Tsuki could surmise it had been alarming when she suddenly dropped from the ceiling of the kitchen, because Kemuri-san nearly dropped the orb as he tripped backwards in surprise. Huh. Lucky she had ended up here. Grabbing some heating mitts and pulling them onto her feet like crappy last minute shoes, Tsuki roundhoused the orb out of Kemuri-san’s hands and into the empty, bone-dry sink. Ripping off the mitts before they could pick up on her intangibility and fade past usefulness, she grabbed the orb out of the sink with one of her kid-gloved hands. She ran right through the counter, falling to the floor as an electrified frying pan Kemuri-san had thrown through a storm cloud clipped her and knocked her to the ground.

Kemuri-san snatched the orb and booked it out as he had been doing before she got in his way. As the shock was smaller this time, Tsuki was able to stick her leg through the counter and kick the pan into his path in time to trip him and send him to the floor. She phased through the counter the rest of the way and grabbed the prize again, booking it out the door and into the elevator and slamming her fist into the “up” button. The doors opened and she hurried in, frantically mashing at the “Close Doors” and “Floor 20” buttons. Kemuri-san scrambled out of the kitchen and flew at full speed toward the elevator. “Hold the door!”

The sliding doors glided closed peacefully, just before the cloud boy could get in. Tsuki awkwardly enjoyed a few quiet minutes of silence as the box slowly moved upwards, a tinny tune droning mindlessly in the background in a vain attempt at music. It wasn’t Mozart, but it was catchy and Tsuki found herself humming it as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to swallow the acidic fear that was clutching at her heart. You’ll be out soon. You’ll be out soon. Hang in there. By the time the elevator arrived at the roof, her heart was a butterfly-quick mess and her breath was quick and short. She stumbled out of the confinement and into the open air.

Tsuki crouched next to the box that held the elevator and clutched the orb close to her chest with trembling arms as she fought back the rising panic. She had thought she could handle it, but the nagging sense of impending harm and tightness in her throat told her she couldn’t. A minute of slow breathing carefully calmed her heart rate and she got shakily to her feet. She was still competing. She needed to finish this.

Kemuri-san stepped onto the rooftop out of the shack-like stairwell, and everything was eerily quiet for a moment. Then a fist caught him in the jaw, sending him sprawling. Tsuki, standing to the side of the door with her arm still extended from the sucker punch, looked startled. She dropped the orb, and scurried over. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t mean to hit that hard! I am so sorry, is anything broken?”

She set the orb down and took his face firmly in her hands, examining his jaw to make sure it wasn’t dislocated. Her check confirmed, to her relief, that he wouldn’t suffer anything more than some swelling and tenderness. She let the still stunned boy go and helped him to his feet. The boy’s clouds were a shocking sunset pink, wispy from his surprise and crackling slightly at the edges. Tsuki tried to brush one away and was zapped for her troubles. The blue eyed boy touched his jaw gingerly and winced.

“Sorry,” Tsuki repeated, massaging her fist nervously. “I didn’t think that would actually work. Usually, people figure that one out and dodge! What a terrible first impression this has been, huh? Anyway. Uh, sorry about that.” The boy grimaced. “I bit my tongue.” ”Are you good?” Tsuki shifted from foot to foot. “I mean, you want to keep going?” Clouds McGee shrugged, looking a touch embarrassed. “I mean, if you are?” Tsuki shrugged and charged him. One of his clouds shot at her, getting in her face and blinding her. She dropped into a slide, sinking partway into the ground as she did. Hooking her foot around his, she flew between his legs and pulled him down before rushing back toward the orb. She was nearly there when he grabbed her foot and dropped her again, crawling frantically for the orb. Tsuki rolled to her feet and ran past the struggling cloud boy. Scooping up the orb in her arms, she bolted away from her opponent and toward the edge of the roof. His clouds rushed after her, one once again obscuring her face and the other wrapping around her legs. Stumbling slightly, Tsuki waved the cloud away from her face.

And found herself teetering on the edge of the rooftop. Tsuki glanced back at the charging, stony-faced boy, and made a decision. She had already faced fear of spaces- why not falling as well? Shuffling back slightly, she saluted him. “Thanks for the lift earlier. But I’m going down this time.”

And she stepped backward.

Orb cradled close to her chest, this time the falling felt more like flying. Wind rushed past her like a busy pedestrian, and the windows were a spinning film reel as she went down, down, down. She was little more than a shimmering thought with an orb in her arms as she went down… down…

CNRPK She hit the pavement solidly, arm absorbing most of the blow. Her intangibility helped, but not quite as much as she might’ve hoped. Her arm was definitely broken, and her heart was doing its panicked-best to escape her chest. Tsuki struggled to her feet, gingerly cradling the orb in the crook of her elbow and stumbling slightly in the washing wave of fear and exhilaration. She looked up, up towards the top of the building. There was the boy, staring down at her with alarm.

Tsuki smiled shakily. And stepped back over the finish line. @taiyuu-high-oct

#sugiyama tsubame #kemuri moya #round two #lets hope it works this time #also uh #hope y'all have a good day

13 notes · View notes

arsyeong · 4 years

Text

full moon | cyj.

summary: your boyfriend can only visit you on the full moon, which is why he can’t be with you this christmas. word count: 1,632

a/n: no, this is not a werewolf au. this is just a “moments with moon prince youngjae” with hints of christmas. also fact!! the full moon this month is on the 12th :DD

You walk onto your balcony with your eyes fixed on the full moon; as if you were an insect drawn to the brightest object in that dark night. You’re fascinated by its beauty, you always were, but more awe-inspiring is the man in a suit, standing with his hands behind his back as he stares at the castle grounds below him.

When he turns to you, brown eyes meeting yours, your smile widens at the confirmation that he was, in fact, waiting for you.

He bows courteously in greeting and meets your gaze again with a smile on his face. “(Y/N).”

“Youngjae,” you say, curtsying and lowering your gaze, “Prince Youngjae, I mean.”

“We’re on a first name basis now, remember?” he chuckles, “No need for the honorifics.”

“But you’re not just any prince!” you exclaim, walking to stand beside him, “You’re a moon prince! The Moon Prince!”

“More important than that, though,” he says, turning to you with a gentle expression, “I am your prince.”

You shy away from his gaze, a blush blossoming on your smiley face. Your heart can’t help but flutter at his words; they constantly affirm that his feelings for you do not fade despite you belonging in different realms, only being able to meet once a month. They bring you warmth amidst the December cold, something only Youngjae could do.

“How have you been?” he inquires, grabbing your attention again, “I mean, yes, I do hear your talks to the moon, but I still want to know how you’re feeling. On a scale of 1-10.”

“I’ve been feeling like a 6,” you confess, wrapping your arms around yourself and looking up at him, “But, right now, I can assure you that I’m feeling a perfect 10. Maybe even more.”

He smiles at that, but worry remains in his eyes. “I want to take away all your suffering,” he says, “but I have yet to find a way to do that while I’m on the moon and you’re here on Earth.”

“Hey,” you say, taking his face into your hands when he lowers his gaze to emphasize his apology, “You’re helping me enough by coming here, even if it’s just on every full moon. Every moment and night I spend with you gives me strength to last the month, Youngjae; no need to be sorry.”

“I can’t help it,” he says, wearing a sad smile, “You know how I am.”

“I do,” you say, “I know how you are, and I love you so much for being you.”

The man smiles a lot. He has a sad smile, a happy smile, an excited smile, an emotionless smile, a pained smile and so much more; right now, he’s wearing an adoring one, a special one reserved only for you, and you can’t help but return it with a smile of your own.

You retract your hands when he nods to signal he’s okay, and the two of you return to staring out the grounds. “It’s Christmas soon, isn’t it?” he asks, and you hum in response. “That’d be on December 25?”

“Yeah,” you answer, “What phase would the moon be in then?”

“Waning crescent.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

You’re quiet for a while, and then you go, “I’ll just sing you a Christmas song then.”

“Wouldn’t you be busy then?” he asks, “Isn’t your family going to host some massive Christmas party?”

“They will,” you say, “but that won’t stop me.”

“So, you’ll come out here and sing to the moon? When a lot of people can see you?”

“Yeah,” you say, nodding your head to the idea, “It’ll be a special number for people who would care to look.”

“Huh,” he says, and he turns to you with a pout on his face, “I thought it’d be a special number for me.”

“What I said would be my excuse,” you amend, “but you would know it’s for you and only you. I’m telling you now.”

“You’re making my heart flutter, (Y/N).”

“You’ve been making my heart go wild since you first locked eyes with me,” you counter, and you smugly cross your arms when he doesn’t reply. “I win?”

“Of course,” he says, bowing his head so his hair would cover his eyes but not his smile, “You’ll always win because you’ve already won my heart.”

“You could do better.”

“I know,” he says, hiding his face more, and you have to laugh at how cute he’s being. He raises his head and the moonlight makes his cheeks shine; the moon always knew how to make its prince look better than he already does.

Unable to resist, you take the few steps toward him and pinch his right cheek. “Aigoo, you’re so cute, Youngjae-ssi.”

“I told you to drop the honorifics,” he says, eyes wide in what he means to be intimidating, but only makes you pinch his other cheek. “Hey. (Y/N).”

“My boyfriend is so cute,” you continue to coo, and he breathes out in disbelief, his cheekbones rising once more as he smiles.

You hadn’t realized you had placed yourself too close to him until he placed a hand on the small of your back and pressed you closer to him, your bodies touching.

“You seem surprised,” he notes lowly at the ugly face of shock you were probably pulling, and your arms move to wrap around his neck when he leans toward you, dipping you in the process.

“Youngjae!”

“That’s my name,” he smirks, raising a hand to trace over your lips, “It sounds so pretty coming from your lips.”

“Youngjae,” you breathe out again, blood rushing to your face and eyes widening at the sudden change in his character.

“If you’re going to keep chanting my name like that, would you rather I take you inside?” He gestures to your bed inside, flustering you so much that you repeat his name.

And you repeat again, but you pair this one with a hit on his chest. As he feigns pain, you scold, “You are very naughty, Prince Choi. The moon is watching!”

“Really?” he goes, pulling you close to him again and smiling down at you. “I’m just suggesting we continue this conversation inside. Others may hear you and wonder what the hell a Youngjae is.” With a mischievous grin, he adds, “Why? What did you think I meant?”

“What you meant!” you exclaim in exasperation, wriggling free from his grasp and marching inside, but he’s quick to follow you.

“One word, (Y/N),” he prods, “One statement of which you want to happen and I’ll gladly make your dreams come true.” You turn around just as he winks for the latter.

“You don’t have the power to do that, Moon Prince.”

“I don’t need magic – just you, me and what you humans call hormones.”

“Youngjae!”

