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Substack: @abigailkendallwrites

[marimbles]

my favorite thing about zagreus is that he’s the ultra-cool prince of the underworld, son of the god of the dead, skilled warrior protégé of Achilles himself, tall dark and handsome, completely shredded, with the dopest heterochromia ever, leaving sparks in his wake while he struts around like he owns the place (cause he kind of sort of does). BUT he’s also the most pitiful, disaster-level idiot in the underworld.

He got fired from his nepo job for being lazy and unfit for office work. Whenever he talks to the worker shades in the admin office they all roll their eyes at him. despite his elite training he can only progress toward the surface with endless redos and the constant help of every Olympian AND Cthnonic god. his room is a dump. he’s absolutely terrible at playing the lyre. His outfit is designed after his dog. He is sopping wet from his last dip in the pool of Styx 100% of the time, and every time he fails at escaping the whole house can see his walk of shame while Hypnos loudly makes fun of him for dying AGAIN. And all of this is magnified 10x if you’re bad at the game. incredible story design.

Zagreus’s initial inadequacy makes for an even more compelling narrative that feels extra rewarding with each level of progression. And this is all reflected so well in his attitude as a character. He’s such a fascinating mix of brazen confidence and good-natured humility. He may seem like an entitled brat on the outside but he’s incredibly heartfelt and generous to those around him—not just to those of similar status but also to the nervous housekeeper and his angry ex and the trapped souls he comes across in his journeys. he goes out of his way to help people even while he is trying to reach his own goal. and he never gives up, even when it seems impossible. his repeated failures just serve to emphasize his greatest strengths: resilience, determination, hope, and genuine care for the people in his life.

what a character, man. what a game ✊

[abigailkendallwrites]

[abigailkendallwrites]

[galaxyspeaking]

The gentleman of Lethe

[abigailkendallwrites]

[abigailkendallwrites]

[siriusdraws]

thanatos picks zagreus up after death by natural causes challenge

[abigailkendallwrites]

The prince is dying as the world erupts.

His eyes are weary, skin slick

For it is hot in the air of Asphodel—

Ghostly in its hue as death incarnate, the peaceful executioner descends on swift wings.

Thanatos takes in measure the thin spindle of life, the single thread that keeps Zagreus up right.

And the quietus god cannot help but note that even in the painful strain of slaughter, the prince is beautiful.

He will do this job one-hundred

No—one thousand more times today,

And yet.

It is the smile that undoes him. The grin that spreads Zagreus’ handsome face wide as his eyes roam across death itself, no fear

Only Chthonic joy that strips him bear until he—in the glory of the underworld—is nothing but the query man of slain foes at their feet. Waiting for the reprieve of his hand.

And it occurs to Thanatos, as his scythe pauses in the space between them,

As the very god of death holds his blow,

that there is no other soul that could stave the quickness of his blade.

They are immortal gods here, in the underbelly of the world, but for just a moment,

or is it an hour?

or perhaps several days—whatever the equivalent to gods—

The little godling conjures butterflies into mother night, the dark of her stars his only company.

Even then the shades knew him by sight, the world above by name.

He is a feared child.

He is alone.

And then there were two.

And the prince and the son of Nyx are something akin to children with their hands stained red from afternoons playing in the riverbed.

It is gentle. He does not know how to be anything less to this prince of redemption.

As he scoops him into his arms, inexorably drawn,

And it is by his bare fingers, not his scythe, that Zagreus falls.

The dark head lulls, his body limp.

And even in death Thanatos can feel the clutch of his grip.

The immortal longing of two souls at rest.

in death

death

death

They plunge below worlds, into the shaded Styx,

And they hold against each other.

A waiting pattern of tender flesh

As infinite sleep burst toward the surface of an underworld set alight.

The fire rages.

His brother sleeps

And Thanatos lifts his prince from the bathing of bloodshed.

And as Zagreus awakes in the dichotomous arms of the dark cloud of demise, Thanatos cannot help but remind him that he is

His

His

His

In rebirth

And in death.

