she is a princess and you are a dragon. she will be married tonight. do not keep standing outside of her room like that, go inside. go get her. that is what proper dragons do.
not that you have ever been a good or proper dragon. when you hatched out of your egg, your eggtooth was too smooth. the other dragons were rough with you, put little holes in your wings.
you were not bold. you were odd. you liked rippling water and the shine of chitin when bugs scuttle and of course the movement of the stars. those were all acceptable interests albeit maybe not traditional. perhaps you had inherited these through some great-great-uncle or something. certainly a dragon may be wise, or clever, if they are not bold.
yes, you have been a great deal of a puzzle to the other dragons. your body is smaller and rather more soft than it ought to be. so speed should have been yours, perhaps - your mother said it would be like fighting a shadow. if a dragon is not aggressive, it may instead be cruel, sly; a backstab. but alas your scales - so iridescent that they almost shine like the moon at night, a glow from within - you are not a shadow, you are a beacon like the flash of a knight's blade. your father has said at least you would make a fine egglayer, a nice mate to a good male. a dragon like you may still be a good mother perhaps; and that is a fine thing to be; although of course it would have been better if you'd been a trove-hoarder instead.
what a dragon must not be is kind.
you have watched her now for six moons. what a good and proper dragon would do is to go inside and to snatch her. a very proper dragon would have kidnapped her many times over, but you will be the delight of your brood to princess-snatch even at all. when you catch her in your jaws and bring her home, they will love you, then. they don't think you're capable of it, but you are, because you're a proper dragon. you can show them that. if you go in, now, right now.
you are rather too glossy to hide in the shadows, so instead you have learned how to appear flat and round, a puddle of light. (how your siblings would mock you! a dragon should be matte, to blend with the night). you dapple your flank with mud. you perch in odd angles atop of trees, scuttle like the bugs you love - hither, tither, frantic.
what you must not do is fly with your wings full-out. alight, you will be limned by the moon's corona. you will be a beacon. you must remember this when (not if) you snatch her.
____
you found her because of the lake. this lake in particular was your favorite - nestled deep in the woods, between two mountains. it is very quiet; there is nothing to horde there so no other dragon bothers you. a gentle waterfall spills over into a deep cove, and there are many mossy caves you've spent your afternoons napping in. while it is not proper for a dragon to prefer such things, you like to lay in rolling tenure just under the water. you have become excellent at holding your breath, can do it for hours. it is the easiest way to appear as a patch of sunlight.
she was not sunlight. she was the night's joy. the dark press of water. her face at first concealed by many diaphanous layers. her breathing quick and quiet.
she had pulled them back to drink from her water flask. and there she had been: a princess. your first very-real princess. right there, only the reach of a single talon from you. if you had simply lunged then, you would have been able to take her easily, in one single movement.
but you did not take her.
she had startled you a bit; you'd been daydreaming about music, which you'd just discovered, and rather liked. you'd heard it from a little house while you snuck in and stole their sheep.
but you knew the sound of fear, of being followed. you'd been chased too many times, you knew what it looked like. the rapid jolt of fear.
you smelled her then; cinnamon and onyx, and perhaps that was what had blinded you. perhaps your mouth was just watering. whatever the case, you waited until she had fled back into the forest; and then you waited a bit longer. in her wake, a garrison of men, their hands rough.
oh. so they were not knights. they were just men chasing a young woman through the woods. perhaps they did not even know a real princess had been running from them. well, that was a relief. you are not good at fighting with knights, who have swords instead of cudgels. these were just men, so you rose from the water in the quiet way you'd learned from the fish. they did not hear you coming.
and besides. proper dragons do violence so well.
___
once you had smelled her you could find her, although such things have always been easier for you than for the others. you spend a great deal of time studying things - it allows you to analyze them. you have tried to explain to the other dragons that sometimes it is best to slow down, but of course no dragon should be slow.
at first you did not understand the confusion of the people's umwelt. they relied so much on their communication (only words and actions!) and what they could see with their eyes. you and the other dragons did not use these as much; but you liked prying out the little sonic differences between hello that means "i like you" and hello that means "i don't like you."
so it took you a while to learn that you were responsible for what had happened to her. men had gone missing, and even bad men going missing makes a big fuss. (you know that if it had been girls missing, it would be okay. many proper dragons steal girls because it will not bring a knight to their door). for a while she had been trapped on the palace grounds. it was determined that it was no longer safe for her to be just a princess, she must undergo some human transformation and become a wife.
even so. you had gone looking for her (only to study, of course, so you may know how to snatch her best). but that night you saw her descending from the window of a castle, quick and agile, moving like a whisper, clad almost entirely in black. you could see her quite well of course, although you were not seeing her; but instead her heat and her smell and her sound and all the other sensory noise all humans give off.
you followed her, keeping yourself in a cloud so you appeared as if mist. she stole off into the woods. you were interested in that, and watched her scuttle - although of course you could have taken her then, you wanted to study your prey as best as you could. she did not seem to do much in the woods, only run around cry into her little hands.
she appeared to be looking for something. she did not get far that first night; scurried back to her bed. over and over this happened - she would run as far as she could, only to go back again. it seemed rather boring to you, but of course you had been free your whole life.
and then one night - finally, she arrived at the lake. she sank to her knees then, her hands pressing into the water. her head tilted to the sky. her dark hair spilling in a caught breath behind her.
this is how you heard her voice for the first time. when she came again the next night, she did so more quickly, more assured. straight to the lake, as if it had called her.
she had skipped a pebble over the surface of the water. this action was dangerous, because it almost hit the sail of your wing. you had structured yourself very finely to look like a rockslide.
