@kyuusei-shadowleaf gifted me this incredible picture of Mary from Hvitkanen on twitter and I’m JUST COMPLETELY MURDERED BY IT.
wallacepolsom

oozey mess
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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AnasAbdin
will byers stan first human second

pixel skylines

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Acquired Stardust
noise dept.

izzy's playlists!
Monterey Bay Aquarium
sheepfilms

JVL
we're not kids anymore.
$LAYYYTER
hello vonnie
cherry valley forever

ellievsbear

JBB: An Artblog!
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@foxglovethings
@kyuusei-shadowleaf gifted me this incredible picture of Mary from Hvitkanen on twitter and I’m JUST COMPLETELY MURDERED BY IT.
Hate it when cis people ask unnecessary and invasive questions like "are your experiments ethical?" And "where is that screamimg coming from?"
Homecoming
Previously
Southern blue and gold streamed over most of the city. Stromgarde in name, but not sight and sound. Or spirit.
It looked nothing like what his father described, what faint memory painted for him. That hallowed ancient city of kings and emperors, this was too new and young to pass for it.
For stretches, it hardly felt like a city at all but a military camp, wide avenues with few dressed for commerce or leisure. It was still mostly soldiery from the nations that fought with the king yet crowned—the League’s men, Stormwinders, dwarves of the mountains three. Knights of the silver, knights of the kings west and south.
He could count on one hand those that wore the old red proudly.
He wondered if he belonged among their number.
Homecoming
Previously
“All right, sunshine."
"How do I look?”
Sheoli looked up from her tea to him, allowing him this moment of vanity. The full length, up and down, then up again.
He was not a beautiful man, nor was he particularly handsome. Youth had left him faster than most, with a face creased and weathered, body scarred and palms well worn. He had blond hair so dirtied it was almost brown, tumbling down in waves towards his shoulders.
He was wearing the most ornate plate of any of the Ashvane knights, red and gold and storm silver, the white ruff of a collar barely visible under his chin. A sash of the deepest Stromic red ran from shoulder to hip, the likeness of a crestless helm carved into the rondel.
It was ostentation new and unexpected, and so she chose question first.
“How do you wish to be seen?”
The knight considered.
Out with the Tides
Previously
Montague Dawson Night Mists
“She won’t be in the hold,” the knight said, sword drawn and arm readied. “But she’ll be close. In the bilge, or as close as it gets.”
The hedge wizard half listened as he walked apace with the knight, watching the people watching him, gaunt and shackled, sunken eyes staring from beyond the bars. He tried to ignore the feeble pleas, the hateful gazes, just as his knight-turned-tideguard ahead seemed to, but he couldn’t help but look back, however briefly.
He could feel the weight of his tider’s robes, that thick stitching, layers of woven cloth, blessed by ritual of innumerable age and considerable power. Could feel the weight of representing—however falsely—authority spiritual and temporal, an authority content to let those on board the Falconer remain there.
There must be hundreds, he thought. Hundreds condemned to live like this.
I’d rather die.
Out with the Tides
Previously
Tom Woods Phoenix in Flight
“Let fly,” the sorceress whispered as she sent the phoenix aloft, and then watched as it burned through the black sky, wings outstretched.
She watched, feet delicately placed on either side of the boat, a hand on her hip. It was a truly beautiful creature, worthy of royalty.
She wished, suddenly, that it would live, that it would be hers, perched on her shoulder like the elven queens of old, as she stared out at admiring courtiers and confidantes. She thought of a red robe embroidered with gold, elegantly tailored, the very unlikeness of her brown one. She thought, for a moment, of a different life, a life that could have been, but never would.
That wish ended the moment her creature violently collided with the stern of the Falconer, spraying wood and glass and man into the sea, and roaring flames throughout the lower decks with its last, dying breaths.
She smiled.
