since the old version of this post was flagged for 'adult content'...
Fuck you. This is the coward's way out. This train will not bring you back in time.
It will not take her arm, or his eye. It will not gift your cheeks their stubble. It will heave its way through English fields and English woods and English towns and English rain, and our mother will sit in that compartment with you.
Have you considered that? Mother, who looks at you as a chicken beholds the fox beneath the fence, as a farmer beholds the wolf by the gate, mother, who has long since washed all colour from her face.
Mother, who is grey and damp as the rain.
Hours in a locked tomb. Hours with her. What will she say? How will she sit? What things will she drag from your mouth?
Will she pin you, with those tired eyes, with those faded hands, to the fabric of your seat, to take from you the answers we have been keeping from her for years?
And how could you ever tell her? How could you dare?
Mother, your little boy has died. Mother, your little girl has seen battle. Mother, your children have commanded armies. They've sat thrones and mourned children. They've lost their people.
Twice.
Mother, you are tired. You are weary. You would not understand.
By the lion, you'd despair.
Mother, a witch has spelled your son when his ears still stuck out and he missed your husband with all the violence of a schoolboy. She took him, pointed nails and pearl-teeth, god, she carved flesh and bone and sinew until that paper-thin skin held nothing at all.
Mother, the son you sent to the countryside with the world digging into his shoulders has died. In tiny pieces, at first, and then all at once, as a trickle turns first into a stream and then into a raging river.
Until finally, it spreads into the sea.
Your child lies buried in every decree, every law, and- Christ, who are we kidding, the Narnian soil. The golden boy you wanted so desperately to protect lies in pieces next to the witch, rotting into the earth.
We cannot return him to you.
Will you tell her, I wonder, about the razor blades underneath your floorboards? Will you bare your neck and show her all the mess you've made of the soft skin there when the nights were long and the tremors were terrible?
What of the knives under our little ones' pillows?
Fuck you.
When I was born, I had you. When I was little, I had you. Those terrible, wonderful years - I had you. How am I meant to go on without you? Brother, I don't know how.
Already my lungs are refusing their work. Already my stomach turns. My teeth are aching, my bones have chilled. My cheeks are stained - big red streaks of salt.
Of blood.
I have carved a way for myself through the chalk and the limestone and the mud. With my hands and my teeth, on the last bit of hope I could still heave up in between the cigarettes and the whiskey, I dug my way to sunlight. For days, for months, for years.
With my bare fucking hands, brother.
And you? You've never put the sword down. You've never looked at the dirt. You can't, you say. You're not made for it. Your mouth is the wrong shape and your eyes want nothing to do with the ground.
Instead, you've spent your time picking out the perfect mortician, the right funeral shroud. The coffin. Instead, you've drawn maps and routes into a home that has long been plundered.
Brother, where has your hunger gone?
every photo of a shoebill eating is progressively worse than the last
I swear I saw a tumblr post on here that said ‘horses have over 4,000 bones’ and i don’t know where it came from because its totally wrong, they have 205, but what kind of fucked up horse has this person seen out there because I’m absolutely terrified of it
Some new sigil designs that will be avaliable on the 30th
Crabs amaze me. They’re the perfect life form, a tank made of legs and living hate-armor. It’s not just about their physicality, though; it’s the soul of the crab. See, no crab in the bottomless history of the sea has ever questioned itself, doubted itself, worried, or been afraid. A crab is pure motion. A crab is pure id and unrelenting forward force. Crabs invented the word violence and they will scuttle on the surface of the world while the red giant of Sol creeps closer to devour everywhere we’ve ever known. They will look into the sky and clack their claws and there will be no fear.
Dustin Panzino - https://www.artstation.com/inkwell - https://twitter.com/inkwell_illust - https://www.deviantart.com/dustinpanzino - https://linktr.ee/Inkwell - https://www.instagram.com/inkwell_illustrations/ - A Tribute to Studio Ghibli Featuring the following films Kiki’s Delivery Serves Howls Moving Castle Princess Mononoke Spirited Away Castle in the Sky Ponyo Whisper of the Heart My Neighbor Totoro Nausicaa valley of the wind The Secret World of Arrietty
pumpkin spice candles soon
pumpkin lattes soon
pumpkin everything
“ ALRIGHT YOU MANGEY DOGS, YOU KNOW THE RULES: NO DYING ON THE PREMSIS OR WE CHUCK YOU IN THE ALLEY, NO KNIVES UNLESS YOUR TAB IS SQUARE, AND NO BREAKING A GLASS YOU HAVEN’T PAID FOR. AND REMEMBER, SPARE TEETH GO INNA THE TEETH JAR: ROUND’S ON THE HOUSE IF YOU SAD, GIBFACED, BASTARDS MANAGE TO FILL IT UP.”