"three months." her voice was like her: it was deep and smooth and dark, a low violin string. "they want me to marry that bastard in three months."
and then she cried into her hands again, and the sound of it almost broke you.
you followed her maybe more than a proper dragon should, after this. more than just back to the castle and her bed. you hid along her daily walks and watched her in the throne room and saw her out riding horses. she was good with dogs and nice to her people and very much a proper princess, although you had heard it said a proper princess ought not to slip out at night and run around barefoot through the woods.
you discovered she is terrible with directions. you have often had to make a path more clear so she could get home again. she cannot hunt better than an egg; you have had to kill fish and push them subtly up to the shore.
but she appears to love the lake as much as you do. you have seen her read by candlelight (how foolish. the entire woods saw her each time). you have seen her build little paper boats to float along the surface. you have seen her strip her many layers and dive in, have seen her lay with her belly to the sky, floating like she is suspended by the hands of darkness itself.
oh. so she loves the stars, as well, then.
__
you must go in. she will be married tonight. that is a human thing, but you have since learned what it has meant. she will go to somewhere else, and you will not see her again, maybe ever. and then how will you be a proper dragon? go!
you have made yourself in the form of a gargoyle, hiding in the white stone. you can see into her room; and the tapestries that seem unlike her. everything in her room is very bright, which is bad for a proper dragon. there are many knights in the hallways and in their rooms, and their smell is itchy and repugnant to you.
her dress is white, which does not seem like her. you have only seen her wear black. she is sitting at some kind of desk, and she is crying again. she smells of cinnamon still, but moreso of grief. you can feel the heartbreak in her as if it was inside of you.
you cannot watch her cry anymore. you have watched too often without moving. that is shameful.
you nose the door open. you can move quiet, because you are not very big. she is within a cave of you, then a wingtip, and then she is standing up, looking into your eyes.
"it's you." her hand on your jaw is warm. "i thought i was imagining you, you know. i turned around that day. i saw what you did to those men. i have been looking for you since. i told everyone that i had an angel to protect me. they locked me in here anyway."
you are not an angel, you are a dragon. you have to keep your wings locked tight or you would explode the walls of this place. it makes you feel big, suddenly. you are not used to that sensation. you do not like to be locked in a tower. you believe maybe the princess does not like to be locked in a tower either.
you take her in your jaws. she is very small, and does not resist you. although you are not a strong flyer, you must take off in a single push. any other movement would be too slow. you must also hold your breath so you do not smell her, the clove and cinnamon and little bird of hope. your mouth would water and you would drop her.
against the full moon, you do the thing that is impossible. you stretch yourself out all the way, a bold and beaming arrow, and you fly. you can hear them cry about you now, loudly. a banner that would strike pride even into your father: dragon. dragon. dragon.
on the eve of her wedding, you snatch the princess from her tower.
an arrow whisks for you, and then dozens, and then hundreds. you are not afraid of pain. you have learned long ago how to fly with holes in your wings. you hold her very gently still, and you push past the smell of your blood.
in the night you are a star. someone somewhere could look up and see you and make a wish.
there will be another lake, you decide. you can find another lake. somewhere very, very far from here. however long you must fly, however long you must hold your breath: you will take her home, because you are a proper dragon.
___
sometimes they come for her, your treasure. you have built her a little castle here, deep in the forests off the map. and of course for you: a silver round lake like the shift of her iris. you bring her books and she brings you bugs to study. you let her saddle you, and together you ride through the clouds and fog banks. she is a shadow on your back; a warm and velvet thing. she makes you music and lives the way she should; free in the night like a promise.
but they do come. you have stolen a real princess, and they do not want her to be a princess. they want to make her into a brood mother, or into bait, or into prey. they always look into the caves first; into the places proper dragons stay. they are real knights, not just men with sticks. they are loud and their smell still makes you itch.
but she has made you brave now, and cunning. if a dragon is not big, it should be cunning. and since you are a proper dragon, and since your treasure is your most precious thing, you lay in wait.
let them come. you will let the light drip off of you, and then you will pour through them.
afterwards, your princess will tell you a story around the fire. she will patch your wounds as she did that first time. she will sing to you.
and in that moment, neither of you will be a title nor a story. she will just be herself, and you will just be you.
you can kinda tell when a writer has spent a lot of time around kids bc they avoid most of the pitfalls that come with writing children. namely, not giving them a too cutesy or twee voice but making them sound more like extremely weird little adults. kids playing pretend will almost never cutely slot into some romantic scenario for the adults' benefit bc the adults are usually too busy cleaning up or wondering what the fuck is wrong with their child. kids also have surprisingly stringent hangups ranging from very petty grievances to downright chauvinist gender roles, more often than not the result of a tragic education but sometimes far surpassing what they were taught in intensity. what im saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with treating fictional kids as stock characters but it's always quite nice to see when they aren't
It's extremely common for very young children to suddenly say something extremely cogent and articulate, that's jarringly inconsistent with their normal speech. This is usually something that they heard an adult say recently. A kid will spend ten minutes telling you a story about how they fought a wolf yesterday using simple sentences of fifty cent words, then nibble a snack, wrinkle their nose and say something like "I feel like Mum was overenthusiastic with the salt today, and not for the first time either" before going back to their clumsy story. (They do understand what they're saying when they do this. Kids' communication is usually held back by their vocabulary and pronunciation, not their understanding.)
Young kids are also a lot more socially aware than people give them credit for. Young children are perfectly aware that adults don't take them seriously. They know when their parents don't actually like them. They listen and remember when adults talk about them while they're in the room. Kids will develop basic abilities to charm etc. from babyhood and will begin experimenting with social norms and concepts of deception, appropriate information, and acceptable language and attitudes in toddlerhood. By the time a kid is five or six, they have solid social strategies for relating to adults and separate ones fr relating to their peers, that they'll continue to refine for the rest of their lives. They will also say completely off the wall shit because they don't have the context to know what is and isn't considered super fucked up yet.
By the time a kid is eight or nine, their main difference from adults is in experience, interests, and ability for long-term focus. An eight year old can think as intelligently and coherently as a thirty year old, they just have less experience and information to draw from, and are likely interested in very different things. They're also likely still slightly hamstrung by vocabulary and literacy, though much less so than a younger kid.
