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this is how my smut sounds when i’m not horny

Kit and Dru deciding on which cult to join

Dru: How about the Crimson Hand?

Kit: Nah, I’ve heard of them, their founder is some loser who probably lives in his mom’s basement and calls himself ‘The Great Poison’, and they don’t even worship a cool demon

*somewhere across the country*

Magnus, sneezing uncontrollably: Someone’s talking shit.

#kit herondale #dru blackthorn #magnus bane #the shadowhunter chronicles #incorrect tsc quotes #tsc #the dark artifices #tda #magnor the type to start a cult drunk #but kru the type to join a cult drunk #or sober

Prompt 19: Where the Heart Is

~patria est, ubi cor est~

Nonna was forever cross-stitching things. But her oldest work -- needled when Laelia’s parents first got married -- still hung within the kitchen of the family restaurant, yellowed with equal parts age and, well, fumes most likely. That wasn’t to say they ran a dirty establishment, hells no. Belisario in Culina was highly respected and, if the usual traffic was anything to go by, quite popular besides. Laelia couldn’t remember a day that hadn’t been hectic growing up. She’d return home from school and immediately be put to work. That’s just how things were.

While her older siblings buzzed around the tables or handled the till, Laelia had preferred staying in the kitchen helping Nonna and Papa cook. There just was something quintessentially Garlean about preparing food and sharing meals. Everything about it was social. Everything about it was fun. Every recipe was steeped in tradition and love.

So she couldn’t really help begging leave to return there when she was recovered enough to walk again. The medicus assigned to her was skeptical -- that Adder’s poison had been something else -- but it was hard not to argue that some light physical activity would aid in the pilot’s recovery. Laelia was at last granted permission to stay with her family, on the condition she check in daily until she was fit for service again.

Her arrival marked the first time her parents and siblings seemed happy to see her. They were so damn proud. She was making something of herself, after all. She was serving and protecting the Empire! Laelia forced a smile and tried to wave them off, not having the heart to tell them they’d lost the Wall, or that Castrum Abania had fired on Specula Imperatoris. They all were so drunk on propaganda that she had no hope of sobering them to reality. What a world she’d returned to, where truth was conspiracy.

But Papa knew that look in her eyes from his sniper days. He silently handed her a crate of vegetables with a kind smile. Laelia set to dicing like it was the most important job in the world, because in all honesty there was nothing she wanted to do more right then. Cooking was an act of creation. She was feeding people. She was improving lives and days in some small manner.

It was strange, in a way, to see how little had changed at home -- other than the restaurant staff. Her parents had had to hire teenagers to wait tables now that her siblings were all grown up and moved out. They were about as reliable as one would expect and, when two called in sick one day, Laelia had been forced to cover for them. Naturally, that was the day when every asshole in Garlemald decided they wanted to go out for some cannoli. The lone solace she had all evening was a quiet woman sitting by herself at a corner table, reading while slowly working away at her noodles. It was only by chance, as Laelia moved in to refill her wine, that she caught the title of her book: philosophy from the old republic -- banned before either of them had even been born.

Their eyes met, and the woman gave an easy smile.

“Research for the Senate. Not to worry.”

“You’re a senator?”

“Goodness no.” She laughed. “I’m a staffer for a senator -- Faustina fae Ledicus of the Populares.”

“Yeah?” Laelia asked. “Why’s she so interested in that book?”

The woman waved to the adjacent seat invitingly, and Laelia found herself plopping down against her better judgement.

The conversation that followed would change her entire life.

#ffxivwrite2020 #laelia jen belisar #in which i infect this with growing up italian #not exactly roman but we're close enough #food is a whole THING in italian families #nobody goes home hungry #or sober