date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.
The first time she lets the redhead take her home, she’s diligent about hiding her cloak. She folds it carefully against tears and rips and abrasions, and hides it in a sea cave whose entrance is concealed by the tide.
She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.
“Mind me, Niahm. Never let them find your cloak.”
The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.
So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.
Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.
The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.
She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.
When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.
She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.
And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.
The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.
“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.
“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.
She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”
A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.
Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”
She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”
The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”
It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.
The ninth time, she hangs her cloak by the door, draped in careful dappled folds next to a drying oilskin jacket.
i say this every time it crosses my dash but i’m so freaking happy someone liked my submission and Wrote Stuff and it’s so good!!! i love these girls so so so so much
This post is like the only Worthy Thing i have ever done on this website and you made that possible, you rock <3
Spring does not do well with being caged. He paces, tense as a cornered hare, his face drawn and thin. He is pale in the faint shimmering light of the underworld, unnaturally so, the leaf-shaped scar on his cheek standing out white as bone. Death notes, with something between professional pride and vindictive satisfaction, that he stays well away from the black bars of the cage. They are forged from stygian iron, which drinks the life of anything that touches it; even Spring, the spark in the cold, the flower in the snow, the crackle of the thaw – even Spring does not have life enough to give that he can touch them for long.
Death steps forward, into the light. Spring goes still the moment he sees her, and his eyes track her as she moves toward him. She stops a few paces away from his cage and waits, silent.
He doesn’t seem able to meet her gaze. He looks at her folded hands, at her gold-embroidered hem, at the rubies of her crown, but he can barely glance at her face before his eyes skitter away again.
Death watches Spring, and Spring does nothing but fail to watch her in return. It is, she is surprised to find, tiresome.
She waves a hand and a pair of shades bring forth a chair for her. Spring does not spare the shades more than a glance, as if he is accustomed to seeing the greyed-out spirits of the dead. Most likely he is, alone among the gods above. Death suppresses the twinge of irritation at the thought and sits, arranging her skirts with a practiced movement. Spring shifts his weight slightly, planting his feet and drawing himself up straight, and now he is the one waiting. If it weren’t for the thin bars between them, he could be coming before her for an audience. It’s almost an amusing thought – no one has asked Death for an audience in centuries. No one has visited her kingdom at all, in fact, except for the dead – and Spring.
you know how sometimes your phone can’t get a GPS signal, so you have to wave it around for a bit to reorient it? I think it would be funny if that was a recurring sci fi trope, but with sentient robots. sometimes they get lost and have to pause in the middle of a conversation to just. spin around in a circle for a bit until their internal magnetometers reset
As the Royal Oracle it is your job to write a prophecy every time a noble child is born. However when you are presented with the King’s Heir you foresee that they will achieve nothing of note in their lifetime. In order to keep the King happy you must predict something that sounds impressive.
[CW: death during childbirth.]
The firstborn came into the world bathed in blood. The queen, beloved by all, succumbed to the the ill effects of the childbirth. She was a strong woman, both in wit and appearance. But that did not matter in the matters of her womb. She had smiled when her son issued his first cry, and held him in her arms.
And then, she died.
Her husband, King Jakim the Uniter, his grief knew no bounds. When he was given the child afterwards he would not let it go. The child had to be wrenched from his hands to be fed by one of the wet nurses, for he would not even entertain the notion of his wife, the child’s mother, not being the one to do such a thing.
It was cruel fate that the kingdom was dealt this hand. It was unjust punishment that a beloved ruler would have to suffer through such tragedy.
He kept to himself for a few days. He allowed only one of the younger, healthier nurses to care for the child when it needed caring. Other times, the child never left its father’s arms.
For a few days the king all but ignored his kingly duties, and let it fall to the court carry on with stately affairs without his oversight. He built a great court. He trusted their judgement.
But the only affair that was significant was my affair.
I was not part of the court. I was part of the temple. I was the Oracle. The only being other than the Divine One that the king would bow to. For I held the fate of his lineage in my quill and paper. With strokes of dark ink I could foretell what was to come.
I had done so with Jakim. I had written how, after six generations of constant conflict and skirmishes, the King Jakim would finally cease the hostility between his kingdom and the neighbouring free lands of Luqari. Not through invasion and subjugation, but by unity.
The unity being between Jakim and the freedom fighter Boomika, the only person the free lands recognized as their spokesperson.
There was a lot more to this unity that I was not privy to at the time. But it was clear. Jakim would be the one to end hostilities and strengthen the kingdom through an unlikely alliance. That was what my hands were compelled to write.
And now…
Now, as the quill flits through the empty piece of paper, wanting the write the grand deeds of the heir and eventual king, I realise a dark truth.
The king’s firstborn son would accomplish nothing. Nothing of note. The kingdom was in a good state. No war, no conflict, no shortages of anything. Trade was trade, taxes were taxes. Everything was as a kingdom should be.
There was no grand new war to be fought. No new weapon to be wielded. No divine quest nor challenge that needed to be overcome. There was… Nothing. The child would not be remembered for much.
And that worried me.
After what Jakim had gone through… After the cost that was paid to bring this child into the world… How could I tell him his progeny would not amount to anything? How could I face him and give him such news.
