the relic, the reliquary @nednewcastle - Tumblr Blog

on the high farm @manojoaquin

The world on Meridum had more or less gone back to standard, after those accursed trees; not normal, but then, one would be hard-pressed to define a Meridium ‘normal’. Best keep those terms loose and pliable, so you could weather a storm of strangeness like what they’d recently endured.

Joaquin was (as always) an oddity in that area. Ned found it endlessly fascinating, how the old monk absorbed what the island threw at them, circled it around where his tonsure should be, and emerged from the other end perhaps a touch ruffled but no worse for wear. It was commendable, if people ever commended Sisco. Ned wasn’t entirely sure they did. Brother Saelices would probably cringe from such an acknowledgement, anyhow.

And there he was, with Bev and Jacob, who looked over at Ned with expectant, watchful faces as he approached. “Good day to you all,” he said cordially, and Bev said, “We’ll leave you in peace,” almost immediately, departing with Jacob. Ned watched them go. He said, “It’s been a while since my copy took you and Aurelie to the Labyrinth, eh?” and then looked over at Joaquin. “She’s rather tossed up about it. How are you faring, Sisco?”

#with: joaquin #p: sifting

aureliemarchand:

“Classic indeed,” Aurélie says dryly when Ned illustrates his point thoroughly enough – and then more so. It could potentially be a compliment from anyone else. But she knows this audience. Maybe it’s good. Making sure she doesn’t get soft in her old age. Though she doesn’t show that as she counters with a reminder, “Joaquin was seeing Maria long before he met me.”

Ned verbally lays her out and Aurélie allows it, sitting and silently simmering as he states blatantly that she feels robbed of not being given a platform. Anointed. Such a word choice; so fitting, for him. “I have had time to think on it,” Aurélie comments, after having chewed and swallowed not only her last bite of food, but the judgment he’s laid at her feet. “About who was chosen. Targeted, if you will, by the island. And I think it may have sensed weakness. How else would it have snatched people away, hoisted them off into trees?” Her gaze holds levelly with his, dark and probing. “It would not be the first thing you were not present for, after all.”

That’s far from kind and perhaps all the more cruel in that it’s said just before the world turns topsy-turvy, tossing them elsewhere. Still, they huddle together as long shadows cast themselves overhead and greenery shoots up, spins them around. It’s enough to leave her breathless and bug-eyed, looking wildly around as she realizes where they are with nothing short of dread.

Matthew’s rules were never something she held especially close, but this one she did try to follow, for the most part. With some exceptions, when people went missing or her emotions were too storm-torn to be taken anywhere else. But otherwise, she’d had no real desire to go into the Labyrinth. Yet it seems that it desired them. Ned’s humorless comment earns nothing from Aurélie, who’s busy straightening up, taking a few steps forward. “It is so… quiet.” Unnervingly so, no chirruping or chirping, no voices, no crashing waves. “I never realized just how quiet it would be.”

Suddenly she jumps, hand lashing out as something behind her makes her hair stand on end… but it’s just water, dripping from the bough of a tree and nearly landing on her head before she’d stopped it. So she’s jumpy. Aurélie flicks the water away with her attunement before swallowing hard and looking around again. “How did you find your way out? It could not have taken us far.” It very well could have.

@aureliemarchand

Aurelie tries to beg off by saying that Maria predated her, and Ned intones, “...and yet.” But he leaves it there. He’s too soon back from his years in the jungle to know the ins-and-outs of the Joaquin and Aurelie relationship, and where to apply pressure for the most satisfying result.

She’s made her own progress along those lines, though, providing a scathing condemnation of the weaknesses of those taken to the trees and Ned’s saved from finding a suitable riposte by the jungle itself. Or the Labyrinth, more specifically. “I only stepped foot in the actual Labyrinth itself on accident,” Ned says, craning his neck to look upwards. “And it let me go, that time. Which from what I gather is how the place works.”

He’s about to use his attunement, create a mist that he can roll low through along the ground to see what it can turn up, but then Ned stops. Makes a fussed sound, turning to look at Aurelie. “We were sitting out of the Labyrinth when we started, yeah?” he says. “And then it sprung up around us. So far as I know, that’s not how the place operates, which means it’s the bloody island playing silly buggers again.”

