Perhaps Mr Qi With A Fluffy Cat...? I Feel Like He'd Be A Cat Person, And The Specific Type Of Cat Person

This has been their every single morning ever since they started sharing the same bed.

Also, Yoba sounds like Toast from Bee and Puppycat!

some of my medieval inspired sdv posters :)

bringing my thread here in honor of the ballad of songbirds and snakes trailer today because the "lucy gray parallels katniss" people are out there and they are wrong, lucy gray baird is peeta mellark and sejanus plinth is katniss everdeen and i will die on this hunger games hill

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Not a big blog, but boosting nonetheless

Me: *passing by Caroline and hands her one of the Horseradishes I happen to be carrying atm*

Caroline, for some reason:

. . . how the flip am I supposed to respond to that.

Chapter 11!!! I'm getting close to having posted everything I've worked on up to this point. I NEED to get back to writing lol whoops.

This chapter explains a bit more of how Oryn came to be in the forest with the Witches in the first place.

tags: @skidotto @idonthaveapenname

tw: mentions of death, war, abuse

Ch. 11

The man was rugged; not the image of holy ambition and sanctity by any means. May didn’t know what to expect—gilded robes, braided hair, hard posture—but he was none of it.

Flanked by both Demetrius and Oryn, he sat beside the hearth as if his very bones craved the warmth it gave. His bony fingers shook as he held his hands before the flames, his cloudy eyes glowing in the soft light. They were heavy, thinking and turning and never quite still.

He swallowed another sip from the flagon Demetrius provided, coughing as he choked it down. His legs sat at odd angles in front of him, his bloodied and bruised feet emanating a smell that could only be a festering rot. He’d trudged through the mud on foot for far too long to make it there.

The tension was thick, flitted gazes passing between Demetrius and May as a deep and boiling heat was stoked in Oryn’s core. They all but vibrated with the anticipation of knowing what was to come; the iron smell creeping its way through their nose and to their brain feeling like a coil being wound tighter and tighter with each breath they took.

May’s jaw tightened as she shifted where she stood, the weight of her armor clinking as she settled. She turned the pin over in her hand: heavy, weighted with a dark blue stone at its bottom, the rest of it a soft gold.

“I’m sorry for the lack of hospitality, Councilor, but with the ongoing siege I’d hope you’ll understand my hesitancy.” She studied his face.

His bones all but creaked as he pulled his legs underneath himself, settling into a slouch within his tattered robes as he scooted himself closer to the fire.

He wasn’t deaf; she saw the way the weight in his eyes rattled as she spoke. No beggar would calculate himself so.

May took a deep breath, looking towards Demetrius’s hard gaze before continuing, “I had sent word to our good King in hopes of… Well, support of a different manner.”

That elicited what could only have been a laugh from the High Councilor, his ragged wheezing behind a smile quickly descending into a coughing fit. It took a moment for him to catch his breath, but his smile never left his lips.

Oryn watched closely as he pulled a muddy and deep brown-stained sleeve away from his mouth, a small trickle of blood and pungent saliva running down his chin.

He wouldn’t look towards May when he spoke. “The good King Terrance did not send me,” he sputtered, struggling to put the flagon back to his lips.

Demetrius rolled his eyes, his hands laying on the hilt of his sword.

“Then you’ve traveled all this way on foot with no supplies but the robes on your back for…?” May shook her head softly.

The man sighed. “I heard of the death of some people very dear to me,” he said, sitting up a bit as he reached into his robes and procured a tattered piece of parchment. “They thought I’d perished, too, but were right in their suspicions of my… continued existence on this mortal plain, with the God’s mercy,” a small, sad excuse of a chuckle left his cracked lips.

Demetrius sighed, tired of the Grandfather’s games right as they had started. “You still have not said why you’ve come, sir,” he clipped, ignoring any honorific if not those of who he directly served.

