Losing someone you care about is the worst feeling in the world.
They’re gone and there’s nothing you can do, and when the memories catch up with you you get in your car and you just drive and run for as long as you can.
But eventually you have to stop and accept that they are gone and no matter how much you loved them, it won’t bring them back.
Your love isn’t enough, and it will never be.
For eight years, Lucien has lived in a secluded northern village built around the ruins of a medeival castle. He was put under the thumb of a woman named Constance, who harbors a deep mustrust of outsiders and tormented him in the guise of raising him to be pious. Several years ago, a war broke out that has torn the continent to shreds. The self sufficient mountain village has been largely unaffected until the conquering force from the South decides to use the old fortress as a stronghold to push further North. The infamously merciless Captain Grimaldi is the presiding officer, along with General Louviere, who takes a sadistic interest in Lucien.
*ask to be tagged, little ragtag band who reads this one :) @faewhump
***
Before the occupation, the rooms still standing in the old castle belonged to the priests. Their monastic cots and prayer mats were gone, replaced by brightly colored couches tilted at angles toward the fireplace, burgundy curtains on the windows, hurricane lamps in every corner. Blueprints are spread across the table, next to a detailed map with pawns positioned on top like tokens on a board game.
Lucien stands just inside the threshold and watches the Captain pluck a half-smoked cigarette from a notch in a glass ashtray, tilt his head to light it.
“Come in.”
He gestures for Lucien to sit on one of the soft upholstered couches. He feels as if he will dirty it with his clothes, sits on the very edge. The Captain takes a seat on the opposite sofa, putting an ankle over his other knee, relaxed. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and blows smoke toward the stone ceiling, lost in shadow.
“You aren’t from here.” A statement, not a question.
It’s a leap year! In a week we’ll be experiencing the elusive 29th day of February.
Way back when, most of the matter in the Solar System clumped into the Sun while the rest turned into everything orbiting it. The time Earth takes to orbit around the Sun once is a year for us. Earth’s also rotating around its own axis, with one rotation being a day, but the amount of rotations in an orbit isn’t exactly 365 days.
One year is just a little less than 365 days and six hours, so we add a day every four years but not every 100th year. Unless that year’s divisible by 400, which is why we had a leap year in 2000. We can refine it further, but we’ll be too dead to worry about it before it becomes an issue.
Hence leap years! The extra day keeps our calendars in line with where the Earth is and makes sure our seasons don’t come earlier and earlier. Wouldn’t it be weird to have winter in January?
But that doesn’t mean days are all the same length - those can be more fickle. On average, our days have been getting longer by around two milliseconds per century (we can blame that on the Moon, by the way), and things like powerful earthquakes and a certain Three Gorges Dam have also shortened and lengthened days. What then?
Well, to keep things neat like we’re wont to do, we have leap seconds. Seconds used to be defined according to the length of a day, but without getting too technical, they’re now measured according to the vibrations of a Caesium atom. Their accuracy is a double-edged sword - we can keep time very precisely, which is good for keeping track of flights and the like, but since we’re still trying to match Earth’s rotation we need to add a second to the day every now and then to give it time to catch up.
Leap seconds aren’t predictable and they can pose much bigger issues for our computers. None have been planned this year so we’re in the clear for now. Until next time, happy early leap year!
With many thanks to @unfavorableinstigation for being the outside editing eyes!
We have a Deckerstar Hitman Au and a Deckerstar bodyguard au, so…. What about an au based on The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017)?
—
Protection Agent Chloe Decker is assigned to protect the life of her worst enemy, hitman Lucifer Morningstar. Now they have to work together to solve who is coming after Lucifer, all while avoiding their own personal grievances with each other. Enemies to Lovers AU
1. Keep to the marked trails in the woods. You do not know more than these ancient trees and there are things in the woods you do not want to encounter. If a cat, bird, or dog crosses your path, you’ve gone too far in. Turn around. Immediately. They are they for a reason and you do not want to meet who they are guarding. Those that stray from the trail sometimes come back with nothing more than bug bites and stories about boys in crowns and a throne of trash. Not all are that lucky. Not all come back.
