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With nothing but a broken mp3 player, 18¢, a “fun-sized” bag of M&Ms, and a wallet full of gift cards that may or may not be expired, describe how you saved humanity from extinction.

linkedsoul

You put your earphones on while making your way to the highest building of the town. You knew you would find him here. You raised your head: black clouds were already forming in the sky, lightning flashing here and there, thunder making the ground shake occasionally.

In your ears, your broken mp3 player was playing the same song over and over. You had never been able to repair the damn thing - at least you liked the song. You couldn’t increase or lower the volume, so you could still hear the thunder as well as the people screaming and running around you, the sirens roaring in the distance, the howl of the wind; but all still quite faint under the music.

You sighed, ran your free hand into your hair (the other was holding your ‘fun-sized’ bag of M&Ms). Humanity was going to end soon.

You reached the building. The doors had been torn apart, surely in one of his access of rage, and you slipped in easily, walking carefully through the destroyed halls up to the elevators.

“He better not have wrecked them too,” you grumbled. That building was high as fuck. You didn’t want to take the stairs.

After two fails and a lot of cursing, you finally found a functioning elevator, which took you to the rooftop. You palmed the pockets of your jeans during the ride, pinched your lips. You thought you had taken your phone, but no, that was your gift-card wallet. Most of those which may or may not be expired. You had absolutely no idea, because you tended to forget you had gift-cards way too easily.

That was a shame, there were some interesting stuff in there. You promised yourself to use them if humanity wasn’t extinct tonight.

At last, the rooftop. You stepped out of the elevator, yelping a little when the strength of the wind nearly knocked you off your feet. Recovering your balance after a bit of struggle, you squinted your eyes and caught sight of him at the edge of the roof. In front of him, the entire city lay, completely at his mercy, covered already by the dark clouds he had summoned, which would unleash their rage when he would be done charging energy. And it would just be the beginning - nothing compared to what was expecting humanity the second after the storm would have started his work of destruction.

You didn’t know what he had planned after the storm. He liked surprises. You kinda betted on a flood, but you weren’t too sure.

The wind made each step complicated, and it took you five minutes to reach him, despite doing your best. You were a little scared to be thrown off the roof, but hey, you weren’t going to crawl up to him either.

You gently tapped on his shoulder.

“Hey.”

He turned around slowly, having already noticed your presence (and he had done nothing to help you? Asshole), and looked at you with those eyes you had never gotten used to: old, so very old, filled with ancient power gathered throughout millenaries, haunted and tired and pulling you in like a void.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

You dug into your pocket, swore a few times while searching, then proudly handed him your 18¢. He took them with a raise of eyebrow.

“I owed you 18¢ for that coffee the other day, remember?” you smiled enthusiastically. “I didn’t have enough coins. You gave me some.”

“It’s only 18¢.”

“I always pay my debts. How dare you underestimate me.”

Finally, he cracked up a smile. “You say ‘the other day’, but that might be a bit more than that. It was three years ago. The first day we met.”

“Yeah, took me a while to get exactly 18¢. Damn, I use coins a lot.”

He laughed, the millenaries-old eyes taking a slightly fond light, then turned back to the city and his work of destruction. You stepped beside him, handed him an earpiece. By habit, he took it absent-mindedly and put it on, watching the dark sky with a certain nostalgia while listening to the song that had been playing over and over on that damn broken mp3 player.

“You have M&Ms,” he then said.

“I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed them sooner, for a god. It should be a must, you know. M&Ms noticing skills. The world would be a better place.”

He snickered. “The world… it can’t be worse anyway.”

“Ah, yeah. That’s what this-” - you designated the brooding sky - “-is about.”

“The world is rotten. You know it too. Humanity is broken.”

His shoulders slumped, his composed mask falling down. You reached out to him, held his hand. He held back tightly.

“I’ve been here for millenniums. I’ve tried to help them for so long. But humans… have always been too broken, from the start. Genocides, wars, murders, stealing, rapes, poverty, corruption, cruelty, erasure, intolerance, extremism, oppression, discrimination, atrocities, ruins, tears, blood, pain…” He didn’t finish, because the list would be endless. You didn’t look at him, but you knew his eyes were filled with sorrow, and his voice was raspy. “I’ve seen it all. It was there from the start. It has never stopped. Has even been worse, sometimes. There would be so much to do, to fix the world as it is now.”

“Yeah.” There was really nothing else you could say. “I know.”

“Humanity cannot be saved.”

“I know.”

“That’s why I have to destroy it. If there is no humanity… there are no humans to cause harm.”

“True.”

There was a long silence, during which you both listened to the music on repeat, holding each other’s hand, looking at the city which was soon going to be reduced to nothing.