Teens will behave like adults who have little power (a teen is often at the mercy of their parents and the state and rarely taken seriously, which is extremely frustrating) and who are high stress and mid-crisis, because they're going through a transitory period where their bodies and moods are changing and are having to constantly learn and adjust; a fourteen year old in a stable situation will act pretty much like a thirty year old with an oppressive boss who's just left a tumultuous relationship.
#oh is *that* why i feel 14 again after my fiance broke things off with me and i had to move halfway across the continent back in with my ma?
Yeah that's just what humans feel and act like when they're unmoored and powerless and unpredictably changing. Teenagers are pretty much constantly unmoored and powerless and unpredictably changing, and react reasonably to those circumstances.
Bad writing means you took the time to write something, you, a real human being. It means you created something! And you have the awareness to see that there's room for improvement, too!!!
Bad writing is wonderful!!! Bad writing is a platform from which you can build your masterpiece! Bad writing is the backbone of good writing!
Give yourself permission to write badly. No, actually- give yourself permission to write something TERRIBLE. Give yourself permission to write such drivel that you can barely read it.
Nothing comes out a masterpiece the first time!! You think Isaac Asimov never wrote a total stinker he had to rebuild from the ground up? You think Jules Verne never wrote utter slop for a first draft?
WRITE SOMETHING AWFUL!!! Write something so bad you cringe about it years later!!! And then when that's done, write some more!!!!!
Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again
YOU'RE A REGULAR WRITER! YOU CAN CRAFT A COMPLETE SENTENCE! YOU'RE A REGULAR WRITER! YOU USE THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF COMMAS! YOU'RE A REGULAR WRITER! YOUR PROSE IS GOOD AND RIGHT! YOU'RE A REGULAR WRITER! EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS YOUR VISION!
some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.
Stop playing games, stop watching movies, stop following football matches, stop listening to music... Leave them alone, even if only for a minute. Sit with yourselves for a minute and think carefully: Do we deserve to die? Do we deserve to live this life? If the answer is no, then do something for us. Either donate, participate, or do anything that makes us feel that you are with us and not leaving us alone in front of the genocidal criminals.
I am a father from Gaza, a mobile app developer who only wanted to build a peaceful life for my wife and our four children. But war and displacement have taken everything from us. Now, all I wish for is to keep my family alive and safe — to give my children a chance to grow, to sleep without fear, and to eat without hunger. I should not watch my kids suffer because of this injustice. Please stand with us.
If you think my fundraising campaign is only for one family, please know that your help also supports others around us who have lost everything. You can donate here . My family and I need a lot just to survive. Being displaced again and again has already cost us thousands of dollars , just to stay alive.
we're watching twilight on your couch. your roommate is in in the kitchen, listening to a liveplay dnd podcast i recognize. you point to the screen while edward's hands remake the book cover. "took them 13 takes, which i find auspicious," you say, sprinkling popcorn into your mouth, "they used a string for it."
"i am a sucker for a practical effect, it must be said." on the screen, rob patts sort of awkwardly grimaces in cold lighting. i have all of my limbs tucked underneath myself.
you pass the popcorn bowl to me, i shuffle up a handful. for a second, turned away from the movie, my ears ring. you are alight and beautiful, grinning. you mouth the words of dialogue.
i don't know much more than how ya been loca? and of course spider monkey but i did like the books.
halloween decorations flock your walls. the room is warm. autumn is twisting against the window. i wish, violently, i knew how to knit. something to do with my hands.
"remember divergent?" you say. edmund is eating a bag of eggs. "that shit was violated-the-geneva-conventions terrible."
"first book wasn't so bad," i offer. "it's the rest of the series i cannot talk about. no, for real, i will get upset."
you laugh.
i have to break eye contact. i instead focus on kristen stewart, her rapturous stuttering. i actually think she did a great job with the source material, considering.
you point to me. "you know, naming him four was wild. because it's like, the number of fears he has, right?" you grab more popcorn. "i would have, like, invented new things for them to be afraid of."
what a good point. "actually, yeah? why were none of his fears getting his dick blown clear off? or like, getting eaten alive by ants?"
i had a dream, once. about what would happen if i just broke it open. sometimes you look at me and it's all live wire. like if i put my hand on it, it'll erupt. sometimes i think you want it just as badly. most of the time i think we are both too old and too hurt to be making choices unwisely.
you have the longest eyelashes i've ever seen.
"everybody afraid of being eaten alive by ants," you agree. you pick up a fleece blanket. "wait, what am i doing. come here, come get cuddly." you balance the bowl in one hand and wiggle over to me until our legs are touching, throw the blanket over both of us. "okay, so much better, right?" you squint. "you know, there really is something so mormon about the bible imagery in this."
i am practicing deep breathing. i turn back to the screen. i am very still in every part of my body. i am suddenly very aware that there's a kernel in my back tooth. "you lost me." my voice comes out kind of tight, thank god the soundtrack is playing.
"this specific one not so much; but there's a Christianity to the whole thing, right? and the cover; i mean. forbidden desire when it's done by straight people is always, like - come on, man."
your roommate takes their dinner and their podcast upstairs, and then it is just us; just the stupid movie and your body burning through my atmosphere. and of course the kernel, which my tongue can't find but i know is there.
i watch-without-seeing. i think about the pros and cons list i've made thirty times and counting. cons: she's your friend, you idiot. i think about how i only still-talk to like, two of my exes. cons: you would love her too loudly. i can't be wrong again. i can't choose the wrong person and go through the whole thing.
three months ago, when you were drunk, you peered up at me - okay but what if we kiss. just once. just to see.
i pick up more popcorn. "you ever hear the actor commentary on this thing?"
you cackle, and the laugh rings through both our bodies. "oh my god, the wire in the shirt, right? what did he call it - like, intentionally ruffled or something?" you manage a pretty good impression of him, honestly.
i try to picture next october, and what would happen if i didn't have this. like, if we ruined it and didn't talk and no longer had our little rituals. who would i even talk to about it? it's always you i come to, over and over again.
you nestle closer. the faint and sardonic curl of your lips. "honestly," you whisper, blinking those wide eyes up at me, "i was actually team jacob."