2. People may seem older than they appear. You may notice that they remain unchanged from pictures dated years and decades ago. Do not question it and do not comment on it. Questions lead to trouble and Ferryport Landing is not particularly merciful to those it considers trouble.
3. The gaps in your memory are normal. Convince yourself of this before it’s too late. Your mind might seem like a scratched CD, skipping over sections and you know that something is meant to be there but you don’t know what. This is normal. Everyone in Ferryport Landing knows this feeling, so get accustomed to it as fast as you can.
4. Never go hiking alone. The mountains hide as many secrets as the trees, and you do not want to meet any of them alone. There may not be safety in numbers, but it does create more witnesses.
5. Do not visit the abandoned asylum. Some say it is haunted, some say it is just a common ground for stray cats. Do not give into the temptation to investigate. Both these theories are wrong and you do not want to meet what is really in there.
6. Keep your windows closed at night. Ferryport Landing is plagued with bugs that will sting mercilessly if given the opportunity, so keep your windows closed no matter how hot it gets. If you happen to see something that seems unbelievable (magical) outside at night, when everyone forgets about the other residents of the world, keep it to yourself. Try to dismiss it from your mind and above all else, do not mention it to anyone else. You do not know who will spread that information to others and you do not know what will happen if the wrong person hears it.
7. Respect the wildlife. Animals may be more than they appear. Do not acknowledge the human intelligence in a crow or rabbit’s eyes, but do not scorn them. Even if they appear to fall into the arbitrary category of ‘normal’, you do not know for sure and you do not want to anger them.
8. You will see things you cannot understand. Do not try to explain or justify their existence. Those outside of Ferryport Landing will not believe you, and those within it know that it is too dangerous to confess to seeing things you aren’t supposed to. They will never admit that they will believe you, so if you see anything unusual, it’s best to keep it to yourself.
9. Know where the edges of the town are. If you ever encounter a situation that seems too strange (magical) or dangerous, run for the edge of the town as fast as you can and do not look back. Most residents can’t won’t leave town. This may just save you.
10. The Grimms are the exception to everything. You will never know why, and they will never give you an answer. Take gratitude in your ignorance, because having knowledge makes you a target and you do not need to make surviving any more difficult.
Once, four kingdoms ruled the sea. War and time had further worn down the boundaries, until two remained.
This she thought, remembering the voices of all her old tutors and advisors overlapping in her head. The young queen gazed out at the harbour, where the blazing blue sky met the glistening waters.
She awaited the king of the other kingdom. She wondered if this time they would all become one unified kingdom. Perhaps not in her lifetime, not with the Vaes sea separating them. The immense blue gulf that led many a sailor to their deaths with their many unseen rocks, whirlpools, and as-of-yet unknown dangers, as to be almost unmappable.
Nene picked up the hem of her trailing skirt, before she carefully made her way down the incline of the hill, from the outer borders of the palace grounds. Lush green grass tickled her feet underneath.
She couldn’t stand there dawdling all day, waiting for a near-mystical king to show up or not, there was work to be done.
Despite that inner admonishment, her thoughts returned to the day the falconers had entered the Commons Hall to report that they had finally made contact with the land across the immeasurable ocean. One only mentioned briefly in the annals of the Conquering King. Their history had lauded him, calling him the usher of the Golden Age of Heartria.
He had nearly made the entire string of islands his kingdom, after all. Slowly, his ships had encroached all over the port cities of the larger stretch of the mainland until the entire peninsula was under his rule. Not long after that, the islands of the archipelago bowed to him.
Everywhere he landed, he planted a fireflower tree to mark the joints of his realm.
All except one. The elusive land of the King of Swords, so-called for their unearthly skill with weaponry. No foreign king had been able to conquer them, and thus no cartographer had any idea how large or small their tract of land actually was, what their interior geography was like, what they traded or subsisted on.
[ Lost: I plead guilty to all of you ]
Inside the woods we couldn’t tell
Who burned the walls and who burned with
Inside the roofs we couldn’t yell
Who broke and broke apart our myth
The story which we believed in for endings
We wished never to see, like our spendings
It craved too much to face consequence, we
actually couldn’t handle in sequence, See?
