Understanding The Root Does Not Mean Understanding The Sum Of The Branch’s

Children’s play grounds

We willing put our kids in spot where they can get hurt and consider it a lesson to the kids when they get hurt. We have spinning platforms. Ramps. Swings all of these are very dangerous and can harm kids. I think that Aline’s would be super protective of their kids imagine them seeing all the pain kids go through and how often they get hurt.

Humans Are Weird

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

Tigerfish

It was always dicey, dealing with the mermaids of the delta.

They were quick, with fast hands and faster smiles. Plenty of good men died by just getting too close, and they encouraged it.

Tiger scales were a warning, to anyone who knew to look for them. Even the crocodiles gave them wide berth.

Once in a while they fought.

Javan saw that once. Saw the brown water and the papyrus rattle as two predators fought, one with scales like armor and the other with knife and tooth and claw.

There was so much blood, he would never have known who won, except for the flash of gold scales and tiger stripes.

She was hurt. So hurt that she might have died, and yet he dared to bandage her, cautious because she could kill him any moment, but unable to leave her there, dying in the shallow water.

There was a giant, bloody tooth in her hand. He didn’t try to touch it. 

“Why?”

He jumped and pulled his gun before he even quite knew what he was doing. The mermaid bared long, pointed teeth at him and hissed, tensing like she was about to bolt, or slash at him with her lethal claws.

For a long minute, they waited. She was fast. Probably fast enough to kill him, but not before he shot her at least once. 

“Peace,” she said at last, and pointedly retracted her claws. Javan watched her. It could be a trap, and he hoped it wasn’t. Sure, the mermaids tended to be maneaters, and this one probably did exactly that, but he didn’t actually like killing anything. “I will do you no harm on this day, Arab.”

“I’m not an Arab,” Javan winced, but he did put his gun away. “I’m Armenian. Are you going to claw me if I patch you up?”

“Patch up?” she cocked her head and considered him. Her dark skin glittered with water droplets and her eyes were gold. “What is ‘patch up’?”

Right. No clothes. The concept of patching was probably unfamiliar.

“Bandage,” Javan nodded towards her still bleeding arm. “This is a bad place to be bleeding.”

She mulled that over, and seemed very aware of her long, golden tail that was half-submerged in the water. A trail of thick blood followed the current downstream.

“Very well,” she decided after a while. “Until we part ways, and unless it is in defense, I will not harm you.”

That was… pretty complete all things considered. Javan decided he would take it. “Gotcha. Okay, hold still.”

She did, and he dared to get closer so he could wash and bandage her bleeding hide. As soon as everything was clean, he held up a bottle of liquid bandage. “This will sting, but it will help.”

Again, she considered, and nodded her approval. He had to work quickly, but it didn’t take long to get her as whole as he could manage.

“Why help me?” she asked after a while, and waited until he finished with a bite down her arm to haul herself out onto the sparse grass nearby. “We kill your kind.”

“Yeah, I know,” Javan admitted, and prudently got out of range. He didn’t think she was going to change her mind about him, but it was never good to be close to the water, mermaid or no mermaid. “Your lot make mine real nervous. We keep losing guys down by the river.”

Not like they could do anything about it. They weren’t even supposed to be in this part of Africa, but there was something to be said for hiring mercenaries, and one of the local diamond barons needed some extra muscle.

“So why risk it?’ she persisted, and kicked her tail to spray water over herself. “Between me, and the crocodiles, I would think you would leave me.”

“I’ve seen a lot of death in the last couple weeks,” Javen said, and found a seat on a fallen log nearby. It was surprisingly bug-free, and he settled himself, interested in talking as long as he could. “I might be good at killing, but I try not to if I can help it.”

She hummed thoughtfully and rolled her crocodile tooth between her long fingers. Now that he looked, he realized she had a whole necklace of them.

“You helped me without asking anything in return,” she said quietly, and raised her bandaged arm. “Except that I not harm you while you did it, which is no proper repayment. Take this.”

She tossed him the tooth and Javan caught it reflexively. It filled his palm. The crocodile itself must have been absolutely huge.

“Wear it as a necklace,” she ordered him, and flashed him a smile that was pretty, and full of fangs. “And remember the name, Zamara.”

Before he could reply, she flipped and vanished into the murky water.

He looked down at the tooth in his hands and then at the dark water.

“Thanks,” he said to the empty air, and dug for some string.

He didn’t know what the tooth meant, but who was he to refuse a gift from a mermaid?

+++

Support me on Patreon!

Good Boy

It began on a Tuesday. Later, she would tell people that this made sense. Nothing bad happens on Tuesdays. He knew better, but he was far too polite to contradict her.

The offering had changed. Usually it was the standard bowl of cream, which he ignored. He wasn’t a cat. There was one outside almost every door. Not hers.

He knew what it was long before he found her door. Floating above the heavy, yellowing smell of dairy, twisting through the shimmering scent of the Fair Folk – leaf-mould, rainwater, Sambuca and not enough sunlight – was the tang of blood. Meat.

His ears twitched. His maw began to slaver. He was hungry, so hungry. There were no offerings for him. He took what he could get at The Hunt, but it was never enough.

He followed his nose. There, outside a door that smelled greenish-blue and soft. It sat raw and wet in a little dish, piled up like rubies.

One of Them was crouching over it.

They didn’t eat meat. It was poking at it with one long, long, long finger, disgust twisting all four of its mouths. It hissed, clicked, and all the quills on its spine bristled with fury. Not the cream it was used to.

He growled.

It turned. Shifted so it was blocking the meat, just out of spite. It wasn’t going to eat the meat, but it certainly wouldn’t let him eat it, either. It shifted its smell – something the Fair Folk always did when they wanted to give him a headache – and waited for him to leave.

He snapped at it. It shrieked, flapping backwards, and scythed out a claw. He lunged forward and bit, jaws tight around its arm. There was a crack and it came away in his mouth. He shook it around, just to show the thing who was boss, and it ran shrieking down the corridor.

He spat out the arm by the greenish-blue door. He wasn’t going to eat that. The bones felt like bark and tasted like mouldering leaves, and there was fresh meat waiting for him.

He settled down to his dinner and licked the bowl clean.

There was more meat the next day. The arm was gone, though. Ripples and dents spattered the floor from where the thing had bled, but the corridor was empty. Good. Sometimes the Fair Folk needed reminding of what he could really do. Too many of them saw him as another of their shiny, knife-like hounds. He was another thing entirely.

He’d left scorch marks on the floor too. The RAs wouldn’t like that. One of them had tried to chase him off with a broom when he’d been at his weakest and the whole experience had been very undignified.

Keep reading

Your church-going, God-worshipping sister adopted a small child and you’re excited to see them. But when you do, the child is a menace. They’re throwing things everywhere, setting furniture on fire with seemingly nothing, chanting in Latin to summon demons, but the weirdest thing is that your sister doesn’t seem to mind.

character who doesn’t know they’re in a timeloop: you’re back early

character who knows they’re in a timeloop, at the same time as the other character: you’re back early. yeah. i know. today’s haunted

character who doesn’t know they’re in a timeloop: what?

character who knows they’re in a timeloop: *loads gun* today’s haunted