Summary: Trapped in his own undoing, cornered by his guilt and shame, he rushes to a place where relief can only be found.
status: ongoing
wc: 2245
Warnings: Body horror, Blood and Gore
18+ only, your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. Do not proceed if these matters upset you.
—
The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time, Possibly since you were born.
—
Someone left the window open.
He hears locusts in the depths of his depths. Even in the middle of the razor-slicing rain. Hammers his head. Rings him the long sleepless nights at the Red Keep, a figure drenched in the black of shadows between the stoned arc—her ghostly footsteps stain the red floor, deafening when he is away from the palace. I have to go to King’s Landing.
It was not his fever nor the rain that froths the drone. He hears it all the second. Swarming his bone white head down to his coal black heart, echoes louder than the thunder biting Ashford Meadow. Corroding its way outwards. His body is burning, and the chill of the rain hurts his skin like the press of little needles; he could only squirm in it, then cry. Between tears, Aerion calls out her name. His mouth and throat feels thick, raw and tastes bloody.
His delirium sighs dreams of her phantoming beside his bed, ghostholding his bruised hand. Peels sweet plums for his sick, bitter tongue. Nectar trickling on her wrists. She slices open the bruise on his abdomen after she feeds him. Held him as she cradled his head in one delightful hand, holding the knife with the other. Only in his dreams could she do so.
-
The royal family departed for the Capital earlier at the pleading of Aerion’s restlessness. Maekar reluctantly allows the journey. He can only bear so much of the sight of his wounded son's repeated attempts at escaping, crawling away from the bed of the guest chamber to reach the stable and join Maekar’s entourage. Like a man trying to escape his own self-immolation.
But mostly because the barking of his disapproval and threats deters not the young prince. The guards posted outside his chamber only ended in a bloodshed. Aerion managed to bite a chunk of an ear out of one of them. Took a knife out their pocket and sliced open the corner of the other poor man’s lip. Maekar pays the wounded a heavy sum to keep their mouth shut; the tragedy of the tourney is a stain upon his and Aerion’s cloak enough. The heart of the smallfolk is scarcely on the crown for the time being.
So Maekar rides, watching the fever sway his son side to side atop the horse, struggling to keep steady. The sickly-sweet perspiration layers the forehead and neck of the prince’s fine skin. Pale head gleams like dragon’s teeth under the light from the torches of his men.
Maekar calls for Aerion to ride the carriage and gives a reassuring hand to his shoulder, but Aerion swats his father’s hand away, saying nothing, and gallops his horse faster into the black night, rushing through the spectre-ridden fields. Trampling the dying terrain that condemns the memories of the rebellion.
Maekar indulges Aerion on these little visits on days his heart is not hardened enough to dictate no, even if it’s still heavy with reluctant permission, never consent. He was not to ride with Aerion to King’s Landing. That is the last thing he wants before the death of his brother. He was to leave Aerion on his bed and ride to the capital while his son sleeps the fever and shame away. Then command his men to take Aerion back to Summerhall with Daeron and Aegon before Maekar sends off the little bloodthirst to Lys. But his sons are scattered to the four winds, whether in body or spirit. He can’t help but find temporary relief whenever he can keep them close.
“Ah, fuck.” Maekar heard the low curse beside him.
“What’s wrong?” He asks Daeron atop his brown horse pinching the bridge of his nose. His wineskin looks thin and light, never full. Never far from his waist. He sways no better than Aerion does.
“Speak, I asked you, son.” Maekar demands when Daeron doesn’t answer, as his child’s eyes probe somewhere not of the night of this time.
“Nothing, Father. It’s just-” Daeron breathes in before continuing.
“Just- I just remember a dream. Suddenly. I don’t know.”
Maekar despairs Daeron’s dreams. Yet not a day passed that he did not wish he could take his gift and suffer it for himself. He’d suffer anything to watch his boy grow without the plague of his ancestors' talents.
“Indulge me.” For Maekar, to know the burden of these dreams is the only relief he could give to his boy.
Daeron struggles for a long time, considering whether to disclose to his father. Maekar waits patiently as he listens to the hooves of the horses and the sound of the wheels against the muddy slopes. Winds howling long, forgotten ache with the trees.
“I uh… I had this dream. Once. Long time ago when she was back in- umm.” Daeron stumbles upon himself. The son clears his throat.