With a blink his body had snapped towards May, his long and dwindling arm extended towards her, his skeletal hand holding the all but unreadable letter that he’d carried all this way. As Demetrius jumped where he stood, the old man shook the wet parchment.

“They left something to me,” he huffed towards May, his breath the smell of death and decay. “And I had to come and claim it.”

Demetrius let his sword slide heavily out of its sheath, the grating noise of steel on steel a warning to the man to step back.

May took a moment to study the man behind the tattered page before gently taking it from his hands and standing a bit closer to the hearth to get some better light.

Jonas,

We know not where this piece of parchment will find you, but know deep within our souls that it will.

It’s time to make pace, High Councilor. The boy has taken the last we have to give; we’re joining our sister and suggest you come to proceed to the next steps in this wretched plan of yours.

Do not mourn us. We wouldn’t have mourned you.

Maureen, Starla, Elisa

~

She clutched the babe close to her chest with all the might she had left in her small frame. Her legs shook exposed to the chill air, her feet numb on the frozen earth, her arms burning and tingling as she struggled to maintain to her grip on the bundle she carried.

The cabin was close—she could feel the forest closing in around her as she pushed forward, her blood boiling with the fear it instilled in all those who entered. She knew she could make it, if she could just keep putting one foot in front of the other, taking one more breath after that exhale…

You have to promise me, he’d said to her, you have to promise me with every part of your soul. Swear it on the Waters and Winds, swear it on the church, swear it on the love we share. Please, Grenia.

His pleading rang through her head like the bells upon the church towers, bouncing from one side of her head to the other over and over again, reminding her what her purpose here would be.

This is the beginning of it all, he whispered to her, pulling her hands into his own and leaning down to look into her eyes, into her soul.

I love you, Genia, he’d said, his voice but a murmur against the soft skin of her ear. He’d never said it to her before this, never once. Not when she’d saved his life at the Sanctum, not when as she cried in his arms, not when he’d finally told her about where he came from and his purpose was here at the palace’s chapel. Not even when he finally bed her, their first moment alone in the months since they had met, in a dark and cramped alleyway between a scribe’s office and the sanctum’s entrance.

She thought of it all now. Thought of it while she ran, while her feet bruised with each step she took and the blood trickled from the scratches and cuts across her arms and legs.

At first, the babe was silent. They lay in her arms all swaddled in blankets that must have been made with love by one wet nurse or another. Their breath was soft and steady, heat steaming from their tiny lips as they drifted into a deep sleep.

Now, though, they screamed. She couldn’t understand how something so small and fragile would wail with such strength for so long. The blood-curdling screams pierced her ears as she ran, mixing with the dark and malicious feel bubbling up inside of her as her thoughts bounced around in her skull.

Then, for a while, everything went black.

When the warmth started returning to her it was the soft linens and skins laid beneath her that told her she’d made it where she needed to go.

She shifted in the warm bed, her entire body beginning to throb and ache as it started to fully feel alive again.

“Easy! Easy,” Maureen shot up from the chair beside her, gently laying her hands against her shoulders to push her back onto the mattress. “Don’t move too much, it’ll hurt. And you get nothing for the pain until I know where you’ve been, what happened.”

The conversation didn’t start for another hour after she woke, needing to reorient herself before breaking into tears at the face of the sister she thought she’d never see again. But their reunion was short lived.

“The child, Grenia. Is… is he yours?”

She shook her head. Jonas’s voice rang in her ears. They must not know.

But how could she keep this from them all when she was asking so much?

She looked throughout the cabin from where she lay, the walls keeping all of the warmth and life of the forest inside of the dwelling for the four of them to feed their practice. It was a small space full of trinkets and bobbles of all sizes and shapes that could do any number of different things. Books and charts and maps were scattered across every surface, littered with sketches of the local flora and fauna, but also symbols and glyphs she knew weren’t holy.

That’s how the three of them found themselves out here, after all.