Out with the Tides
Previously
Montague Dawson A Night at Sea
The knight stood on the Falconer’s deck, the dampness of the night clinging to his skin. A place and feeling dark, but not unfamiliar.
Even in death, with her sail stripped and masts shorn, he knew what she once was, and he felt a sense of sadness, and shame, for what she had become.
For a moment he remembered the sound—the smell—of cannonry, of death, of guns firing at orc, at demon.
At human.
The better days.
I know you. Teary-eyed and shudder-breathed, you grasp at the void and find only me. Your ritual components are laid out before you. You expected this to be harder. I can tell because your eyes widened as I clawed my way into your world. I can hear your breath catch. Perhaps you're afraid. Maybe the image of my exposed sinew, pulsing and grey, startled you. It might have frightened you when I smiled- wide and uncanny. I have so many of mankind's teeth. You do not call me beautiful when you compose yourself. Not like the flatterers who ask me for pacts to cure their puppy's plugged nostrils or bring back their lost child or whatever vain, flimsy things men lean on to pretend their ambitions are different than ours.
Keel Harbour, Early Morning
They sat together at the break of dawn, when the world is fresh and blue and pale, and the first white rays of the sun cast its rippled light across the harbour. A rare break in the rain was a welcome sight for most, especially those unused to Gilneas and her silver shroud of mist and soggy weather. Birdsong and the swaying of boats, and the mastbells that chirped to one another above their flags of deep, old country blue and Alliance gold.
Western Air Marchesa, poorly named, twenty years-old and sporting deep bags beneath his eyes, cradled a mug of bitter coffee in his hand. Still hot. His father, who would have named him Nicholas if he’d been there and was happy to tell everyone that was the case, sat beside him.
They did not look overly similar, at first glance. Westy was tall and trim, with rust-coloured hair and pale blue eyes, and an easy smile that he liked to share. He wore his armour with the confidence befitting a man his age, and shared his sword and heart with the world like a poet. How rare it was for him to sit in silence with shaking hands, the ghosts of the day before lurking just behind his eyes.
His father was shorter, and broader about the shoulder. Dark hair had begun sporting grey about the temples just a few years ago, threatening to creep into the mustache kept tidy above his upper lip. He had blue eyes too, once, before the curse took hold of him. A common link between all the Karfrost children, bent and broken long ago. His son looked like his father, Lane noted, more than he looked like himself.
The smell of smoke still clung to Westy’s skin and clothes, mingled with sweat and blood and soap that desperately tried to overpower them all. He’d scrubbed until his skin was red and the water ran out, plagued by the desperate whines of Marcus Ironshield’s worgen in his head.
A mother watching her children. He could see the memories of them so clearly when he closed his eyes. He could see her grief when the youngest was lost in the Cataclysm. The funeral, the rain, the struggle to put things back together. He watched her, in a flash of all her moments jumbled into an instant, throw herself into caring for her oldest. He saw her pride, her tired smile. A modest home to grow up and grow old in. He saw the scrap metal grafted to her skin, infected, rusted, cruel. The cages and collars, and felt nothing but her hunger at beck and call.
And he heard, in the end, the sound of the bullet that laid her to rest.
Father and son sat silently together, tongues heavy in their mouths. They watched the soft glow of the sun creep up over the horizon, obscured by the grey veil of Gilnean weather. They watched the harbour begin to wake, and listened to the sounds of groggy chatter and the spark of a fire. Of a skillet. The whistle of a kettle. One put his hand on the other’s shoulder and left without a word; the half-hearted promise of a better day dead on Lane’s lips.
Prologue
It was a mighty high drop from the cliffs into the churning waves. And it was a brutal storm blowing in from the south. Dark scud clouds hung low beneath the darkness that blanketed the coast. The winds were violent and bone-rattling, and every pelting raindrop on the skin felt like a whip's lash. Merlofyr's gore-red skirt clung, soaked, to her legs. Her hair stuck to her face and the nape of her neck. Her left arm ached in fingerprint pinpoints where her father's grip had bruised when he dragged her up here from the safety of the ship.