Ned nods, obstinacy lining his face, and sits down. Folds his arms. “I say we don’t move,” he tells Aurelie, looking up at her. “I say we stay right where we are until it changes back. It’s a better idea than going rushing off God knows where, trying to flail our way out and ending up like chickens with our heads cut off. We can wait. Sit. Tell me more about your theory of my venial sins being the reason for me becoming a tree person, and all your unresolved anger at both me and Sisco traipsing off for years on end.”

#with: aurelie #p: were you there #stranded event 12 #/i figure we could close it off!

What is the absolute worst meal you've ever eaten?

"Sadly, one by my own hand. I happened upon a patch of winkles at the seaside and thought I'd make a meal of them, but I'd never prepared them myself before. I neglected to soak them properly so some of them were still full of sand, and I didn't remove all of the hard shells that protect the meat. And yet I worried them all down so my hard work foraging them wouldn't go to waste. False pride indeed!"

#askned #writing this made me shudder viscerally lol

jupitergeorge:

end.

#with: jupiter #p: somebody likes snouts #stranded event 12 #no better ending than a jupe remark

jupitergeorge:

♃

@nednewcastle

“I gotta admit, I love that English accent,” Jupiter giggled, then thwapped Ned lightly on the arm. “I like Scottish better though.” The devil or the deep blue sea. That sounded really cool. “So you’ve lived longer on Meridium than you have England. I’ve always wondered how the oldies feel about that.”

Jupiter had been through this whole weird change-a-roo thing a couple times already. Memories retained, strange memories that clashed with the ‘real’ memories, conflating her age back home and her age on the island. It was hard to know what was what - but this time she didn’t change. Only Ned did - slimmed down to a young man with the brightest blue eyes and a full head of dark blond hair. The posterboy for English piety, Jupiter thought, like something out of a Biblical picture book.

But the Jesus-fire in his eyes had a whole different take, when it was cast upon her.

“Uh-oh,” Jupiter said, watching the hysterical boy cross himself a few times, and then proclaim Baroner the ‘servant of Lucifer’. “Hey! This is just a giant prehistoric goat, not some…okay well I guess it’s a goat, so you’d assume it was something to do with the Devil, What was that devil-goat named in The VVItch? Black Phillip? Not that racist Black Peter from Sweden -”

Jupiter muttered to herself as baby-Ned yammered on; and if Jupiter was listening, she would’ve thought it was pretty damn cool. If someone like Ned - with that conviction and all those fancy exorcism speeches - had been a guest on HBH, he probably would’ve been a hit. The ‘young hot Priest’. Every fiction loved the trope of the ‘young hot Priest’!

But then Ned called her a dang ‘Whore of Babylon’ and Jupiter snapped her fingers. “Hey - hey hey! None of that language, Mister-man! I’m not - whoa. Wait -”

But Baroner was quite nervous from all of Ned’s impassioned incantations and motions, and and Jupiter hadn’t noticed the giant goat was backing up to the edge of the precipice until the last second. “Baroner! Baroner, watch yourself boy! Don’t -” But too late. Baroner gave a bleat of terror and jostled Jupiter wildly, leaping down into the gorge. The goat shrunk suddenly and landed on a little ridge, and Juptier was pitched right off its back, and off the edge of the gorge.

…and then she rose.

Well, not really rose. More like janky-hovered in the air, scrambling for purchase. Her arms slammed and locked at the edge of the cliff, her feet barely finding rock to cling to. “Ned! NED! Help me up, I’m serious! I can’t hold on much longer, kid! I’m not a Devil, geez-louise!” She knew better than to call Jesus’s name in vain at this point.

“Black Phillip!!” Edmund all but shrieked the name as soon as Jupiter said it. Not that this was a known being, but he could recognize one of the Devil’s other Earthly disguises when he heard one. The serpent was subtil, after all, and went by many names to fool those of weak or absent faith. The Name of the Beast was Black Phillip, Edmund decided, entirely disregarding Jupiter’s statement that the goat was most definitely not anything more that giant and weird.

“I abjure thee, Black Phillip!” Now that he had the name, Edmund wasn’t about to back down in the face of evil. The woman did seem ... somewhat perplexed by the entire thing, and wasn’t exploding into a shower of fireworks or billows of crimson fire or screaming with the voice of a thousand trumpets, any of the things that he might reasonably expect from the Devil’s Harlot, but Edmund wasn’t going to be deterred by that. Was he?