She swallowed the lump in her throat before looking down at her hands.

Swollen. Bony. The joints all red and enflamed, her fingers bend in odd shapes and the skin of her palms scratchy and rough. Those fingers, that just a few weeks ago were spinning threat and crafting needlepoint and practicing piano. Now so changed, so stained…

“You will not be happy with me, sister,” she said, her voice hoarse and full of sorrow.

Maureen nodded, standing to move the chair closer to Grenia, laying a hand on top of her own. “That’s alright,” she nodded, her eyes serious but soft, “What matters is you made it back home to us. To me. As long as we’re together, we can handle the messes you’ve made.”

Grenia’s eyes filled with hot tears as she looked up her older sister. She was both gentle and firm, loving and strict. She hated herself for knowing what she had brought here.

“The babe,” Grenia muttered, her breath hitched. “Is not what you think.”

And so, she told her.

Me, unfortunately 🥲

most unstable girl you know: i need to get a masters degree

Visiting an old friend or something

Your writeblr coffee shop order is ready!

Coffee: Does your character hold a lot of grudges? What is something they are bitter about?

Oh, May? Holding grudges? Yeeeaaaah.... she has a lot of rage inside 😌 From one thing to the next, she's been left making choices that were not of her design. Nothing that has befallen her was an opportunity, but rather a curse she needed to learn how to bear. And she had no say in that. Her anger comes from the facade of free will that comes with the responsibility she carries, knowing she will never truly make a choice solely for herself.

Chapter 8 is here mwahaha 😈

The siege has been going longer than expected as May tries to come up with something to save her men from the impending doom of being locked behind the courtyard walls for too long, still not sure of where the attack came from.

P L E A S E give me feedback and critiques 😌 only partially edited as well so keep that in mind lol

tw: mentions of death, war, bodily harm, blood, food shortages

Tag list (dm me if you want to be a part of the club lol): @skidotto @idonthaveapenname

Ch. 8

They started calling it “the Bitches Siege.” It enraged May’s men in a way that made her proud, no matter how twisted the circumstances.

The makeshift barricade lasted longer than anticipated, especially after the local masons and carpenters took to work reinforcing it on their own volition. Food and certain other supplies were growing scarce, though that was to be expected from a siege. It wasn’t going to end in a matter of days; they’d be lucky if it were over in a matter of weeks, if not months.

May was a studied Duchess, understanding more than others the ramification of what this attack could mean. It’d been months since Giardin’s men were at her gates; they had settled their three-generation long debacle after May had all but killed him in hand-to-hand. She knew him as a coward, but never expected him to yield. The truce was signed within the day. And, considering the lengths at which they were at odds, she had never seen him possess such tactics.

But what would he know about Oryn?

There were no secrets among her men. At least, none that May couldn’t control. Oryn was a secret that was spread wide throughout the manor and surrounding encampment, the stories of a man who can become a beast saving the day.

Little did they know that the entire attempt at this siege was one made on Oryn’s life.

It was obvious who they were searching for; they distracted as many of May’s men as they could with the hopes that Oryn would be tucked away into the saferoom that they must have known about long before May herself had discovered it.

How was it all related to the summons she received from the King? The call to war?

She had yet to call a meeting to discuss anything more than battle tactics with her men. The looks of desperation and curiosity grew in numbers with each passing day, more and more of them needing answers to feel satiated. But May didn’t have any.

Someone is leagues and leagues ahead of me, calculating every step I take and making sure I fall into place like the pawn they want me to be. Whether it’s one of my own men, someone from the church, some imposter hiding amongst the chaos—

“You’re brooding,” Demetrius’s heavy hands clapped together as he stood at attention next to may, staring ahead.

“Planning,” May interjected, sighing as she changed her own stance to match his. They stood atop the barricade as the sun set, the small flames of invader campfires glowing softly in the distance.

“We need to ask for further assistance,” he mumbled, his brows setting deeper. “Look at them all out there. A few thousand, at least.”