Hyllubd the Offal wasn't the world's most well-known pirate. But he was among the more ruthless. Blood seeped through the decks of his ship to the point that the red-stained boards oozed their rusty tinge back into stormwater that splashed onto them. His crew, the Whorling Poisoners, reveled in the sport of pillaging. It was all for Llymlaen, they said. For she fed on the fathoms of depravity with a gaping wave-toothed maw and tasted the blood that dripped into her waters with each life taken. She smiled, shark-like, with each. Hyllubd's Llymlaen was Merloefyr's Llymlaen, wrathful and cruel and bitter. It was her blessing the pirates sought.
To visit a friend
The forest groaned and creaked in the wind, foreshadowing the coming storm. The Gilnean, who was wrapped in bandages and dark leathers, sighed and glanced at the sky. He pulled up his hood and returned to his weary march through the Blackwald. Every step down the hill made him wince, the pain in his side threatening to bring forth his wolf. His foot slipped on a wet rock and he stepped down a little too hard causing him to grunt, his eyes flashed orange and teeth elongated. His form seemed to ripple; he took several deep breaths and leaned against a nearby tree. Opening a pouch on his hip he pulled out some Peacebloom, a simple herb to help with the pain, and chewed it slowly, he knew he needed to save his magic. His wounds could wait.
As his breath steadied, the fur receded and his eyes returned to their normal hue. He glared up toward the sky as the first drop of rain hit him square in the eye. He growled and pulled his cloak tight then resumed his slow march into the forest. The ground finally leveled out and patches of red started to appear on the forest floor. He was getting close. The next bend brought him to a glade where a gigantic tree crowned the forest. "Almost there," he grunted, "Tal'doren looks well enough after all this time." As he neared the tree, he could feel his emotions calm and some of his weariness melt away. The tree seemed to still have a soothing effect on his wolf.
His stride quickened as the tree eased his pain, he walked around the base of the tree towards the back and swiftly hobbled up a small hill. At the top he stopped and knelt down at a mound of earth, a marker stood at one end. He took a deep breath, the rain almost sensing what was to come started to fall harder, a soft chorus, a background to words of grief.
"Hello Lys," he choked, "We finally did it. We cleared the city, Gilneas is ours, we have a home again." He paused and took a shuddering breath, tears streaming down his face into his beard. "I don't know what happened to the others. Many fell, lost to battles, both physical and mental. I almost lost myself after you..." he paused to wipe the tears away. "After you fell I was lost, I missed my friend...I miss my friend." He continued on, pain in his voice, "I never thought we would be home, I never thought I'd be able to visit you again." He paused for a long time, the sky weeping as he was. “I hoped I would be able to choke up chunks of my own sins, tell you of all that transpired since that day. Now that I’m here I don’t know what to say except I’m so sorry.” He closed his eyes and wept silently.
After some time he softly spoke again "I brought you a gift." He reached into his pack and pulled out a folded tabard with a rose on top. "The Hounds have all but disbanded, this is the last piece I could find of them and I felt it was right to bring it here to rest with you. It’s the only place I could think of that would be peaceful enough to ease the pain." He laid the tabard down and stuck the rose into the ground to the side of the grave. Whispering softly, he reached out and touched the rose, using what druidic magic he had left he asked it to grow. Moments later there was a large rose bush next to the grave, flowers of all colors blooming in the rain. "I haven't used the Gift in years, this is all I have left after the battle." Clutching his side the pain spiked, he couldn't hold the wolf back anymore. The change was swift, and with a growling voice he spoke, "I know I should take better care, I needed to save what magic I had left for your gift. Don't worry, I'll recover and return soon to tend the roses. I'm glad to be home." He paused as he struggled to choke out the words, "I wish you were here."