His laugh is a merry one, echoing around your room. “Just tell me what you want, (Y/N),” he says happily, “I’ll give it to you. Remember, I won’t be here on Christmas, the day you actually give gifts.”

“Don’t remind me,” you groan, walking to your bed and falling on your back, “It greatly saddens me this is the last time we’ll see each other in a month and, here you are, annoying me.”

“Am I really?”

“You know what I mean.” You didn’t want to offend him; you two had drawn a line you could only ever tread on but never cross. Throughout your relationship, you had gotten to know what pushes him in different ways – and you had discovered he didn’t like feeling and being treated like a nuisance.

He just wanted to make people happy.

Overcome with guilt, you sit up. “Was that too far?”

“It’s okay,” he says, a small smile on his face, “It’s you.”

You pat the space beside you and he accepts your invitation immediately, his smile widening enough to show his teeth as he practically skips to you. He flops onto the bed, bouncing slightly, and he reminds you of a child who’d just seen the fluffy bed at a hotel.

“What do you want for Christmas, Youngjae?” you ask with a curiously tilted head, raising a leg onto the bed and angling yourself to face him. “Let’s restart our conversation there.”

“All I want for Christmas,” he says, facing his body to you as well and reaching out to cup your face, “is you.”

“Are you aware that’s a famous song?”

“Maybe,” he says with a shrug, and he leans closer to you like he did earlier, “But, right now, all I’m aware of is you.”

“Youngjae,” you whisper. The mood had changed again and, once more, the atmosphere around the two of you was charged with some energy you just couldn’t explain.

“I missed you a lot, (Y/N),” he says quietly, “Maybe I wouldn’t be so talkative if I were by your side every day but, then again, maybe I would. I don’t know how to act around you,” he whispers, eyes firm but soft on yours, “You drive my heart into a frenzy, and I really wish I make you feel the same.”

“You do, Youngjae, I promise you.” Your reply was immediate, but not in the way that it was rehearsed – just in the way that it showed how you wouldn’t hesitate to express your love with him. It was that raw, that genuine. “Don’t ever doubt the heart.”

“I missed you a lot, (Y/N),” he repeats. One of your hands is intertwined with his, and he leans in until you could feel his lips brush against yours when you say, “I missed you a lot too, Youngjae.”

He gives you a small smile before closing his eyes and sealing your lips together, this moment in itself being the best Christmas gift both of you could ask for.

23 notes · View notes

thejudgementbegins · 5 years

Text

Judgement Pacific Theater P-day

Part 1

31th of December; 23:57:01 (GMT-8)

Downtown Los Angeles; Hotel Intercontinental Los Angeles

All apparent local power shut off in the Los Angeles Downtown area. No form of energy appears to work including battery powered equipment and devices. People who instinctively reach for their cellphones discover that their phones are off! Moving vehicles shut off, most roll to controlled stops by their drivers, while flying craft steerage lock up, engines power down and then begin to fall uncontrollably.

The hotel guess located in the roof’s Spire Seventy-Three open-air bar, witnesses a couple flying aircraft tumbling to the ground in the night sky. Tracing their travel as they temporarily block out stars with their movements. One, a large commercial jet appears to be heading straight towards the roof of the hotel. The other a helicopter crashes into a high rise building several hundred yards away. At the last minute the commercial liner jet appears to shift its direct trajectory towards the hotel, veers off and its left-wing crashes through a western corner portion of the hotel. The plane crashes off in the distance exploding as it smashes into the Coliseum, catching the stadium on fire. The left-wing causes several windows to shatter as well as send parts of the roof and several lower floors walls tumbling. Some of the people manage to hold on to a ledge of the building still connected to the hotel, but most fall along with debris, traveling at least seventy feet screaming to their deaths. Panic ensues among the survivors. People begin to scream and run, looking for exits. Most people move about nearly blind with only a waning crescent moon and star to light their way. A lucky few had lighters.

Those who run to the elevators discover them not be responding. Two guests begin yelling out to have the guest calm down on the roof, and to head towards the known stairwell exits. The darkness masks everyone, leaving only their silhouettes. People do their best to calm down and follow a more orderly process into the stairwells and down the stairs. It is a long and difficult trek to the bottom of the hotel, with the hotels lobby being on the 70th floor. Some people trip over each other, which causes people to have to wait, as others assist the fallen.

The hotel staff like the guest all head down the stairs. Security and some of the hotel walk in to each floor’s hallway, knocking on doors and asking everyone to head downstairs for safety. On the ground floor is several conference rooms and a guest hall, that is usually rented out by companies for special events. One of the guests who helped calm people down on the roof, named Patrick Barnard, a young professed college student studying medicine and doing an internship at the nearby Good Samaritan Hospital ask the hotel manager, Vanessa Vasquez for a large room that could be used to provide medical aid for those who were wounded. Vanessa opens the large conference room. Dr Tanna Quinne a foreign guest, with several scars on her face and an eye patch covering her right eye, volunteers to assist Patrick with those who were injured. She takes one of the ladies who had become ill right as the power outage with her to the conference room.

Patrick ask for a volunteer to go retrieve his medical supplies from his motorcycle’s cargo cases, that is parked in the hotel’s base parking area. Mack a large, nearly six and a half feet tall husky man volunteers to go down stairs to retrieve Patrick’s medical supplies. He takes off immediately using some candles that has been recently supplied to some of the ground floor guest by Vanessa and her hotel’s housing staff.

Most of the local employees and guest decide to depart the hotel Intercontinental, hoping to reach home, friends, or family that are not too far away from the downtown Los Angeles area. Others try to reach nearby homes of people they know. The hotel’s landline phones being dead leaves everyone with no outside contact. So, these people, decide to try and get home or go to a nearby friend of family members home. Those left number slightly over two hundred individuals, most are anxious and hoping that the power will come on soon.

***

Carnival Cruise Line’s Miracle Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean (same time; which is 21:57:01 local time, approximately 8-10 hours away from Oahu port.)

A horrific storm comes out of nowhere to engulf the ship with heavy winds, rain. The ship rises and falls suddenly do to the large waves that begin to form and disappear near the Miracle. Captain Carl Heaten, warns passengers, via the ship’s intercom system, of the dangers of the storm, sends non-essential crew members to their cabins or to stay in one of the bars or lounges, as the crew on hand, does their best to tighten down equipment, and steer through the raging storm. Communications officer Tabitha notes that the communications systems is unable to get a response to her emergency messages she broadcast.

The Blue Lounge’s current entertainer for the evening Skye an attractive young female adult sees the worries and concerns on the faces of the people in the lounge and does her best to try and calm the patrons. She decides to sing, to help others pass the time hoping to calm them enough as the crew tries their best to get through the storm. Some of those in fear and ready to leave the lounge decide to set back don and stay, allowing the young singers voice to lull them into calmer states.

The ship lurches and sways through the waves as the wind and rain continue to pour. The night sky with its narrow sliver of moon makes it difficult to see. The pilot and navigator concentrate on trying to keep their ship on its course. The lack of the navigation equipment and their disconnection to the satellite global positioning signal concerns the officers, who decide to keep this information between themselves and the captain.

In time the storm only gets worse, lighting begins flashing in multiple areas within sight. The flashes provide brief visual sights for the crew and guest looking out of their cabin windows. Navigational equipment begins sound audible alarms at the computers show error messages of all detection systems. The storm continues for nearly three hours, before the wind and rain stop abruptly without warning. The ocean’s waves calm, and the captain gives the all clear announcement to the passengers and crew. The pilot and navigator tried their best to stay on course, but with their equipment failing, neither is sure of their direction or the actual distance covered during this time.

The mood of the guest attitudes improves with the change in weather. Crew member go out double checking equipment and double checking that the ship is secure. Captain Heaten sends out other crew members to check on the ships guest to be sure that no one was injured, and to send those injured to the ship’s doctor if necessary.

#Judgement_Pacific_Thearter #GURPS #ttrpg #Roll20

1 note · View note

flowercuco · 6 years

Text

Veil Episode 2 Pt 3

After a long break that is surely to inadvertently be followed by another long break, our group reunites to help protect the Virtual Idol A.I. Crescent Moon, only this time! It’s at night!

As the group begins to settle inside of Crescent Moon’s hotelish room, they get a call from Waning Touch, Crescent Moon’s manager, she says that she’s heard some people being rowdy around the room and is scared to go home by herself, so Will offers to go pick her up. Synch has something to do and Fortuna has a wife to go home to, so Senza and Ariel will be more than capable of keeping Crescent safe, right?

Before anyone heads off though, Will wants to talk to Synch after speaking to Crescent Moon. She tells the Virtual Idol, while being flirted at, that she wants Ariel to learn more about humanity and fit in and be more friendly, but its pretty apparent that they don’t like her that much. To that end, Will asks Crescent to speak to her for her, Crescent agrees, greatly implying that she would do much more for Will, who she think is extremely cool.

Meanwhile, Fortuna checks her e-mails in an attempt to figure out what Buster Wolf was talking about before with regards to having to go to work. Ultimately, what Fortuna gets is that just as she has shunted all of the work to her T.A.’s, they have began to shunt onto each other and others, a wild web that is, a mess, but works well enough. Or rather, has worked well enough, as with all of them taking some time off for Crescent Moon’s concert, there is a risk of all of this going to hell and Fortuna’s classes imploding on themselves. Her plan to deal with this, is to convince Crescent Moon to give her Signed Tat, that she can use to bribe her students into doing what she wants instead. The cost is of course, that Crescent Moon is going to want to go see the university. The one full of CM fans.

Senza tries to see if there’s any events at the school, but instead finds some conflicting reports, getting the idea that theres some recruiting event but not if she wanted to go to it or not. Fortuna’s calendar proves unhelpful, only highlighting that the event will have free food.

Will meanwhile, catches Synch before they slip away and asks about Burning, saying that they saw him earlier, and that it would be good to have some help given the seriousness of the events all of the sudden. Synch lies and says they don’t know him which is fair because Will is lying to Synch and just wants to talk to Burning to get him to leave Quid because Will is Kind Of A Cop. (Only Kind Of).

As everyone else departs, Ariel changes into their military depot getup and with paranoia, checks the room Crescent Moon is in. The idol tries to calm them down and asks about the rest of the group, especially Will, friendship, and that kind of thing. Ariel responds with disgust for the organisation that Will is a part of, something that makes Crescent uncomfortable, as she sees Will as more of a Knight than a cop. Crescent just wants everyone to get along, to be able to trust people and have people trust her, and for Ariel to also be able to do the same. Ariel discovers that Crescent has some sort of hidden agenda that requires knowing if the group is trustworthy or not. Crescent asks Ariel if she can trust them, to which they say yes. Ariel follows that up with asking about how she can trust humans when they’ve seen them at their lowest, to which Crescent talks about seeing A.I. at their lowest as well, and also adds that there are A.I. who have not been created by humans. Ariel asks Crescent if she trusts them, she says yes, and the conversation ends with Ariel finally unlocking all of her emotions.