“But it’s not right,” you declared. “Humans cause harm, and others get hurt. Are you going to also destroy those who deserve to live a better life? Those who have been hurt? Those who suffer? Those who haven’t even gotten the chance to know good things? Wouldn’t it be unfair?”

“Yes,” he replied sadly. “But it would be for the greater good. Humans… humans are just hopeless.”

“I’m also human.”

You turned your head towards him. He was looking at you, expression bitter.

“You’re different.”

“No, I’m not. I grew up in this world too. I am not the worst human, but not the best either.”

“You’re not rotten,” he hissed, maybe a bit too aggressive.

You didn’t back off. “If humanity is born rotten, then yes, I am.”

You confronted his ancient stare with the same quiet and patient determination which had carried your steps here. In the end, he sighed, and averted his eyes while letting go of your hand.

“Yes,” he said tiredly, “you are.”

You smiled, opened the bag of M&Ms, put it between you two. He took one.

“But if everyone was like you, it would make things easier.”

“Come on. I’m already giving you troubles. It would be a mess. Everyone would forget their gift-cards.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you found more.”

You beamed, and took out your gift-card wallet out of your pocket, opening it to show him what you had. He glanced at it, and ate another M&Ms to hide his little smile. It seemed to you the wind was weaker, now.

“There are always more,” you winked.

“I bet most of them are expired.”

“But not all.”

You grinned happily, while he shook his head; but he wasn’t even bothering to hide his smile, now, though it was a somehow sad one.

“Humanity is like a wallet full of gift-cards which may or may not be expired,” you said. “Most of them are probably useless by now, but some of them are not. And just for those, you keep the entire wallet.”

“… you’re too positive.”

You saw the distress in his eyes, the despair, the ages-old tiredness - and it all made you want to take him in your arms and never let him go. But you didn’t.

Not yet.

“It’s like 18¢: it’s almost nothing, but it’s still something, and it still has some worth. It’s like a fun-sized M&Ms bag: small, and there will be some you don’t like, and some you do, and it gives you a smile. It’s like a broken mp3 player: damaged, but still working somehow. Broken, but not beyond repair.”

The first tear rolled down his cheek. You followed it with your eyes, followed how it traced the line of his jaw before being taken away by the wind. He turned his face away. You didn’t lose your smile.

“Your infamous bad metaphors,” he croaked out.

“Those are comparisons. And they are good.”

He shook his head lightly, not to lose the earpiece, then turned back to you, unable to stop weeping.

“And what if I don’t destroy this world? What then? What happens tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, one more person will be able to smile. One more person will be able to take a step towards healing. One more person will be able to be happy, and make other people happy. One more person will have the courage to accept themselves. One more person will accept others for what they are. One more person will live beautiful things. One more person will learn their lesson and become a better person. One more person will be kind.”

You couldn’t help the enthusiasm in your voice. There were many things he could answer, but he didn’t - maybe because he already knew it would be useless, against you.

“Those people make me so happy. Them, and all the others who make me believe in this world no matter how rotten it might be. They’re giving me courage.” You looked at the city in front of you, made a wide arm gesture towards it. “Look! There are so many people here, and some of them have struggled so hard to get up this morning, but they did it, and they’re still doing their best to find happiness! Don’t you feel proud? Also–”

You didn’t finish.

He wrapped his arms around you, buried his face in the crook of his neck, and cried, shattered and exhausted, while the wind around you slowly calmed down.

You leaned your cheek against the top of his head, held his arm.

“I want to go home,” he whispered. “Your home. Where it’s safe.”

“Sure. Let’s look up which of those gift-cards we can still use online tonight, ‘kay? My treat. You get whatever you want. And I still have some M&Ms at home, don’t worry. We’ll also be able to listen to something else than that song. Well, if you want. I mean, it’s a good song. I like it.”

He laughed between two sobs, holding you even tighter. He didn’t answer. It sounded like he couldn’t, like he was crying too much to formulate words for now.

It started raining; but the sky had cleared, and the wind was a breeze, and the thunder and lightning had faded away with his will to end the world. You welcomed the rain happily.

“It’s okay,” you said. It really was. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay, I promise. I’ll be there. You’re making me so proud too.”

“How can you have… so much faith?” he asked, voice strangled.

You smiled.

“People can surprise you in a good way, if you give them the chance.”

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After Harry Potter came out, many videos surfaced online of people running into brick walls at train stations as a joke. While at one of these such train stations a friend dares you to run into a wall. They pull out their phone and start recording as you reluctantly run towards the wall. Expecting to hit it, you brace for impact but none comes— when you open your eyes again, the platform is empty and the train you see is most definitely not the Hogwarts Express.

mythmica

hollowsolaris

Myth it is tOO EARLY FOR THIS XD

mythmica

Me: *reblogs this*

You and the rest of my followers:

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Ok. That’s enough Tumblr for today.