-Ares McKinley, Barkeep.
Setup: When listed among the city’s various taverns, drinking halls, and common rooms, the Powderkeg is a sort of afterthought. Easily the most rowdy establishment in the city, it has little in the way to recommend it it save for the cheapness of its drinks or the ease with which one can find a brawling partner ( or three). There are rooms to let, but the loudness of the rabble downstairs lasts until the early hours of the morning and seems to preclude sleep, which the proprietors seem more than happy to encourage as it scares off “ The wrong sort of customer”.
Adventure Hooks
The Powderkeg makes a natural backdrop for any hardknuckle tournament, be it wrestling, boxing, or just a plain old fashioned fightclub. Characters who want to prove their grit may seek their fortune in the lists, but may discover that the Powderkeg regulars are well acquainted with a wide variety of cheats, ranging from simple underhanded tactics to performance enhancing substances. While many of these under the table alchemics are to be expected in such violence revering venue, some others seem tailor made to the clients interests, or else dangerously unpredictable. A back alley alchemist is at work here, selling drugs to the brawlers and using the clientele as their personal testing grounds for new mutagens. Getting ahold of this supplier will be difficult, as they always work through proxies, with many of the buyers knowing them only as “ The Good Doctor”.
A villain or rival who wishes to parlay with the party may use the Powderkeg as a stage, knowing that while the establishment may appear innocuous and ostensibly neutral, their agents may hide among the rabble and a few well placed bribes can allow them to slip out a back way while the party is barred inside. Worst comes to worst, this antagonist may incite a brawl, hoping the ignorant punters will soften the party up for the real slaughter to come.
If you were to ask how the Powderkeg got its name, any of the regulars could tell you that it’s an old joke relating to the fact that the owners are so cheap they store their liquor in casks bought secondhand from the military, which explains one of the very particular smells wafting around the tavern and why the cheapest drinks happen to be a bit gritty. In fact, both the name and the smell are explained by the tavern being a front for one of the city’s largest illegal weapon manufacturers, who use the fights and ensuing infamous reputation as a smokescreen for their real crimes. Materials for weapons and black powder are disguised in the same sort of barrels any tavern takes in by the wagonload, and are processed in a network of hidden cellars deep beneath the surrounding streets. When a buyer is found, the ‘Keg’s owners send their product off in a cask, mixed in to a wagonload of identical, empty barrels, which conveniently detours through a little observed location where the goods can be unloaded without scrutiny. Such deliveries are given little scrutiny by police or trade officials, which has allowed the gunrunners to operate unchallenged for YEARS. That is, until a mixup causes on of these barrels to be picked up by the owner of the party’s favorite tavern, who’s asks for their help untangling the crime they’ve absentmindedly gotten themselves tangled in.
There is a specific and terrifying difference between “never were” monsters and “are not anymore” monsters
“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying
“The thing that was not a deer anymore” on the other hand implies a thing that USED to be a deer before it was somehow mutated, possessed, parasitically controlled or reanimated improperly and what makes THAT terrifying is the details that are still right and recognizable poking out of all the wrong and horrible malformations.
You know what? Fuck it. Don't get married. Don't ever have sex. Don't even think about kissing.
Practice writing. Mold some clay. Pet a dog. Grow some garlic. Go stargazing. Wrestle a bear. Adopt a cat. Knit a sweater. Adopt two cats. Landscape your yard. Adopt seven cats. Go to bed. Play The Sims. Don't go to bed. Chug hot soup. Rob your neighbors. Learn the splits. Roast some marshmallows. Commit arson. Sniff some flowers. Climb a tree.
Get wild without getting cooties.
She/her, aroace ♠️, lover of all things animals, nature, wild, fantasy, cryptid and adventure, or books.
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