Will finally in RedBlack Duel Park, where Crescent Moon is going to have her concert, a park of Red leaves and Black bark. She quickly finds the fence that is covered by a tarp to better and secretly prepare for the concert, though the fence’s door has been forced open. Will goes in and realises that some people, likely Old Media Hipsters related to the Old Neo Underground, are messing with things, and as it isn’t anything too dangerous or permanent, opts to go retrieve Waning Touch instead. On the way, she runs into an old friend, the Burgundy Themed Cobra Assailant. He makes a show of how sneaky he is and generally says some cryptic shit after reinforcing his desire to kidnap Crescent Moon. He threatens and succeeds in intimidating Will after she fails to probe him, claiming that he will spare her if she promises to bring the idol to him, but she nevertheless overcomes that fear in order to use her Seat of Judge’s mask to instil a peacefulness to the masked man who then jumps away, though not without leaving a USB behind. Will gets Waning Touch without much more incident and makes her promise to hire more security and also to not stay in the park alone.

Synch and Burning meet at some odd and seedy sort of bar that the Eyes have occupied. Melting is grooving out to Crescent Moon music obnoxiously, with a shirt that has the lyrics play as his cat ear headphones play them. Burning also introduces Synch to Asking for the truth, a new member of the eyes, who is just kind of a little shit. Synch says that they need privacy, so Burning makes Melting take Asking to the other room, with difficulty. Synch warns Burning about Will’s investigation although not without naming names, saying that things are also dangerous for other reasons and that they need to leave town. Burning reveals that what actually happened was that the SVS scientist, Professor Vas Nicola-Lelulelo, was actually started the fire and planned to make Burning disappear in it, but he managed to escape and run away. He thought it would have all blown over after seven years, but clearly it hasn’t. Burning tells Synch some interesting information as well, giving them the name of Ariel’s creators, who they thought had something to do with their psychic powers, the Angelic Threads. Floating and Thundering are both investigating a lead with them, and Burning asks if, worse comes to worse, if Synch would help rescue them. Synch responds with his obligation to the team, to which Burning responds that they would like their help as well, especially Ariel. If they need him, Synch promises to be there. After committing to telling Ariel about the Angelic Threads, Synch and Burning go on a nice date.

Fortuna is driving home to dinner with her wife when a person tries to get her attention, Fortuna slows her car and opens her window, which just BLASTS OUT Crescent Moon nightcore, something that Bicker Boulder, interviewer for the Investigative Bureau, a collection of journalists and other similar professions, ignores so that she can try to leverage an interview out of Fortuna. She wrangles out some sort of verbal contract out of Fortuna to be interviewed after calling out her lifestyle of never being accessible to anyone. Bicker writes a note to Fortuna that has normal writing from the interviewer on the front, and a threatening You Should Do Your Job and Stop These Excursions” printed on the back.

Back to the room, Crescent Moon is playing with her veil altering abilities when Senza, egged on by LACUNA, finally starts to approach the Virtual Idol. Ariel is also in the room, just reading about whatever she wants. Senza gets to the point and asks Crescent about the company that made her and if it has any relationship to SVS, something she isn’t aware of. Senza talks about how it isn’t necessarily about something between the two, it could be some secret branch of the company headed by a weird or power hungry CEO. Whatever it is, Crescent doesn’t know it, because she talks about how her company, NMT, didn’t want to spotlight themselves with Crescent Moon too much, as it would bring them attention that they would be too small to deal with properly, something that becomes relevant as Crescent tells Senza, through tears and hesitation, about her mother, Heartful Vale, and how she’s vanished. Crescent asks Senza what her relationship with her mother is like, and Senza replies that she has some disagreements, but they still love and understand each other. When Senza probes Crescent Moon about this whole situation, she seizes up, causing Ariel to misinterpret things and ask Senza what her problem is.

The two argue, with Senza more or less correctly saying that while this is hard, they needed to know about this information from Crescent Moon, as it has clearly led to this danger and her possible kidnapping! Crescent Moon agrees and sobbingly apologies, as it is so hard to talk about these kind of things. Senza opts to de-escalate, giving Ariel space and moving away from Crescent Moon, giving Ariel a blanket to comfort Crescent with so that she can call Will and talk about the whole Missing Mother/Creator thing. Crescent needs some time alone, leading Ariel to talk to the only person they can, 2Beta, who is currently in a cardboard robot model kit play thing. He answers the phone on a cardboard house and asks about Ariel, who asks if he knows anything about Crescent’s mom or if the creators have anything to do with it. 2Beta doesn’t know, but also doesn’t think that this specifically, directly, has to do with their part of whatever plans the creators have. Ariel overreacts a bit to 2Beta’s uncertainty, as Heartful Vale being an A.I. scientist who made a super cool and powerful A.I. must have painted a target on her. They then apologise and ask if 2Beta is ok. He’s lonely, working on trying to become Joyful, and asks Ariel to apologise to Senza for him. Ariel promises to visit soon, and do so.

Senza and Will speak, with Will not wanting to take the USB back to the hotel in case it has a tracker, to which Senza agrees, as it will make speaking about things easier. As she gets ready to leave, Ariel apologises to her for before. Senza explains that it isn’t that she’s being patronising, or at least she’s not trying to, it’s that as an adult who works at a university she feels the need to make sure that the young folk are doing ok and are taken care of. Ariel feels that they can take care of themselves but thats not quite what she means. Ariel also apologises for 2Beta, and asks why Senza got into her field. She goes on for a bit about why it is due to the differences in the same kind of robots, and how she was just kind of a weird kid who got really interested in her maid robot. People wanted personable machines but they didn’t quite realize that they would just make machine people.

Finally, Senza and Will meet up, and after the 2Beta incident, Senza has a sort of sandbox environment for LACUNA, which she tests the USB in. The two most important files are of course, a README that says “if lost return to crescent moon” and a png labeled “To Crescent Moon.” The image shows a middle aged lady, tied up against her will. Senza, recognising what this is says “this is what we need to talk about,” as it is obviously a picture of Heartful Vale, and this is a picture meant to taunt or incite Crescent Moon.

Next time is... some amount of things as I need to try to get things closer to some sort of conclusion!!!

#quidama dre #concert at quid central

5 notes · View notes

paraparaparadigm · 6 years

Link

It had been like dying, that sliding down the mountain pass. It had been like the death of someone, irrational, that sliding down the mountain pass and into the region of dread. It was like slipping into fever, or falling down that hole in sleep from which you wake yourself whimpering. We had crossed the mountains that day, and now we were in a strange place—a hotel in central Washington, in a town near Yakima. The eclipse we had traveled here to see would occur early in the next morning.

I lay in bed. My husband, Gary, was reading beside me. I lay in bed and looked at the painting on the hotel room wall. It was a print of a detailed and lifelike painting of a smiling clown’s head, made out of vegetables. It was a painting of the sort which you do not intend to look at, and which, alas, you never forget. Some tasteless fate presses it upon you; it becomes part of the complex interior junk you carry with you wherever you go. Two years have passed since the total eclipse of which I write. During those years I have forgotten, I assume, a great many things I wanted to remember—but I have not forgotten that clown painting or its lunatic setting in the old hotel. The clown was bald. Actually, he wore a clown’s tight rubber wig, painted white; this stretched over the top of his skull, which was a cabbage. His hair was bunches of baby carrots. Inset in his white clown makeup, and in his cabbage skull, were his small and laughing human eyes. The clown’s glance was like the glance of Rembrandt in some of the self-portraits: lively, knowing, deep, and loving. The crinkled shadows around his eyes were string beans. His eyebrows were parsley. Each of his ears was a broad bean. His thin, joyful lips were red chili peppers; between his lips were wet rows of human teeth and a suggestion of a real tongue. The clown print was framed in gilt and glassed.

To put ourselves in the path of the total eclipse, that day we had driven five hours inland from the Washington coast, where we lived. When we tried to cross the Cascades range, an avalanche had blocked the pass.

A slope’s worth of snow blocked the road; traffic backed up. Had the avalanche buried any cars that morning? We could not learn. This highway was the only winter road over the mountains. We waited as highway crews bulldozed a passage through the avalanche. With two-by-fours and walls of plywood, they erected a one-way, roofed tunnel through the avalanche. We drove through the avalanche tunnel, crossed the pass, and descended several thousand feet into central Washington and the broad Yakima valley, about which we knew only that it was orchard country. As we lost altitude, the snows disappeared; our ears popped; the trees changed, and in the trees were strange birds. I watched the landscape innocently, like a fool, like a diver in the rapture of the deep who plays on the bottom while his air runs out.

The hotel lobby was a dark, derelict room, narrow as a corridor, and seemingly without air. We waited on a couch while the manager vanished upstairs to do something unknown to our room. Beside us on an overstuffed chair, absolutely motionless, was a platinum-blonde woman in her forties wearing a black silk dress and a strand of pearls. Her long legs were crossed; she supported her head on her fist. At the dim far end of the room, their backs toward us, sat six bald old men in their shirtsleeves, around a loud television. Two of them seemed asleep. They were drunks. “Number six!” cried the man on television, “Number six!”

On the broad lobby desk, lighted and bubbling, was a ten-gallon aquarium containing one large fish; the fish tilted up and down in its water. Against the long opposite wall sang a live canary in its cage. Beneath the cage, among spilled millet seeds on the carpet, were a decorated child’s sand bucket and matching sand shovel.

Now the alarm was set for 6. I lay awake remembering an article I had read downstairs in the lobby, in an engineering magazine. The article was about gold mining.

In South Africa, in India, and in South Dakota, the gold mines extend so deeply into the Earth’s crust that they are hot. The rock walls burn the miners’ hands. The companies have to air-condition the mines; if the air conditioners break, the miners die. The elevators in the mine shafts run very slowly, down, and up, so the miners’ ears will not pop in their skulls. When the miners return to the surface, their faces are deathly pale.

Early the next morning we checked out. It was February 26, 1979, a Monday morning. We would drive out of town, find a hilltop, watch the eclipse, and then drive back over the mountains and home to the coast. How familiar things are here; how adept we are; how smoothly and professionally we check out! I had forgotten the clown’s smiling head and the hotel lobby as if they had never existed. Gary put the car in gear and off we went, as off we have gone to a hundred other adventures.

It was dawn when we found a highway out of town and drove into the unfamiliar countryside. By the growing light we could see a band of cirrostratus clouds in the sky. Later the rising sun would clear these clouds before the eclipse began. We drove at random until we came to a range of unfenced hills. We pulled off the highway, bundled up, and climbed one of these hills.