No! No, this was a distraction to take his mind from what needed to be done. Likely “mister-man” was some conjuration that the Scarlet One was placing on him. Edmund crossed himself feverishly, wishing he had holy water on him. He stepped forward, but then the Beast moved back, back, over the edge of the cliff, and Ned shouted in sudden panic--

--only to find his voice choked off when the woman rose up in the air. Or, rather, swam up, dog-paddling to stay afloat. “What on earth,” Ned said, and his voice came out higher, squeakier. The woman still looked strange to him, dark-skinned and foreign, but as a boy of thirteen he hadn’t been hard-coded into religious fear yet and so Ned darted forward, dropping to his belly to skid to the edge of the precipice and grab Jupiter’s hands. “I have you!” he squalled. “Can you ... can you rise again? Can you swim up? I can’t pull, all I can do is hold you!”

The goat, far below them and perfectly safe, gave a few concerned bleats.

#with: jupiter #p: somebody likes snouts #stranded event 12 #ty for your patience

aureliemarchand:

“The same iteration, then,” Aurélie corrects herself somewhat impatiently. “The same vision, passed onto another. Unless she was wearing another face.” Have they compared notes? Somehow, Aurélie doubts it. She hasn’t raised the issue one with Sisco, afraid to bruise his feelings. She’s beginning to regret raising it to Ned.

The implication isn’t missed by her but she doesn’t pry it open, not especially wanting to, frankly. But she does get an answer to her unintentional question: a different Maria. Aurélie nods slowly, unsure of what to say. Congratulations? Best of luck? Instead, she deliberately decides upon a more purposeful question. “What does she look like?” This isn’t for a game of compare and contrast, really. She just never got an especially thorough description from Joaquin that didn’t end with skittish laughter and various hand gestures.

They’re hoisting their arms now, prepping for battle; not especially vicious, but still, fixed with barbs. Aurélie shifts in her seat so that she can level her own probing gaze with Ned’s sharper one. “She declared that the island demanded sacrifices,” Aurélie states plainly. “How am I meant to not be disturbed by that sort of declaration? Hm?” Her interrogative noise is testy; her statement is not complete truth. That hadn’t been what had troubled her most, after all, had it? “We were meant to give ourselves to the jungle. That is a horrifying thought.”

One they’re about to become more intimately familiar with, it seems. The ground doesn’t bother to shake and shiver beneath them as change enters the picture, inserts itself into the conversation. Things just… grow. At once and without stopping, the terrain shifts, going from quiet hilltop to the dark mess of the Labyrinth at once. “Quoi–?” Aurélie has time to gasp, dropping the remains of her dinner and staggering to her feet, demanding in French, “Edmund! Tell her to stop!”

@aureliemarchand

“She may very well be wearing another face. Sisco’s Maria might have been more along the lines of the Virgen of Guadalupe. Mine is rather more the sort you’d see in Renaissance paintings. The classic Virgin Mother, if you will.” There’s no need for Ned to draw a finer point than that, but he can’t resist a riposte, aimed squarely at Aurelie’s vanity when she asks for further elaboration: “Mine looks like she was born in Westminster. His looked like you.”

He laughs, though it’s not entirely good-humoured; the barbs are something they’ve both encountered with each other and they’ve come to grips with that. Ned’s not certain about Aurelie, but he enjoys sharpening his teeth and claws through these conversations. It keeps him feeling vital in a place where the endless march of time can wear you down. “You were meant to be disturbed by it at the time,” Ned says. “The machinations of a copy of me whose aim was to trap and harm people. All that’s been revealed, love, done and dusted and those of us swallowed by the trees are back among you, everything the copies did exposed as lies and deceit. Yet this sticks in that lovely craw of yours. Of all the things that happened, the idea of your not being chosen, that you can’t shake.”

Ned purses his thin lips, fixing Aurelie with a considering, narrow-eyed look. “Even though it was all a fabrication,” he says. “Being chosen. Being meant to do anything. It bothers you to not be anointed.”

But they don’t have the opportunity to press deeper into that strange wound, because the surroundings shift, and Ned leaps to his feet as well, crowding instinctively closer to Aurelie. “This isn’t Mary!” he says, hand hovering over the holstered knife he’d worn in the jungle all those years and hasn’t stopped wearing now. “I don’t know what this is. But there’s nothing holy about it.”