[abigailkendallwrites]

Morning with your toes touching mine

It is, by definition, still morning.

Though the sun would say otherwise. It is higher now than the productivity champions would congratulate me for, but it is still, by definition, morning.

Your toes are tiny. Little and hot in your sickness. The fever makes you uncomfortable. The heat like fire against a hot air balloon, keeping you floating just above the restfulness of sleep. You press them against my leg, and when I move, you move with me.

Is this invisible string theory? The way a child moves with the mother?

I think about my own mother. A memory.

I am seventeen and sick. I do not get sick a lot. In fact, I was so infrequently sick that I would come up with elaborate imaginings of fevers and stomach aches in a desperate bid to miss school.

But I was not practiced in sickness then like I am now.

And that is beside the point.

Remember, I am seventeen and I am sick. I am too big to be held, and yet I am climbing into my mother’s black computer chair, fastening myself in her lap. She clucks her tongue, a gentle, pitying sound.

Her arms barely fit around me, her fingers just barely touching against my back, holding me in.

Holding me steady.

I am twenty and three and I am sick. I call her. We are states away now. Her voice holds me, her presence like water memory, fitting itself around my body.

I am months away from thirty. And my child is sick. I watch him, and I consider making soup, buying Tylenol. I call the doctor, I clean the sheets.

But mostly my hands are on him. Scratching his back. Holding him tight.

Maybe this is the invisible string? The way in which my hands look so eerily like my mother’s. Like I have moved with her, or perhaps she has moved within me.

[abigailkendallwrites]

I write fiction.

Mostly.

Fiction—and some blurring together of long form prose and muddled soliloquies

And are they the same thing?

I write about dragons, and boys who drink too much, and women who are frightened to exist in the world.

I write about love and, as Hamlet so dramatically put it, “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

But mostly—

Mostly I write about grief.

Grief that feels like too rich a dessert.

Its stickiness leaving me full and heavy

Until I cannot move.

The toffee breaks my teeth—the love with nowhere to go

I am told to feel my feelings as they happen.

But If I am honest, I don’t always know what that means.

What does my anxiety look like?

What color is my anger?

Is my happiness soft?

My boredom sharp?

I do not always know.

But I will always know grief.

Her features are familiar.

I find her lips and cheekbones and eyes in the mirror.

She makes me feel other.

She makes me feel part of one another.

Because who lives without some measure of it?

I bask in the sunlight of my grief.

Until it shines too brightly.

Until my life is tinted with it so profusely that there is no pigment of rose that I could tinge my irises to cancel it out

and there is no color blindness that could make the grief less recognizable.

I grieve as the unrequited yearn.

And perhaps I confuse the two.

Or are they the same thing?

I write grief layered underneath the fragility of fairy wings and the bite of mythical teeth.

I mostly write fiction

But I always write grief.

[abigailkendallwrites]

(ACOSF SPOILERS)

You know we don’t get a lot about Rhysand and his sister, but I always wonder if he taught her to fly. If he gathered her up in his arms and flew side by side with her until she got it right, always with the promise to catch her should she fall.

Do you think he snuck her extra chocolates at dinner, or misted the vegetables she hated when their parents weren’t looking?

I bet he did.

I wonder if he teased her.

I bet he would ruffle her hair, and she’d aim a kick at his shins, and he’d dance back on his toes and their laughter would bounce across the Sidra.

I bet he made puppets out of shadows for her, performed entire tales of adventure and happily ever after until she fell asleep.

I bet he missed her so much the first night in that Illyrian war camp.

I bet she cried and raged that she couldn’t go too, and I bet her tears hurt him so badly that he learned to conjure notes between them so she wouldn’t have to be alone with just their father in the house.

I wonder if he thought about her as he wrote that first note to Feyre.

I wonder if he sees her when he looks at Nyx, if the way his baby’s nose crinkles reminds him of the little sister he lost.

I bet it does.