“I had this dream, a corpse of a dragon contained on the brick floor, your grace. Scales Black as the Storm brewing outside the window panes.” Daeron swallows. Maekar listens with something that feels like a fish bone lodged under his heart.
“And there is not a patch of skin on its body that was not cut wide open. Serpents slithered out of every wound.”
His son gulps the misty air.
“I just don’t like the part where its limbs are digging at its own flesh in that one.”
Maekar doesn’t like the image either. The corners of his lips twitched downwards.
Maekar rides and watches Aerion far in the distant fields. His pale head merely a faint shimmer. He knows what his son is desperate for. What is his violence always after.
He is distressed by the fact that he is currently confined only to observe. With all the authority and power of being the prince of the Seven Kingdoms, none can help those he holds close to his heart. He can only watch now, with a heavy throat and fisted knuckles. Watch Baelor die before his eyes, watch Aegon choose the distant path from him, watch Daeron gradually cave into his own mind, and watch Aerion ride into his own death.
–
Aerion isn’t as untouchable as he’d consider himself to be. The moment their retinue reached the gate of the Red Keep at the cold dawn, his body hunched itself and toppled over. The burn in his skin could turn coal into ashes.
When he wakes, he sees the red of an embroidered canopy. He doesn’t remember nor care who carried him to the bed of the chamber and cleaned his wound. No sight of his doublet around the chamber, the blaze of the fireplace is the only glow; he could see nothing else. The rest is smothered in the dark. If it weren’t for the crackle from the fire, perhaps he could hear the abyss.
His fever has broken. But the body is still patched in linen, holding in the wound, strain and sores, his boiling plague. No matter, he hastens his way to the door of the chamber.
Out to the black of the Red Keep.
Aerion follows the sound of the drone where it lessens with every step he takes. Left corridor, downstairs in the hallway. He passed by the library and the doors of the Great Hall. Wading his way through thick Red walls and cold Red stone. Passed voiceless guards with prying gazes. He asks them not where she is.
Someone has left the doors open. Beyond the threshold, he could see the red of the Weirwood. Aerion never liked the old tree. He thinks the carved visage is too ugly to be worshipped and the old gods have no place in the age of Dragons—Targaryens are gods enough. But he is reminded of someone who does love those ancient, ugly trees.
Aegon limps through the door. The moon hangs murky in the sky. No stars to be found. Torches have been put out, devoid of recent human touch. This night is darker than most nights. Perhaps the heavens mourn his uncle’s death too. Aerion has mourned as well.
He finds her sitting under the Weirwood, modestly dressed in black and silver rings. Eyes cast to somewhere a little too far from King’s Landing. Everything tilted on days that has passed comes to a center in this body under the tree. The drone disappears. The Abyss replaces. Unmeasured emptiness that he could never see how the edge looks like. He could swallow her to the ends, and the starving hole for her would still be there. The hollow. The hollow without her. He knows he has strayed from her for too long.
“All these years, what the fuck have you learned in this damned city? Did you cast your tepid magic on me?” He asks, feigning demand, but his voice flies as if he complains he had cut his finger and wishes for her to shower kisses on it.
“Did father swing his mace at your head back at the tourney as well?” She bothers not to look at him as she answers. Eyes hollow and far.
She doesn’t hear it like he does. His lips pursed downwards. Does he need her more than she needs him? Aerion swallows the thickness in his mouth. The thought wants to make him slice his own throat.
He falls on his knees beside her, then drops his head on her, as if to crush the pretty thing. Circles his arms around her waist, face pressed between her breasts. She greets him with her fingers running through his hair. Lit his skin in shivers, dousing his agitation. He thaws against her figure.
“You are a senseless thing.” she whispered in his ear.
“You’ve killed Uncle. Kind uncle Baelor.” Then she presses the tips of her fingers on the linen covering his wound. He groans from the ache. Gritting his teeth.
“I hate you for it, Aerion. No one will protect me in this pit of Vipers now.” Her fingers slip under the bandage, she ghosts her nails on the edge of the gash where it’s not yet dry. His breath caught in his throat. His mouth waters. Aerion tries to swallow between ragged breaths.
“I could protect you. I always have, haven’t I?” He whines like the dog he hung from the tree back in Summerhall when they were no more than eight winters old. Tongue wagging in its last breath. He knew her eyes were the only witness from the window of the castle.
“Sweet Aerion, you were never there when I turned. You could never be.”
She pushes a finger inside the wound. Intruding the incipient scab. His flesh is a friendly memory to her skin. Aerion groans out as he tries to muster something coherent. His thighs clench, his weight fully surrenders on her body.
