A Stranger With A Sly Smile.... I Caught The Hades Brainworms So Obviously I Had To Draw Scarlet Pearl

Knight Gem season 10??? Tw: blood a bit

Gem heard the clank of her ship’s anchor drop. Normally, the would be. Well. Normal. Except Gem was currently ankle deep in discarded maps in the storage locker and the anchor dropped from the top deck.

“What.” Gem glared at the ceiling. It’s too late for someone to be messing with her boat. There are rules. (Unless the snails got bored, but that was different.)

She stomped up to the deck, shoving the door open with her shoulder to find…nothing. A empty, clean deck. No footprints, no feathers, no redstone marks, no signs left from Etho where he complained about not having the right materials for him to steal (washed! up!), nothing.

She gripped the rope in tired hands, freeing the anchor from the depths. Morning-Gem was going to hate now-Gem when she found the disgustingly silt-covered anchor getting mess everywhere, but it was late and reeeaaallly difficult to bother. (Morning Gem can deal.)

The engine sat close, thankfully, so she didn’t have to go far to start it. If she got to the reef she could do a bit more collection.

She tugged the cord.

Nothing.

“What.”

Gem rapped the top of the engine cover with her knuckles. “Why are you doing this? Did Grian touch you? Grian is going to be banned.”

The sound of rope hitting the deck was a sound she was used to now. That’s why it took two seconds too long to notice it behind her.

The plunk of the anchor sinking back into the depths left Gem blinking, heavy, tired eyes at the guileless ripples it left behind in the water.

Her deck was empty. Just Gem and the inky dark and the boat-sounds that were actually normal. Maybe she should—lie down on the deck? The stars were out.

A door opened, an arrow cutting across the night silence.

Her hammock was swinging gentle in the room. A lantern sat on the shelf. The boat rocked, suddenly, making her feet slip forward, and Gem had to catch herself on the door frame.

The door started tapping against her back. Gentle, then faster.

“Okay, okay,” Gem laughed, incredulous, holding up her hands in surrender. “I’m going, I’m going! Gosh.”

The door shut behind her and it’s warm in her cabin. A welcoming heat to contrast the bite of the water.

Gem kicked her boots off (almost tripped like, three times while she did but she didn’t) and dropped into the hammock with a huff. “Happy?” Gem said, punctuating the question with a jaw-cracking yawn.

A blanket dropped on top of her from somewhere. One of the heavier ones she definitely tucked on a shelf somewhere. Warm and weighty.

Oh. She definitely wasn’t moving till morning, was she?

“Fine,” she murmured, the consonants messy, “sleep time.”

She was asleep, so she didn’t hear the fog horn sound one, short (quiet) blast. Like a fist pumped in victory.

Gem's zombie army but im going for those photos of deers in the middle of a night

The thing in her cargo hold is looking at her again.

Really, Gem should have sold it by now. If the fishmonger had refused to take it--and really, it seems unlikely, Gem thinks, that the fishmonger would refuse to take it; he has taken and carved up and made meals of far stranger fish than one with a human face and hands and torso--she could have easily sold it to the man on the train, who takes exotic catches for his zoo. She could have even taken it to Grian; it's not a mending book, but it's the sort of thing he'd like to make fun of her for catching, instead of anything she's after.

Really, she should have. The longer she keeps the thing in her cargo hold, the more it starts to look properly human to her. She should know better. She has caught far stranger fish, and none of them have been human. It's another trick these seas have been playing on her, she thinks.

Long nights alone do that to a woman.

She ignores it. Instead, she opens the lid of the tank and starts depositing salmon. "It's a really weird request, that I keep them alive the whole time. You won't eat them, right?" Gem says, knowing the thing in her cargo hold can't answer. "Because if you eat them, this time, I really am going to sell you to the fishmonger. Or maybe I can figure out how to get fillets from you on my own? I've certainly eaten weirder fish..."