I bet on late nights, when he joins his friends at Rita’s, he imagines her sitting between Mor and Feyre, imagines the laughter that would bubble between them, the little jokes and whispered secrets that they’d share,

I wonder if he imagines what life would have been like if he could’ve protected all of the women he loved.

[paulfrankjuliusthemonkey]

anyway. onto better things

[abigailkendallwrites]

I think a lot about Rhysand after he gave that speech to the inner circle at the end of MaF

How after they went home, the bravado he’d been holding onto melted, and how he’d stood in the too quiet hallway, fiddling with his hands until he poured himself a drink, and how, when he couldn’t take the emptiness of he and Feyre’s home anymore, he climbed the steps to the roof.

How he looked up at the stars and begged them to listen while he swirled the dark liquid in his glass.

How he could, in his mind, hear Cassian’s screams as Madja healed his wings. How two Archeron sisters now lived in Velaris and neither of them were Feyre.

I think about how he stayed up on that roof all night, holding on to that whisper of the bond because he couldn’t bear to go into the bedroom that had so recently gone from his to theirs.

I think about how he must’ve felt as the High Lady of his court, his mate, his wife, laid her head down to sleep in the home of the family that had killed his own.

I think about how after 50 years, he finally had everyone he loved in front of him, and then he was alone again.

[abigailkendallwrites]

“She was, all in one moment, confronted with a certain understanding that her life was not her own.

That her story would forever be controlled by the men who wrote history.”

-excerpt from a story that lives in my brain

[abigailkendallwrites]

You know what’s not talked about enough? The fact that when Aelin kept saying Fenrys’ name in KoA, Rowan didn’t even hesitate to go back for him.

He’s just gotten Aelin back, had just seen her for the first time, and he still went back for Fenrys, a male he historically did not like at all and barely tolerated.

[abigailkendallwrites]

Would you ever write a reader x Liam Fic?

Idk I’d be willing to give it a try but not necessarily motivated to. We really don’t get a ton of Liam’s personality. Bits and pieces I could work with but I don’t really understand him romantically

[abigailkendallwrites]

The Wolf & The Heir of Fire (Fenrys Moonbeam POV excerpt)

Fenrys sat, his golden fur a shining beacon as he laid next to the Fae-Queen of Doranelle.

Her presence grated. It was a dark venom that flowed in his veins. A side effect of the all consuming sacrifice he’d made in the name of his twin. The brother who had been placed on the other side of the cold stone throne upon which Maeve sat.

Fenrys had become Maeve’s plaything, her entertainment, her pleasure.

Her whore.

On the ground in front of him Rowan, Vaughn, Cairn, and Lorcan kneeled, their foreheads touching the floor in a bow. The submission of high lethal fae warriors bound by the Blood Oath never failed to make Fenrys shudder.

“Rise.” Maeve’s voice was a soft, unearthly command.

In unison the males lifted their bodies off of the floor, but did not move to stand, remaining on their knees before Maeve.

“I have,” She paused briefly, an amused smile on her lips, “Something that needs doing quite badly.”

Her hand dropped over the arm of the throne, and Fenrys lifted his great big head to allow her spindly fingers to twine through his fur.

He let out a low growl of pleasure at her touch.

The dichotomy of the Blood Oath.

Maeve was the bane of his existence, his warden, bought into slavery by her blood and coercion.

But she was also his queen.

His ruler to please, to obey.

She was quiet as she examined the cadre, her index finger and thumb lazily stroking Fenrys’ golden ears.

“Aelin Galathynius has crossed into Wendlyn.”

[abigailkendallwrites]

Hi friends, thank you for all of the love and support that you guys have shown to this fanfic, it truly has been so uplifting and downright special. This Fanfiction has been the reason I started writing in general and certainly a catalyst for my love of it. From the beginning this was for me and I promised myself I would do it for as long as I was proud of what I was putting out there and continued to love doing it no matter how it was received.

All of this to say, I won’t be continuing this fanfic at the present. I won’t say never, but as of now I have no intentions of continuing.

Again thanks for all the love and kindness, it’s truly helped me grow and gain some confidence in an area that often feels very scary for me.