The normal sounds have been swallowed up, and Ned feels a sick certainty about where they are now, from the way that the trees seem to close overhead and prevent any sort of attempts at orientation. “Well, m’duck,” he says lowly, in a mirthless chuckle, “it seems you’ve got your wish. The Labyrinth has chosen you, after all. Does it feel as good as you’d hoped?”

#with: aurelie #p: were you there #stranded event 12 #ty for your patience

jupitergeorge:

♃

“Oh. Ooooh!! My bad, baby!” Jupiter burst into a set of giggles at Ned’s drawl, able to recognize a kiki quip. Or, well the old fashioned variation on one. Then again, maybe the dude was just English. Regardless, she laughed along, not really caring but certainly entertained. “Where’s my manners. I’m basically the age I look - which is thirty-five, in case you’re wondering.”

Not that Jupiter cared about telling people the truth - good black don’t crack, and she sometimes loved amaaaaazing people with her real age. The compliments of ‘girl you don’t look 40-whatever!’. But she figured old Ned deserved a Golden Girls moment.

“Are you high-class? Sorry, I could never really tell the difference of English accents, but I know there’s a lot. Is that insulting? It’s such a tiny country with so many big ideas of itself.” She pat Baroner’s thick neck though. “You’re a good goatie, Baroner! We like you.”

Until Baroner got spooked, and then Jupiter’s tune suddenly changed. “Bad goatie! Bad boy, stop it this instant - oop!” Ned managed to swing up to sit behind her on Baroner though, and she leaned forward, gripping the goat’s shaggy mane. “Oooh lord, this ride is bouncy. Watch your jewels Ned!”

When Baroner skidded to a stop, Jupiter half-stood, trying to peer down the crevasse. “Go down? That? You sure that’ll wor - eep!!”

The wildcat was close now, prowling in that predator way around Baroner, ready to pounce. Before Jupiter had a chance to push a slap of air or anything, it seemed Baroner had it under control.

A loud, panicking bleat and then - boot.

The goat’s hind leg kicked back, hoof connecting right with the wildcat and sending the poor thing flying in the air, straight down into the crevasse. Its loud yowl drowned out the further it fell. No sploot noise or anything thankfully, but Jupiter remained shocked and silent. She turned fully on Baroner then, to stare at Ned.

“M’okay, well. I guess goats are…real good at kicking?”

/ / /

religious fanaticism cw, racism cw

Jupiter spoke at a dizzying pace -- for Ned, anyhow, accustomed to slower-paced people and a lot of solitude over the past twenty years. He didn’t mind it, though. Being back on the beach (even if it was a different beach) meant becoming accustomed to people again and Jupiter was -- neverminding the strange circumstances -- cheerful company.

“I’m not posh in the slightest, love,” Ned protested. “Any Englishman worth his salt would know me for common the minute I opened my mouth. But don’t worry, I’m not insulted -- I don’t get riled that easy, me.”

Baroner had been christened, but Jupiter seemed to like calling him goatie and Ned latched on to that instead, grunting as the ride got rougher, “Goatie here seems a right nutcracker. But right now I’m more concerned about that wildcat or this ravine, the devil and the deep blue sea--”

The goat had that in hand, though, or rather ... hoof. The wildcat’s noise diminished comically as it sailed down into the ravine, the only sound as both Jupiter and Ned witnessed its fall and the giant goat’s taking a few steps back from the lip of the crevasse. “Bugger me,” Ned said.

--and then nothing made sense anymore.

Not that it had been making a whole lot of sense up till then, but when Edmund found himself astride an enormous goat with the blackest woman he’d ever seen in person, he did almost fall off. And then he leapt off, skuttering backwards and crossing himself three times in rapid succession. “Saints preserve us!” he barked, scraping his longish blond hair back behind his ears. “Christ in heaven, save thy humble son from this--” he stared at the dark woman sitting astride the slot-eyed goat, unnatural and giant and unholy, “--this servant of Lucifer! Guide them back down to Hell and away from this land!”

Edmund looked towards the ravine. He had no idea where he was but he knew what a Satanic apparition looked like when he saw one, and he knew what he had to do. “Blasphemous beast,” Edmund said, stepping forward and holding his hand up in front of him in the Christogram, “I consign thee return to the pit, return to perdition, and to take thy rider with thee, to bear Babylon the Whore back to the waters of abomination. I cast thee out, in Christ’s name, in the name of Gabriel and Michael, in the name of God himself!”

