The Summoning By @wildkittewrites (AO3)

the universe i wished to protect

consider: Veth, recently married and super pregnant, goes out into the woods and finds a teenage Beau who just ran away from home. She immediately adopts her. Yeza is unsure of what to do because so far she's only adopted squirrels and kittens, but this is a person. But when Beau's father sends men to bring her back, Yeza's the one who protects her. And Luke grows up with a cool older sister. (This wasn't meant as a prompt, but if you feel inspired, feel free to add onto this :p)

Hmm, yes you could say i had feelings about this au. This got very long, but MAN do i kinda wanna write this fic now, thank you for this beautiful idea-

Veth insists she’s pregnant, not bedridden, and goes out as usual to harvest fresh ingredients

She’s just about ready to start heading back, basket full of stuffs, when she hears some muffled noises and what sounds suspiciously like stifled tears (she remembers the sound of those intimately)

Of course, she seeks out the source

The source turns out to be a bruised and bristling teenage beau, with what looks suspiciously like dried blood on her shirt trying to untangle her sleeve from some thistles

Veth offers to help and take her home for dinner, and it’s getting dark out and the woods aren’t very safe after sunset she says

Beau is, obviously, wary of accepting help, but she’s tired and she’s been walking for days, and it’s a pregnant halfling lady, what would she even do? So she says yes

They walk back together, beau trying very much to answer veth’s cheerful questions with as few syllables as possible

They get to the apothecary

Yeza sees that his wife has upgraded her strays from coyotes and raccoons to human teenagers and tries very hard to be surprised

Then he notices that this particular human teenager has bruises around her neck that look suspiciously hand sized

He and veth share a Look

He goes in the back to ‘grab the healing potions’, while veth gets beau settled at the table and starts preparing dinner

Luke, 2 years old, toddles out and tugs on beau’s leg, because he wants Up! darn it, and it doesn’t matter who’s holding him

Beau freezes, she is not a good influence (as she’s been told many, many times) and she’s never had a meaningful interaction with a child in her life, but veth just glances at them with a smile and says

“Oh, be careful, he does tend to drool,”

And what’s she gonna do, make him cry? So she picks him up, and he tries to use her as a human climbing pole, and by the time dinner’s ready and yeza has returned from ‘grabbing the potions’ (venting his rage) (he does, though, have healing potions, and makes sure beau consumes them all)

Beau has gotten less tense, and maybe fallen in love with the tiny, tiny child a little. a little.

They have dinner, names are exchanged, the brenattos insist that she stay the night because kamordah is so far, and we wouldn’t want you captured by goblins or something horrible like that

And beau, whether she admits it to herself or not, likes these kind halflings and their stupid son with his stupid, cute face

And maybe she’s trying not to cry during dinner because dinner with her parents (when they bother to show up) is never like this, it’s always cold and full of snide comments about everything that’s wrong with her, and the rage boiling up in her throat because why can’t they just let her be-

And veth shows her to the guest room, and tucks her in, and that’s just when she loses it, because she can’t remember ever being tucked in before

And veth just holds this little girl, and quietly vows vengeance on whoever caused this

And when she strolls back into bed with yeza, they just look at each other and mutually agree that they will find the person who has harmed this child and drip acid into their eyes until they are begging for death go through the proper legal procedures to adopt this girl

So beau’s been with the brenattos for a week, maybe a little more, and she’s starting to think that maybe things are going to be okay, that she can stay and learn how to make acid with veth and yeza and babysit luke while they’re away and practice fighting on the bushels of hay in the tillage (she still a fighter, always a fighter) but then,

Then the men show up, three of them. Clearly hired mercenaries, meant to drag her back kicking and screaming. And beau knows that it’s the end,

That these little halflings are nice, but they wouldn’t break the law for her, wouldn’t risk leaving their real son in danger for her,