With a final deep breath he let out a howl, full of all the pain and rage and grief. As his voice gave out, he could hear throughout the forest, wolves were responding. Wide eyes looked around and his hands came to his face as he wept.
RP Bar on MG-US
THE FILTHY WARG
The greasiest bar this side of the Greymane Wall opens its doors in a new location: Gilneas itself! Come down to Stormglen and head inside the inn for questionable drinks and fatty food, or head down to the docks for a refereed round of hitting friends and strangers in the face with your bare hands.
What's better than a night of being drunk and disorderly in Gilneas? Lots of things! Lots of very normal, quiet things. But if you're feeling restless and looking for something to make you worse as a person, the doors will be open on the last Wednesday of every month!
Date: Wednesday, Jan 31st Time: 8pm server to 11pm Location: Stormglen, Gilneas Who's Welcome: Anyone! Gilneas is lowbie friendly.
Afternoon in Dalaran ♡
Day, Week,
They met in a dream, the first time. A real dream, with his eyes closed and his hands beneath his head and one scarred ankle over one weak knee, and not the Dream itself. Two pairs of golden eyes watched each other from a distance of less than a foot; his opponent’s toothy jaws pointed downward. There was little need to speak but he did anyway, his own voice hoarse and foreign to him after minutes or hours or days of silence. However long Amelia said he’d been there.
“What do I do?” The wolf said nothing.
“I can’t keep doing this.”
A breeze picked up between them, sweet and green and ripe with bursting orange dream fruit that hung fat and low from fleshy sprouts that shot up out of the ground and curled under the weight of their own propagation. The wolf’s nose flared at the scent.
He felt the urge to lunge at it with teeth of his own, and bite down into its neck and shake it, and taste its blood on his tongue and wear it like a red badge across his chin. He thought of his last fight, ended with a shot to his good leg, and felt the bile and rage boil inside him so hot it roused him from the dream entirely, and he was left with nothing but a bleary, unfocused look and the questioning eyes of the mage nearby.
The second time they met was in the waking Dream, that big green wide whorl of vast verdance, now singed and brown and orange at the edges, like a fraying autumn. It was beneath an arch of waxy vines, twisted together at their crown and sprouting flat, broad leaves, dark and veiny and turned toward the sun. Lane could count their pale undersides from beneath, and see the shadows of nosy beetles, like spectators, crawling along the tops.
The wolf spoke to him this time, and his voice was deep and resonant and indifferent. “You are not of my pack.”
“I am.” He heard himself protest, so meek compared to how he dreamed this would go. “I am, I am! I was bitten! I turned just like the rest of them!” The wolf regarded him with unfamiliarity, worse than disdain, as if his struggles were not worth remembering. The clawing fear he had whenever he turned, and the deep, stomach-turning hunger that burned hot inside of him. The need to rip and tear and run and bite and gnaw like an animal. Worse than an animal, that existed to survive. He felt in him the need to kill, and had buried it so deep within him it only clawed its way out when there was no other choice.
And here, this monster of a dog, this great white beast with golden eyes that matched his, looked at him with the same disappointment mirrored in so many others. Abby for never marrying her. Kaerlic for not being Evain. Charlie for not being interested. Ellie for being happy she didn’t need him. Donna for being his father’s son.
“Then use it.” The wolf climbed to its feet, paws the size of Lane’s head, and turned to go. “Run with my children. Feel their joy and their fear and their hunger, and sing with them when the moons are in the sky. Feel the earth beneath my paws and smell it with my nose, and hear it with my ears and love it with my heart. Use my gift, or bother me not.”
“Wait.” His voice cracked. His gut turned. His feet felt as lead in the soft dark earth, unwilling to follow as the answer to his prayers padded away from him. “Please wait.”
And suddenly the leaves turned, their pale bellies folded to a rising wind and pushed a wave through Lane’s greying hair. The same colour as the sky with its fat clouds and rumble of distant thunder, and fat drops of rain that shattered like glass against his leathers.