#with: jupiter #p: somebody likes snouts #stranded event 12 #/can't believe the one time he's doing an exorcism of sorts #/he's in his twenties #/so i can't use exorcist gifs lollll #/also WOW RUDE NED

jupitergeorge:

♃

“Have you?” she retorted, knowing Ned only asked because he probably had. So she scoffed. “I’m air-attuned and you’ve obviously got the experience riding horses, I’m guessing, so. We’ll be fiiiiine. How old are you anyway, Ned?”

Suddenly, Ned was agreeing. Whatever reasons he’d gone through in his head seemed to satisfy him, and Jupiter wasn’t going to lose this momentum. “Yeah okay - hey! Hey I gotta give you a name now big boy, don’t I? How about ‘Baroner’ - “ Jupiter snort-giggled at her own cleverness, and started to explain. “It’s from the Star Trek episode ‘Errand of Mercy’, where Kirk and Spock…ahh y’know what? Don’t worry about it,” she waved a hand at Ned. “Sometimes I forget people aren’t from my era. Or even thirty years before it!”

Was that enough talking to keep Baroner calm? It seemed like it. Baroner was now stomping his cloven hoof impatiently though, like he wanted something but Jupiter couldn’t fathom what. The grass it tore up seemed to calm it a bit, as Jupiter used Ned’s foothold and a burst of wind to alight onto Baroner. “What’s your power anyway? Mine’s air, obviously.”

More hoof-stomping, just as Ned mentioned the sound of a wildcat. Jupiter had been so busy getting on dang Baroner, she hadn’t heard a thing; but she reached down to grab Ned’s hand and haul him up too. “C’mon - there you go Baroner, it’s cool! Stay cool! I think - OH!!!” Baroner suddenly bolted, with poor Ned clinging to the side of its matted hair. Jupiter jostled and jumped on Baneron’s back, but she held on to Ned’s hand. “I got you! Climb up! Ow - I bit my dang tongue!”

“Jupiter. It’s rude to ask a lady her age.” Ned grinned, a twinkle in his eye, and said, “One hundred and twelve, in Meridium years. But I was spry enough even in my fifties. And you? Are you the age you seem? Which I’m at a loss to pinpoint, let’s be clear.” Ned was certainly not beyond the adage of women liking to be told they looked or seemed younger than they were, and applied it liberally, assuming it held true for all women.

The name Baroner didn’t mean anything to him from a Star Trek perspective, the show being after his time on Earth, but Ned agreed easily enough, saying, “--best we keep the beastie happy, eh? And a name seems just the thing. Besides, it sounds rather upper-crust, doesn’t it.” An irony that he liked. “Works on both our levels.”

Jupiter didn’t need much help getting up onto Baroner, and Ned grasped her hand and twisted a handful of giant goat-hair in his other to scrabble aboard, assuming his long legs and ropy muscles would make short work of the effort. “Water,” he said. “Not much use in lifting me places. Or at least, not my sort of wa--”

The goat took off before he had a chance to finish and Ned slipped, hanging there for dear life as they jolted and bolted up the rocky range. “Bloody hell!” he shouted, jamming his toes against the goat’s side. It bleated louder and that wildcat sound also increased in volume behind them as Ned hauled himself up with a burst of effort.

Just in time for the goat to skid to a sudden halt: where the range had been uninterrupted before, there was suddenly an enormous jagged crevasse. “Too far for it to jump?” Ned asked aloud, already figuring out the answer. Baroner kicked its hooves on the edge, knocking loose some stones that bounced down along the irregular ledges. “We should go down.” He arranged himself behind Jupiter, so the two of them could keep each other upright. “Baroner will know how to navigate, I reckon. Yeah? Goats are good at that? Blimey, I’ve no idea.”

#with: jupiter #p: somebody likes snouts #stranded event 12

jupitergeorge:

♃

Jupiter made a long displeased hum. “I guess I’ll tell Tomas about this. But he probably already knows about all the wildcats that get too close to the community. And people who wanna live on the outskirts can probably take care of themselves. Where do you live?”