The thing in the cargo hold continues to stare. It has eyes that look like little moons, and brown hair, and it is smiling for some reason. Gem huffs.

"Don't give me that look! You are a fish. I am a fisherman. If mere human faces stopped me from doing my job, I would have gone mad a long time ago."

The thing in the cargo hold smiles wider. The lights flicker. Gem rolls her eyes and finishes putting salmon in the tank. As though to spite her, the thing in the cargo hold immediately lashes out, grabbing one in the claws on her otherwise-human hands and then tearing it apart with razor-sharp teeth. Blood rises on the water. Gem sighs.

"I have a harpoon in here somewhere, or at least a very sharp knife," she says to herself. She doesn't really want to use her nice knife, the one she always keeps on her belt, but she ought to have another knife around with which she can finish the job, right?

The lights flicker and go out. When she looks across at the tank, there are two silvery-moon eyes looking at her.

Gem pulls a wire. Gem turns the lights back on. She takes a deep breath.

"I really should have sold you by now, really. If the fishmonger won't take you, then the zookeeper would love you," Gem says.

The radio crackles. Gem startles. Very, very few people ever contact her on the shipboard radio, but if she's getting a signal, that's more important than a grudge match with a fish. She heads over to answer the call.

An amalgamation of voices responds:

YOU ARE FUNNY. I HAVE A MESSAGE. A DELIVERY. YOU'VE TRAPPED ME THOUGH.

Slowly, Gem turns around to the thing in the cargo hold.

"This won't stop me from treating you like a fish," she says. "If messages from the ocean stopped me--"

A terrible, crackling laugh sounds from the radio.

I AM THE MOON'S PEARL. YOU WILL NOT HOLD ME FOREVER. WE WILL SEE WHO EATS WHO.

Gem wags her finger. "We'll see, for sure, as long as you don't eat my salmon. That man in the fish-scaled suit was VERY insistent, you know."

TELL ME MORE.

"You're tying up my radio. What if there's another ship? What if there's something important?"

OH GEM. YOU KNOW THERE WON'T BE.

Gem swallows.

The thing in the cargo hold is staring at her.

"I need to sleep. I need to go to shore," she says.

YOU WON'T, the radio says.

She won't.

Pearl never understood why no one seemed to like the rain.

They said the rain was sad, with its darkened skies. Though Pearl admitted the theme was fitting, like the heavens themselves were crying, there had always been something more to the rain in her eyes.

It watered the farmland, breathed life and vibrance back into the grass. The sound of those little drops was soft and calming, the echo of thunder seeping into her bones. And the lightning, a bright and otherworldly spectacle that carved lines of gold into the stone sky.

Sometimes Pearl would just sit next to an open window, watching and appreciating the cool air in her lungs. Other times she would grab a coat and stand under the open sky. If it was warm enough, she would forgo the coat entirely, feeling the raindrops against her skin.

The rain had never done anything wrong.

So why did everyone speak its name through barred teeth?

The crux of the anti trans movement is a war on bodily autonomy. They don't want you to have any agency over what you look like, how you dress, who you date, whether to have kids, etc.

They want total control over you. Not just trans people. Not just queer people. You. Everyone.

Trans people are just a scapegoat. They want total control over everyone's self expression. They want the right to mold you into their perfect little cog in their dehumanizing machine.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. Our rights are your rights. Our destruction is your destruction.

i know it may seem miniscule, but i genuinely can't stop thinking about how students in gaza were preparing for school around this time last year. and it's not just gazan children i'm referring to. it's little kids who were about to have their first ever day of school. it's university students in their last year of college. it's grad students who've been working so hard in their field, who just had years of labor and effort torn away just like that. we all have the luxury of continuing on, of starting this new chapter in our lives, while theirs seem to be on permanent arrest. it's just not fair. it's heartbreaking

big skull

I love gem’s base so much

waitt i'm browsing the warsaw national museum's online database and there are some lovely paintings from a trip to palestine in 1901