A young dunmer who entered Skyrim 3 years before to study at the College of Winterhold, she has found herself in the less than savory sides of the province, as well as taking on motherhood with a 8 year old Imperial child named Lucina. [[Mod/Mun is over...
Right so, an explanation is under the cut for my disappearance.
tl;dr Blog is on a hiatus until I can get my shit together.
So this is a hiatus for the time being.
I have been through... a lot of shit these past four/five months, and to be quite honest I don’t want to go into detail.
I haven’t been in the right state of mind to write for a very long time, and I am exhausted. Jae’s muse can’t seem to handle this exhaustion and has flown the coop for a bit as well. So I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m just having a rough time of it mentally and I need to get myself life back in order before I can come back and do this.
I’m still here, and I read things occasionally, but as far as doing drafts that shit isn’t happening for a while. My apologies to those I owe. Feel free to drop me if you would like. No offense taken. Should you wish to talk to me, feel free to IM me or ask for my Skype. If we’re mutuals, then I will likely be willing to share. But we’ll talk privately.
I’ll be back, I’m not leaving forever, but for the time being I just can’t do this right now. Sorry that it took me so long to realize that and say something about it.
Jae moved to pick up the stupid journal and Fienelef felt her hands lifting, pressing against her skin to hide her face, breathing into her palms. Her feet carried her backwards and, after a few steps, she hit the edge of her desk and slumped back on it, unable to keep herself upright on her own volition.
She was crying, but made no noise as her shoulders shook and tears rolled down her face, invisible under her hands.
The anger that had bubbled was fully snuffed out and, no, she didn’t hate Jae for it. She hated the world for everything it had done and, maybe she always had.
To Jae’s desperate word, she replied with her own pained sentence.
“I want my mom.”
The dunmer stood, setting the book aside gently before stepping closer and touching Fi’s arm, afraid to move too close while she was this upset. She would let Fi initiate any space or lack thereof she required. “I know, daeseh,” Her heart was breaking, seeing Fi like this. And it was her fault.
“Can I make you some tea? O-or would you perhaps rather some space, or-?” For the first time in a long while she was clueless on how to help her friend in her time of need despite the strong desire to do so.
Hello everyone, now seems like a good time to finally tell you all about Pillowfort.io, a blogging platform that I (juliabaritz) and vaguestblogging have been working on for a while. Basically, we wanted to start a new blogging platform that takes our favorite features from sites we’ve used like Tumblr and LiveJournal, and create the best kind of blogging platform we could think of. Our goals for Pillowfort are to create a place where fans and creators alike can share their work, create a community of their own, and do so in a positive and safe environment.
On Pillowfort you’ll be able to run a personal blog similar to how Tumblr blogs operate, but also create communities similar to the ones that LiveJournal features, so that you can easily share content with people who share your tastes and interests. We’re also working on privacy features like blocking users, the ability to make posts rebloggable or un-rebloggable, and creating privacy lists so that your posts will only be visible to certain users. In the next few weeks, we’ll have more detailed posts about what Pillowfort is going to look like and what features we’ll be including, but above are a couple screenshots from the current state of the site so you can see what we’re going for.
We want to get the word out, so share this post if you would be interested in using a site like this so we can get an idea of how many people are interested! This site would also be a very large undertaking for us to attempt to finish ourselves, so we would love for people who would be interested in helping us with the programming to contact us and let us know that you’re interested. The app is built on Rails and currently deployed on Heroku (using Postgres for the database), so a familiarity with Rails and PSQL is greatly preferred.
Interesting.
So basically, what Dreamwidth is to LJ, you’re hoping Pillowfort will be to Tumblr?
“What are you going to do? Oh so kindly ask my mother to write me another letter from her death bed in the hopes that I would read it and understand when I was older?”
Her voice was shaking, and when she looked up, the tears in her eyes and heat in her cheeks were all too clear. She swallowed, an action made difficult by just how much she wanted to break down and sob. She wanted to be angry, but she didn’t have it in her, not when the emotion was being squashed by such a deep and profound sense of loss.
Her grip on the journal tightened before, suddenly, she threw it on the ground where it landed with a wet plop.
“You can’t fix this. There is no making this right. That was…that was the only thing I had. Jae she’s dead. Shes…dead.” And it felt so fresh, so raw that she felt she very well might be sick.
Oh gods Fi missed her.
Jae flinched at her words, hands raising up defensively as Fi’s upset made itself known. How could she fix this? Paper was such an easily damaged thing, written words so easily lost, no matter how dear to one’s heart they were. The dunmer knelt down to gingerly pick up the book, staying there for a long moment as she contemplated what to do, what to say.
What could she say? That she was sorry? Like that would do much good. She had just destroyed something so precious, so irreplacable to her best friend. Sorry was not going to cut it. Jae looked up with pleading eyes to say something, anything, but when she moved to speak, all she could muster was a quiet, desperate “Fi...”
Fienelef held the sodden journal in her hands, staring down at the old leather that had become perfectly worn, pale spots marking where her fingers always held it. She hadn’t meant to drop it in the slush, Fienelef knew that, but gods above if it didn’t feel like the world was crumbling out from under her feet.
Slowly, she pealed the soaking, cold cover back and stared down at the letters that had been tucked away in the front. She had carried some of them with her for years, others fro months, but they were there because they had been so important to her. The sharp, crisp parchment that smelled like ink and flowers had wilted, shriveling as the letters and memories were ruined.
