6. What’s your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year?
This one comes from an unposted, nearly finished fic. The context is that Dess is finally moving out of Sana’s apartment and in with Hannah and Alli:
“You’re sure you’ll be okay on your own?” Dess asked Sana as she secured the last crate. “I can probably convince Cassia to move in if you find yourself missing having an insufferable turian around.”
Sana shook her head as she rolled her eyes, chuckling. “You are moving a few blocks over, not to Palaven.” She winked and added, “I am looking forward to the quiet, actually.”
Dess gave an exaggerated sigh as she sent the command to the pallet to start moving toward the door. “You know you’ll miss my wild sex parties.”
“So will you,” Sana said. “You cannot have those with a kid at home.”
Dess flicked her mandibles in a lopsided grin. “A minor scheduling challenge.”
In a gesture Dess had rarely seen, Sana threw her arms around her and held tight. “I am proud of you,” she said, her face buried against Dess’s shoulder. “I am happy for you too, but mostly proud. You and Hannah fit each other. I know you will be happy together.”
Dess returned the embrace, her voice suddenly and inexplicably failing her. They stood there for a moment more before Sana stepped back and swiped at her glistening cheek.
“Be good to each other, okay?” she said, a short laugh in her voice. “Don’t let your dishes pile up in the sink, and put your laundry in the hamper instead of leaving it on the floor.”
Dess rolled her eyes. “Since when have I not cleaned up after myself?”
“Never,” Sana voice cracked. “I just needed something to say.”
Ngl, I made myself tear up there :P
7. What’s your favorite piece of description or narration?
I think one of my favorite OCs to write for is Dess, mostly because she’s so introspective. If she were human, I can see her being something like a Djuna Barnes or Vita Sackville-West—artistic and gifted with word, slightly scandalous but in the way a lot of rich people are, like not getting invited to parties you probably didn’t want to go to in the first place kind of scandalous but otherwise unaffected. So I liked delving into some of her musings here:
Spirits, it was a strange feeling—taking off without knowing where to land.
There had been a time in her life when Dess didn’t think too far into the future. She’d wanted to make general someday, yes, but it had been more of a vague desire than a hard ambition with timelines and milestones to achieve. She’d also spent her days flying the most fearsome combat plane in the galaxy—damn what a rush. Then, most nights, she would take that adrenaline to bed with the first willing body. Short-field takeoffs, short-field landings. No long flights.
All that ended after Shanxi, though.
It hadn’t been a smooth transition, not exactly, but a surprisingly welcome one. If anyone had asked Dess—Major Odessus Ravaka of THS Honorable, daughter of Taetrus’s most vicious political varren and Minister of the Interior Lavina Ravaka—whether she would ever find herself holding a steady desk job that took more thinking than shooting and looking forward to nightly dinners with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s daughter, well. Her younger self would’ve laughed until she felt lightheaded.
🍄 What are your OCs favourite snacks? Their favourite comfort food which always cheers them up when they’re down? Favourite meal to make? Do they enjoy baking and cooking and are they any good in the kitchen? For any or all of your OCs (but especially Hannah, Dess, Sana <3) please and thank you!
Thank you, dear friend! <3
Hannah Shepard
Hannah has an insatiable sweet tooth. She has her personal VI keep track of birthdays aboard Einstein for two reasons: morale and cake. The first reason is important, but the second is not insignificant. Given her choice of sweets, however, she loves anything that’s chocolate and hazelnut. Little chocolates like Reese’s Pieces or peanut M&Ms are dangerous because she’ll lose track of how many she’s actually eaten until the bag is empty.
When it comes to comfort food, though, she’ll go for anything that’s easy. Canned tomato soup. Grilled cheese sandwich. Jarred alfredo on frozen raviolis. If she’s sad, she wants carbs and a short wait time.
Her favorite meal to make is ordering pizza (New York style, with pepperoni and onions). She’s been told more than a few times she’s not a great cook, so prefers to embrace her other skills while also feeding her family :P
Odessus Ravaka
Dess is a grazer, so she usually has some kind of food within arm’s reach. Her favorite grazing snack is a bit like trail mix: a mixture of turian chocolate, nuts, and dried fruit, especially when that fruit is Taetrian, but that’s harder to find on the Citadel. Her second choice is graxen, but it doesn’t have the salty/sweet taste she prefers.
