saw a question on twitter about “whats your favourite herb in wow--or whats your characters favourite?” & was reminded of an old piece of work i did that revolves around this (& that helped cement the eponymous tradition of “starlight” as the lovey dovey name between my paladin & @234ams crystalsmith)
so im bringing it back because im pretty sure i never posted it anywhere other than sharing it originally with mr am once (& so i can shamelessly link it as my response)
written from the pov of mr ams character as a gift
(img src from wowhead)
--
a flower particularly a rose is considered objectively pleasant. this facts been told to him many times by others.
the flower he presents today he gives without flourish or preamble but with his pulse trembling inside him. the long stem is ridged in tiny thorns all down its length but lacks bite. he made sure of this. trimmed each point with care: though less with forethought and more through learned experience. his own hands, large and heavy and just as worn as the ones that take the rose from him, are crisscrossed with the toothsome marks of previous failures.
hed been thoughtless in plucking the early attempts out of the earth. treated the flowers with the force applied to stubborn weeds or like the daily tasks that his easy strength carried him through without pause. the results were thorns snaring his clumsy efforts with their brambles and fistfuls of dust scattering from disintegrating petals. the stardust sifted through his fingers and clotted with his blood and left him with nothing of use for his purposes.
the recipient of his gift stares silently at the buds soft translucent petals. he stares at them. at their hand and their thin fingers and the thinner scars gained from years of practise and the battlefield alike. stares longest at the ginger way they curl the tips against the sides of the trimmed stem.
"starlight."
"yes?"
pale blue eyes full of stars, too, tilt until they look at him. not at the rose any longer. just at him. he tries to keep their stare but lasts barely seconds before averting his eyes. they cant tell with his goggles to hide behind--or perhaps they can. hes tucked his chin slightly. his jaw tendrils coil all at angles beneath to squirm restlessly.
he looks back at the rose. through the rose. fixates on the sheen of their pale bare skin seen through a shimmering filter of dusty blue petals. there are words to say. he wants to say them. to cough them out at last. they stick in his throat. gum up his mouth and hide behind the backs of his teeth. he shares none of the thoughts he means to: not about the view before him, or of the other draenei who waits so patiently. all of it is out of reach.
"the roses name," he continues. says facts aloud instead of the truth. watches guarded behind the opaque lenses of his goggles while the roughened fingertips of their other hand slides so ghostly from stem to bud.
"yes?"
"also starlight."
"ah."
the sound is a breathy huff of surprise; their already airy voice is clearer to his ears and he catches the change of tone as faint as it is because their mouth isnt muffled by fabric like it so often is in public.
the rose is briefly forgotten. his attention wanders from it distracted and drifting from bandaged jaw and cheek to scarred lips. his goggles still reveal nothing of the directions his gaze ever takes on their own but hes being a little brave and lifted his chin from his chest. the cant of his head betrays him well enough.
"this one," they start to say, then pull their mask down entirely from their jaw so that it rests around their equally-bandaged throat, "has heard... many things... said of him before."
they offer their hand. when he takes it they draw his own rose-bitten ones to them to press their disfigured mouth on. he can feel exposed teeth from the ruined side through the layers of gauze. they prickle far more gently than where thorns did earlier.
they mumble into his hands between gentle albeit imprecise kisses: "it is... entirely a... novel experience, this being... compared to, ah, the... glory of, of a flower."
as their tone turns aside of impersonal and becomes decidedly less so, they move their face against his cupped palms to smile up at him. the damage theyve suffered prevents much but the subtle kind of joy in the way they squint up at him is a muted look he loves. when their lower lids raise it turns soft and happy with faint lines of crows feet at the edges.
"withal: i think--"
the tint of rose-blue that stains the tip of their good ear and flushes as a dark bloom on their unmarked cheek are rarer than the flower he spent so much time on. and more than merely objectively pleasant to him.
"im the best!" red bird awks his loudest. his black hand and metal hand talk with him for all hes shouty shouty.
"im king!"
{what-of} look-out asks, giving his most done-face. his hands shift from palms wobbled out to in with pointers and thumbs linked like chains.
"of me! of all the things!"
the bony goat knight, dead and pale as red bird is live and red, huffs a silent snort.
red bird gives teeth, part laugh and all pride.
"am so. king. and gonna eat all the chips i found!"
look-outs shiny shiny eyes full of blue wrong-fire narrow to thin streamers and his palms spread to crackle with the purple death. just a little of it.
just enough. the open crinkly bag of chips red bird found in the big glorious bins of free food has been thiefed! taken! ripped from him for showing off mid spin.
he gawks at look-out while his skirt settles and stills around knobby scabby red knees. his hands are still held up, pinchy pinch as if holding something tight.