“You can’t.”
Her voice sounded truly pained, as though someone were grasping her vocal cords in a vice.
“F-Fi, I-” Jae’s eyes were glued to the papers, soggy and in spots turning grey from the mixture of ink, water, and paper.She had stumbled on something, whatever it was, she wasn’t sure and didn’t much care anymore. It had made her lose her grip on the book as she went to hand it to her. Gods damn her lack of awareness.
She hadn’t quite understood Fi’s devastation until she had seen what was in the front of the book and her heart stopped. What had she done? Such precious things, ruined. Jae knew that if Fi kept something like this, it was because it meant a great deal, and to know she had just destroyed them... the mage couldn’t live with that, “Please, Fi, l-let me try. I did not mean to-” Those words did not really do much good in this situation did they?
Jae sighed, “You deserve for me to try to make this right.”
as much as i love the trope of a character falling fast and hard for someone, i also love the subtle descent where they don’t really think about it; where that person is just kind of there until one day they realize that person is so ingrained in their lives and they cannot do without them. where there is no conscious effort on either ends to become romantically involved but somehow the thought of them being with someone else is disconcerting. where “i enjoy being with you” unwittingly turns into “i want to be with you”
// Yep! Today is Jae’s birthday (15th of Frostfall)! She’s turning 33 today (gotta remember to update that), so feel free to bug her about it if you would like. :D
“Alma?”
Jae had been at her desk, going over her notes from her last lecture in Alteration when her daughter’s voice brought her back to the present. Setting the pages aside, Jae turned to face Luci and smiled. The little Imperial was holding her lyre to her chest and something else behind her back, her feet shuffling as she took a few more steps forward. She seemed nervous, but not like she had done something wrong. “Yes, hla aln?”
Luci grinned crossing the rest of the distance between them and presented a peice of parchment to her, “Happy Birthday!” The parchment had a drawing of herself and Jae holding hands, with what looked like the College behind them. It was actually quite good for her age, like she had really taken her time with the charcoal, and even colored it, staying in the lines as best she could. Jae’s smile grew and she pulled her daughter into her lap, setting the picture aside so she could hug her little one properly.
“Luci, I love it. Thank you, dear.” And she did. A drawer in her desk had been dedicated to the drawings Luci had done over the years, something she liked to rifle through on the nights she couldn’t sleep or when she was having a particularly bad day. They were a nice reminder that not everything was awful, and she had her own personal little ray of hope that things would be better. “You did such a wonderful job on it.”
“I’m not done though!” Luci chirped and wiggled back off her lap after pressing a quick peck to her cheek, “Um, I wrote a song too. Auntie helped me with it a little and so did my teacher, but I made it for you.” she was nervous again, hands gripping the neck of her instrument tightly, “Can I play it?”
The fact that she even wanted to play in front of her was already gift enough. As Luci had grown, she had started playing her instruments elsewhere, somewhere quiet and solitary, having grown nervous to do so in front of others. It was a very personal thing for Luci, and sharing her music was like baring herself to the person she was playing for. Or at least, that was what Jae had gathered when she had asked her about it one day. Jae had missed hearing her practice, after all. It was a nice background noise while she worked or read.
So to have Luci offer to play in front of her was an honor and a wonderful gift all on its own. She could have been playing Ragnar the Red and Jae wouldn’t have cared. Just the act itself was enough.
“Of course, dear,” Jae said, adjusting in her seat to show her interest and support, “Whenever you are ready.”
Luci nodded and got her stool from next to her bed, placing it in front of Jae before sitting. She strummed the instrument once to check its tuning before nodding and meticulously placing her hands on the neck of the lyre. And then she began.
The melody was slow, a soft thing, but not romantic like one would hear at a ball for a dance with a lover, or sad like the approach of a coming storm. It was a thoughtful, airy thing, happy and calm, reminding the dunmer of Cheydinhal and the wood around her parents’ home, and of Riverwood. Bright, natural places with wonderful scenery and people. Luci was biting her lip as she worked her way through the song, and though she was still learning, she produced the notes like she had been doing it for decades.
As the last chord rang out, Jae clapped for her little girl, beaming with pride, “That was beautiful, Lucina.”
She could see the little Imperial’s heart soar in her eyes and she was grinning from ear to ear, “You think so?”
“Aye. Absolutely beautiful. I would hear it again, if you would be so inclined.”
Luci smiled and nodded, hands much more relaxed as she started again, the tune wafting out of the room like flowers on a summer breeze. It made the college feel almost warm.
“It seems like you’re easier to persuade than you lead on to be,” He said as he folded his arms against his chest, peering down at her with an almost too triumphant of a state for this minor accomplishment. “Of course she can come, I’m sure you’ll both have a good time. We won’t be leaving for awhile, so you have ample time to prepare. It should be smooth sailing too, since we will be following the coast, less for to worry about and all that.”
“Now how can I debate with you properly over the awful thing that is the ocean, if I do not at least let you try to prove me wrong.” It was bull. She knew it was. But like Oblivion was she admitting defeat that easily. “Luci will be ecstatic for the trip. The only long trips we’ve ever done were to my family in Cyrodiil by carriage.” She shifted uneasily for a moment, realizing she’s never really traveled by boat either, save for the times she had to with the Thieves’ Guild, but even then she was still in Skyrim. “Ah, is there, erm, anything in particular I should bring for us? I fear boat travel is not a specialty of mine, as you can imagine.”
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