“I tried. To be here as often. I tried (y/n).” Aerion hardens himself against the sharp intrusion. He could feel the vein carving his forehead, beneath his jaw.
Yet the pain, the mouth-watering sting feels like a relief of the Abyss he has longed for so long. His eyes rolled close.
“I don’t believe you.” She whispers in his ear. Curls her finger and wears him like a gauntlet. Closes her eyes with him, centering on the feel of her fingertip. The world feels lighter there.
“Forgive me, little sister. I beg of you, please forgive me.” The words spilled in quiet whimpers. Repeated in repentance. She sinks further. Into the soft, wet, red.
“I would- fuck-” he pants. His limbs have grown soft, trembling on her waist.
“Never have called the trial if i’d known-”
“Know what, dear brother? That you’d kill the future king?”
“That it’d upset you!” He cries out as she sharply pulls her finger from his flesh.
Aerion falls sideways on her, his legs flats the grass. The blood gushes through the bandage as the night cools his sweaty forehead. Calms the pulse beating in the wound. But he doesn’t like how his body is shivering at the slightest change of wind.
When he look upon her, her eyes meet his in silent contempt. Her face is as unreadable as shadows under the archways across the tree. Concealing everything in its black. He wonders since when that shadow has shielded him away.
Yet contempt has sharpened her beauty. Or perhaps sharpened by the days they are apart, he cares neither the reason. He wants to take her on that very grass, just by the blood he leaks.
The younger raises her silver ringed hand—laved in his blood—to caress his silver head.
“I have loved you for such a long time, Aerion. The first thing I could ever remember."
Aerion renders and pants under her hand. He could feel his fever worming its way again from the flesh of his wound. But he sensed her shifts, pulling away from him. His tears scrape the back of his eyes. He wants to bite her velvet dress.
“But you always upset me.”
(Y/n) stands, austere and quick. Fades away into the palace with Red on her fingers.
Aerion sobs on the grass. Shivering, frail, and for once, he feels uglier than the laughing Weirwood tree.
The British Home Office refused to grant a visa to a Palestinian refugee even though she had received a full scholarship to study for a doctorate at the London School of Economics. It claimed a visa would "harm the public interest." No further explanation.
Amena El Ashkar, a former recipient of a Chevening scholarship, has been awarded a full scholarship to study at the London School of Economi
it broke my heart to read this post is by journalist yousef (ph_youseeff). he’s a cancer patient and he has been trying to evacuate for a very long time now to continue his treatment. his health condition has been deteriorating in light of the lack of hospitals health care.
PLEASE DONATE TO HIS FUNDRAISER IF YOU CAN
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radfems don’t bother me because existing on the internet as a trans woman is getting used to the same mind-numbingly boring rhetoric they pass around like a blunt in their echo chamber but it is mildly irritating to try and come on tumblr and have the algorithm and your for you page randomly decide to show you some pretty nasty posts about yourself lol. i guess tumblr thinks anything with my name in it is something i’d want to see. anyways, i stand by what i said, i just deleted the posts so the notifications would stop flooding my inbox lol. i don’t have any respect for near-masturbatory levels of wallowing in victimization in the same way i have zero respect for people who seem to think that they’re the only people who have ever suffered in this lifetime. i’m never going to exploit the depths of my own trauma for the public to rip apart as they so choose, i’ll leave the music to them for that. but to anyone who actually thinks im demonizing cis women for having body hair or genuinely thinks i find “women” equated to “breedable anime girls”, you have a severe willful lack of reading comprehension. either that or you very well may be retarded after all.
So now we’ve gone from “radical feminists believe women only count as women if they’re little breedable girls, but actually you women are hairy beasts and slugs and having a vagina doesn’t absolve you of being beastly”
to “actually I meant that last post for my followers, not the degenerate gang of militant broads that I’d never have sex with, you psychos”
to “I didn’t actually mean any of it, you self-righteous women with your masturbatory self-victimization, and you’re posts are getting mean 🥺 but I don’t care what anyone says about me anyway 😏 also you’re still retarded and I do stand by what I said but I did delete it also.”
you know what, maybe i will just sit in the weeds with you toads a while.
to preface everything i’m about to say, i understand that radfems love to provoke and antagonize just to sit back and cry MALE MOMENT when a trans woman reacts with even the slightest bit of irritation. that fact is not lost on me whatsoever. so call me a pedophile, call me a man, tell me i have a big forehead. whatever. one of those three things is true so you got me there.