The hill was 500 feet high. Long winter-killed grass covered it, as high as our knees. We climbed and rested, sweating in the cold; we passed clumps of bundled people on the hillside who were setting up telescopes and fiddling with cameras. The top of the hill stuck up in the middle of the sky. We tightened our scarves and looked around.

East of us rose another hill like ours. Between the hills, far below, 13 was the highway which threaded south into the valley. This was the Yakima valley; I had never seen it before. It is justly famous for its beauty, like every planted valley. It extended south into the horizon, a distant dream of a valley, a Shangri-la. All its hundreds of low, golden slopes bore orchards. Among the orchards were towns, and roads, and plowed and fallow fields. Through the valley wandered a thin, shining river; from the river extended fine, frozen irrigation ditches. Distance blurred and blued the sight, so that the whole valley looked like a thickness or sediment at the bottom of the sky. Directly behind us was more sky, and empty lowlands blued by distance, and Mount Adams. Mount Adams was an enormous, snow-covered volcanic cone rising flat, like so much scenery.

Now the sun was up. We could not see it; but the sky behind the band of clouds was yellow, and, far down the valley, some hillside orchards had lighted up. More people were parking near the highway and climbing the hills. It was the West. All of us rugged individualists were wearing knit caps and blue nylon parkas. People were climbing the nearby hills and setting up shop in clumps among the dead grasses. It looked as though we had all gathered on hilltops to pray for the world on its last day. It looked as though we had all crawled out of spaceships and were preparing to assault the valley below. It looked as though we were scattered on hilltops at dawn to sacrifice virgins, make rain, set stone stelae in a ring. There was no place out of the wind. The straw grasses banged our legs.

Up in the sky where we stood the air was lusterless yellow. To the west the sky was blue. Now the sun cleared the clouds. We cast rough shadows on the blowing grass; freezing, we waved our arms. Near the sun, the sky was bright and colorless. There was nothing to see.

It began with no ado. It was odd that such a well advertised public event should have no starting gun, no overture, no introductory speaker. I should have known right then that I was out of my depth. Without pause or preamble, silent as orbits, a piece of the sun went away. We looked at it through welders’ goggles. A piece of the sun was missing; in its place we saw empty sky.

I had seen a partial eclipse in 1970. A partial eclipse is very interesting. It bears almost no relation to a total eclipse. Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane. Although the one experience precedes the other, it in no way prepares you for it. During a partial eclipse the sky does not darken—not even when 94 percent of the sun is hidden. Nor does the sun, seen colorless through protective devices, seem terribly strange. We have all seen a sliver of light in the sky; we have all seen the crescent moon by day. However, during a partial eclipse the air does indeed get cold, precisely as if someone were standing between you and the fire. And blackbirds do fly back to their roosts. I had seen a partial eclipse before, and here was another.

What you see in an eclipse is entirely different from what you know. It is especially different for those of us whose grasp of astronomy is so frail that, given a flashlight, a grapefruit, two oranges, and 15 years, we still could not figure out which way to set the clocks for daylight saving time. Usually it is a bit of a trick to keep your knowledge from blinding you. But during an eclipse it is easy. What you see is much more convincing than any wild-eyed theory you may know.

You may read that the moon has something to do with eclipses. I have never seen the moon yet. You do not see the moon. So near the sun, it is as completely invisible as the stars are by day. What you see before your eyes is the sun going through phases. It gets narrower and narrower, as the waning moon does, and, like the ordinary moon, it travels alone in the simple sky. The sky is of course background. It does not appear to eat the sun; it is far behind the sun. The sun simply shaves away; gradually, you see less sun and more sky.

The sky’s blue was deepening, but there was no darkness. The sun was a wide crescent, like a segment of tangerine. The wind freshened and blew steadily over the hill. The eastern hill across the highway grew dusky and sharp. The towns and orchards in the valley to the south were dissolving into the blue light. Only the thin river held a trickle of sun.

Now the sky to the west deepened to indigo, a color never seen. A dark sky usually loses color. This was a saturated, deep indigo, up in the air. Stuck up into that unworldly sky was the cone of Mount Adams, and the alpenglow was upon it. The alpenglow is that red light of sunset which holds out on snowy mountaintops long after the valleys and tablelands are dimmed. “Look at Mount Adams,” I said, and that was the last sane moment I remember.

I turned back to the sun. It was going. The sun was going, and the world was wrong. The grasses were wrong; they were platinum. Their every detail of stem, head, and blade shone lightless and artificially distinct as an art photographer’s platinum print. This color has never been seen on Earth. The hues were metallic; their finish was matte. The hillside was a 19th-century tinted photograph from which the tints had faded. All the people you see in the photograph, distinct and detailed as their faces look, are now dead. The sky was navy blue. My hands were silver. All the distant hills’ grasses were finespun metal which the wind laid down. I was watching a faded color print of a movie filmed in the Middle Ages; I was standing in it, by some mistake. I was standing in a movie of hillside grasses filmed in the Middle Ages. I missed my own century, the people I knew, and the real light of day.

I looked at Gary. He was in the film. Everything was lost. He was a platinum print, a dead artist’s version of life. I saw on his skull the darkness of night mixed with the colors of day. My mind was going out; my eyes were receding the way galaxies recede to the rim of space. Gary was light-years away, gesturing inside a circle of darkness, down the wrong end of a telescope. He smiled as if he saw me; the stringy crinkles around his eyes moved. The sight of him, familiar and wrong, was something I was remembering from centuries hence, from the other side of death: Yes, that is the way he used to look, when we were living. When it was our generation’s turn to be alive. I could not hear him; the wind was too loud. Behind him the sun was going. We had all started down a chute of time. At first it was pleasant; now there was no stopping it. Gary was chuting away across space, moving and talking and catching my eye, chuting down the long corridor of separation. The skin on his face moved like thin bronze plating that would peel.

The grass at our feet was wild barley. It was the wild einkorn wheat which grew on the hilly flanks of the Zagros Mountains, above the Euphrates valley, above the valley of the river we called River. We harvested the grass with stone sickles, I remember. We found the grasses on the hillsides; we built our shelter beside them and cut them down. That is how he used to look then, that one, moving and living and catching my eye, with the sky so dark behind him, and the wind blowing. God save our life.

From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching. It was a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lighted from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That is when there were screams. At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world. We were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around and around, embedded in the planet’s crust, while the Earth rolled down. Our minds were light-years distant, forgetful of almost everything. Only an extraordinary act of will could recall to us our former, living selves and our contexts in matter and time. We had, it seems, loved the planet and loved our lives, but could no longer remember the way of them. We got the light wrong. In the sky was something that should not be there. In the black sky was a ring of light. It was a thin ring, an old, thin silver wedding band, an old, worn ring. It was an old wedding band in the sky, or a morsel of bone. There were stars. It was all over.

It is now that the temptation is strongest to leave these regions. We have seen enough; let’s go. Why burn our hands any more than we have to? But two years have passed; the price of gold has risen. I return to the same buried alluvial beds and pick through the strata again.

I saw, early in the morning, the sun diminish against a backdrop of sky. I saw a circular piece of that sky appear, suddenly detached, blackened, and backlighted; from nowhere it came and overlapped the sun. It did not look like the moon. It was enormous and black. If I had not read that it was the moon, I could have seen the sight a hundred times and never thought of the moon once. (If, however, I had not read that it was the moon—if, like most of the world’s people throughout time, I had simply glanced up and seen this thing—then I doubtless would not have speculated much, but would have, like Emperor Louis of Bavaria in 840, simply died of fright on the spot.) It did not look like a dragon, although it looked more like a dragon than the moon. It looked like a lens cover, or the lid of a pot. It materialized out of thin air—black, and flat, and sliding, outlined in flame.

Seeing this black body was like seeing a mushroom cloud. The heart screeched. The meaning of the sight overwhelmed its fascination. It obliterated meaning itself. If you were to glance out one day and see a row of mushroom clouds rising on the horizon, you would know at once that what you were seeing, remarkable as it was, was intrinsically not worth remarking. No use running to tell anyone. Significant as it was, it did not matter a whit. For what is significance? It is significance for people. No people, no significance. This is all I have to tell you.

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil. Its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.

The world which lay under darkness and stillness following the closing of the lid was not the world we know. The event was over. Its devastation lay around about us. The clamoring mind and heart stilled, almost indifferent, certainly disembodied, frail, and exhausted. The hills were hushed, obliterated. Up in the sky, like a crater from some distant cataclysm, was a hollow ring.

You have seen photographs of the sun taken during a total eclipse. The corona fills the print. All of those photographs were taken through telescopes. The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity of internal experience. Lenses enlarge the sight, omit its context, and make of it a pretty and sensible picture, like something on a Christmas card. I assure you, if you send any shepherds a Christmas card on which is printed a three-by-three photograph of the angel of the Lord, the glory of the Lord, and a multitude of the heavenly host, they will not be sore afraid. More fearsome things can come in envelopes. More moving photographs than those of the sun’s corona can appear in magazines. But I pray you will never see anything more awful in the sky.

You see the wide world swaddled in darkness; you see a vast breadth of hilly land, and an enormous, distant, blackened valley; you see towns’ lights, a river’s path, and blurred portions of your hat and scarf; you see your husband’s face looking like an early black-and-white film; and you see a sprawl of black sky and blue sky together, with unfamiliar stars in it, some barely visible bands of cloud, and over there, a small white ring. The ring is as small as one goose in a flock of migrating geese—if you happen to notice a flock of migrating geese. It is one-360th part of the visible sky. The sun we see is less than half the diameter of a dime held at arm’s length.

The Crab Nebula, in the constellation Taurus, looks, through binoculars, like a smoke ring. It is a star in the process of exploding. Light from its explosion first reached the Earth in 1054; it was a supernova then, and so bright it shone in the daytime. Now it is not so bright, but it is still exploding. It expands at the rate of 70 million miles a day. It is interesting to look through binoculars at something expanding 70 million miles a day. It does not budge. Its apparent size does not increase. Photographs of the Crab Nebula taken 15 years ago seem identical to photographs of it taken yesterday. Some lichens are similar. Botanists have measured some ordinary lichens twice, at 50-year intervals, without detecting any growth at all. And yet their cells divide; they live.

The small ring of light was like these things—like a ridiculous lichen up in the sky, like a perfectly still explosion 4,200 light-years away: It was interesting, and lovely, and in witless motion, and it had nothing to do with anything.

It had nothing to do with anything. The sun was too small, and too cold, and too far away, to keep the world alive. The white ring was not enough. It was feeble and worthless. It was as useless as a memory; it was as off-kilter and hollow and wretched as a memory.