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A necromancer falls in love with a healer. Describe their lives together.

themauvesoul

Their house is odd, people say. That it’s both warm and cold all at once. People whisper about the garden out back, where some of the plants are black. Sometimes they whisper about the inside, about the table that holds both a mortar and pestle, and a complete set of bones. One of their cats is dead, they say. People fear a lot of things about their house, but nearly all of them have been inside.

They have four shelves in their house, for their books and jars and things they need for spells.

One of these shelves is stuffed full of books. The books are thick, fat, heavy. If the wood had a voice, it would speak in a groan. Half of them are soft, brown leather, with gold traced in plantlike designs on the spine. Half of them are black, heavy and cracked, with bookmark ribbons the color of blood and pentagrams on the covers. There are plants tucked into the corners. Some trail green fingers across the ledges. Some reach with thorns.

Another of the shelves is full of jars and bottles. Some of these jars are filled with potions that glow a dim yellow, or swirl a cheerful green. Some of the jars are filled with blood or crushed bits of bone. Some of the smaller bottles are full of dried clippings of rare plants. Some of the bottles hold things that move. But each jar has a neat little label, with the same gentle writing.

The third shelf is by a window, and it holds plants of various sizes. Most of them are small and green, meticulously watered and trimmed. But there are a few, scattered amongst the green, that have thorns longer than thorns should be, or leaves a bit too dark, too shiny.

The last shelf is full of bones. Cat bones. Dog bones. Bird bones. A skull. Fish bones. Wishbones. Snake’s fangs. Sometimes the bones move. Sometimes they don’t.

They have two tables. One holds a mortar and pestle, a small cauldron, bandages, some crystals. One of them has bones perched on the corners and a pentagram etched in the middle.

Dried herbs hang from the ceiling, and there is a box of litter on the floor.

They have two hearths; one for cooking, one for magic.

The walls are a deep green, the floor a wooden brown. The windows are large and lined with plants. The rooms are lit with floating crystals.

Everyone fears their house, but nearly everyone has gone inside. What is it, the healer asks, and her eyes are kind. What do you need?

A pain reliever. A bone set. An illness cured. A child delivered.

What do you need, she asks, but sometimes the answer is nothing. There isn’t anything to heal. So the healer nods, steps aside, and gestures to her wife, the necromancer.

And the necromancer looks at you, with her dark eyes and dark robes stitched with blood-red runes, and for a moment you are afraid. But then her eyes clear, and she smiles, and she asks. What do you need?

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Everyone in your world can teleport within 10 feet of the person they love the most. Your best friend wonders how you always seem to be there just when they need you.

songlordsbug

State Farm puts out a series of joking commercials. The punch line being that of all the people in your insurance agent’s life, you’re the one they care about most- you’re the person they can teleport to.

It’s bold of them to joke about something so controversial. After all, who your ‘port is can make or break a relationship. Study after study has been done on the ‘port between parent and child and psychiatrists are always analyzing your ‘port history.

The commercials are tacky, too. They make fun of the power inherent in a person’s greatest love. That’s what a ‘port is, after all, your love for someone being strong enough to take you to wherever they are. All in all State Farm’s “good neighbor” commercials leave people shaking their heads and laughing uncomfortably.

Caitlyn’s not laughing when a man brings a gun to her school.

Her class is on the yard and there’s no warning- he’s just there, with a gun, and her kids are frozen.

Mickey’s too close too close and not moving and the man is turning the gun towards him. Mickey’s only 8 and he drives her nuts most days. He cries and screams and he runs away and he makes things up and he loves his mom and his sister and he cried when Caitlyn got stitches and she loves him she loves him she loves him.

She feels a moment of disorientation and suddenly she’s between the man and the boy.

She doesn’t hesitate, just wraps herself around Mickey. Then she closes her eyes and reaches inside herself for the first-easiest-always, thinks I love you I love you I love you and feels the shift of the ‘port.

And her eyes land on Zeke, who is jerking to his feet in shock, and she feels a huge wave of relief. Zeke’s been her ‘port since they were months old and her aunt got up one morning to find two babies in the crib instead of one. These days they usually plan their visits and Caitlyn’s never brought a kid before, so Zeke has questions in his eyes.

Before he can voice any, she’s pushing Mickey towards him and gasping out “I have to go back-”

And she’s thinking of the next closest kid, Jasper, one of her rough and tumble boys, he’s so big, 8 years old and almost as tall as her, Jazz is learning to control his temper and his energy but there’s a sweetness to him that comes out at the oddest moments. It’s easy to declare I love I love I love and then she’s grabbing Jazz and sending herself back to Zeke’s shelter.