“Please.” He begged, the wolf well out of sight. “I don’t know what to do.”
Day Two:
He never was afraid of bugs. They crawled over his boots, all powder brown and copper green, reflecting the warm glow of sun filtered through the thick canopy overhead. A pair of pearlescent wings unfurled and flicked faster than his eye could follow, testing their strength before their owner, a beetle nearly the size of his hand, took to the air.
The bugs weren’t afraid of him either. Sets of legs and probing antennae tested the integrity of his armor, looking for cracks and folds and places where he may have hidden a good cool place, or food, or rot. Golden eyes watched them with mild interest, flicking ones away that got too close to getting under his clothes or into his boots, and the rest were allowed to march and poke and prod in relative, simple-minded peace. They wouldn’t find what they were looking for, not on Lane. That rot was buried too far within.
–
A wolf’s canines can grow to nearly three inches. A warg can easily double that. Their lips curled back, pink tongues licking at snow white. Frosted peaks on dark mountains. Snarls and howls from the back of their throats, heads down, eyes shining like the moon in that deep forest blackness.
All Lane had was a knife.
It was older and decently well kept, though the little ruby that once sat on the hilt was long gone, and its original leather grip wrapped and re-wrapped several times over. A sentimental thing, still sharp, and sat in his hand with the ease of a painter and a brush. Red was its only colour, and skin and muscle its canvas.
The druid beneath him, their skin charred and cracked with flame, scrapped and pulled at his armor in fervent desperation, leaving black marks behind on the leather. A wide mouth opened to protest; a garbled sigh escaping them. The release of suffering and the surprise of loss, soft despite the violence that preceded it. A hot hand trailed along his cheek; one final, whimpering strike. Lane tilted his head away and twisted the knife, letting the body jerk beneath him until that hand fell limp into the grass.
Where were those teeth, flashed like a warning before a strike? He pulled the blade from his quarry and painted their robe with red, pausing before sliding it back into its sheath. The light caught it there, silver and gleaming; a sliver of moonlight in the darkness, like a fang.
Day One:
The Emerald Dream was the bottom of a well. He could have been ten and staring into it, grubby hands flat against grey stone, willing his then-blue eyes to adjust to a deep darkness he was sure held some sort of mystery in its depths. Water echoing like blood through veins. A pebble thrown in to hear the splash at the bottom, and to guess how deep it really was. The itching urge to jump, to climb, to simply lower oneself down in a bucket and touch what could not be seen.
Lane didn’t have the magic in him to be druid, no matter how much he wished it were so. His father didn’t either, but that didn’t stop Lord Karfrost from looking to his two eldest sons with some disappointment. Lady Karfrost was a Harvest Witch, a real one, brought into the family to upkeep a dying tradition. Her husband couldn’t will a plant to grow any more than he could force the sky to rain. Neither could his brothers, who all died off before he succeeded his father anyway.
He remembered the stinging of his palms as they were slapped with every correct incantation, every flower that failed to bloom, every warmth they failed to feel radiating from within him. Leave them alone, Nicholas. His mother would plead, quiet, tired. You can’t see what isn’t there.
A sea of green spread out before him in whorls of darker shades; two sides of each blade of grass. The tops and bottoms of leaves turning of their own accord to seem pleasant and charming, tickling the bowls of little flower blooms that hung distended in the air, as if frozen, breathing, laughing, drawing in honey bees and birds with their yellow pollen and spring-summer scents. Thick tree trunks breathed beside their spindly counterparts, gnarled branches hanging low with fat fruit and adorned with nests and birds the way one might clasp a fine chain around a slender neck.
And the air was so clear. It was entirely new; untouched by those except its caretakers, many of them green themselves. The smell of streams and rocks and good earth curled up around his dew-covered boots. Stay, stay, stay.
Lane brought a hand to his eyes, golden now and weary, and gave himself a moment just to breathe.