When you try your hardest to recall someone’s face, or the look of a place, you see in your mind’s eye some vague and terrible sight such as this. It is dark; it is insubstantial; it is all wrong.

The white ring and the saturated darkness made the Earth and the sky look as they must look in the memories of the careless dead. What I saw, what I seemed to be standing in, was all the wrecked light that the memories of the dead could shed upon the living world. We had all died in our boots on the hilltops of Yakima, and were alone in eternity. Empty space stoppered our eyes and mouths; we cared for nothing. We remembered our living days wrong. With great effort we had remembered some sort of circular light in the sky—but only the outline. Oh, and then the orchard trees withered, the ground froze, the glaciers slid down the valleys and overlapped the towns. If there had ever been people on Earth, nobody knew it. The dead had forgotten those they had loved. The dead were parted one from the other and could no longer remember the faces and lands they had loved in the light. They seemed to stand on darkened hilltops, looking down.

We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet’s crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition we have forgotten we ever learned it. Yet it is a transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add—until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use.

I do not know how we got to the restaurant. Like Roethke, “I take my waking slow.” Gradually I seemed more or less alive, and already forgetful. It was now almost 9 in the morning. It was the day of a solar eclipse in central Washington, and a fine adventure for everyone. The sky was clear; there was a fresh breeze out of the north.

The restaurant was a roadside place with tables and booths. The other eclipse-watchers were there. From our booth we could see their cars’ California license plates, their University of Washington parking stickers. Inside the restaurant we were all eating eggs or waffles; people were fairly shouting and exchanging enthusiasms, like fans after a World Series game. Did you see ... ? Did you see ... ? Then somebody said something which knocked me for a loop.

A college student, a boy in a blue parka who carried a Hasselblad, said to us, “Did you see that little white ring? It looked like a Life Saver. It looked like a Life Saver up in the sky.”

And so it did. The boy spoke well. He was a walking alarm clock. I myself had at that time no access to such a word. He could write a sentence, and I could not. I grabbed that Life Saver and rode it to the surface. And I had to laugh. I had been dumbstruck on the Euphrates River, I had been dead and gone and grieving, all over the sight of something which, if you could claw your way up to that level, you would grant looked very much like a Life Saver. It was good to be back among people so clever; it was good to have all the world’s words at the mind’s disposal, so the mind could begin its task. All those things for which we have no words are lost. The mind—the culture—has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world’s work. With these we try to save our very lives.

There are a few more things to tell from this level, the level of the restaurant. One is the old joke about breakfast. “It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.” Wallace Stevens wrote that, and in the long run he was right. The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. The mind’s sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy.

The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious, clamoring mind will hush if you give it an egg.

Further: While the mind reels in deep space, while the mind grieves or fears or exults, the workaday senses, in ignorance or idiocy, like so many computer terminals printing out market prices while the world blows up, still transcribe their little data and transmit them to the warehouse in the skull. Later, under the tranquilizing influence of fried eggs, the mind can sort through this data. The restaurant was a halfway house, a decompression chamber. There I remembered a few things more.

The deepest, and most terrifying, was this: I have said that I heard screams. (I have since read that screaming, with hysteria, is a common reaction even to expected total eclipses.) People on all the hillsides, including, I think, myself, screamed when the black body of the moon detached from the sky and rolled over the sun. But something else was happening at that same instant, and it was this, I believe, which made us scream.

The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon. I have since read that this wave of shadow moves 1,800 miles an hour. Language can give no sense of this sort of speed—1,800 miles an hour. It was 195 miles wide. No end was in sight—you saw only the edge. It rolled at you across the land at 1,800 miles an hour, hauling darkness like plague behind it. Seeing it, and knowing it was coming straight for you, was like feeling a slug of anesthetic shoot up your arm. If you think very fast, you may have time to think, “Soon it will hit my brain.” You can feel the deadness race up your arm; you can feel the appalling, inhuman speed of your own blood. We saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit.

This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds. How could anything moving so fast not crash, not veer from its orbit amok like a car out of control on a turn?

Less than two minutes later, when the sun emerged, the trailing edge of the shadow cone sped away. It coursed down our hill and raced eastward over the plain, faster than the eye could believe; it swept over the plain and dropped over the planet’s rim in a twinkling. It had clobbered us, and now it roared away. We blinked in the light. It was as though an enormous, loping god in the sky had reached down and slapped the Earth’s face.

Something else, something more ordinary, came back to me along about the third cup of coffee. During the moments of totality, it was so dark that drivers on the highway below turned on their cars’ headlights. We could see the highway’s route as a strand of lights. It was bumper-to-bumper down there. It was 8:15 in the morning, Monday morning, and people were driving into Yakima to work. That it was as dark as night, and eerie as hell, an hour after dawn, apparently meant that in order to see to drive to work, people had to use their headlights. Four or five cars pulled off the road. The rest, in a line at least five miles long, drove to town. The highway ran between hills; the people could not have seen any of the eclipsed sun at all. Yakima will have another total eclipse in 2086. Perhaps, in 2086, businesses will give their employees an hour off.

From the restaurant we drove back to the coast. The highway crossing the Cascades range was open. We drove over the mountain like old pros. We joined our places on the planet’s thin crust; it held. For the time being, we were home free.

Early that morning at 6, when we had checked out, the six bald men were sitting on folding chairs in the dim hotel lobby. The television was on. Most of them were awake. You might drown in your own spittle, God knows, at any time; you might wake up dead in a small hotel, a cabbage head watching TV while snows pile up in the passes, watching TV while the chili peppers smile and the moon passes over the sun and nothing changes and nothing is learned because you have lost your bucket and shovel and no longer care. What if you regain the surface and open your sack and find, instead of treasure, a beast which jumps at you? Or you may not come back at all. The winches may jam, the scaffolding buckle, the air conditioning collapse. You may glance up one day and see by your headlamp the canary keeled over in its cage. You may reach into a cranny for pearls and touch a moray eel. You yank on your rope; it is too late.

Apparently people share a sense of these hazards, for when the total eclipse ended, an odd thing happened.

When the sun appeared as a blinding bead on the ring’s side, the eclipse was over. The black lens cover appeared again, back-lighted, and slid away. At once the yellow light made the sky blue again; the black lid dissolved and vanished. The real world began there. I remember now: We all hurried away. We were born and bored at a stroke. We rushed down the hill. We found our car; we saw the other people streaming down the hillsides; we joined the highway traffic and drove away.

We never looked back. It was a general vamoose, and an odd one, for when we left the hill, the sun was still partially eclipsed—a sight rare enough, and one which, in itself, we would probably have driven five hours to see. But enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.

#Total Solar Eclipse #Great American Eclipse #Eclipse

1 note · View note

rememberwarlock-blog · 6 years

Text

fic: scattered light characters: Luka, Radana, Greta, Dominik notes: Some character building, the shift in Luka’s story, where gears are gonna start rolling. The Luka now, reflecting.

