Definition: An abinary daehood. Identifying as a dae in a way that’s removed from midbinary third gender androgyny/midbinary daenhood and in no way connected to (mid)binary masculinity and femininity. It’s a daehood that doesn’t exist forming a trinary with man and woman, but instead exist outside of/apart from it.
i'm the androgynous anon and these terms don't work because i'm not a boy or girl, i'm feminine masculine, different things. i looked into nym- and actually found nymdae which describes this
I thought about that, but femascdox at least allude mascfem in its name, while the color meanings on the damogirl/damseboy post allude masculinity/femininity too. That's why I recommended taking a look at them.
What would your oc do if they knew they were going to die in the near future?
Daen please! ♡
This got really dark, really fast. Daen is my OC and I borrowed Janny, who is @trulyhopelessromantic's OC for this piece. For anyone who wants to know more about Daen (or any of my OCs), my ask box is always open!
Trigger and content warnings below for discussions of death and implied terminal illness.
Daen looked at the test results in his hands, practically a death certificate printed on nothing more simple office printer paper. It felt crude.
“How long?” he’d asked the doctor only a few hours earlier.
“It’s hard to say with these things,” the doctor had said, trying to ease the blow, but one look from those hard green eyes made him pause. “If you’re lucky, you’ll get to see Christmas.”
Five months. If he was lucky. The doctor had sent him home with the paperwork of the official prognosis. Top end, five months.
He folded the paper in half and drew in a slow breath through his nose. The scent of the roses on the kitchen table was strong. He’d bought them on his way home - pink and white. The lady at the flower shop had made a joke about him getting out of the dog house when she saw his serious expression, but he’d simply shook his head and the woman gave him an odd look before adding an etched vase to his purchase at his request.
Daen vaguely remembered his father reading a Sherlock Holmes story aloud to him once.
“We have much to learn from the flowers,” Holmes had said. The fictional detective had been talking about Providence - the possibility of a higher power and how so many things in the world could be explained by logic and reasoning. But flowers - there was no way to logically understand the existence of flowers. Sure, they served a greater purpose in the world, he was certain, but the fact that they were so beautiful, so utterly appealing to mankind for no conceivable purpose meant their very existence defied logic.
And yet, flowers still died. They were beautiful, of course. Daen had tattooed more than a hundred of them in his lifetime and even had a tattoo of one himself. But they still withered away. They could be preserved, but Daen couldn’t bring himself to try and understand why now. Why hold on to something that wasn’t even half as beautiful in death as it was alive? It was a husk, a dry shell of something that someone had nurtured and then cut off for no reason than to - what? Put on display in their home like a severed deer head? A home decorated with the carcasses of someone else’s care?
Daen shook his head and tucked the paper in his hands into a folder on the counter before placing the whole folder away into the drawer where he kept the bills and other important documents.
Janny would be over soon and he still didn’t know what he was going to say to her. How do you tell someone you’re going to die? And maybe this was all harder because it had always been assumed that he’d long outlive her, that he’d be the one left to carry on when she’d passed away from old age and he’d barely crested later-middle age by then. But now…
We have much to learn from the flowers.
He couldn’t make sense of it. How does someone live through so much to get cut down by his own body? How does someone survive through loss and fire only to crumble under something that seemed so small?
He rested against the wall. His body felt heavy, his thoughts thick with the crowding thoughts of everything there was to come. He had lists upon lists of things to tie up and sooner rather than later, but the thought that pounded on his skull now was how he was going to tell Janny.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he looked to see a text from the woman herself.
Janny: Stopped to refuel. I’ll be there in 10. Love you!
Daen heard the strangled noise that came out of his mouth before he recognized that he was the one that made it. His hands shook. How was he supposed to do this? For five minutes, he stood, forehead pressed to the wall and breathed slowly to calm himself.
They’d been planning to get married next year. Everything had been perfect. Everything was falling into place like a dream and Daen had never thought he’d be so happy again. They’d talked about building a life, him and Janny. They’d talked about the house, children, work, everything. Ups and downs, richer and poor and all that romantic bullshit that Daen so often grumbled about. But…
Christmas. He may or may not make it even to Christmas now.
The rumble of a car pulling into Daen’s driveway sounded and Daen mechanically walked over to the door when he heard the bell ring. The door opened almost without him realizing he was the one opening it and Janny breezed into the house, smelling of apple blossoms and cinnamon.
“Hi, you!” Janny greeted with a smile like a thousand stars as she toed off her shoes in the entryway and dropped her bags. “Oof, sorry. Heavy bag.” She turned to give a more official hello and her smile slowly slid from her face.
Daen stared at her, drinking in the sight of her as if for the first time in years. Blonde hair turned even lighter in the sun, the spotting of a slowly-fading tan on her shoulders and arms, large bright eyes that shone with intelligence. How many times had he looked at her and never seen her like he saw her now - never appreciated the fact that it might be the very last time?
“Daen? Are you okay?” she asked and stepped closer to him. “What’s wrong?”
Daen cradled her face in his hands like she was made of glass and pressed a kiss to her lips.
“Marry me before Christmas,” he murmured to her. “Marry me tomorrow.”