He’s a little more prepared this time, reaching out to steady her and guide Jazz away while she turns her thoughts and heart to the next kid.

And she’s gone and grabbing Topher, her sweet boy who listens and cares and tries, and they’re back to Zeke.

And she’s gone and grabbing Zornitsa, her scampy little comedian, and back to Zeke.

And she’s gone and grabbing Ariel and Kaho and Clarissa, her gymnast trio with their fierceness and their determination, and back to Zeke.

This time she thinks to shrug her backpack off and gasp out “There’s a list- in the emergency folder-”

And then she’s gone again.

When she reaches for Heidi, her zippy little miss who won’t touch fruit and loves worms and has grown so much, that she lands inside. She pulls Heidi and Adela into her arms and shifts back to Zeke.

Her kids are away from the man with the gun and she feels shaky. She takes a couple breaths, bracing her hands on her thighs. Then she thinks of passion-dedication-exasperation, guide and guidee, and wraps that all around her I love I love I love.

The next moment she’s in a closet turned office made all the smaller by the crush of people in it. She looks up at her boss as several kids stifle startled yelps and Colin looks back with wide eyes under his tangled mop of curls.

“What-” he starts to ask.

“Third grade was on the yard, there wasn’t time to get indoors, but I think I got them all safe,” Caitlyn tells him.

“How?” he asks.

“Like this,” she says, voice tinged with hysterical laughter.

She wraps her arms around Carmela, Elizaveta, Winona, and Joanna and reaches for Zeke. She drops the girls off and goes back to Colin, who goggles.

“I know you need to stay on site, but I thought you should know that I’m evacuating our kids,” Caitlyn tells him.

Colin shakes off his astonishment and squares his lanky shoulders.

“Can you get to kinder?” he asks, eyes lighting up.

“Yes,” Caitlyn says, “with Nancy there that will be easy.”

“Get them all out,” Colin says, “and tell Nancy to start listing who is safe, have her message me.”

“Will do,” she says with a nod. She grabs the three remaining kids and takes them to Zeke.

She thinks of Nancy then, they have different classes this year but they’re still brain mates, still the team, and it’s easy to wrap finishing each others sentences and communicating without words around her I love I love I love.

Nancy startles when she appears, and several of the babies scream. Team Kinder moves into action, hushing and calming. Nancy just waits, meeting Caitlyn’s eyes.

“Colin sent me, I’m evacuating you guys,” Caitlyn explains. “I can take as many as I can hold at a time. How do you want to do this?”

Nancy nods once.

“Start with Mr. Mason and Bashir and Rafael,” Nancy says. “I’ll have the next group ready when you get back.

Caitlyn nods and grabs them.

Things go pretty smoothly after that. Nancy sends kinder off a group at a time and then quickly takes control of the chaotic crowd that Caitlyn has already saved.

Caitlyn moves on grade by grade, finding her way to the colleagues she is so so grateful to work with.

By the time the cops secure the man with the gun, the school is empty, everyone 150 miles away.

When they ask later how she did it she looks right at them.

“Love is love,” she says, “there’s no such thing as more or less,” she shakes her head slightly, “it’s not quantifiable, there’s no scale that can measure it, love is.”

why-not-jane

Wow

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Aliens have invaded and are taking over. Their technology, intelligence, and power is unstoppable. They just didnt plan on one thing: The old gods returning.

fenrir-kin

When they first arrived, we were overjoyed. Proof that we weren’t alone in the universe, that there were other races to share and exchange technologies with! Their arrival brought about world peace - with other life forms out there, we needed to present a united front. World hunger and poverty was solved within a decade, a demonstration to our new friends that we were worthy of the responsibility of exploring the galaxy.

They disagreed.

They accessed our histories, they saw everything, and they recoiled in horror. They could not fathom the world we had created, and the solutions we had brought about not because it was the right thing to do, but to impress them.

They were not impressed. They told us, regret tinging the translators, that we could not be trusted as keepers of this world. The damage we had done was coming close to being irreparable, and for our own good they’d need to take over.

I have to say, I agreed – humans are terrible. But the funny thing about humanity is, even if something is right, if it means giving up our control, it is wrong.

We fought back.

At first we fought back democratically. This race that had descended from the stars was peaceful, never seeming to favour violence. We didn’t think they’d start killing indiscriminately. We didn’t think they’d take inspiration from our own history books.

As with so many other things, we were wrong.

An extreme group of humans succeeded in ambushing and killing several of their high-ranking Xenos. Human lives were lost in the process, but the extremists saw that as a necessary sacrifice, a means to an end. The Xenos had been shown that we wouldn’t tolerate their kind here, that they should leave and let us get on with things how we always have.