Her favorite comfort food is louza soup, which is a bit like chicken soup. Her dad used to make it for her when she was a kid and either sick or “sick.” Her mother tended to be too busy with state affairs and usually delegated the more time-consuming things, like being an attentive parent, to her husband and house staff. Louza soup was pretty much the only thing Dess’s dad knew how to make, but Dess loved it every time he did.
Generally, Dess is pretty good in the kitchen—it’s just too bad she’s the only one who can eat most of what she makes. She’s especially proud of her ability to make the perfect, medium-rare nathak steak every single time, and other than a pinch of salt, it's flavorful enough to need little seasoning. When it comes to baking, however, she tends to keep her distance from things that require kneading or chilling. For one thing, she hates getting the dough stuck in her talons; for another, she gets impatient when she can’t eat the thing she’s making the same day she starts to make it. She will, however, make a pretty mean dessert that resembles a fruit cobbler :P
Sana T’Oriza
Sana’s approach to food is the picture of organization. While there are foods she enjoys more than others, she thinks of nutrition before anything. Her snacks tend to be fruits and vegetables and sometimes nuts. She’ll have one snack midmorning and one snack midafternoon, and before bed, she’ll have a warm drink to help her sleep. She is disgustingly healthy.
That being said, she’s always had a weakness for carbs when she’s feeling down, and ever since humans started opening ice cream parlors and bakeries on the Citadel, she’s found herself more tempted than ever. After acclimating herself to human confectionaries, she’s found a new affinity for oatmeal raisin cookies and will indulge every now and then :P
She’s had a long time to learn her way around a kitchen, regardless of how full her pantry is, so she has quite a few recipes she knows by heart. Her favorite to prepare is a dish with lots of sauteed and preserved vegetables and poached eggs, not unlike shakshouka. It’s easy and tends to clear out lingering veg, but mostly she enjoys watching the eggs turn white and then spill when she cuts into them. She’s not partial to baking, but she enjoys learning new recipes and techniques. If she makes anything sweet or on the dessert end of the spectrum, she’ll usually give it away to someone else to enjoy, saving only a single portion for herself.
Thank you again :D It’s fun to get back inside their heads after such a long hiatus!
Ahead of the coming Legendary Edition, I’m throwing caution to the wind and posting my first attempt at sexytimes. This one’s supposed to be a year or so after Alli enlists. Please enjoy :D
On AO3
Illium Holiday
The transport ride from the Citadel to Illium had been long and tedious, and Odessus Ravaka’s limbs complained as she stretched them in the terminal to get the blood going again. Another traveler leered at her surreptitiously as he sauntered by—she didn’t miss the swing in his hips or the tilt of his long fringe at her—and she answered with a hum and a dip of her mandibles that said I’m not even remotely interested. He shrugged and moved on, which was fortunate. Tonight, all she wanted to do was check into her hotel, wash off the grime of travel, and sleep through the length of two shifts without even thinking about it.
Of course, as is often the case with travel, it could never be that simple. It took an hour for her to get her luggage. Then, the queue for a taxi was monstrous, and by the time she finally got to the front of it, her feet hurt and her hands sweated inside her gloves from holding her bags so tight. (Illium wasn’t Omega, but people would still rob you blind given half a chance—they had that in common.)
Then it took another hour to get to the spirits-forsaken hotel—where of course there was another feet-achingly long queue. Why had she decided to come here? Why hadn’t she just gone home to Taetrus, put in the time with her family, and earned another few years of people not prying into her life?
Probably because of that prying bit, she thought and sighed internally. Besides, she’d never been to Illium before, and she’d heard lots of good things. As long as you were cautious and alert, you could do just about anything you wanted with complete anonymity here. Plenty of people used Illium’s lax laws as a license to commit as much depravity as they pleased, but Odessus just wanted to disappear for a while, to get out from under the feel of constant scrutiny that life on the Citadel—and even Taetrus—so often engendered. It would be nice to be no one, even if it was only temporary.
Besides, it wasn’t all bad. At the moment, she stood behind another guest with an exceptional waist—for a human, at least. And the way her dark red hair was pulled into a tight rope of a braid that swayed down her back afforded Odessus a view of her especially long and slender neck and strong shoulders. Not that she was into humans or anything. But she could appreciate the way her waist twisted and moved as she leaned and shifted her weight, right?