You entered the story in mid-hell
Hoping for better but clinging to our abyss
We built our house knowing too well
We were meant together but only for a width
Of time, the height of fortune and span of luck
I think we think of each other still, almost stuck
A miracle and nightmare together at once
Sometimes I wish we never met even once
Inside the woods we couldn’t tell
Who I’ve met and who you met that month
Inside those words you couldn’t tell
How much we were changing a moth
To a butterfly, you and I became incompatible
She and I became despicable, Her? Expendable
Me to myself more erasable and you, You—
A god, a bible, a life I clung to: everything I woo
Mainly there were 3 friends I ail
Included here in this poem and yet I miss
More than just those 3 I lost well
more than just them so many that I dismiss
And open my eyes away from my head to see
I’ve lost myself with all of them and my feet
Don’t know where to, who to, what to go to
Anymore or why so often I just cry.For them too
Taken from Chapter 8 of The Cetus Arc
“It’s done.”
Latex gloves snapped as they were being removed.
“You know what needs to be done.”
Her throat hurt. There was something stuck there. It’s long and hard that started from her lips, down her mouth and into her throat. She moaned as a wave of pain swept over her head and neck. The tube was slowly being extracted. She coughed as it finally came free. Voices came into focus.
“Give her another hit, she is waking up.”
There was no pin prick of an injection but her head grew fuzzier than before.
“Don’t worry, the sedation will make sure she doesn’t remember a single thing. Don’t forget give her a dose of biotic inhibitor.”
Ryder didn’t hear anything else as the claws of drugs pulled back beneath the murky depths of darkness.
There are two sides to every story. And for many, both are worth hearing. To help her father heal and to better understand Ignis, Simone knows she must learn of the fire elemental’s past. That is, if he chooses to tell her.
Female Human (POV) x Male Monster
TW: self-harm
As a child, I used to scream myself awake at night.
Sweat soaked my pajamas every time and my muscles ached from thrashing around. The only thing that brought me to my senses was the gentle touch of Nana’s hands.
My lungs always struggled to take in air and there were times when I threw up. But Nana would just draw a warm bath then gently wash my body with lavender soap. And she never let me feel ashamed.
But during the worst nights, I couldn’t look at her. Even after she’d dress me, change my bedsheets, and tuck me back in. I wanted nothing more than for her to leave so I could stay angry at myself. She never did.
From @dottie-wan-kenobi: omg idk when u posted that wip guessing game post but plssss do: hair, hold, want, and almost
Almost, from a giant WIP that has morphed into several other fics but has parts I need to return to:
“Sure you did,” Stiles sneers. “Either way, it’s too late now.”
Derek sets his jaw. “What if I don’t want it to be?”
Stiles stills. Derek can hear his sharp intake of breath in the sudden quiet. His face is flushed, fists clenched at his sides. They stare at each other until Stiles finally looks away, up toward the tree line.
“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before,” he finally says. Stiles turns and reaches for the sack, swinging it up on his shoulder. Derek almost offers to help - it looks heavy and awkward, digging into Stiles’s shoulder and sliding down his back - but he’s learned not to. “Come on. It’s too fucking hot down here and it’s a long walk back to the road.”
By the time they get back to the car, it’s almost dark and still 95 degrees. Stiles’s shirt is soaked through, clinging to his back. He heaves the bag into the back of the Jeep and pauses, catching his breath, hands on his hips as he glares up at the sky.
“I hate this place.”
++
And there you have it, a ton of evidence that I have to do a ton of editing before I post things to AO3. Hope you liked them!
From @dottie-wan-kenobi: omg idk when u posted that wip guessing game post but plssss do: hair, hold, want, and almost
Want, from a document with the working title “getting what you want is a curse”:
“I know you think that,” Derek says, something twisting sour inside him. “But I can’t – I’m not going to do that to you. It doesn’t matter how much I want – I could never.”
Stiles just looks at him.
“This is my fault.” Derek can barely hold his voice steady; he has to. If he even wants the slightest possibility of being friends after all of this. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Derek, no –” Stiles half-rises, reaching out, but Derek steps back, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I wish I could stop it, but I can’t.”
stray kids reaction to: u struggling w homework and exams ꒰๑ ᷄ω ᷅꒱
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