Luka thinks she’s fond of him. Must remind her of someone from before, when she could take in a breath and live. Fingers move through his hair, barely there but noticeable enough that it’s the first thing he wakes to. Not the light that cascades into the room, gold and inevitable. Like a whisper of a muscle memory, he brings his fingers to cover the phantom touch. But there is no one there. Nothing. In the back of his mind, he hears the giggle from the spirit, as if it were a game. And then she’s gone; floats somewhere else until the next morning, he’s sure. So he breathes in, tensing as he sits up in the bed, skipping the part where he readies himself for the day, physically and mentally, and simply heads to his dresser to pull out an outfit for the day. Radana’s ghosts. That’s what he calls them. He likes to call them that because he’s never felt them so prominent before in his life. Radana has lived quite some time, has trudged up enough death and life to have lost souls follow her aimlessly. Like she’ll answer them, like she answers the living. They’re drawn to her, as everyone is in this world. Everyone gravitates towards her in some fashion and it makes sense to Luka that ghosts would too. He’s in the shower when it runs cold. It takes him a moment to realize it’s not the water but him. Just beneath his skin, his blood beats ice water and he holds his breath on instinct. “You’re warm, so warm,” says one of her ghosts, lips against his right ear. Warm like the sun that shines gold in his room, nearly unwelcome. Warm like the hands that took his cold dead ones that night. Warm like his sister’s smile, the third time he saw her after the flames because now she knew he was tangible, not going anywhere. Warm like Carlos’ little hands that gripped his. Warm like the blood that ran down his nose when he dipped into the Other Side, calling out for a father who didn’t want to be found. He shifts, feeling the presence stagnant in the air around him. Air. It’s always been the element he could depend on; the element that he held fiercely to his chest, as if it were to be stolen away. But it’s never been his. Luka knows it. It’s not the element meant for him, despite how much he’d like to keep it. You’re cold, he thinks to the spirit, Cold and sad. Like the end of the first day of winter, gone and alone. It leaves him with a brush of his jaw, one touch before the water burns his skin and he rushes to adjust the setting. --- “Your mind is wandering.” He snaps his gaze to her then. It will take him a few moments before responding to her. But Radana, great, oh powerful Radana, is so patient for whatever reason. She doesn’t snap, doesn’t seem irritated. And he knows partially why, though he doesn’t want to lean into that reason too much. He can feel her, on the edges of his mind, stealing however much she can from him, to leave him with just enough. She’ll never take too much, like she can with Dominik. Luka would be left with nothing with bones inside if she did. Dom gave everything to Radana because he could, all of what he felt. Dom loved and hated with every cell in his body and she scooped him up. Dom offered everything. Until Dom didn’t. And Dom was no longer Radana’s. He sees himself looking at Radana now, with one of her ghosts to his left, laughing about a crush (But you have it wrong, there’s no love here, he says to it) and he wants to ask her if she thinks he’ll be her new Dom. Her new everything, a everlasting fountain she could thrive on and he’ll be okay with it because it’s Radana and everyone centers their damn world around her. “Sorry,” he murmurs instead, still staring at her, still listening to the light laughter of a spirit that has the wrong idea. “What were you saying, Ma’am?” Radana blinks, tilting her head. There’s jest in her tone when she says, “I worry for you.” Another ghost flits between them, whispering Liar but if she notices, she doesn’t react. But that’d be just like her, Luka realizes. Nothing phases Radana. Nothing bothers her. Not pretty immortals that orbit her, somehow. And especially not when they leave her. “Don’t have to be. Not for me,” Luka assures her. And he looks away then, as if by instinct. A type of submission he’s used to. Like with his father. Or maybe someone else but he can’t remember. “All right. Finish the translation. I will be upstairs.” He doesn’t answer her. Not to be disrespectful but because another one of her ghosts prods at his shoulder and he slightly moves at the sensation. As if to tell him to follow her. But the ghost doesn’t understand. It’s not like that. He’d follow Radana to the ends of the damn earth, he’s realized, but not to stand where Dom stood. Not where others have before. He’d follow her because he didn’t follow another witch before. Someone he should have a long time ago. --- Greta’s the metaphors he still can’t quite place. If she is the waning crescent, he is the waning gibbous, rushing to to fit where she may have been, to fill in the gaps. On lonesome nights, he’d stare up at the stars, sixteen years old and without ambition but somehow full of life. A fire inside him that would be the death of him a few months later. He’d lean against the old family car while Jonas was inside the hotel room, reading over grimoires, calling up connections, or whatever he did so that he wouldn’t have a conversation with his son for a moment. Luka would look up, watching the odd fade and spark of the lights above, the twinkle poems mentioned. He remembers how it actually reminded him more of the ocean at night. How the moon’s reflection scattered over the surface, brighter than stars. He remembers the water, how it fit him like a puzzle piece. The element that wanted to be his but he rejected it long ago, chasing the wind instead. Choosing to breathe the toxins that came with it. He remembers wondering if his sister thought about the stars in a similar fashion. And then kicking off the hood of the car, thinking No, that’s bullshit, Greta’s somewhere else, somewhere happy because she wasn’t happy here. I’m not happy, he remembers thinking. But a pretty girl named Bonnie Bennett smiled at him a few months later and he thought he could be. --- The same spirit traces the line of his face. Another morning, another one of Radana’s damn ghosts, leaving consciousness in her wake because she has nothing better to do. This one stays with him the most, however. Because, honestly, she’s one of the firsts to show up in his second life. It’s because of Radana and how everyone and every damned thing orbits her. Not her, honey. You’re such a fool. A fool he used to be, Luka would like to believe. A fool to chase a Bennett out of the frying pan and into the fire. A fool to listen to his father when he said You’re acting like your sister. A fool to not at least ask Greta if he could come with her. But he isn’t a fool now. Because he watches Carlos, does little things to keep him safe. Because he follows Greta now. Follows the Thorned Witch and listens. Because he’s not in love, he’s safe. Not a fool, not a fool, not a fool. The touches pause and he’d like to open his eyes, look at the phantom that haunts him the most, wakes him up to the sun when he doesn’t want to. But he doesn’t. Instead the spirit chuckles and he feels lips upon his temple as he lays there in bed, too tired to bat the ghost away. Radana’s ghost. Hers. Not hers, the voice says but it’s more of a feeling that leaves him with a dull ache, a void. Yours. Oh, honey, you’re a fool. --- He lets Radana take whatever he feels that morning. Tosses that ache towards her in spite. And he wonders why he feels that towards her. His savior, the one who he first woke up to, explained he was here and no one knew why. But he’s spiteful and he thinks it has something to do with the ghost that wakes him every morning, reminds him he’s still fucking here, not on the Other Side, where he should be. And there it is. He almost misses it. A jolt in her movements. Like a reflex. Like he’d actually thrown something physically at her, as if he could hurt her. And he instantly recoils, still watching but he feels smaller. But she seems smaller somehow too. Her eyes, just a fraction wider, bore into him. When he blinks, she’s back to the cool Thorned Witch, nothing could hurt her. Nothing is there, not even the whispers of souls that tell him he’s done something, that Did you see that? She saw you. Something’s wrong. The moment passes and she greets him, brushing past, her fingers on his shoulder and it feels searing hot, like she’d branded him there. Yours, he remembers the Morning Ghost saying, sweetly but sadly. Yours like how he’d follow Radana anywhere, how he should have followed another. Yours like how Dom must have said over the years, only to leave small traces of him for her to find. Yours like Bonnie Bonnett and her beautiful smile. Yours like the first embrace he gave to his sister, after the flames and when he cried because it was kinda true. Or Yours like the whispers from this morning. He was waning gibbous and he couldn’t claim the element he wanted to because another claimed him awhile back. He was that scattered moonlight, the sixteen year old that grinned far too much, with a fire inside his chest. But now he’s the stagnant pond that sits waiting for ripples and moonlight, with ghosts in his ear and a wandering mind, a fool. Yours yours yours yours yours yours--- “Mine,” he says the ghosts that cut through the air. Because now they were his, for whatever reason. They showed up, not as much as first, but now they were the air he breathes. And he just wants to be the scattered light upon the waves, broken down so that they can’t find him. So that Radana can’t say what he fears she’ll say because he won’t deny her. And he’s mad at himself for it, mad at Dominik for a moment and wants to fling his frustration her way again, find her and let her scoop it up. But he doesn’t. Because Luka Martin doesn’t feel all that much anymore and he lets it go all too much. The ghosts are his, in some way. He doesn’t know why or when it happened but he’ll accept it for now. Like he accepts everything. Luka thinks that’s okay as long as everyone else is.

#fic.#the headcanons.#about luka.

4 notes · View notes

effervescentlotus · 6 years

Note

◎

◎ — Surprise Me

Trigger Warnings: Violence, gore, character death emotional trauma.

Recommended Rating: R-15

The moon was high, a sly, sharp crescent waning away much the way Nami’s determination was. Her iron will felt paper thin, and through it, the starlight filtered cold and unforgiving. Revealing in a way that peeled through her scales and made her feel raw from head to fin. Her tide was gone, and her scales pinched as they dried, but the itch was a minor thing as she stared at the sky.

Beside her, Elaine slept silently, body frail, cheeks hollowed, shoulders and legs emaciated from lacking nutrition. Nami had spent so much time and care, trying to feed Elaine with her skills, with her powers; she had hunted and fished and foraged, and with her all Nami strained her body, not by any stretch made for land, to provide for an overskyer that could not provide for herself. They were spiritual kin, wanderers in the same wasteland. Nami felt her heart crack and shake violently as she watched the young woman slumber, lovely even in the eyes of a different species.

She slid from her perch on the window to the bedside table, eventually swinging her body silently into the worn mattress of their shared hotel room. Even now, Nami could picture Elaine’s smile. It was so blindingly bright, an iridescent pearl of light in the dark murk of her life.

Nami took Elaine by the shoulder, and shook her awake, bolstering her heart with an ugly determination. “Elaine. Elaine, awaken. We need you awake.”

Sleep-drunk, slow reactions followed Elaine to consciousness as she slurred her words beyond understanding.

“We need you awake, Elaine.”

Ocean-blue eyes met hers, light coming into them as she became more alert. “Nami? Is something wrong? Are you okay? Need water?”

Nami shook her head. “We only need Elaine awake.”

Elaine measured her with her eyes, steadily more alert. “Nami, you only refer to yourself as ‘we’ when you’re really serious. What’s going on?”

Nami sat next to Elaine’s face and watched her quietly. She memorized Elaine’s face, worried, loving, alert, gentle; this Elaine that was Nami’s sister in spirit, a spirit that had helped heal the scar left by Rasho.

Holding that in her heart, Nami wrapped her warm, dry hands around Elaine’s neck. She watched Elaine’s eyes go wide, steeled her heart as she choked, lost the fight with tears as Elaine struggled in Nami’s superhuman grip.

“You have Nami’s heart,” she whispered, much as Rasho had whispered to her. “Nami’s love is with you, Nami’s spirit dies together with you. We are so, so sorry. We adore Elaine.”

Her webbed fingers squeezed tighter, the struggle became weaker, and Elaine’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. A wet crunch sounded dully in Nami’s ears as the delicate neck crumbled into mush within the webs of her fingers, saliva streaming out of this precious one’s mouth left open in a gasp for air that never came. Nami sobbed, hands sliding up to cradle the lifeless head in her fingers.

“We adore Elaine, but for Nami’s people, Elaine must die.”

#tw: violence #tw: gore #tw: murder #tw: character death #tw: emotional trauma #nami #marai #vastaya #sxlemnity #elaine #League of Legends #kill my character prompt

2 notes · View notes

writer-k-pop · 3 years

Text

The Musician (l.w.z) - Waning Crescent Hotel

Please read this (W.C.Hotel) if this is the first post of this series that you see. Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of death Genre: Angst, Hotel Del Luna AU, Choose your own adventure, SVT x Fem! Reader Staff: Yong (Spirit General Manager) / Jiwoo (Human General Manager) / Soon Bok (Room Manager) / Mun Hee (Front Desk Receptionist) / Shin (Grim Reaper assigned to Waning Crescent) Word Count: Ending A - 4.5k / Ending B - 4.4k

W.C.Hotel | Seventeen Masterlist | Masterlists

"How do you know that?" Yong smirks at me as we walk out of her office.

"Because I am an all knowing being." I say smugly in return but Yong smacks my shoulder, "Ah, okay. I overheard Jiwoo and Mun Hee giggling about what to get you."

Yong exhales, "Oh, they're getting me a gift?"

I shrug, "I guess. You should probably tell them if you don't want it."

"Well, this will be the first time in 500 years that's someone's gotten me a gift for this anniversary. So I'll take it." Yong giggles happily.

"Am I expected to get you something?" I ask, mildly panicking about what to get her.

"A gift from you?" She smiles, "While it would be a miracle to see that happen, no, you don't need to get me anything. Especially if Jiwoo and Mun Hee are going to get me something."

"I'm sure they'll make sure it's grand." I reassure her. "Where are you headed?" I ask when I realize I have no idea where we're headed.

"Hm," She chuckles, "Well the Gods thought it would be great to send us a few new employees. So I have a nice little orientation to go through with them."

"How many did they send?" I ask, slightly weirded out that we would get new staff.

Yong blows airs through her lips, "Five."

"Not too bad." I shrug as we near the conference room, "Where are they being stationed?"

"3 are being attached to Soon Bok in rooms and 2 are going down to the kitchen." She explains with a hand on the door handle.

I nod in understanding, "Alright."

Yong nods in farewell and turns the door handle but I stop her with my next questions.

"Oh, just quickly, what room and how long?" I ask in a quick breath.

"Room 221 and 15 days." Yong says softly with an even softer smile.

"Good luck." I tell her and walk back to the lobby so I can make my up to my office.

With my hands clasped behind my back, I walk lightly and just listen to the sounds of the hotel. The dings of the elevators. The lively chatter of the guests walking to and fro. The muffled footsteps mixing with the sharp clicks of heels against the tile floors.

My body feels light and for a moment, I feel happy and calm.

But it all comes crashing down when I hear yelling from the lobby.

"Why is it always the lobby?" I groan to myself and redirect my route.

When I enter the lobby, I see a group surrounding one man who looks like he wants to take them all but also very panicked on the inside. The group around him is shouting angrily and some are even trying to throw punches at him.

As I approach the group, Mun Hee walks out from the reception room and Jiwoo falls in step with me.

"Do I want to know what happened here?" I ask, leaning towards Jiwoo.