"[x story type] but what if-" short story. come on man you should know that if your story is easily blurbed down to "interesting thing happens" that is not going to sustain a reader for 400-600 pages. a book is where you write an actual narrative, not a cool idea that came to you in the shower last night.
there's nothing wrong with writing a short story! there are lots of good short stories that revolve around Interesting Ideas. What if I was my own mother. What if fish people were real and also (evil) living in massachusetts. What if you were your own worst enemy, literally. lots of good short stories there, all at just the right length for a cool idea. no one is going to go see the feature-length adaptation of William Wilson though, because that's it. unless you add in a tragic backstory and a love interest and so on and unfortunately there are a lot of novels and movies running around out there that clearly were meant to be a short story before someone took them and stretched them to a silly length.
your short story doesn't even have to be short! herman melville wrote over 100 pages of a guy who hated his job so much he died of being a hater the end. good show, herman. thank you
novellas exist. you can write one. please. it's necessary for the land to survive
Growing up, one of my dad's favorite quotes he'd say whenever he found me writing came from a movie called As good as it gets. In it, Jack Nicholson's character is asked how he writes women so well. He responds "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability." My dad would later bastardize this quote to "I think of a man and then take away all logic."
rather than teaching me anything about writing, what this taught me was that my dad was never going to be able to understand a woman's point of view because he was proud he couldn't understand it. He thought of himself as "logical" and anything other as "illogical." I've met other people like my dad who won't read books with female main characters because it's "unrelatable." Growing up, most of the largest series in the world featured male characters with an occasional female side character. When an MC is a woman/nonbinary I hear "why do they have to be X?"
(and this is about ten times louder when a MC dares to not be a cis male or is a person of color)
At the heart of writing there is storytelling. And, at the end of the day, there will be people who don't want to understand that story. Not because it's not well-written or important but because it doesn't fit their world view. they don't want to hear about a main character that's female, nonbinary, black, disabled, fat, queer, etc.
Write those stories anyway. Bang on their doors and plaster those words everywhere they can see. Get comfortable telling your stories and get even more comfortable making those people who cover their ears uncomfortable.
There is community in what we do and in the stories we tell. Don't let those people who are proud that they don't understand diminish the great things you're going to contribute to that community.
(Edit for clarity: changed wording around cis male for specificity)
Summary: Abomination. The S-class Supervillain. Me, a C-class hero. I take a deep breath. Close my eyes. Remind myself that I’m a hero.
------
Damn. I really wanted to live.
The jets roar overhead again, screaming familiar complaints after only a moment. It’s easy to see the scene – three military planes diving down towards the writhing, fleshy tentacles and then being forced to pull up as Abomination hurls another chunk of freeway at them. The sequence has been repeating for the last two hours as they desperately try to buy time until the big hitters arrive.
I hold my hand up towards what’s left of the ceiling. Abomination had peeled open the tin roof of the service station like an anchovy can. That was back when my team first arrived on scene. Back when they were on either side of me, winded but already looking back towards the fight. Back when the worst of it was just—
My hands are a mess. The road rash tearing across my palms is the worst of it, but my attention goes to my nails. Blood and soot and dirt (and worse) tear at my cuticles. My nails look like they made friends with a cheese grater. My sister once told me all things look better under the sun, but I bet she’s never seen a hand like mine held up against the peerless blue of a rare, sunny Portland day. Not that she’ll ever see it--
I imagine a joint between my fingers and pull it back to press against my lips. Puff, puff, pass. My ribs bark a protest when I laugh. I let my head fall back so I can watch imaginary swirls of smoke escape through Abomination’s handmade skylight. Carefully I bring my hand to rest on my chest. If I let my cracked bones ache instead of throb, it’s kind of like the good burn of smoke in my lungs.
I take a deep breath. Close my eyes. Remind myself that I’m a hero.
I open my eyes and let them water from the sudden radiance of the noon sun shining down on me.
The lumps of spandex on the other side of the station are hardly noticeable when I look up like this. And listening to my own breath helps me ignore how I can’t hear theirs anymore.
My sister will never see my hand again. I have this insane urge to text her a picture of it – maybe my left one since it’s got less blood on it – but my phone is back at headquarters. She’ll get something soon enough, even if it’s not a text from me. They won’t wait long to send Hero Force agents to pack up my bunk. An hour. Maybe two. They’ll wrap up my effects in small, neat, brown-paper parcels that my sister can throw in her god-awful Croc bag that she usually reserves for farmer’s market veggies or thrift store finds.
A Mesolithic howl rips through the air. Machine guns bark and the air throbs with percussive force. Abomination laughs and it’s like lava escaping through an ocean vent. Subatomic and primal. Out of reach. Unstoppable.
I sniffle. Swallow blood. Gross. It’d probably only get grosser if I started crying, so I don’t. Hauling my aching corpse to its feet is a process that I savor. I won’t be doing it again, will I? I can’t get my spine to unfold which doesn’t feel worth savoring, if I’m honest. I crouch hunched against the broken station wall, shoulders rounded, and head tucked to my chest. The standard issue mask is gone, and my face is sticky with soot. My nails bite into the road rash cutting across my palms. I grind my teeth. There’s a whine that coming from the fight that could be the jets’ engines or could be someone screaming. “Come on. Come on. Come on.”
My back straightens with all the integrity of a pipe cleaner. Fuck, that hurts. Training kicks in. Rotate shoulders, swivel hips, shake out my arms. Diagnosis? Not combat ready.
My foot nudges something metal. I blink blearily and look down. My helmet. Soot-stained and devoid of its usual red frill along the crown. I pick it up with more effort than I’d like to admit. Put it on.
Right.