Oh, that fic is both one I’m very much looking forward to finishing and also one I rather dread picking up again. Not because it’s a bad or boring story, mind you! Just emotionally taxing. It deals largely with the aftermath of Shepard’s (Alchera) death and how it affects Hannah (the idea behind the title being there’s no word, in English, for someone whose child is dead), but that’s really just the beginning. The meat of the story is Hannah’s knowledge of and involvement in Shepard’s resurrection—which is to say, late, limited, and adamantly against but incapable of stopping. I can’t get too much further into the details without spoiling some late chapters of Family Resemblance, but here’s a snippet:
The image of Alli lying still and breathless flashed through her mind unbidden, and Hannah’s inside turned cold and hollow. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, inhaling and exhaling one slow breath at a time.
Keep it together, Hannah. Just get home.
How many times had she watched Alli breathing in her sleep as a baby? She could still feel her quick heartbeat against her chest. It had seemed miraculous that something so small and fragile could ever exist—and so frightening to think Hannah might one day fail in protecting her. Alli had grown strong and quick and even ruthless—a soldier in every sense—but that day had come all the same.
Hannah glanced up to see she was nearly to her door, and put a hand over her mouth. Just a little farther.
She jumped out of the sky car almost before it stopped and took long, quick strides toward the door. Through sheer force of will, she made it all the way to the kitchen sink before her stomach turned itself inside out. When there was nothing left inside her, she let the water run and scooped it into her mouth to rinse out the foulness.
Memories of sitting up late at night when Alli was sick came to mind, and her hand tingled with the feel of Alli’s fevered, clammy forehead beneath it. She’d been so afraid, she couldn’t have slept if she wanted to. When the fever broke the next morning, Hannah nearly cried. Part of her thought that if Alli would’ve had any siblings, Hannah would’ve handled those common emergencies more fluidly. But that had been pointless speculation. Alli was all she ever had. And now she was . . . somewhere. Nowhere.
Was she floating, frozen through space? Had she burned up in the atmosphere over that strange planet? Was she battered, burnt, broken—
“Han!” Dess broke through Hannah’s increasingly worse thoughts as she rushed past the kitchen, saw her, and hurried back. “Drescher called me and said—” she stopped short as Hannah turned off the water and didn’t look at her. “No.”
Hannah barked a bitter laugh. “You got it a hell of a lot faster than I did.”
Ah yes. Illium Holiday. Tbh, I was hoping this one would kind of get lost in the mix, but rules are rules :P
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s my first attempt at smut :D In fact, it’s not technically a WIP because it’s finished (heh), but I can’t post it yet because of other plotty things. Though, I suppose it doesn’t really spoil anything I haven’t spoiled here? I dunno, I’ll have to take a look at it again to reconsider :P
The gist: Dess goes to Illium for a much needed vacation and meets someone very interesting. Things progress from there. Here’s a snippet:
At the moment, she stood behind another guest with an exceptional waist—for a human, at least. And the way her dark red hair was pulled into a tight rope of a braid that swayed down her back afforded Odessus a view of her long and slender neck and strong shoulders. Not that she was into humans or anything. But she could appreciate the way her waist twisted and moved as she leaned and shifted her weight, right?
“Lines are the worst part of traveling don’t you think?”
Odessus snapped her eyes back up to the human’s face, which was now turned enough that she could talk to her over her shoulder. Odessus felt her neck warm and she fumbled for a response.
“That and lost luggage,” she offered, chiding herself internally for having leered so openly.
The human’s mouth turned up, and the corners around her sea-green eyes wrinkled. It was a nice smile. Friendly but in an easy, intimate way, like she’d known Odessus all her life. The human turned the rest of her body so that they could talk more easily.
“I’ve been lucky enough not to have that happen to me,” she said. “What about you? Are you lucky too?”
Odessus flicked her mandibles out. “I usually get lucky, yeah,” she said, and the human’s smile grew.
She put out her hand, “I’m Hannah. Hannah Shepard.”
Odessus took her hand and shook it, surprised by her firm grip. “What brings you here, Hannah?”
She shrugged one shoulder and said, “I had some shore leave to use or lose, and I thought I’d explore the galaxy a little bit. I took the names of a few places I’ve been curious to see and put them through a randomizing program. The first one to pop up was Illium, so here I am. What about you?”
“Something like that,” she said and flicked her mandibles in a grin. “You’re military?”
Hannah nodded and gave a little salute. “Yes, ma’am. Alliance Navy. I’m currently stationed at the Citadel, so it’ll be nice to get my feet on some solid ground for a bit.” Odessus thought for a moment the human’s eyes looked her up and down, but she was probably mistaken. “Where are you coming from?”
Odessus felt a small thrill go through her. “The Citadel. I work for C-Sec.”