Within days, war had been declared, and we learned why we should have tried harder. Had they decided to simply fight the moment they touched down, to systematically advance and wipe out every human life they came across, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Their weapons, armour, tactics, the sheer firepower and the size of their armies were beyond comprehension. Out of rage and grief, they marched over us, and began the slow process of wiping us out. Bullets couldn’t pierce their armour and shields, rockets fell to the ground lifeless, and even nuclear devices were somehow disabled mid-flight.

Still we fought back. Humans never have figured out how to give up when all hope is lost.

There was no formal resistance of rebellion, we simply gathered, fought, and survived where we could. When something new happened, it took weeks, months, to reach every last survivor.

And then, something unbelievable happened.

Stories started filtering through to the pockets of us in hiding, strange stories – a freak electrical storm in Greece that appeared from a clear blue sky and wiped out a thousand of them in less than 15 minutes; Xenos impaled on braches of rare trees, some kind of grisly warning that we chalked up to particularly violent survivors in that area; whole armies frozen to death because the temperature around them had dropped too quickly for their environmental suits to keep up with. Freak weather patterns that worked in our favour, violent survivors, terrain they couldn’t navigate. That’s what we told ourselves when the stories filtered through.

But then they got weirder. There were stories of Xenos being swallowed by the ground itself. A pack of wolves, larger than anything ever before seen appeared from a crack in a mountain range to storm through an encampment and kill every last Xenos. There was a massive surge in the number of corvids around the world, and they always seemed to congregate where the Xenos were thickest… days before something killed everything. Then they’d vanish, and more corvids would appear somewhere else. Harbingers, just like the old tales.

One day a massive seafaring vessel chasing a fishing trawler was pulled under the water – no reefs or icebergs in the area, and the sea mines had long been disarmed and deactivated. I spoke to a man who had been in the sloop running from the Xenos ship, and he swore blind the Kraken had got it, the tentacles alone bigger than the tiny boat he’d been huddled on. He shuddered and drank too much, and I put it down to hallucinations caused by a bad batch of moonshine. There was no such thing as monsters.

Then we heard about warriors. We heard about chariots, of all things, chasing down whole platoons of Xenos in Egypt, chariots so bright it felt like staring into the sun; a huge hound with three heads was spotted in Greece, a man in shadows and a woman of light removing the leash as Xenos advanced on them; a woman showed up in Iceland standing head and shoulders above the tallest man there, with an army of her own. They didn’t seem to fall in battle, and pushed the Xenos back, fighting with sword and shield and spear, a fury that our alien invaders couldn’t match.

Humanoid creatures with eyes of fire supposedly began granting wishes over in Syria, as long as your wish was for them to kill your enemies. There were sightings in Ireland of pure white horses, horses that once ridden wouldn’t let you off, that dragged people into bogs and rivers. Tales came out of brazil of monstrously large snakes, sometimes with the faces of women, dragging aliens into the gloom of the rivers and rainforests.

But there’s no such thing as monsters.

I finally believed when I saw three women facing down the largest army of Xenos I’d ever come across – at least twelve thousand by my counting. I’d been running from a scouting party, and when I stumbled out of the treeline onto a road I realised they’d chased me right into the path of the oncoming horde.

The moment you face your death is a strange one. Everything felt calm except the thundering of my pulse in my ears, and the crows that seemed to come from nowhere to blot out the sun.

Then three women strolled into the road in front of me, placing themselves between me and the advancing army. A young woman, barely out of girlhood; someone who could have easily been my mother; and a woman so old she was almost bent double. It was the oldest who strode towards the mass of Xenos without any fear, leading the other two towards their deaths, and the din of the crows got louder.

The youngest one glanced my way and smiled playfully, and something from my grandmother’s tales made me flatten myself to the ground, hands clamped firmly over my ears.

The scream started low, in the back of the old woman’s throat, travelling through the ground and making every bone in my body shudder with the vibration. Realisation began to dawn on me as Maiden and Mother joined in with their Crone, and the scream climbed to a crescendo that could have shattered glass. Even with my hands tight over my ears it pierced me to my core, a screaming agony that made me want to curl in on myself and die.

I survived because it wasn’t meant for me.

The Xenos, however, felt the full force of the rage these women contained. An entire planet’s worth of grieving poured out of them in this shriek, rooting their enemies to the ground with the difference in tone and pitch between these three women telling their stories.

The mother stood tall and resolute, screaming her grief at these invaders, a mother mourning all of her children.

The crone’s low snarl was that of war. Weary of the fighting but always ready to defend what’s hers, she growled her challenge, and the Xenos couldn’t stand against it.