I launch myself through the ceiling, twisting to avoid the snarls of metal. Portland blooms below as my winds buffet me higher. Crawling roads and squat buildings built like sugar cubes that’ve gone soggy at the edges. Streetlights and swathes of green sneak between apartment buildings and fifty-year-old shops.
And over there where the highways twist together is Abomination.
He’s bigger than in the pictures. I think it might be the largest sighting ever recorded. His center mass has to be the size of a blimp and from it spring at least fifty appendages. Some have hooked talons on their ends. Others have whole hands. Some are covered in dozens of eyes that swivel and scowl at the planes shooting by overhead. How much has he eaten to grow so large? How much of it was biological? How much of it screamed?
My winds drop me at our original entry point. The bridge we parked the team van under (“Sorry, guys, I asked and Hero Force won’t let us paint it like the Mystery Van.” “What the FU—“) is gone. Rebar twists like broken fingers from the shattered edges. The van is half lodged in what remains of the underside and debris falls over it like a curtain. I have to move a slab of asphalt and concrete from the passenger side to crawl in.
It still smells like Tay’s gun oil and Crew’s hot Cheetos. It floors me for a minute. This will be the last time I get crumbs all over my fucking hands because Crew can’t eat clean. This will be the last time I’ll choke on the chemicals Tay insists she needs to keep her weapons lubed up. I could stay here. I could just sit in the middle of the van and tell Hero Force I was too hurt to try again. Maybe it’s even true. If I did that, I could probably see my sister again.
Ha.
It’s dark and cramped inside and I can tell a lot of it has been dented and crumpled. But the case behind the driver’s seat – my seat – is still there.
My backup bow is too long to pull out with my body in the way. I have to drag it out behind me, wiggling across the seats in a way my ribs really don’t like. I exit the van butt first and pull all 6 feet of solid yew out in one go. I set it aside and go back in for whatever arrows survived the initial attack. I can pry 6 out of the quiver pinned to the van door before I start feeling splinters along the shafts.
Six is probably all I have in me anyway.
When I crawl back out of the van, there’s a kid holding my bow.
He’s probably 15. Buzzed head, torn hoodie, pajama pants and house slippers. There are fresh tear tracks cutting through the soot staining his face. I check him head to toe. No blood.
“Thanks for holding that for me,” I say. I extend a hand. “Appreciate it.”
The kid’s knuckles go white along the body. The string trails along the ground. “…I wasn’t going to take it.”
He probably thought about it. Hero artifacts are worth a lot – especially after they’re dead. The van will be stripped by locals before Hero Force thinks to recover it. I don’t mind people taking the costumes or snacks or even the little hula bobblehead Tay insisted was our mascot. The weapons…
I remind myself to put one problem on my plate at a time.
“I know,” I say, dropping my hand. He’s not running, so he’s telling the truth. I put the arrows in the quiver strapped to my back, grateful that they slide in without much resistance. The kid might be able to tell me how bad Abomination’s last hit messed up my back, but I wasn’t about to subject him to more blood than he’d already seen. “I do need it back though.”
The kid stares. His eyes are bottomless pits, that’s how blown his pupils are. “You’re going out there again.”
Yeah, ‘cause I’m stupid. I nod. “Yep.”
The kid looks over his shoulder. There’s destruction down the street. I wonder which house is his. Or rather which pile of rubble is what’s left of his house. When he looks back at me, his chin is trembling. “How?”
I try to keep my voice even. His clothing is torn by glass. He got out through a window. “You leave someone behind?”
He blinks quickly. Goes to speak. Can’t. Nods and looks down at the bow in his hands.
“That’s okay,” I say. I’m supposed to get down on my knees during these conversations. Supposed to take off my helmet. My body won’t do it. I’m also supposed to sound a lot more comforting. I can’t do that either. “Getting yourself out is already more than enough. And I’m sure you tried. You did what you could.”
“You tried too,” he says. When he looks up, it’s a surprise to see he isn’t crying. His eyes are angry. “You’re going out there again. I can’t ask you —I should be able to—”
“Blame me,” I interrupt. I hold out my hands. Helpless. “Any other day, I’d be going there for you, you know? I’d try and save whoever it is. But I can’t today. I’m the only one l—” left “—here. I’m the only one that can. I have to go and that means I’m the one leaving your people behind. Not you.”
He wants to argue. I can hear a thousand other voices begging me to save them and I know he wants to be one of them. His brow knots and his knees shake. His lips purse. He wants to, I can see it, he wants to, but--
“But you’re trying to stop it,” he mumbles. “You’re trying to save everyone else.”
“I am,” I say. I’m two seconds from ripping my bow from his hands. He’s costing me time. I keep my voice soft. “But I’m not trying to save you. It’s okay to hate me for that.”
The kid is quiet for a beat. Another. His eyes drift back to my bow and I can see the veins in the back of his hands flex as he squeezes and unclenches in sync with his unsteady breathing.
I time it and snatch my bow from his hands when his grip is loose. He staggers in surprise. He yells – for me to stop? For me to wait?
I can’t hear him over my wind.
My winds fling me into the air and I hurtle towards Abomination. My chest stings and I think it’s partly from the broken ribs and partly from what I just did. I’m trying to save the day, I am. But I left that kid with two villains today.
At least I won’t have to live with the guilt for long.
The jets are fewer in number now. Abomination’s appendages are long and thick, more than strong enough to sling a plane into the city. Response teams are having to weigh the risk of getting close enough to give him another projectile. It’s good and bad news for me.
Good news, I don’t have to watch out for other air traffic.
Bad news, I’m alone as I crest above Abomination.
He sees me. I know he does. His many eyes roll in their ill-fitting sockets, watering and twitching under the uncompromising sun. It’s possible that I’m backlit and that’s why his eyes never fix on me. It’s possible that I’ve found a blind spot that I should be grateful for.
His eyes spin away from and all I feel is rage. He hits me, hits my team, hits my city and then dismisses me?