"betrayed!" yaru shouts, forgetting to use his hands at all, and look-out just gives an ugly hoarse laugh before deliberately turning his face away. if he cant see he cant know red birds words, and now its the most one sided game of keeps-away as red bird pops from one pocket of the world around look-out to the other, trying to reach, trying to get look-out to look.
being deaf and tall and immune to red birds portal tricks just isnt fair.
{dont-eat garbage} look-out tells him later, but before theres a hand to his head careful careful and another hand out to give a sweet from acorns tray.
- illustrated by my good buddy corpse: commissions info
- prompt inspired by this art: “im going to eat chips out of the garbage!”
- the long-suffering “look-out”/grave belongs to mr @234am
readjusting to having cats is an experience for all involved
our house is three levels (since the garage attaches like a bridge to the main house, via a room above the garage)
this is relevant coz it means stairs
lots of em
and so i usually have either my wife or mr am help me when i need to go up or down, particularly if im relocating for an extended period; less trips all around if i have many hands to grab all my stuff for me yfm
anyway uhhh i forgot we had cats for several seconds, had my wife go into the bedroom before me, and heard SCRAMBLE SCATTER CLATTER BOOM
see my wife was carrying my gigantic nest's-worth pile of pillows in her very lovely strongk arms
which gave her a very strange silhouette
which spooked the cats
and sent them running for their lives on hardwood floor (so imagine looney tunes running in place style) before skidding into the far table and accidentally waking mr am in the process
its the funniest thing thats happened in a while but also i feel so bad lol
(theyre fine now, mr four cheese is turning me into the russian skeleton meme by laying on my legs, and mr pickle is by the door staring at it expectantly like another weird pillow monster is gonna burst thru ala koolaid man style)
what a start to my nightly attempts at corralling my brain into a writing session!
so im currently trying very hard to contain my excitement
coz every other time ive gotten started on this shit something inevitably comes up and all my plans for self improvement go onto the backburner for several more years
b u t
maybe not this time (various positive health and trans-related things under cut)
i have an appointment at last (november oh my god simultaneously so far away and so soon) with a surgeon to discuss potential CRS options
im on the waitlist for getting a neurology appointment, with referrals waiting in the wings for several other health related issues ive been dealing with for way too many years
even talked briefly with my new gp about potentially sorting out the whole undiagnosed adhd thing which boy that already feels like a gamechanger on its own
also got all my blood stolen today with the usual complications of being a super hard stick so im all sorts of bruised and burst veins to show for it lmao
which, barring unforseen weird blood test results,
also means i will finally get to start homones and slather myself in boyjuice
its been 84 yrs
i honestly never thought as a kid, as a teen, as a young adult--that i would ever be here now, much less with a future sprawled out ahead of me
much less one that included escaping pain and dysphoria thats haunted me for almost 40 yrs
instead of just existing day to day, i feel like maybe i can finally start thinking about actually living (oh thats kind of scary, i dont even know how to DO that)
im really hoping this could mean good things for my productivity and spoon lvls again, too; i miss creating things regularly, and enjoying the process of it, which is already so hard when fighting your own brain on top of fighting everybody else outside it
anyway uhhhh words cannot adequately express how overwhelmed i am right now in the best way possible
my goal is to try and make at least a post a day on here, even if its nothin very interesting to anybody else
i feel like,,, if i can finally successfully make it a habit to post and engage, it might just trick my brain from task avoidance
so! post done and heres the part for me thats fun:
(under a cut since its ramblin long)
the books im currently reading concurrently are some conlang construct books mr am got me that have been on my wishlist for ages, along with a very cool book about black holes and theories surrounding them, which mr am loaned to me from his collection
one of the things we share is a love of science and space, and more specifically, stars and time travel and all the things about our known universe that black holes straight up break
i have a lot of fun chatting with him; i really cant overstate the value of a friend so genuine, who i am never too much of, and i can talk about all my interests without the reflexive dread creeping on in
all that bullshit i learned growing up, yanno the kind: "im boring, im dumb, who could possibly enjoy swapping rock facts, much less listen to hours of it even when it our interests DONT align"
like, theres so much else about my friendship with him thats meaningful, but thats top tier right there
and lately? ive gotten a few others in my corner, who when i share, im starting to feel like that with them, too
its so weird! to have gone from one person to a tiny community of folks (and i mean little! its like,, five? six? of us max usually) that thrive on a love of the weird and the cringe and the stubborn hope
plenny others have waxed more eloquent than me about this sorta thing--how fandom spaces come sorta pre-fab with common, shared interests that its fans bring, and they build their fort and theres rules already laid out, and it becomes a second (sometimes first) home, of sorts
but when its starting from scratch, when its about stuff and is made by people that others just wouldnt ordinarily invest in or look at without outside prompting, thats not the same! its not a bad thing, more neutral, but its stressful, its really such a lonely feeling
except--when you finally find it, that person, and thats a community of its own, and it can grow, and suddenly you swappin stories, throwing jokes! and memes and links and hey inevitably, theres also those what ifs about your little guys
and everything is srs and sacred and everything is hilarious and "i cant believe this is real life" levels of stupid
you get to learn habits and quirks and whole personalities
"hey this reminded me of you"
"hey, check out this view"
"oh, thats right, yer the possum dude"
"you love medieval lore--and i read this, and what do you think about it, too"
its suddenly kind of a fandom space after all, and its like, still work of course, reaching for and keeping more and being a person with, it aint that neat or pretty
but its got warmth and joy and expansion, after a lifetime of making yourself small enough to try and fit
you end up fans of your friends, fans of their life, hyping each other up and up and up about the most mundane shit and it starts to look like not even the skys the limit
planning things to do together, spending long hours into the night to parallel play with vidgames or watchin movies like time aint nothin thisll last forever, right?