The maiden was hope, the only act of defiance in a world on the edge of ruin. When everything was dust, when the last stragglers of humanity were contemplating giving up, she was the hope that kept them fighting.

Part of me wondered how many shirts they’d washed, how many rivers they’d wept together, before standing up and saying “no more.”

The scream stopped abruptly, leaving me feeling like the breath had all been sucked out of me, a void in the air around me that rushed back in and filled my lungs with a long, shuddering gasp.

I opened my eyes to carnage. The Xenos had died where they’d stood, their organs haemorrhaging, what passed for blood pouring from every orifice, their eyes turning to liquid in their skulls. Bodies were everywhere, and the crows circling overhead had fallen silent, uninterested in the feast this must have surely been for them.

The Morrigan was one woman now, ageless and terrifying.

“Get up, child.” She commanded, and I had no choice but to obey, trembling legs pushing me to my feet. She reached out a hand, and gently wiped a trail of blood away from my ear. “Did you really think we’d abandoned you?” She murmured, and the crows descended, carrying her to the next battle.

Monsters are real, and some of them look like people. But the Gods are also real, and they still believe in us.

So I’m still fighting, and my battle cry is full of hope.

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You’ve just aided an old woman knitting by the side of the road, and she reveals herself as a goddess in disguise! Having passed her test and earned your place as the goddess’s chosen hero, she brings you back to her dwelling to choose a magical weapon or item, only to discover that a thief has completely cleaned out her stash!

The only magical gift she has left is the pair of knitting needles she was using in her “old lady” disguise.

elidyce

The young woman stood in the middle of the empty cavern, looking around. She seemed… untroubled. “This was thorough,” she said, her voice as calm and pleasant as it had been when she’d offered a helpless old woman a share of her bread and escort through the wood. “It looks professional, or at least well-planned. Did anyone know you were seeking a new chosen hero?”

The goddess blinked. In three thousand years, she had been so mortified before a hero only twice before… and then, one had cried and one had lost faith in her upon the moment. This one, new as she was, didn’t even seem troubled. “All the gods know,” she said slowly. “My last champion’s fall was… widely known.”

“I see.” The young woman knelt and examined the floor. “I see three, perhaps four distinct footprints,” she said, sitting back on her heels and looking up at her goddess. “And it would have taken at least one large cart or two smaller ones to move it all. I think I can track them, but I’ll be outnumbered. I don’t suppose you have any *other* caches of magical weapons?”

“No.” The goddess felt her throat tighten. “This was a collection that took millennia to build. All I have left is these.” She held out the knitting-needles she’d clutched, as the helpless old woman. “These are enchanted.”

Dark brows rose. “Hm. To do what?”

“They can knit anything.” It didn’t sound like enough of an explanation, and she gestured vaguely. “Well… anything that you can catch between them. The branches of a tree, the feathers of a bird, the hairs of a man’s head - even the dust of the roadside.”

“And what can one knit them into?” the young woman asked.

“That depends on one’s own gifts,” the goddess answered, surprised again. She hadn’t expected this young woman, carrying the bow and knife of a forester, with her sun-darkened brown skin and sun-faded hair, to take much interest in magic knitting needles. “Your will… and your imagination.”

“Oh, I have those.” The young woman held out her hand for the knitting needles, and she did hold them as if she knew how to use them. “Thank you, my goddess. I’ll bring your treasures back, if I’m able.”

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Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.

sadoeuphemist

Arepo built a temple in his field, a humble thing, some stones stacked up to make a cairn, and two days later a god moved in.

“Hope you’re a harvest god,” Arepo said, and set up an altar and burnt two stalks of wheat. “It’d be nice, you know.” He looked down at the ash smeared on the stone, the rocks all laid askew, and coughed and scratched his head. “I know it’s not much,” he said, his straw hat in his hands. “But - I’ll do what I can. It’d be nice to think there’s a god looking after me.”

The next day he left a pair of figs, the day after that he spent ten minutes of his morning seated by the temple in prayer. On the third day, the god spoke up.

“You should go to a temple in the city,” the god said. Its voice was like the rustling of the wheat, like the squeaks of fieldmice running through the grass. “A real temple. A good one. Get some real gods to bless you. I’m no one much myself, but I might be able to put in a good word?” It plucked a leaf from a tree and sighed. “I mean, not to be rude. I like this temple. It’s cozy enough. The worship’s been nice. But you can’t honestly believe that any of this is going to bring you anything.”

“This is more than I was expecting when I built it,” Arepo said, laying down his scythe and lowering himself to the ground. “Tell me, what sort of god are you anyway?”

“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth. I’m a god of a dozen different nothings, scraps that lead to rot, momentary glimpses. A change in the air, and then it’s gone.”