"I don't even know what happened." Jiwoo whispers back as the group's noise level grows louder.

I groan and throw my head back, eyes closed. "Why me? Why my hotel?" I wonder out loud.

Lowering my head, my gaze hardens and my expressions steels. "HEY!" I yell louder than the crowd and make all heads turn to me. "What is going on?"

A split second of silence and then all the guests start talking and yelling and point all at once. I hold up a hand and their voices quiet down immediately.

I inhale and prepare to rip into these people verbally but one of the guests yells out.

"He murdered us!" He yells angrily. "We're dead, and it's HIS fault." He's pointing at the man in the center. The one who's eyes are split between cockiness and panic.

"Did you?" I ask the man, stepping closer.

"Did I?" The man repeats my question with an arrogant smirk, "Did I do what?"

I close my eyes and mentally roll my eyes so hard before opening them again. I meet his gaze while fighting back a scowl. "Did you murder these people?" I expand my pretty obvious question.

The man half smiles, "Maybe."

Jiwoo tenses in fear behind me while I tense in annoyance.

"It's a yes or no question." I state and take a step closer. "You either did." Another step closer. "Or you didn't." Another step. "Answer me now." A step closer and I'm only a few feet away from him.

The man rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. He even puffs out his chest a little. "And if I did? What are you going to do? Kick me out?"

I scoff, "Kick you out? No. No, I wouldn't do that."

"Yeah, I killed them." The man interrupts me before I get to the good part.

I glance behind the man and meet the gaze of Shin standing next to Mun Hee a feet away.

"Again, I wouldn't." I repeat myself for emphasis, "But Shin, here, will escort you to the place you actually belong." I smirk and Shin approaches the man from behind.

"Wha-" The man stutters as Shin grabs his arms and starts dragging him backwards.

"Where, where are you taking me?" He struggles against Shin's iron clad grip.

A smokey grey doorway appears on the wall and Shin heads straight into it with the man struggling behind him. Shin gives me a curt wave and I return the gesture with a small smile before the two of them disappear into the grey smoke. And in a blink of an eye, the doorway disappears.

I turn and walk back to Jiwoo who blinks a few times to reset himself.

"Ah, uhm, I do apologize for... that." Jiwoo says once he has his voice back. "He will no longer be a problem so I do genuinely hope you enjoy your stay here. I will have refreshments sent up to your rooms."

Mun Hee leads some guests away as they break away from the group while the others disperse by themselves. Jiwoo stays quiet at my side and I finally let my shoulders relax slightly. A female guest walks up to us and takes my hands in hers.

"Can I finally rest?" She asks with pleading eyes.

I nod once, "You can rest now."

The guest smiles happily and a male wraps his arms around her shoulders. He pulls her away towards the elevators. Jiwoo and I turn and follow their movements.

"Sooo..." Jiwoo drags out the word when all the guests are out of earshot, "Where did Shin take that guy?"

I smile with mischief, "A place similar to what you humans call hell."

Jiwoo's eyes widen, "But what about the souls who had a past life of a murderer?"

"One or two murders is, unfortunately, passable for another life in the human world." I explain, eyeing the other guests milling around the lobby, "However, kill three or more and the Gods end your lives right there and then. When they reach our front desk, Shin is usually waiting to take them to 'hell.' Though I don't know what happened today." I say, slightly confused.

"So hell really does exist?" Jiwoo wonders in awe, "Like there's an actual place where terrible souls go?"

I chuckle and look over at him, "It exists and, no, you don't want to know what it's like."

"Okay." Jiwoo takes in my answer, "Then have you ever been there?"

"Once." I breathe out, "When Shin was busy with a departure and there was a female who killed 8 people acting psychotic in here. I had to take her there and for the record," I lean over and whisper, "Even I don't ever want to do it again." A shiver runs down my spine as the memory of the cold empty air resurfaces.

Jiwoo is stunned into silence and he just blinks at me. "That... That is scarier than all the stories my world has of it."

"All you need to know about it, is that the souls who go there, certainly belong there." I tell him and then walk to the elevator. Reaching the elevator, I press the up button as Jiwoo calls out another question.

"(y/n)! What do you call it?" He asks and his curiosity evident when I turn around.

"There." I tell him as the elevator dings and the doors open.

Leaving him no time to respond, I enter the elevator and press the floor where my office is located. And let the doors close shut.

~The Fifteenth Day~

The bright sun burns against my skin as I sit outside on a picnic blanket. Soft guitar plucks flow through the air. I turn towards the sound and find Woozi sitting next to me with a guitar in his lap.

He looks up and notices my gaze. A lazy smile grows on his face and he stops plucking at the strings.

"Like it?" Woozi asks, resting his arm on the top of the guitar.

"Not sure what it was." I answer him, pulling my knees up to my chest.

Woozi laughs, "Me neither to be honest."

"Well, for a moment, it sounded like you had a melody going." I say leaning my head on top of my knees.

"Which part?" He inquires with eyes full of wonder.

I bite my bottom lip in thought, "The small bit with the repeated runs."

"That's like the entire thing." Woozi chuckles and shakes his head. "I always forget you're not versed in music terms."

I roll my eyes, "You try running a full-scal-" I stop myself mid sentence realizing what I was about to say. In my time with Woozi, I've become extremely relaxed and almost let my secret slip.

"Running a what?" Woozi smiles softly, amusement showing on his face.

"A full scale family." I clear my throat, covering up my mistake.

"I thought you didn't have a family?" He questions, setting the guitar aside.

My eyes widen like a deer caught in headlights. I blink a few times as my mind races to think of another excuse. With each second that passes, my heart beat starts to beat faster. But Woozi grabs my hand, smiles, and makes my panic disappear in a second.

"Don't worry, I won't push." He says softly, "I know you don't like to talk about it."

I turn up the corners of my mouth and he gives my hand a squeeze before picking up his guitar again. I rest my hand on the blanket and continue to watch Woozi as he resumes his random plucking.

My fingers fumble with the pen in my hand and it clatters onto the floor breaking me out of my daydream.

"Fuck." I mumble and bend over to pick the pen up off the floor.

My hand wraps around the pen when someone quickly opens and shuts my door. I jump in surprise which results in me hitting my head on my desk.

"Fuck!" I groan in pain and slowly rise up, the pen still in my hand, somehow. With a hand rubbing the spot on my head, I look towards the door and find Yong leaning her back against it, breathing heavily. Her eyes are wild and in a slight panic.

"Are you okay?" I ask with slight concern that the hotel may be in extreme, extreme chaos.

Yong nods while still catching her breath. "Uhm, I sort of blew up the gift that Mun Hee and Jiwoo got me. And... they found out." She reaches the climax of her story.

"How did it happen?" I ask, trying to mask my laughter.

"Well," Yong exhales, pushing away from the door, "I was trying to turn a knob on it and then a different piece sprang off. And then another. And then the whole thing came apart within seconds." She finishes and glances back at the door to make sure it stays shut. "It was just my luck and then even more my luck that they passed by my OPEN office door." She shakes her head, "I ran out while they were stuck frozen, just staring at the scattered pieces."

I place the pen back in it's holder, "You'll be okay. They'll forget about it." I comfort her then wiggle my eyebrows, "Especially if you ask them to help you put it back together."

"That is an excellent way to get pummeled by two employees." Yong rolls her eyes and I laugh with glee.

"You'd survive." I tell her, our smiles still lingering.

"Barely." She mumbles, "Uhm, I was supposed to talk to you about a few things but," Yong gestures to her empty arms, "I kind of don't have the files."

I wave my hands dismissively, "We can it without the folders. It's not like I look at them anyway."

"True." She nods her head at me, "Well, Shin just helped with two departures and there are 3 more left today. There weren't any check ins during the day but Mun Hee checked in 3 guests as the moon rose. Soon Bok's new employees are picking up the work nicely and the guests have nothing but compliments for them." Yong looks up at the ceiling in thought, making sure she's not missing anything.

Yong's phone dings with a notification and she quickly pulls it out. "And Soon Bok just dropped Woozi off in the garden."

"She dropped him off?" I chuckle and raise to my feet.

Yong shrugs, "Hey, do you mind if I hide out here for a bit? I kind of want to avoid Jiwoo and Mun Hee."

I nod, "Go ahead. Just don't let Jiwoo or Mun Hee trash my office."

Yong throws me a thumbs up as I walk past towards the door. I throw one back and exit my office, heading towards the bare tree sitting in the center of the lonely garden.

As I enter my garden, I'm welcomed with the soft patter of fingers drumming against a table. Smiling, I turn towards the source and see Woozi staring out the window, his fingers mindlessly drumming to a melody that only he can hear.

"Oh, I like that bit." I say and Woozi's head whips around, startled. I giggle and he chuckles at the fright he fell into.

"Well, now I forgot what that bit even sounded like." He pouts and I sit in the empty chair next to him. "But if you give me another hour, I probably could find it again."

I hum in amusement, "If you did that, I wouldn't be able to talk to you." Now I'm the one pouting.

"What do you want to talk about then?" Woozi asks, resting his chin on his fists.

"Anything." I say with a smile, "Everything."

Woozi chuckles, "Where would you like me to start?"

I pucker my lips in thought, "Mm, start like you always did. With the music."

"With the music." Woozi repeats my words and leans back in his chair, "Well, I wrote a lot after you left. Wrote and composed. So much, in fact, that I had nearly 100 titles under my belt within 10 years." He smiles at the achievement, "Was considered a musical genius by everyone. Even the critics. Though they continued to enjoy ripping my pieces to critical shreds."

"I thought the critics loved you." I wonder.

"Oh, they loved me." He agrees, "But they also hated me. My pieces were so beautiful but they were made up of the worst parts. The critics never understood how so many terrible passages could mesh together to make the most beautiful piece their ears had ever heard."

"There was never another Jihoon. Ever." I reference the pseudonym he used and lean my head on my hand.

"You kept an eye out?" Woozi asks with delight.

"Of course, I did." I scoff, "I had to make sure no one would surpass your level of genius."

"And what if someone came who was better than me? What would you have done?" He questions me, squinting his eyes.

I shrug, "Probably delayed or made it so their works were never as good as yours."

"Seriously, how would you have done that?" Woozi smiles at my ridiculous statement.

"Twisted the Gods arm and forced them to." I state definitively much like a child.

Woozi bursts into laughter, his body rocking forward and his hands clutching his stomach. His outburst makes me laugh as well because we both know that I would never be able to do such a thing.

"Did your kids like your music?" I ask when our laughter has died down.

"My kids?" Woozi asks.

"Did... you not have kids?" I hesitantly ask, wondering if I got that piece of information wrong. "I thought I heard news that you and your wife had 2 children together before she... passed away." I avoid eye contact because I remember hearing about the slump he slipped into after she died.