(it doesnt, always, but thats also part of this, and the ones that stay, the ones that work with you
those are the ones waking up to backread your chats like its the morning newspaper
and your life matters
like its better than the best hot goss, its saturday morning cartoons and their favour ice cream flavours
only now we adults and its also commiseratin over breakups and bills, and cross-country moves, and its celebrating that i saw chickens in the yard today and you finally got your boygirlthemsomethin gender fuckery juice)
idk idk idk
i feel some kinda way about all that
i never thought id make it so far that im nearly forty
never thought id get to ask "okay, well, now what? what do i wanna do, and try, and be?"
im... starting small i think, and im for reals happy, happier than i have been in years; i learned how to be alla my friends biggest fans, and im starting to finally believe
so mr am (@/234am) has been hosting a lil dnd campaign for a few of us!
its been SO much fun, and mr am has consistently gone above and beyond in providing amazing enfishment for our small little group to gnaw upon within our virtual enclosure
i thought, both as a thank you to him, and coz sort sort sort i like to arbitrarily sort its fun, that i would release little scraps of our adventures here as i go through and document/preserve our ongoing shenaneries
the campaign itself is homebrew and ffxiv-themed; the party meets up weekly on d/iscord and consists of four players (myself, my wife*, @/blatantlyqueer, and @/meredactyl), and four main characters (mordant, fhloe, e-yuk-pen, and sohna) that are (mostly) au versions of themselves (fhloe is the exception and was crafted specifically for this)
the campaign itself is ongoing and currently still in Act I--
which thus far has solely centred around being stuck in The Torment Nexus aka Palace of the Dead, where bad and naughty characters get put through the pear wiggler and we collectively get to see what falls back out :)
the whole campaign is basically themed around this:
from what mr am has told us, there is An Lot content planned, so we can likely expect to see our characters go to lvl 20 and potentially further!
basically, this is four absolute walnuts (affectionate) knocking barbies together making four supposed strangers fumble their way through hell, looking for both answers and a way out
while our dm makes this face the whole time: >:)
yoshi-p voice: please look forward to it
*ironically the only veteran dnd player in the group, but one who solely has experience with 3e and earlier; she joined up to have fun and learn 5e together with us
the rest of us either have limited experience or zero
its babys first dnd campaign and has been a wild ride so far for everyone involved and i cant wait for more!!!
this is my main blog and im also 6of575 on other spaces unless its like, a specific fandom thing (see: dirgeofgelmorra as final fantasy-related)
i aim to shove personal works and others writing inspiration on here as my so-called content; things i put online are maybe 98% worksafe, but i like gore and horror and im bad at filtering my mouth; so while im not anyones dad, minors probably still shouldnt be here or like, expect worldly advice from me
i am old, queer, deaf, autistic
i use they/them; and friends call me sunny
i love sunflowers, i love monsters, and i love you
i sometimes make things; i sometimes want to share, and i want to make connections whether transient or lasting, through what i make
i am holding my hand out on the playground and looking at you and asking if you also want to be friends
if so, then lets fingerpaint our lives, messy and glorious and bright, together
no one asked for this but yall gonna get it anyway
hey whats up its that time again:
i originally made a buncha platforms (here, birdsite, that pillow place, etc.) thinking not only i would regularly keep up with them but make new friends that way
but like, depression, cross country moves, more depressions, ongoing health decline, and loss of friends instead of getting more of em all kept getting in my way, so i said fuck it and retreated back into my own lil corner
but things are (maybe?) lookin up this year, so imma try again and gonna convince myself that social media presence is a thing i can both maintain and care about lmao