I hiss in a breath as I string my bow. I feel all one hundred and fifty pounds of draw as I pull an arrow fletching back to my cheek.
“One,” I whisper and let go.
The sun follows my arrow, catching and spinning along the arrowhead until it’s orange with heat. In normal, cloudy Portland, my secondary power isn’t very impressive. My arrows fly a little faster, maybe. I can get a better vantage point from up high, sure.
But in the sun?
Abomination screams as molten metal drives deep into the largest of his eyes. His appendages writhe, curling back into the main body like an octopus’ tentacles.
I laugh. “Didn’t see that coming, did you?”
“I’ll kill you!” Abomination’s many mouths screech. He roils and surges, appendages turning over until a new one is revealed. There’s a man at the end of this one, or the facsimile of one. His blonde hair hangs over his face in a curtain so thick I can only make out his teeth bared in a grimace. “You’re DEAD!”
I spin through the air as he lashes out. A hook swings past and curves towards the back of my legs. I whistle and the wind flips me into a backflip that helps me neatly evade the attack.
Tay’s voice whispers, Make it look easy.
I string another arrow. It’s not easy. My backup bow has a draw twenty pounds heavier than my main. I close my eyes, feeling the sun against my face. It reminds me of the last time I saw my sister. It’d been a sunny day like today. She’d brought along a picnic basket. Peanut butter and jelly like she used to pack me for lunch every day.
“Two,” I say and fire at the fake man Abomination created.
This time it’s not the sun that follows my arrow; it’s a cyclone. The roar of it matches Abomination’s when the appendage fails to dodge and lodges into his chest.
It destabilizes my wind. I get tossed in the air and dropped twenty feet before I can catch myself again. I pant as I reach for another arrow. Abomination’s stretching, his appendages reaching higher and higher. Trying to reach me.
“Three,” I gasp and release a sunbeam. The power of it sears me. I’m usually C-class at best. B-class on sunny days. The sun cuts through my dominant arm and clings to my arrow like lightning.
Abomination is too big to dodge now. He tries to hit the next shot out of the air. He can’t. The light cuts like a laser through his hooked arm and his howls shake the air as it crashes into the city below.
Don’t wait for them to get back up, Crew whispers. The crackle in my lungs sounds a little like how he cracked his knuckles. Hit them again.
Not very hero-like, Tay says.
“We weren’t always heroes,” I say and shoot. I don’t remember pulling the arrow. Don’t remember drawing the bow. “Four.”
I go blind. I think I draw the sun into the arrow again. I don’t know. Nausea churns my stomach. I fall, I think. For a second. Just a second. Then my wind catches me like a battering ram and I wheeze, flat on my back with the sun burning through the gaps in my helmet.
When I can blink the darkness from my eyes, I’m barely higher than the rooftops. Abomination is a hundred feet away from me.
He sees me at the same time I see him.
A large section of Abomination is charred. Burnt through. I can see the sun sparkling through the cracks in his charred flesh. The smell makes me gag.
I don’t see the tentacle ripping towards me until it’s too late.
I get my bow up a second before it hits. The thing is fleshy and warm. Alive. There’s something so different between getting hit by something alive than something dead. I hear snapping, like a branch in a storm. The air is chased from my lungs.
It’s not my first time getting thrown. It’s not even my first time today. But this time my wind isn’t fast enough to even slow my descent. I hit the ground at full force and I lose track of time for a while.
When I come to, the world is filled with smoke. It curls around the shattered remains of buildings and through the jagged cracks in the road beneath me. Sitting up is fucking heroic on its own. I spit to my side and force myself to look. Abomination is moving – away from me. The sluggish path he’s cut across the city isn’t over. He thinks he’s killed me.
I look down. My bow is split, like I feared. The two jagged halves are connected by the string and that’s all. I consider it for a second before realizing my quiver is still on my back. I pull my last two arrows and stare at their wicked points.
Yeah. Yeah, that’ll work.
If standing was hard before, it must be impossible now. There are sounds coming from me that shouldn’t come from a human. I tune them out. Abomination sounds like a sack full of slime when he moves. Wet and heavy. Half-blind, I stagger after the sound. I trip over valleys gouged into the road and shards of metal I can’t identify. In each hand, I have an arrow gripped about halfway up the shaft. My palms are raw and scream as I tighten my grip.
I thought I had six shots in me. It looks like five is all I’ll get. Pulling the sun takes negotiation. I can only coax a trickle in, but it’ll have to do.
I really wanted to live.
I raise both arms, cocking them back in preparation to throw—
Steel hands grab my arms on each side. Instinctively I try to rip away from the grip, legs buckling when I try to kick out. The same hands holding me back, hold me up.
I turn my head to find Strongwoman on my left.
Strongwoman’s dark eyes are kind. “Good job, Apollo. We’ll take it from here.”
On my other side, a woman I’ve never seen before nods agreement. She’s wearing a gold body suit and there’s a flame motif along her mask. Her dark hair is a riot down her back. “We are here.”
I try to speak and nothing comes out. My knees buckle and Strongwoman holds me up. The other woman smiles at me. “You’ve done your part. Now it’s ours.”
She walks towards Abomination.
I find my voice as she gets within a hundred feet from him. “W-wait. F-flame. He’s weak to heat. My arrows—“
“Don’t worry about Firebreather,” Strongwoman says. She hauls my arm over her shoulder and turns to start marching us back. “She’s got plenty of that. She’s just happy you held him back long enough for her to get to him.”
This time the roar that flood through the city isn’t from Abomination. It’s not from my winds.
It’s from the flames.
“We should help,” I say. I watch the shadows at my feet writhe as the fire behind us blooms. “We should—”
“Your team needs your help more,” Strongwoman interrupts. Her eyes are fixed ahead. In the distance, there’s the canopy of a white tent. “They’ve been asking for you.”
This time, even her help isn’t enough to keep me on my feet. I collapse so hard that I can feel the impact through my hips. “W-what?”