She smiled at the goat. “Not like this little guy was one of the farm goats, anyhow!” she jiggled the thing like one might a baby; but of course unlike a human baby, the kid did not like the sudden movement and spasmed and bleated again. “Oh noooo I’m sorry, baby.

She clucked in sympathy at Ned’s surprise, and then nodded along. “My house keeps changing up. I figured it was dangerous to stay in there and have something fall on me or something.”

But now goats were changing too? “Goddamn! What kinda pre-historic shit is this! It looks like a woolly mammoth but like…the goat version!” She squirmed, realizing she was in a stranger’s lap. “Oh - sorry -” she tried to move but the huge old goat got to them first and Jupiter froze…until the thing licked her.

She giggled and melted. “Awwww, so cute!” she cooed. She tentatively pet the snout. “There there, baby. I think it thinks I’m mommy!” As Jupiter stood up, she got a weird, wild idea. She looked at Ned. “It’s a mountain goat too. What if…we ride it up Alphonsus range? Maybe…maybe we can see what’s on the other side!”

“You want to--” Ned stared at the woman in his lap, somewhat reluctant to let go of her just yet in case the so-called mountain goat turned out to prefer crunching bones along with its diet of entire bamboo thickets. “You must be mad. Ride that thing? Have you ever ridden a horse bareback, Jupiter? It’s not easy.”

But the goat was nuzzling at her, and it did have a sort of raised ridge with longer hair down its spine. And Ned had wondered, since he’d arrived on this beach, what might be on the other side of that salubriously-named mountain range. He could even feed the knowledge to Nick Alphonsus, to be included in the map he was intended to be making.

“Right, then.” Ned stood, bringing Jupiter with him. “Let’s give you a leg up so you can keep the beast calm whilst I get on it.” The massive goat snorted, but otherwise didn’t seem inclined to do anything untoward, so Ned said, “Perhaps if you keep talking? It seems to like the sound of your voice.”

Its lowered neck seemed to be the best mounting-point, so Ned tugged Jupiter around to that point and crouched, lacing his fingers together. “Good job of it that I’ve some height on me,” he said, starting to be a little more cheerful about this as the goat calmly yanked up huge hanks of grass to eat. “You’ll be able to reach up there fine--”

He paused, turning slightly. “Did you,” Ned said, “did that sound like a wildcat to you?” He looked back at Jupiter. “We’d best get a move-on.”

#with: jupiter #p: somebody likes snouts #stranded event 12

aureliemarchand:

A midday rest is meant to be just that: restful. Yet Aurélie feels anything but, sitting ramrod straight and looking out at the horizon as Ned whispers his grace and she searches for her own. It’s not fair, what she’s feeling. The actions of that… thing had hardly been his fault. Even less so were her stung feelings. Now if only she could forget them.

“Ah, bien, bien,” she murmurs at his explanation, then sits in the silence, the only sound the whistling wind that’s common up here. Rather nice, in fact. Nicer than the line of questioning she knows they’re about to descend down. Her fault, really. “I do not know how much you remember,” she begins, as Ned hadn’t specified the bits and bobs he’s been privy to thus far. “Mais… oui.”

Not that she’s exactly rushing into it. Aurélie gives herself another moment to look at the distant ocean before sighing softly and recounting, “In short, it… tricked us. Led us first to the Heart Tree, where we faced perilous danger, and then to the Labyrinth, where it… well, claimed a multitude of things. Including that it was seeing María. Joaquin’s María.”

The Mother of God is, she knows, not owned by anyone. But you spend a decade with someone’s invisible friend and it begins to become an inevitable association. “It seemed that you may have been seeing her still, when your true self emerged from the tree. Is that so?”

“I hardly think she’s Sisco’s Maria.” Surely Aurelie knows that Ned would choose that point to protest, yet she says it anyhow. Drawing allegiances? Claiming territory, on the monk’s behalf? Nothing that Sisco himself would co-sign, certainly. “Unless you’re saying that his was a singular apparition and not the Virgin herself, who’s deigned to show herself to many a believer.”

Ned’s own implication being: are you calling Joaquin delusional. She wouldn’t be the first, nor the last, and Joaquin had weathered people far more aggressive about calling him a fraud or a zealot. What he’s saying isn’t likely to sit well with Aurelie, but Ned’s never been one to shy away from a contentious opinion. ~she’s full of herself anyhow. taking her down a peg would do the little bint some good~

He finishes his food, setting the plate aside, and says, “Yes, in fact. I have been blessed with apparitions of the Holy Mother -- not Sisco’s Maria, but nevertheless, Herself.”