Hannah cocked her head to the side, and Odessus carefully kept from looking at what the gesture did to the length and curve of her neck. “What a coincidence. We might’ve passed each other a hundred times before and never known it.”
“Oh, I’d remember you,” Odessus said without thinking and felt her neck warm again.
@1esk19 drew the scene between Hannah and Dess early in Hawks and Doves and it’s just *chef’s kiss*. Like seriously, this is EXACTLY how I imagined it. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF IT’S SO PERFECT.
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!
I’ve been a big fan of @1esk19’s fanart for a VERY long time, and this is just. AAAAAHHHH!
Let me just say, if you like her fanart for Mass Effect, you’re gonna LOVE her fic. Somewhere Among the Stars is INCREDIBLE. And I should know because I’ve been beta reading it, and I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. @1esk19 is that rare sort who both writes AND arts. WHAT.
IT’S INCREDIBLE. YOU’RE MISSING OUT IF YOU DON’T READ HER FIC.
So, this one is Iris, though I do plan to do one for Daffodil too. But I’ve thought a lot about how the Vallum Blast would affect Dess, being from Vallum herself. Thank you for the prompt and enjoy :D
You can also read it on AO3!
valor: (n) strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to encounter danger with firmness: personal bravery
***
News of the Vallum Blast was on a constant loop on every station. Everywhere she looked, Dess found another reminder, another devastating image that left her cold and nauseated.
She hadn’t been home since . . . well, home was too strong a word, but Vallum had been her family’s hearth since the city’s founding, long before even the Unification War. She could’ve had her arm amputated and it would hurt less than seeing a crater of rubble and ruin in the place where she grew up, the place where her family . . .
Within hours of the news, Executor Chellick issued carte blanche leave to anyone in C-Sec with ties to Taetrus. To grieve. To search for loved ones. To fight.
A transport carrying volunteers would leave in two hours. With priority traffic clearance and a relay already on the edge of the Mactare system, Dess could be there inside a day.
“You’re going?” Han asked. Anyone else might’ve missed the strained note of panic kept in check in her voice, but for Dess it rang like an alarm bell.
Grabbing an old footlocker—dusty from disuse, kept all these years from nostalgia rather than out of some expected need—from the hall closet was a convenient excuse for Dess to avoid looking at Han. “I have to.”
“No, you don’t,” Han said, her voice hardening from panic to defiance. “The Hierarchy has plenty of soldiers they can throw into that meat grinder. You don’t have to be one of them.”
Dess moved into the bedroom and started gathering her clothes to fold compactly into her bag. A couple decades might have passed since she’d served, but old habits died hard. “It’s not like that,” she said. “As a volunteer, I’ll be behind the frontline most of the time and—”
“What frontline, Odessus!” Han wasn’t one to raise her voice, and the sound of it made Dess grow still. “They flew a goddamn spaceship at the whole fucking planet!”
“I know.” Dess’s heart pounded hard against her chest, but she kept her eyes on the task in front of her.
“People were already dead before the fucking thing even made impact!”
“I know.” Dad . . . Mom . . . Hadrian?
“They can do it again, and you wouldn’t even—”
“I know, Hannah!” Dess snapped, a high keen threatening in her throat. Finally, she turned her full attention on Han, anger and grief tearing at her voice. “I know they can do it again. Right now, it’s my family who’s gone, and tomorrow it could be someone else’s. I can’t just do nothing and let that happen. Again.”
“And if you go, I’ll lose my family!” Tears streamed from Han’s eyes, but she still held onto her defiance. “I can’t do that again. Not after Alli. Not you. I can’t—”
All the anger went out of Dess, and she reached for Han, pulling her close until Dess could press her brow to Han’s. “You’re not going to lose me. I promise. But I need to do this. My family, my parents, everyone, they’re—”
Her voice finally broke and her shoulders trembled under the weight of her grief. She could feel Han sob, something she hoped she’d never have to feel again after the news of . . . of Alchera had reached them.
Han put her arms around Dess. “I know,” she said, her voice watery. “But I’m going to hold you to that promise. If you die over there, I’ll kill you.”
Dess huffed a short laugh. Her subvocals vibrated all on their own, even without her prompting. I love you, too.
#
The impact crater—centered on where the Radiatum, the main parliamentary building, had stood—was five kilometers in diameter, but the devastation rippled so much farther. Evidence of the destruction saturated the landscape.