Strongwoman mutters a curse and swings me up into her arms. “I was trying to preserve your dignity, you know. The cameras haven’t left you since you first started solo fighting.”
My dignity is the least of my worries. I grab around her neck. “My team? My team is asking for me?”
“Yes? Of course they—” Strongwoman hisses in a breath. “You thought they were dead.”
I didn’t look. The spandex in the corners of the station—“They’re alive?”
“They’re alive,” Strongwoman confirms.
Finally, I start to cry.
-----
Thanks for reading! If you like what I do, please consider supporting me on Patreon (X).
Next week's story will be posted on my Patreon early by Sunday 8/17! It's a bit more lighthearted and is about one of my fave heroes The Shark (read first part here)
Summary: You are The Shark and your new hero team leader wants you to go to support group about it.
I often get asks about illegitimate children and what their lives would be like in a typical fantasy setting. In many cultures, to be born or to have a child out of the bounds of marriage, it is extremely taboo and can result in some social ostracism while in others, it isn't seen as a very big deal and illegitimate children could rise to places of power.
Double-Standards
All illegitimate children are born outside marriage but not all illegitimate children are made equally. Most of the time, illegitimate children born to the poor can experience worse treatment by their community. If they are born to an unwed mother or a mother who gave birth to them outside of marriage, their mother may be denied services in the community such as housing and employment and be shunned publicly. A royal or noblewoman would also face the same scrutiny and be shunned from all high society and may even be imprisoned or executed. They faced more dangerous circumstances if they were married, mainly because they have put the succession of their children into question which could be grounds to disinherit their other children which could lead to larger issues. However, the father of an illegitimate children would likely not face too much scrutiny. While frowned upon, especially if he has quite a few illegitimate children and/or doesn't support them. A nobleman or royal father could father children without too much scrutiny, again in moderation.
Child Support
Illegitimate Children were not equal to legitimate children in a good many Western Cultures. In most cultures of the west, illegitimate children were not entitled to anything their parents owned or could lay claim to and if on the off-chance they were to inherit, it is only when all illegitimate claimants are out of the picture. Illegitimate children of royals or nobles were not in line for titles, crowns and lands - in fact, they were only provided for when their father wanted to. When the father did, he could see that they were educated, treated almost the same as his legitimate children - a good many illegitimate royals could count themselves in for a Dukedom or Earldom, with a fine marriage in the future and a lot of wealth and position (especially if the mother is also aristocratic). A poorer father might offer the mother up-keep for herself and the child but again, this is his own choice and he may not offer support. However, in other cultures, an illegitimate child could receive the same if not better treatment than their legitimate siblings. In the Ottoman Empire, a Sultan was expected to father children with women of the harem, who he was not married to in order to sire the next generation of royal heirs. The daughters born of these unions were often married to high ranking advisors and court and granted education and luxury like that of royal princesses while sons were often granted fine educations and later in life, provinces to reign over. Under Ancient Hindu Laws, children could inherit from their mothers and depending on circumstances their fathers. In China and Japan, while children born to concubines with all the same honours as legitimate children they weren't ostracised and were often raised with many of the same luxuries and amenities.
Prospects
An illegitimate child may not be on the same equal footing as their legitimate counterparts but that doesn't mean they are blocked from every good thing about life. They could be educated, they could marry well, they could rise high in society but their birth status may still be used against them. They may be believed to carry some stigma, be seen as dishonest or more inclined to act a certain way - which is all bullshit but the village is going to judge regardless. Illegitimate children born into higher ranking families might gain high positions of power, receiving high military positions or advisory positions at court to support their siblings. They may even marry to improve their family's status, with illegitimate royals even marrying other royals or nobles.
Relationships
Illegitimate children may have close relationships with their parents but that depends on the relationship between their parents and whether they have any contact with them. Illegitimate children may be raised alongside their legitimate siblings in order to foster good relationships between the siblings. Illegitimate children might have good relations with their step-parents but this is up to the step-parent. Some step-parents refuse to have the illegitimate child. An aristocratic father might set up his illegitimate child on an estate with a household of their own. Depending on the circumstances of their birth, their extended families may accept them as relatives or reject them.
Legitimization
I often get hypothetical questions on what happens when a royal or noble illegitimate child gets legitimized. Legitimization is when the illegitimate child is made legitimate by decree. This is usually through four ways: the parents marry and the legitimization is retroactive (this isn't always accepted), the illegitimate child is legitimized by the crown, or by religious authority or the government passes a bill of legitimization. However, this doesn't mean the child has all the rights of a legitimate child. Some royal or noble children could inherit but usually only after their legitimate siblings, nieces and nephews. Sometimes they are entitled to use certain styles and titles, they may be allowed to call themselves Prince/Princess or the courtesy title of their parents. However, legitimization is usually only carried out when there is either a deficit of legit heirs or enough of a surplus that legitimizing an illegitimate child is almost no danger. Most royals and nobles don't opt to legitimize their offspring in order to ensure the succession is protected and the overall peace preserved.
There is a species of butterfly that lives in the mountains.
When it hatches as a caterpillar, it lowers itself to the ground on a strand of silk, and then produces a chemical that smells like the larvae of ants. An ant eventually discovers it, lured by the scent, and brings it back to the anthill, where it is cared for by the colony until it pupates. After a few weeks, the adult butterfly crawls back up through the anthill, through the dirt and the winding tunnels, and out into the sunlight before it can finally open its wings.
Some say that the caterpillar “tricks” the ants into doing this. I don’t know if I agree – I think it’s too small a thing to accuse of guile, don’t you?
With this in mind: Once upon a time, there were seven dwarves.
They lived and worked in the mountains, mining for gold and jewels and precious things. And one night, after a long day’s labour, they heard a knocking at the great stone doors of their mountain.
Outside, shivering and small, they found a human child.