The Royal Deliverance was meant to be a joyous reading where I would foretell all the great deeds that would be done by the new royal in times to come. How would I stand up in the balcony and read from my scroll what I had written if what I had written was ‘the child would grow to be a king’ and nothing else?
What would the townsfolk say? What would the kingdom say? What would the king say?
I was dreading it. I was dreading talking to the king. I dreaded it from the night the child was born and I seen his bland future. It had been four days since then, and I knew eventually the king would leave the palace and make the journey here to present me the child’s name and ask me to tell him his fate. After which we would go the palace balcony and from here I would recite the prophecy in song for the people. But I doubted the latter would be done now. Four days had passed. The tradition was already broken, not that it mattered.
And on the fifth day, he came. He came alone, his hair disheveled and his robes simple. Not clad in the extravaganze of his station. In his arms he held the child in close embrace, close to his chest. As if he feared the world would take him away like it did his wife.
He stood before me, dark rings around his tired eyes and shoulders slumped. Looking a shadow of what he once was.
“I am here for tradition and duty. I am here for your knowledge and your wisdom. I am here for your gifts. Of prophecy and truth. I am here in supplication, to ask of you as my father had asked of you and his father has asked of you. I wish to know the song of my son, Lyca.”
His voice was tired. His demeanor was deflated. But his words still carried weight. He wanted to know what would his son become.
The lies I had planned to tell him sprung to my mouth. I could not let the good king feel helpless. I could not tell him his loss was for nought.
But what came from my mouth was the truth. Despite my best efforts I was but an oracle. A vessel for the divine truth.
“This is the song of Lyca. A babe born of tragedy to a father who had known none. A babe that would grow knowing no strife, no challenge. A babe that would inherit a sleeping kingdom that would only know peace under his rule. A babe who would only be remembered for short time by those after him, who would know his rule as the rule of ease. Those after him would call him the In-Between King. The king in-between kings of real note. The king in-between kings of real worth and greatness. This would be his legacy. This would be the song of Lyca.”
I stood, silent, angry at the prophecy. The words I was compelled to utter. This was a gross disrespect. A horrifying jest. In-Between King? That was a title of mockery. Despite myself I wanted to apologize to Jakim.
But I saw him smile.
I saw him look down at young Lyca, offering the child his finger which it eagerly grasped with its tiny hand.
“You don’t know how big a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. My boy would inherit a peaceful kingdom, you say? And he’d know no strife?” He bent down an pressed his lips against the child’s hand, “What more would a father want for his child?”
was thinking about why marginalized people often use slurs in describing oppression. like in the phrase “magical negro”, or using the term “cripple” or “tranny” when talking about how people see us. its not reclamation, it’s more about specifically forcing the dominant group to face their bias.
bc when it comes to overt forms of bigotry, there isn’t really the need to do this. the bigot will very directly tell you why they hate you- because you are a [slur], a stand-in for everything the believe about the group they hate (being unnatural, criminals, dirty, sinful, ugly, a drain on society, etc).
but generally those kinds of overt bigotry are harder to have in polite society, especially when the marginalized group in question has enough visibility and has been loud enough about their treatment that people have to acknowledge it. now, saying you hate black people or trans people or immigrants is a social faux pas, and people acknowledge that hating those groups is Bad.
but anything less than hatred is still looked over, because critically examining how our actions contribute to social patterns is Hard and requires abstract thinking, and it’s much easier to just get rid of the most blatant forms of bigotry and wipe your hands of the whole nasty “systemic oppression” issue. overt bigots are bad, ostensibly because of their bigotry, but largely because they just are so gauche about it, you know? it’s easy for Good Liberals in the US north to mock the gun-obsessed fat Southern man caricature who doesn’t believe in climate change and says slurs, but they often get quiet and awkward if someone brings up the liberal white woman from New York who quickly locks her door when a Black man walks by her car on the sidewalk. She doesn’t hate black people, so she can’t be racist- there’s a world of difference (in her mind) between herself and the Racist. even if, whether it’s through gun violence on private property or calling the cops because she feels scared, a Black man gets killed because a white person’s racist bias.
getting back to the original point about slurs: using them in this context forces people to recognize that all of that bias is the same. your racism, transphobia, ableism, isn’t different just because you use nice words. dominant groups get uncomfortable when marginalized groups use slurs to point out their bigotry (i.e “you want me to be a good tranny”) because it draws a direct connection between the blatant, socially unacceptable bigotry and the socially acceptable, low-key bigotry. a lot of times, society reacts to oppressed groups fighting for liberation by addressing the most obvious elements while allowing and encouraging the subtle elements, so that way they calm down and stop causing problems, but society doesn’t have to meaningfully change. drawing that connection pulls the cover off of society. no more “but I don’t hate immigrants so I’m not xenophobic!”, because xenophobia isn’t just ICE officers keeping kids in cages, it’s also getting annoyed with people who have strong accents because why can’t they just learn to speak English better and making every movie set in Eastern Europe have a blue filter so you know it’s Foreign and Sad.
basically, slurs are used as a weapon to remind marginalized groups of every stereotype about them, and “put them in their place”. but they can also be used to force polite bigots to face their own bigotry, blowing away the smokescreen of “only violent oppression is real oppression”. There’s a power to be found in bringing your issues into the light when the world would really rather you sit pretty and smile and thank it for doing the bare minimum while still making your life hell.
Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this