The god heaved another sigh. “There’s no point in worship in that, not like War, or the Harvest, or the Storm. Save your prayers for the things beyond your control, good farmer. You’re so tiny in the world. So vulnerable. Best to pray to a greater thing than me.”

Arepo plucked a stalk of wheat and flattened it between his teeth. “I like this sort of worship fine,” he said. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll continue.”

“Do what you will,” said the god, and withdrew deeper into the stones. “But don’t say I never warned you otherwise.”

Arepo would say a prayer before the morning’s work, and he and the god contemplated the trees in silence. Days passed like that, and weeks, and then the Storm rolled in, black and bold and blustering. It flooded Arepo’s fields, shook the tiles from his roof, smote his olive tree and set it to cinder. The next day, Arepo and his sons walked among the wheat, salvaging what they could. The little temple had been strewn across the field, and so when the work was done for the day, Arepo gathered the stones and pieced them back together.

“Useless work,” the god whispered, but came creeping back inside the temple regardless. “There wasn’t a thing I could do to spare you this.”

“We’ll be fine,” Arepo said. “The storm’s blown over. We’ll rebuild. Don’t have much of an offering for today,” he said, and laid down some ruined wheat, “but I think I’ll shore up this thing’s foundations tomorrow, how about that?”

The god rattled around in the temple and sighed.

A year passed, and then another. The temple had layered walls of stones, a roof of woven twigs. Arepo’s neighbors chuckled as they passed it. Some of their children left fruit and flowers. And then the Harvest failed, the gods withdrew their bounty. In Arepo’s field the wheat sprouted thin and brittle. People wailed and tore their robes, slaughtered lambs and spilled their blood, looked upon the ground with haunted eyes and went to bed hungry. Arepo came and sat by the temple, the flowers wilted now, the fruit shriveled nubs, Arepo’s ribs showing through his chest, his hands still shaking, and murmured out a prayer.

“There is nothing here for you,” said the god, hudding in the dark. “There is nothing I can do. There is nothing to be done.” It shivered, and spat out its words. “What is this temple but another burden to you?”

“We -” Arepo said, and his voice wavered. “So it’s a lean year,” he said. “We’ve gone through this before, we’ll get through this again. So we’re hungry,” he said. “We’ve still got each other, don’t we? And a lot of people prayed to other gods, but it didn’t protect them from this. No,” he said, and shook his head, and laid down some shriveled weeds on the altar. “No, I think I like our arrangement fine.”

“There will come worse,” said the god, from the hollows of the stone. “And there will be nothing I can do to save you.”

The years passed. Arepo rested a wrinkled hand upon the temple of stone and some days spent an hour there, lost in contemplation with the god.

And one fateful day, from across the wine-dark seas, came War.

Arepo came stumbling to his temple now, his hand pressed against his gut, anointing the holy site with his blood. Behind him, his wheat fields burned, and the bones burned black in them. He came crawling on his knees to a temple of hewed stone, and the god rushed out to meet him.

“I could not save them,” said the god, its voice a low wail. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so so sorry.” The leaves fell burning from the trees, a soft slow rain of ash. “I have done nothing! All these years, and I have done nothing for you!”

“Shush,” Arepo said, tasting his own blood, his vision blurring. He propped himself up against the temple, forehead pressed against the stone in prayer. “Tell me,” he mumbled. “Tell me again. What sort of god are you?”

“I -” said the god, and reached out, cradling Arepo’s head, and closed its eyes and spoke.

“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said, and conjured up the image of them. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth.” Arepo’s lips parted in a smile.

“I am the god of a dozen different nothings,” it said. “The petals in bloom that lead to rot, the momentary glimpses. A change in the air -” Its voice broke, and it wept. “Before it’s gone.”

“Beautiful,” Arepo said, his blood staining the stones, seeping into the earth. “All of them. They were all so beautiful.”

And as the fields burned and the smoke blotted out the sun, as men were trodden in the press and bloody War raged on, as the heavens let loose their wrath upon the earth, Arepo the sower lay down in his humble temple, his head sheltered by the stones, and returned home to his god.

sameenbyhat

Sora found the temple with the bones within it, the roof falling in upon them.

“Oh, poor god,” she said, “With no-one to bury your last priest.” Then she paused, because she was from far away. “Or is this how the dead are honored here?” The god roused from its contemplation.

“His name was Arepo,” it said, “He was a sower.”

Sora startled, a little, because she had never before heard the voice of a god. “How can I honor him?” She asked.

“Bury him,” the god said, “Beneath my altar.”

“All right,” Sora said, and went to fetch her shovel.