I’m sure you can guess most of what she told them. Stepmothers were involved – it’s not important. What’s important was that each of the dwarves felt a dire and pressing need to care for the child, and they took her into their home, fed her, clothed her, and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. And many seasons passed around that mountain, with the dwarves raising the child as one of their own, until one autumn’s day.
The girl laid, slender and still, in a coffin of spun glass. And some weeks later, one of the dwarves had the idea to call for a prince. This was of course the sensible thing to do, and the prince of a nearby kingdom who listened to the story thought an ensorcelled girl would be a grand thing to rescue.
Poor devils. It feels cruel to judge them. But there were so many questions they could’ve asked – what was this stepmother’s name? Was she real? Did she exist? Who had made the glass coffin? Surely one of them must’ve thought of the question. And why did it grow more opaque with every passing day?
Were they wrong to trust?
I guess it doesn’t matter now.
The moment the prince stepped into the subterranean chamber with the glass coffin, it shivered with a twinkling, plinking noise. Threads of glass exploded into glittering, razor-edged confetti.
A claw split the great glass cocoon.
The thing that spilled out of it, hulking and huge, knew in the fog of its mind, in a base animal sense that screamed, that it was in a room too small for it to fit. It wanted up. It wanted out.
In front of it was some twiggy little thing holding a sword.
It took its first breath.
The flames were the colour of cornflowers.
The dwarves fled. The thing followed close behind, up, up, up through the stone and the winding tunnels, not to chase, not to hunt, but to get up, to get out, out, out–
It struck the great stone doors at a run. They crumbled like gingerbread. And then there was sunlight, and the open sky…
And it could finally open its wings.
Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing.
The dragon, of course, lived happily ever after with its loot of gold and jewels from a hastily abandoned dwarf mine. Being much bigger than a caterpillar, we could accuse it of tricking the dwarves who were kind to it, had taken it in, had fed and clothed and warmed it.
The way necromancy works is this: Everything in your body — meat, bones, skin, blood — has something like a memory. They remember, in their own way, what it’s like to be alive. Skin remembers the sun. Bones remember what shape they’re supposed to be in. Muscle memory is more than just an idiom.
The way necromancy works is that the caster puts a little bit of their willpower into a corpse to order it to remember how it functioned in life and obey. This is easiest to do with bones, which are easy to trick, and becomes increasingly difficult the more of the original body remains.
To reanimate a full body to your command, you have to have a lot of willpower.
The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently. Then, taking the lantern off its hook, she peered over the side of the little sailboat.
There wasn't much to see. The sea was dark and still as glass, except where the lanternlight turned a patch of seawater a yellowish-green. A tiny fish flitted into the gleam, attracted to the light, and then vanished into the murk again.
The necromancer chewed the inside of her cheek. She sat down again, the boat bobbing gently with the movement, and checked the map one more time. Then she opened the little wooden case on the floor of the boat, which unfolded into a neat arrangement of drawers.
There were. Things. In the drawers. Some wriggled. Others twitched little beetly legs into the night air. A few of them made noises, which ran together into a squeaky, wheezy squeal of horror.
The necromancer twiddled her fingers over the display as she considered her options. Then she grabbed a few of the twitching, wriggling things, held them in her palm and squeezed her hand into a fist as tightly as she could with a squelching noise.
She opened her hand to inspect her work. She breathed the spell into it, and then, holding her hand over the edge of the boat, dropped the spell into the sea.
And that seemed to be it. She sat back in the boat and closed the little wooden case. After a moment she started looking over the map again.
There were a lot of handwritten notes on the map. Each one was connected to a mark and some coordinates; some of them said, "Storm 1457," or "Struck a rock 1483." Others said "Total failure," or “Completely dissolved.”
The note the necromancer seemed most interested in was the one that read, “Battle of Salzstein, 1501.”
The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently, and then she was suddenly thrown down to the floor of the boat as though a giant, invisible hand had crushed her.
Her mouth opened in a noiseless scream.
Two minds were fighting for control of the corpse; on one side was the mind of the caster, and on the other was the memories of bones, of flesh, of skin, trying to drive the caster out.
The weight of that mind was incredible.
Sweat poured off the necromancer’s brow; darkness whorled across her vision. Then slowly, every movement a bone-breaking agony, she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, lungs straining.
The trick was that this mind knew how to obey.
The necromancer stood, wobbled, steadied herself and poured her willpower into the sea. She tried to make hers the full willpower the thing had obeyed in life, the will of the wind, of the sea, of the rigging and the wheel.
Because of course it had been alive. In a sense, they were all alive. Sailors talked of them like they were alive, gave them names, called them “she.”
Sailors knew they were alive.
It was the cessation of that life that interested her.
The necromancer reached out with her power, seized the mind in her hands and pulled, blood and foam flecking out the corners of her mouth as she ground her teeth together with the titanic effort and ordered it to obey.
The sea roiled, hundreds of tons of water moving fast as something deep below boiled to the surface.
A bowsprit sprouted from the water. Then a wood-rotted figurehead of a mermaid. Then inch by inch, yard by yard, the huge barnacle-encrusted bulk of silt-stained timber rose out of the deep, seawater streaming out of every gunport.
For a moment the warship hung in the air like a monstrous fish held by the gills of a colossal fisherman. It dropped into the sea with a sound like a depth charge; the little rowboat lurched in its wake.
The necromancer released the spell. Then she threw up, and passed out.
———
Later, once she had woken, gathered together the tackle box, the lantern, and the map and had scrabbled aboard, the necromancer inspected the undead ship.
There was a hole in the hull where a magazine charge had exploded. This was, admittedly, fine. Undead men could walk with a hole in their bellies; an undead ship could sail with one as well.
Really, she thought, despite the discomfort the spell had worked masterfully.
It was a perfect start.
She unfolded the map on the soggy floor of the quarterdeck, sucked the end of a pen, and next to the last marker wrote “Total success.” Then her finger began to trace down the page to the next.
And the undead ship — unbidden and obedient — shifted its sails and began to move south.