Turians of all ages were wrapped in bloodied gauze and hooked to IV cocktails to clot internal bleeding, fight infection, and replace fluids they’d lost—and they’d been the lucky ones on the outskirts of the city, hit by the shockwave rather than the blast itself.
The streets, or what was left of them, were lit by twisted, still-glowing metal rather than streetlamps.
What had been proud, tall buildings were now jagged, hollowed-out skeletons.
Vehicles lay on the street crumpled to a fraction of their original size.
A jaundiced, apocalyptic glow from the fallout hung over the city day and night.
The acrid malodor of burned flesh, drying blood, and still-living bodies turning sceptic was a constant companion, even with the protective equipment she lugged from one pile of rubble to the next.
Ash and wisps of curling smoke threatened to claw down her throat should she even consider removing her air filter.
She’d gotten straight to work when she arrived. From the moment her boots hit the tarmac of the landing pad, she’d had her assignment and her chain of command. Search and rescue. Lieutenant Araxus. Bunk 347, shift 2.
There’d been only enough time to kick her footlocker into place before she joined a squad of six to take on their section of the grid. After nine hours, they’d cleared two square kilometers and not a single living body. She’d had enough energy to wait for her bunkmate to rouse and vacate the cot before falling down, every muscle and tendon finally failing her.
As her eyes closed and she tried to ignore the instinct to reach for a soft, warm body beside her, the day’s work floated into her mind like sewage water from a blocked pipe. The unrecognizable bodies. The pieces of bodies. The places where bodies had clearly been but nothing salvageable remained. They’d taken genetic samples where they could—she wondered just how many people were too obliterated even for that—so their families could have some closure and might find rest in knowing what happened.
Ravaka didn’t.
#
After a week, the search and rescue operations were reclassified as search and recovery. If there had been any survivors, the chances of them still being alive were vanishingly slim. While a part of Ravaka was gutted to think there was no one left to help, another part of her whispered relief.
No more hope meant more no more disappointment.
No more ticking clock meant no more exhausting pace.
No more lives to save meant no more families to fail.
Finally free to turn off her emotions altogether, Ravaka spent her days picking through rubble, documenting the bodies she found in quiet numbness. She knew it would need to be addressed eventually, but for the moment at least, the levees holding back her own grief and trauma were tall and strong and doubly reinforced.
#
“You must have some kind of leave, right?” Dess could hear the strain in Han’s voice, however much she was clearly trying to suppress it. “You’re a volunteer, they can’t keep you forever.”
Dess scratched her mandible, considering how to respond. “I . . . don’t think we have the same understanding of volunteering. My job here isn’t done yet.”
Han let out a long sigh, cut short by an audible swallow and small hitch in her voice. “I know. I just worry. I miss you.”
When they disconnected, she lay back and scrubbed her hands over her face. Somewhere in the barracks, someone was taken by a coughing fit. Dess wondered idly how she would hide it from Han during their calls when she eventually began coughing too. It wasn’t an unexpected risk working in a disaster zone like this one. Even with the air filters and the decontamination chambers at the entrance of the prefab barracks, the particulates in the air were very fine and tenacious. Things would get worse for everyone for some time before they got better for anyone.
She closed her eyes, hoping to get some rest, possibly some shallow sleep before she would have to relinquish her bunk to one of its other occupants. Her mind had only begun to drift when a sudden uproar outside snapped her back to attention.
As others rose from their bunks around her, she knew she hadn’t imagined it. The sound swelled when someone opened the door to the outside. Grabbing her mask, Ravaka hurried toward the commotion.
The crowd seemed to swarm toward the camp’s medical center. As the sound turned to cheers, Ravaka’s heart thumped hard against her chest. Was it . . .
Her wrist buzzed with a priority message. A low orange glow lit the crowd around her as others checked the same alert.
BREAKING: Survivor of Vallum Blast recovered after 10 days beneath the rubble. This is a developing story. Check back for more details later.
A grainy, low-quality video showed a crew of turian volunteers in a chain pulling a juvenile, who couldn’t have been more than eight years old, from the debris field and placing her on the ground to check her vitals before transferring her to a gurney. She was clearly emaciated—her plates, still soft with youth, hung loose against her hide, her remaining down was matted and gray, and she didn’t have the strength to hold her mandibles against her jaws—but she was alive and responsive.
Despite the swirling ash and smoke, despite the air filled with death and despair, Dess felt herself breathe easy for the first time since she’d heard the news of the blast.
Things might still get worse, but they’d found someone. Alive. There was hope.