"Yeah, I had two kids. Twins." He sighs and grabs my hand, partly to tell me it's okay to look at him and partly for his own reassurance. "Sunny and Yuna. And yeah, they did for a while... and then they were teenagers."

I smile at the unfortunate growth of a human.

"But they came back to loving my music once I retired." Woozi continues. "Sunny became a music professor and she used a lot of my works for her students analyze. And Yuna went into music therapy. She also used my works but for vastly different reasons."

"They did what I expected of a musician's kids." I comment, "You raised them well. They carried on your legacy."

"And how do you know that?" Woozi asks, "I thought you couldn't get involved in my life after you left."

I smirk, "I can't get involved, but I can keep up. Your name didn't just disappear into the noise like most peoples do. Yours stood out for many, many years. I got to see your daughters create a foundation in your name that helped kids get an arts education. I saw your grandchildren continue that foundation. I saw Jihoon's pieces played throughout the decades."

"You watched for that long?" He asks, sincerely touched by my words.

"What else was I supposed to do?" I answer his question with a question, "I wasn't going to just sit around all day, twiddling my thumbs, and waiting for the next love. Besides, since you were no longer in that life, I could get involved... kind of."

"What did you do? Donate money to the foundation every year?" Woozi guesses my exact actions on a whim.

I press my lips together and the information clicks in his head. I even see a tiny light bulb illuminate behind his eyes.

"You donated??" He says, grabbing the table and the back of his chair for support.

"Not a lot." I keep his expectations low, "Just a few thousand every year at the beginning of November."

"My birthday month." He smugly smiles.

"My very own memoriam." I tell him, leaning closer.

Woozi leans forward and presses his lips against mine just for a second, "It fits you beautifully."

I smile happily, "I thought so too." I lean back in my chair and cross my legs and my arms. "Mmm, did you ever tour?" I ask, remembering me urging him to do so but he always shot me down.

"Much to my dismay, I did." He nods, "My management said it was 'good for business.' And they somehow snuck a clause for at least one tour into my contract."

"Where did you go?" I quickly ask, curious.

"Mainly major cities all over the world." He answer me with an amused smile, "It took nearly 2 years to complete and my wife wasn't all that happy about it. Even when I told her she could come along with me but she was determined to stay and work her job." Woozi chuckles and I wrap myself with the comfort that he found someone who matched well with him. "She was so strong headed. Reminded me of another I loved." He looks to me and raises an eyebrow in suspicion, "She looked an awful like you."

I push his face away with a laugh, "Oh, stop it."

Woozi lets out a very airy chuckle, "Are you going to make me?"

I pout angrily at him, "I won't if you keep talking."

"About what?" He sighs as he's at a loss for stories that I want to hear.

"Anything." I groan.

"Everything." We simultaneously say, only he's deadpanning and I'm curious.

Woozi inhales, "Would you like to hear about the time I almost ruined a performance in Paris?"

My eyes widen, partly because of worry and partly because of interest, and I nod my head a little too eagerly.

"Of course you would." He shakes his head in believing disbelief. Then he tells the tale of how he had come down with terrible allergies in Paris and was sneezing terribly through the entire performance.

From Paris, the stories traveled to the cities he toured. Most good and funny memories but there were a few that weren't as cheery. Like in Moscow how he was almost arrested because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or in Australia when he woke up with 5 lizards in his bed. Though, while Woozi found it very traumatizing, I found it absolutely hilarious.

After his story stories were told, he dove deeper into his life as a father to Sunny and Yuna. The days when he'd be home early enough to surprise the girls before bedtime. The nights when they would wait up for him because he 'was the better story teller.' The times when he would be stuck on a melody and his girls would intuitively somehow know that and come running into his home office. All the firsts in their lives that he got to experience. And all the lasts that he missed: high school graduation, college graduation, etc. But even through all that, he reminisced on how his girls never faulted him for any of it. Because they understood his talent.

And so did the world. He got so much recognition for his work and yet, it never seemed like enough to me. I always thought he deserved more recognition when he was living. But like all things, the recognition came after he died.

Just like the soft ending of an orchestral ballad, the sun softly nuzzles under the horizon and gently nudges us towards our end.

I lean my head on Woozi's shoulder and sigh.

"Guess that means my time is up?" Woozi guesses and points to the last wisps of light peeking over the western horizon.

I nod but stay silent.

He smiles and grabs my hand in comfort. "I'm sure the time apart will fly by in a blink of an eye."

"It didn't last time." I mumble, turning my hand over to properly hold his.

"This time it will. I can feel it." He whispers and presses a soft kiss to the top of my head. "Come on now. The Great Jihoon can't be late for his last appearance in this world." He pats my hand against my thigh a couple times.

I lift my head off his shoulder and stand up with him.

"Which one bloomed for me?" He asks, nodding towards the white chrysanthemums.

Lifting my free hand, I point to the one on the far right. "That one."

"And what will happen to it once I leave?" Woozi continues to ask but he starts to lead me out of the garden.

"Do you want to know?" I ask, worried that it won't be up to his expectations.

He nods, "I want to know."

I exhale and say, "It'll wither and disappear."

"Oh." Woozi says softly.

"It's nothing special." I lower my gaze in embarrassment and release my hand from his. "The chrysanthemums are just there to remind me of the loves I have to wait for." I raise my head and find we've almost reached the lobby. "But the withering of one means that another is to come and that I'm one love closer to being free."

"I'll hold onto that last part and not think about the rest." Woozi says and our footsteps echo through the quiet and empty lobby.

Now it's my turn to lead our directions and Woozi grabs my hand again for comfort. We stay silent as we approach the departures door and my heart thunders against my chest. Opening the door, Woozi lets me pass through first with a small gesture.

At the edge of the forest, Shin stands stoic next to a running car, its red back lights like red eyes watching our every move.

"Do you think Sunny and Yuna are over there?" Woozi asks as we walk closer.

I look over at him and his eyes are filled with calm, genuine wonder. "Yuna will be there. I haven't seen Sunny pass through my hotel yet." I tell him honestly.

"And how many lives did Yuna have when she passed over?" He continues to question.

"She lived 8 lives." I inform him.

He looks straight ahead and straightens his shoulders in preparation to leave this world. "And Sunny?" He asks.

"When she was born as your child, she was on her 4th life and she had 6 more to go." I say and my hand remembers how lightly Sunny rested her hand in mine after she passed away in the human world.

Woozi nods and pats a hand over his heart. "Good."

We stop a few steps away from the car and Shin opens the car door for Woozi.

"Hey," Woozi pulls my hand so I'm turned towards him, "I remember that bit." He says quietly.

He raises my hand, palm up, then uses the other hand to drum his fingers against my palm. My eyes watch his fingers as they move against my skin.

Da, da-dum, da-dum-dum, da, da, da-dum.

My eyes look up to his which are studying my face for a reaction.

I smile softly, "That was the one." I remember the small rhythm from hours earlier.

"Don't forget it." Woozi instructs and points a finger at me.

I shake my head, "Never."

He smiles before capturing my face in his hands and bringing my lips to meet his in a deep kiss. I lean further in, not wanting to let go. But the nightly breeze that wraps around us directs us apart.

"I love you, (y/n)." Woozi whispers.

"I love you, Woozi." I say, just as quiet.

After one last kiss pressed against my forehead, Woozi pulls away and walks towards the car. He ducks into the car and Shin closes the door behind him. The car's brake lights brighten for a second before dimming and the car moves forward into the forest fog.

"What did he press into your hand?" Shin asks, walking up to me.

My eyes don't leave the fog but my hands reach for Shin's hands. Without breaking my gaze, I drum the melody against Shin's palm.

Da, da-dum, da-dum-dum, da, da, da-dum.

I let my hand hover over his palm for a second before letting go of his hands.

There is a heart beat of silence before Shin says, "Beautiful."

And back in my garden, the chrysanthemum sitting farthest to the right side withers away.

Return to the Navigation Page (Waning Crescent Hotel) to choose the next guest.

Woozi slides his hands down his thighs and exhales. "This is your last time doing this."

"What? Going to the forest?" I look over at him in confusion.

"Sending people off." He restates.

"But this time I get to leave too." I say and stand up, "Which makes it a last and a first."

Woozi stands up in front of me, "Then we should get this last-first show going."

I giggle at him and nod.

We walk hand in hand to the lobby where Yong, Mun Hee, Soon Bok, and Jiwoo stand solemnly.

"So this is it?" Mun Hee asks with tears in his eyes. "This is the day you leave us?"

"Don't you dare say that. You better not return here." He says angrily through his tears.

I chuckle, "I won't come back. I promise."

Turning to Soon Bok, I thank her for her service and her amazing work. Something I never did and should've done more.

Next onto Jiwoo. I also thank him for his and his entire family's service then I unclip the bracelet that has held him to this place.

"When you leave today, you won't be able to find this place again." I inform him, "I hope that you'll be able to go and live your life happily."

Jiwoo nods, "Thank you for letting me work with you. I won't ever forget you."

I smile sadly, "You will. But thank you."

Finally I reach Yong who is sniffling and trying so very hard not cry.

"You'd think after all these years of waiting that I'd be prepared for this day." She says through sniffles.

"Thank you, Yong." I rests my hands on her shoulders, "For everything. Thank you."

With lips pursed together, she leans forward and wraps me in an unexpected hug. But I soon wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tightly.

We pull apart after a couple seconds and I wipe the few tears that have escaped from her eyes.

"Keep this hotel running beautifully." I tell her before Woozi grabs my hand again.

With final waves of goodbye, Woozi and I walk out to the foggy forest that will take us to our resting place.

At the edge of the forest, Shin stands next to an idling car, a somber look on his face.

"(y/n)." He says when we reach him, "It has been an honor working with you. I wish you both a peaceful rest." Shin bows his head and I pat his arm.

"The honor was mine." I tell him with a smile. Now the tears start to line my eyes as the realization fully sets in.

I'm free. I served my years of punishment and now I'm free to let my soul rest.

"(y/n)?" Woozi softly asks pulling my attention to where he sits just inside the car, "Are you ready?"

I take one last quick look at the hotel before turning away from it. "Yeah, I'm ready. Let's go."

I lower myself into the car and Shin securely closes the door after I am completely inside. As the car begins to drive forward, Woozi securely grabs my hand and I let his warmth guide me towards our final destination.

In the garden, the final chrysanthemum withers and dies so that no more stand at the base of the bare tree.

#kpop #kpop imagine #seventeen #seventeen imagine #seventeen woozi #seventeen woozi imagine #woozi imagine #woozi #seventeen jihoon #seventeen jihoon imagine #jihoon imagine #lee jihoon imagine #lee jihoon #writer-k-pop #waning crescent hotel

25 notes · View notes