“We can hold,” she said, her own confidence wavering in her voice, “I’m not concerned about the barricade. You know it comes down to supplies, which we’re steadily running out of.” She sighed. “Any word yet?”

He shook his head, not daring to make eye contact. “I doubt there will be,” he scoffed.

May’s jaw tightened. “I’m not going to disagree with you, Demetrius, but what proof do we have?”

“Who else knew?”

She took a moment to respond, wishing she could ignore the obvious signs. “You know what that would mean, Demetrius! That’s treason. I can’t risk that yet.”

“Then when?” He finally looked right at her, the anger flaring in his eyes. “When our men are starving? When we’ve eaten all the mounts and burned the last of our fuel?”

She glared at him the way one does when you’ve disrespected your superiors. “I’ve sent my ravens. Until we get a response, the only thing we can do is wait.”

Demetrius shook his head, turning to face straight ahead again. “You know,” he started, “I don’t know much about politics; never cared to. But playing their games can only end one way. Your father knew that.”

May’s jaw tensed as the taste of acid coated her tongue. “My father…” she fought against the lump forming in her throat. “I’m standing firm, General. Tend to your men. I doubt a raid tonight, but be prepared nonetheless.”

She felt his eyes on her back as she descended.

“It has to be about him,” he called after her.

“I know.”

-

There was no brooding after this kill, just a constant worry nagging in the back of Oryn’s head about Alec; the young boy reminded them so much of… some warm and tingly feeling. May’s men quickly turned the dining hall of her manor into a makeshift infirmary; there weren’t enough structures that would properly hold out all the elements within the barricades wall. This was the safest they could get, dying amongst one another.

May’s boots made a crisp sound as they clicked across the stone, walking amongst the rows of beds. It couldn’t be more than maybe a hundred of them—if that—but every single one of them was a devastating blow when your entire retinue only consisted of maybe 600 men total.

There was no doubt that she continued to inspire them just by being in their presence, allowing them to gaze upon the person they thought was wiser and more deserving than themselves. In the recent weeks, however, she could tell that the light behind their eyes was slowly fading. They didn’t see an end coming soon to the carnage, no matter how slowly it was reaped.

She looked from one patient to the next, smiling and shaking hands and bowing as was expected of her. It took longer than she would have liked, but she finally approached Alec’s bed, where Oryn was perched by his feet hunched over a massive tome.

His injuries weren’t as severe as May had assumed. The burns were the worst of it, taking the longest to heal and the only reason he was still being kept in bed.

“How are you holding up?” May smiled, meeting his gaze. He couldn’t help but smile back at her, his eyes still full of hope.

“You could’ve let me up days ago,” he said, nudging Oryn with his foot under the blanket. “But at least now you’re letting me be useful.”

Oryn nodded, shuffling where they sat and waving their hand at whatever it was Alec said, too absorbed by the book in their lap to have heard anything.

“He’d do really well with proper tutors,” Alec said, all but beaming with pride. “I never thought Clergy History was too fun, but we have to cover that first before we start with the real stuff. Look at this,” he said, immediately changing the subject as he slowly peeled back one of the bandages wrapped around his arm.

May peered into the healing wound, still leaking a bit here and there with the skin having faded from a vicious red into a more tender pink. “You seem more anxious than excited to get out of bed,” she said, eyeing him with suspicion. “I don’t want you fighting yet. Besides,” she gestured towards Oryn who had all but stuck their face right up against the aging parchment, “it’s too important to teach him about the world. I can’t risk you,” she tousled his hair, not realizing the care in the gesture until her hand was back at her side.

He laughed before pouting as he fixed his hair. He really was just a boy.

“Alright,” May sighed, “I’m sorry to have to pull you away from your studies,” she waved a hand in between Oryn’s face and the pages of their book, finally pulling them away from whatever they were reading, “But you and I have some planning to discuss.”