in my first post, i am obviously referring to the tradwife babydolls who equate womanhood to femininity in that big scary trannies will never know the delicate pleasures of being a woman (eg: shaving their legs, being “girly”, being tiny and petite and soft) because that’s a group of radfems constantly nipping at my ankles, as many people are aware by how often i’m complaining about them. if pointing out the pedophilic standards created by men and internalized by some women is, inherently, pedophilic, well i don’t see how any progress will ever get made at that point. the lengths some people, often certain subsects of radical feminists, will go to shut trans women out of womanhood have taken the narrative to extreme lengths, and yes, that does appear to reduce women as a whole to hairless children only good for sex and gawking at. which is concerning.
now, did i used to eat that little coquette shtick up for a minute or two in the early days of my career? sure. i was 19-20. god forbid i be young and grow out of harmful mindsets. maybe i just watched little house on the prairie a little too much and, OH NO, fetishized being a wheat farmer’s wife. someone call the executioner, a tumblrina is being an edgelord.
in the second post, well... if you read “touching with a 10 foot pole” as “wanting to fuck” and not “wanting to kick the hornet’s nest”, maybe you’re a touch porn-addled as well. sorry you can’t sexualize me any further than you already have and accuse me of preying on women but i like dick, cock, and balls on GROWN men so idk what to tell you there. i’m sure some of you will take that and run with it as an admittance that i hate or have no need/respect for “biological women” at all now but that’s a sacrifice i’m willing to make for my point.
as for my third post, yeah. you all exhibit willful ignorance and refuse to listen to what i’m actually saying so you can cram everything i say into one of your 10 pre-determined talking points that you’ve been indoctrinated into believing and perpetuating. there’s no winning with any of you because you don’t listen. you exist to preach. forget the lived experience of someone different than you, that doesn’t matter. you are the only story that matters and that is a dangerous mindset and i truly wish all of you well because i can’t imagine any of you are happy.
i shouldn’t even be engaging with this as much as i am but i don’t wanna reinforce the idea that trans women can’t be articulate and only exist to MANMODE and be aggressive. honestly though, with all the talk of female rage and violence, immediately crying male at someone for being even the slightest bit retaliatory seems a little counterintuitive but... that’s for y'all to figure out.
in closing, for those who choose to listen, i would never shame women for having body hair, the reproductive organs, or the overall biology that they do, so let me be clear on that. i love my mother, my sisters, my dear friends, and even strangers too much for that. this is not about that and never has been. now, go forth and twist my words some more. i've said what i have to say.
I wanted to write/create something for the Sandmaniversary this weekend, but I'm visiting my parents and my brain has been filled and worn out by summer Shakespeare (we open next week holy shit i'm totally frekaing out but also super excited) anyway
so instead I decided this would be a great time to not only celebrate the show, this world Mr. Gaiman has given us, but also celebrate each other, the fan creators! In no particular order, these are some of my fave writers and artists in this incredibly talented fandom!
Y'all have expanded my enjoyment of Sandman and the Dreaming exponentially, I love revisiting your works and finding something new every time! So here's to our Sandman blorbos, our favorite realms, and here's to you who keep the stories growing 💗🥂
ahhhhhh please come back !!! love your writing so so much 🧘🏽♀️🧘🏽♀️🧘🏽♀️
Omgg i promise i’ll be back very soon!! I’m struggling to finish IHTMWD’s ending but i’m getting there!
Here’s a snippet of it!
—
Yet he didn't resist. He didn’t care. He missed the chance to take a breath, his nose rushed with the beckoning water and it stung the back of his eyes. A transition from breathing air to water he gladly welcomed for millions of time. Then she squeezed her hands a little bit more. There a quietness surged. The warmth of her skin penetrated his. Even if he is mortal and he can’t breathe under her lake, he wouldn’t care. His eyesight dimmed under the moonlight. He focuses on the outline of her face. Her hazy eyes, her chin, her giddy smile. She could choke him to death, he still wouldn’t care. She leaned and kissed his cheek. As intuitive as his grains of sand guiding the universe,his arms slithered around her waist. Reaching for the macrocosm inside of her, blooming only for him, he realised. There’s only love that night. And perpetual joy. I love her. I love her. She makes my heart ache.
For a brief, rapturous moment, he feels as if he is home inside that shackle of glass.
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