“Wait,” the god said when she got back and began collecting the bones from among the broken twigs and fallen leaves. She laid them out on a roll of undyed wool, the only cloth she had. “Wait,” the god said, “I cannot do anything for you. I am not a god of anything useful.”

Sora sat back on her heels and looked at the altar to listen to the god.

“When the Storm came and destroyed his wheat, I could not save it,” the god said, “When the Harvest failed and he was hungry, I could not feed him. When War came,” the god’s voice faltered. “When War came, I could not protect him. He came bleeding from the battle to die in my arms.” Sora looked down again at the bones.

“I think you are the god of something very useful,” she said.

“What?” the god asked.

Sora carefully lifted the skull onto the cloth. “You are the god of Arepo.”

stu-pot

Generations passed. The village recovered from its tragedies—homes rebuilt, gardens re-planted, wounds healed. The old man who once lived on the hill and spoke to stone and rubble had long since been forgotten, but the temple stood in his name. Most believed it to be empty, as the god who resided there long ago had fallen silent. Yet, any who passed the decaying shrine felt an ache in their hearts, as though mourning for a lost friend. The cold that seeped from the temple entrance laid their spirits low, and warded off any potential visitors, save for the rare and especially oblivious children who would leave tiny clusters of pink and white flowers that they picked from the surrounding meadow.

The god sat in his peaceful home, staring out at the distant road, to pedestrians, workhorses, and carriages, raining leaves that swirled around bustling feet. How long had it been? The world had progressed without him, for he knew there was no help to be given. The world must be a cruel place, that even the useful gods have abandoned, if farms can flood, harvests can run barren, and homes can burn, he thought.

He had come to understand that humans are senseless creatures, who would pray to a god that cannot grant wishes or bless upon them good fortune. Who would maintain a temple and bring offerings with nothing in return. Who would share their company and meditate with such a fruitless deity. Who would bury a stranger without the hope for profit. What bizarre, futile kindness they had wasted on him. What wonderful, foolish, virtuous, hopeless creatures, humans were.

So he painted the sunset with yellow leaves, enticed the worms to dance in their soil, flourished the boundary between forest and field with blossoms and berries, christened the air with a biting cold before winter came, ripened the apples with crisp, red freckles to break under sinking teeth, and a dozen other nothings, in memory of the man who once praised the god’s work on his dying breath.

“Hello, God of Every Humble Beauty in the World,” called a familiar voice.

The squinting corners of the god’s eyes wept down onto curled lips. “Arepo,” he whispered, for his voice was hoarse from its hundred-year mutism.

“I am the god of devotion, of small kindnesses, of unbreakable bonds. I am the god of selfless, unconditional love, of everlasting friendships, and trust,” Arepo avowed, soothing the other with every word.

“That’s wonderful, Arepo,” he responded between tears, “I’m so happy for you—such a powerful figure will certainly need a grand temple. Will you leave to the city to gather more worshippers? You’ll be adored by all.”

“No,” Arepo smiled.

“Farther than that, to the capitol, then? Thank you for visiting here before your departure.”

“No, I will not go there, either,” Arepo shook his head and chuckled.

“Farther still? What ambitious goals, you must have. There is no doubt in my mind that you will succeed, though,” the elder god continued.

“Actually,” interrupted Arepo, “I’d like to stay here, if you’ll have me.”

The other god was struck speechless. “…. Why would you want to live here?”

“I am the god of unbreakable bonds and everlasting friendships. And you are the god of Arepo.”

vmohlere

Always reblog Arepo and his god

constant-instigator

Just cryin on Tumblr on a Monday afternoon. What a beautiful piece of shared art.

just-shower-thoughts

Becoming a teenager is realising that your parents aren’t perfect. Becoming an adult is forgiving them for it.

stagecoachjessi

Classic Hollywood Bloopers

izzzzzzieeeeeeeee

And the greatest Hollywood blooper of all time:

mermaidsandcats29

These are WONDERFUL

stagecoachjessi

Two more of my favorites:

absolutelyaddictedpoldarky

These are great..made me smile😊💖

darkseraphscorner

The fact these exist are truly amazing.

In the olden days, if footage was not used in a film, it was either destroyed or erased so they could reuse the reel, because it was cheaper than storing unused film.

Google the BBC’s lost archives to find out more.

nevillegonnagiveuup-deactivated

nostalgiaunicorn

“It is said a hero is only as good as their enemies. Thus, a good story has to have a well-written villain, somebody that earns respect. After all, what is a hero without a villain to challenge them?”

just-shower-thoughts

When I was a child, people told me I was an old soul because of my ability to understand the world around me. Now, I’m almost 30 years old and that understanding has turned into a cynical, sarcastic humor where my coping mechanism is to make jokes about everything. Now people tell me I’m childish.