Ned’s slightly teasing smile shifts, into something more beatific as he says, “Whatever the copy of me claimed, it wasn’t a Marian Secret. She’s not given me any of those, not yet. Does that soothe you to know, Aurelie?” Ned fixes her with a piercing look. “What is it that perturbs you so much about the claims of that version?”

#with: aurelie #p: were you there

Would you sleep with yourself if given the opportunity?

"Without even stopping to close the bedroom door first, love, ta-ra."

#askned #maggie: 😫

remember: god is watching 😘

jupitergeorge:

♃

It worked! At least it seemed to work, because the guy paused after Jupiter called out for him. Shook his head in a rather unnerving way; but then Jupiter knew she’d watched way too many horror flicks back in her day. Combined with the real ghosties in her roadtrips. Yeah, ghosties really did so that weird flippy-head-blippy thing sometimes.

Fortunately this guy was real, not a ghost. And by the time he got closer, Jupiter smiled at his softer tone, his curious expression. Nothing bad about this guy, nah. She was fine. Still she held the kid a little tighter, which unfortunately only made it bleat and kick more.

“Ow! Dangit, just - sorry! I don’t have much experience with goats, but this one just got attacked by some wildcat. I think its momma’s dead, poor thing. It’s just frightened! All shook up. I just wanna take it back to the farm. Maybe some of the farm goats’ll take care of it but - ow!”

She shifted the goat in her arms. “Calm down! If I put you down you’ll just run away, I’m trying to help you!” she chastised the thing. “I’m Jupiter, nice to meet you Ned. You doing okay? You look…wet.”

As for grass, Jupiter was about to suggest milk, but didn’t get a chance. Because one of those blips happened. With a yelp Jupiter just blinked -

- to find herself hugging not a baby goat, but a thick hairy…tree trunk?

“BLEEEEEHHHHHH,” something thundered metres above her. When she looked up…and up….

“Oh no. Eeep!” Jupiter squealed, hopping back as her air-power pushed her away from the leg of a gigantic pre-historic looking goat. “Oh my GOD!!”

“Yes, that seems right,” Ned said about Jupiter’s supposition on the farm goats taking in one of their kind. For all he knew, goats would trample the poor little orphan to death, but Jupiter seemed quite invested in getting the creature to safety, and Ned was of no mind to discourage her. “Perhaps we should be more worried about if this wildcat’s still roaming about, though?”

He looked down at himself when Jupiter noted his sopping appearance, saying ruefully, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I was taking a stroll and found myself rather inconveniently in the middle of the water with no warning. Have you noticed anything strange happening? I realize on Meridium that’s not much of a quest--”

Ned stopped and jumped back when the tiny animal struggling in Jupiter’s arms suddenly became enormous. As in, enormous enough that they could stand in its shadow. He reached out to hold Jupiter’s arms when she (rightly) recoiled from the thing as it roared out its bleat, a sound so gargantuan that it shook the ground.

He didn’t reckon on Jupiter being air-attuned and using it, so the two of them went catapulting backwards and came to an abrupt stop against a hummock, Jupiter sitting in Ned’s lap like a puppet. “Perhaps we should--” he began to wheeze, but the goat’s head lowered. Its slotted eye came close to them, blinked, and then its enormous nose ... nuzzled Jupiter.

“Oh, leave it out,” Ned said in disbelief, and then hurriedly added, “just keep it happy, then, love. If it bleats again this close we’ll be pulverized.”

#with: jupiter #p: somebody likes snouts #stranded event 12

jupitergeorge:

Location: headed towards lower farm @nednewcastle

“Oh you poor thing, you poor baby,” Jupiter cooed to the bleating goat baby. A ‘kid’, that’s what they were called. It was so cute and currently it was trembling in the cutest baebee way in Jupiter’s arms, a little bruised but no less worse for the wear. Jupiter had heard its pathetic crying for its mommy in the hills, and one minute a wildcat seemed to be terrorizing it. The next minute, the wildcat was a pile of dried-up old bones. Sad, but also - the baby’s saved!