But then yeza comes storming out of the workshop, vials of acid dangling very, very visibly from his belt, the full picture of righteous indignation at his shop being invaded, at his daughter, being threatened, while veth is out, running to the crownsguard-

They aren’t fond of mercenaries, she knows. So long as beau isn’t clearly being held against her will, she’s old enough that they’ll side with the family they’ve known and bought potions from for years-

So while she’s out, yeza stalls

Beau is standing in the corner, shellshocked, as this tiny halfling man stands straight and immovable, when the mercenaries growl and threaten.(how he loudly, proudly, without the shame and thinly veiled disappointment she’s so, so used to calls her his daughter) How, when one of them, impatient and not willing to risk his gold, reaches for a weapon

How yeza uncaps a vial of acid and launches it at the man’s face, grimly triumphant as the man’s howls of pain echo through the house

Then in comes veth, backed up by a group of crownsguard

It’s clearly self defense- one halfling against a group of mercenaries, attempted kidnappers, even? No question. and the girl isn’t being held against her will, clearly

It’s a bit of a blur, after that

Lots of paperwork, and emotional conversations, but by the end of the night, beau is no longer a lionett but a brenatto, and she has a younger brother now, and veth, and yeza, and a home, instead of an echoing prison

And she grows up in an apothecary with ceilings that are slightly too low, with a troublesome littler brother who asks questions about everything and a mother that kisses her goodnight and a father who asks how her martial training with the crownsguard is going

And when she decides that she’s going to become a monk, even with stupid meditation, and heads out to the local cobalt soul temple, there is a teary send off, full of hugs and kisses and orders that she write us every week, beau, we want to know how you’re doing!

Sometimes, I get so scared.

So scared that I completely shut down,

I flinch at small movements and noises

I become terrified of every tomorrow.

The thought of getting older puts weights in my stomach and sweat on my palms.

Knowing nothing about how to live a balanced life scares me so much

And as days pass. As I run out of time to end this nightmare. I’m just terrified I’ll still be here tomorrow.

I’m still so scared of being alive.

passing down family recipe (is done verbally)

absolution

[image is a stylized drawing of a figure with long hair, dressed in white hanfu robes, slumped upside down; his wrists are bound above his head with a white ribbon and his eyes stare out, unseeing. dozens of black swords have been impaled into his torso and throat. the image is greyscale but for the bright red blood soaking into his robes and dripping down his expressionless face.]

IM READY FOR A FIGHT BUT I DONT KNOW WHO TO PUNCH

Hope (in 8 select parts)

1. Faint Music, Robert Hass

Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days— likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears— that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one— except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears. As in the story a friend told once about the time he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him. Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash. He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge, the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon. And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,” that there was something faintly ridiculous about it. No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass, scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs, and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up on the girder like a child—the sun was going down and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing carefully, and drove home to an empty house. There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed. A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick with rage and grief. He knew more or less where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill. They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,” she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights, a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay. “You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?” “Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now, “I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while— Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall— and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more, and go to sleep. And he, he would play that scene once only, once and a half, and tell himself that he was going to carry it for a very long time and that there was nothing he could do but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark cracking and curling as the cold came up. It’s not the story though, not the friend leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,” which is the part of stories one never quite believes. I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain it must sometimes make a kind of singing. And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps— First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.

2. No Choir, Florence + The Machine

3. from The Naomi Letters, Rachel Mennies

4. from On Jellyfish, Nina Li Coomes

5. When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro

…oh, I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I’d get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don’t want it any more, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow’s sky.

6. To the young who want to die, Gwendolyn Brooks

7. In Blackwater Woods, Mary Oliver

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

8. Untitled Project 01 - ISSAC LAM

may i share with you the best video on the internet

Launching my first art blogs with a small comic based on the amazing words of Ursula K. Le Guin!

Pinterest

FREEZE YOUR BRAIN | Heathers in 2019 | Pinterest

FREEZE YOUR BRAIN

Squip slushy.