But as cute as it was, it was wild and terrified. It struggled in Jupiter’s arms and kicked its cute widdle cloven hoofsies. “Oooh, I wish I could put you down but then you’ll just run away and you might hurt yourself! Look at you, you’re newborn! Maybe I can just get you some goat’s milk and you’ll be - oh. Oh! Okay, no kicking!”

The struggle was real; but in the distance Jupiter saw a loping tall white dude striding with some purpose across the field. He looked like he knew what he was doing, and so Jupiter attempted an air-message his way.

Yo, hey! Dude!” she called, not realising her air-message was a little too loud over the gust of breeze. She smiled though, hoping to catch his attention. “Can you lend me a hand with this little guy?”

/ / /

The sound of somebody calling to him through the air -- and it was through the air, amplified, clearly one of the attuned -- made Ned stop and blink hard, shaking his head like a dog that had just gotten out of the water. Which wasn’t too far off from the truth: he’d been strolling along a path one moment and then found himself plunged into the water, obliged to swim back to a shore that shouldn’t have been there. Or at least, shouldn’t have been underwater.

“Little guy?” Ned repeated, then stepped closer, curious to see what the woman had in her arms. It kicked one tiny cloven hoof into the air and Ned for a moment thought ~the devil it’s the devil she’s nursing the devil! she’s a witch! and you know what we like to do with witches!!~ before catching himself and squelching the voice.

“What have you got there?” he said instead, despite seeing quite clearly that it was a goat kid. The creature bleated as Ned approached and he started to say something more, but it bleated even louder. “Is it ... is that normal? Only I haven’t any experience with goats, m’duck. How are these little ones supposed to act?”

Ned had reached Jupiter now and peered down at the kid. “Does it need feeding? Does it eat grass yet? I’m Ned, by the way.”

#with: jupiter #p: somebody likes snouts #stranded event 12 #if they're leela and nibbler #then ned can be MOM lol

poignant-wcb

nednewcastle:

Keep reading

nednewcastle

end.

#with: wenzel #p: fall awakening #/and so they went their separate ways lol #/end!

who you would be in a fantasy society / / the queen

you know what you're about. you are THAT bitch. watch out for guillotines.

#ned the virgo

aureliemarchand:

“Bien, bien. We have plenty to share. Oh, no, no,” she says with what she hopes is nonchalance, waving a hand. “Let us eat outside, hm? The weather is so fair. I will be just a moment.”

Really, she suspects the quarters of their little home will feel quite tight. And it’s not that she doesn’t trust Ned. She just… doesn’t. It isn’t his fault. In fact, his doppelgänger hadn’t even been violent, at least not as much as some. But it had said and done things. And so she dishes them both out plates, generous helpings of stew and the fluffy cassava dough, then ducks back outside.

“Voila. For you,” she announces, then drags out chairs for the two of them to sit upon, looking over the sea. Aurélie folds her legs, using her lap to lay her plate on for a quiet moment before asking, “How are you feeling, in the wake of everything? It has been a relief to see you returned home.” And then, because she can’t help it, “Do you recall anything, from the time during which you were…away?”

He’d caused awkwardness with his attempt to go into her residence, and although Aurelie manages to escape that situation with some grace in smoothing it over, Ned still tastes the agreeable tang of having caused discomfort. She’s clearly discomfited already, and he knows why ~stuck up ninny, still moping that she couldn’t be tacked up on the cross for everyone else’s sins~ that is. His copy had done damage, that much is evident.

But Aurelie prides herself on reason and logic, so despite whatever misgiving’s she’s still labouring beneath, she brings Ned out a plate of food and presents a place to sit and enjoy it with her. “Thank you,” Ned says, easing down into the chair and tucking in after a quick, almost soundless grace. Nothing Aurelie wouldn’t be accustomed to, considering her more constant companion.

It’s good and Ned devotes himself to eating, making inroads before Aurelie even asks her question. “I recall bits and bobs,” he says, though that’s not the truth. The actual, physical, mental recollection of what transpired with his copy is missing; the voice’s imprecations and sullen, teeth-snapping threats enlighten him. It’s rather like puzzling out scripture, a task hes’ eminently suited to. “Nothing terribly cohesive.” Ned chews for a while, then asks, “...d’you fancy talking about what my copy did with you and Sisco, love?”

#with: aurelie #p: were you there

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