Aries moon: Physical movement, scream into a pillow, rage rooms, martial arts, spicy food also helps- your emotional turmoil will pass quickly
Taurus moon: Home cooked food, good sleep, clean environment are a must- you have your own pace of processing emotions and that is okay never let someone tell you otherwise.
Gemini moon: Therapy, talk it out, write it down, don't overanalyze shit try to structure ur thoughts somehow using conversation, and avoid escapism; embrace vulnerability
Cancer moon: Cry it out, work with the depths of your emotions, focus on yourself and on self care rather than on people.
Leo moon: Frequent haircuts are a must, style yourself well, get into projects or initiatives that allow you to shine/to express your creativity, being generous, giving and supportive fulfills you.
Virgo moon: Show up not only for others but for yourself, do not reject people's support, prioritize urself and don't feel bad for receiving.
Libra moon: Always look good, beauty rituals, pleasant environment, write poetry, make art, talk it out with loved ones and especially your partner- you appreciate acts of service so choose people who match your love language.
Scorpio moon: Surrender to your emotions; to the weight and pain of it all, it is meant to teach you something. Alchemize the pain in order to transform into a more resilient version of yourself.
Sagittarius moon: Always always keep your curiosity alive, move, travel, discover- no matter what you are going through preserve your adventurous spirit. Religious or philosophical or esoteric teachings may help you find your purpose and live meaningfully.
Capricorn moon: You need structure in order to survive. Have a clear short term and long term plan and develop the discipline to follow through with it. But make space for your emotions- think of it like this: there is no structured way of being that excludes emotional balance, your emotions are part of you and they must be verbalized or you know expressed somehow from time to time.
Aquarius moon: Accept your own way of handling your emotions, don't be too overly restrictive. Ups and downs are normal for you, joining a community of like-minded people or doing charity/volunteer work will fulfill you.
Pisces moon: Embrace your sensitivity, communicating your thoughts and boundaries helps unless the situation very clearly does not call for it- not everybody is out to get you sometimes people mean well and do not realize the weight of their words. Do not keep your hurt feelings to yourself.
Comment down your Moon aspects and house for more info!!
Check for ascendant, ascendant ruler, and sign & house stellium or heavy concentration of strong planets.
Gryffindor
Tacking action | bravery, chivalry, impulse | The Sun & Mars
House Concentrations
5H doing things for the thrill & the audience
1H instinctual push to act & exist distinctly
Aries - they run towards fights. They’re hella bold and act without thinking twice about it. If there’s a challenge they wanna be the first one to face it. They don't care about the risks, they only care about being the leader and showing they aren't afraid of anything.
Leo - they want to be seen as the hero. They’re loud and brave because they have a lot of pride and dignity. They’ll protect their people but also want the credit for it. They live for the spotlight and have the guts to stand up when everyone else stays quiet about things.
Sagittarius - fits cuz they’re restless and like to take big risks for the hell of it. They don't like being told what to do and will fight for their own sense of freedom. They have a blunt kind of courage and aren't afraid to explore the unknown. They act on gut feelings and never back down from dares.
Slytherin
Self-preservation | ambition, strategy, resourcefulness | Saturn & Mars
House Concentrations
12H operating in the shadows, using discretion
10H having authority, commanding hierarchy
8H hidden influence & leverage on other’s resources
2H owning what you need for survival & independence
Taurus - they care about money and comfort. They’re stubborn and want to own things. They don't move for anyone and willing to wait till they get what they want. They focus on keeping themselves safe and rich.
Scorpio - they want power and keep secrets. They watch everyone to find a weakness. They are quiet but they play to win. They don't trust easily and only care about their own survival and control.
Capricorn - here to be the boss. They’re cold and do the work to get to the top of hierarchies. They don't care about feelings, they care about results and status. They use people and tools to build wins that lasts.
9H high-level logic/law systems & objective truths
3H technical skills & exchanging information
Gemini - they focus on the facts and the evidence. They’re driven by needing to know how everything works and collecting as much information as possible for stimulation. They think fast and can handle multiple ideas at once. For them life is like a series of puzzles to solve, and primarily use their intellect to navigate the world.
Virgo - fits because they’re precise and focused on the intricate details that make everything work. They don't guess, they analyze. They want things to be accurate and functional. Virgos use logic to fix problems and make processes better on the long run. They value competence and have high standards, using their intelligence to keep everything in order and operating correctly.
Aquarius - they value objective truths over any social norm. They think for themselves and don't really care if their ideas seem too strange or experimental to others. They’re interested in systems, logic, and the future. They use a detached, bird’s-eye view to understand the world and find the most efficient way to get things done.
Hufflepuff
Stability | loyalty, fairness, service | Moon & Venus
House Concentrations
11H networks & alliances that support individuals
6H repetitive labor required for maintenance
7H focusing on reliable partnerships & contracts
4H familial/domestic foundations for root support
Cancer - fits here because they focus on nurturing the tribe. They’re protective of their own and work to keep peace. They’re pretty reliable when things get difficult and stay loyal to their own circle. For them the priority is making sure the people they care about are safe and have what they need.
Libra - they care about fairness. They don't like conflict and try to make sure everyone is treated the same. They work hard to balance things out and keep their environment stable. They’re the ones who try to find a middle ground so that the group can keep moving forward without a fight.
Pisces - they’re helpful and don't care about being the boss. They are usually the ones who go along with the plan to keep things running smooth. They’re patient and stay in the background to support the team. They value being useful to others and don't feel the need to compete for the spotlight.
How Hadrian’s Wall is Revealing a Hidden Side of Roman History
A party invitation. A broken flipflop. A wig. Letters of complaint about road conditions, and an urgent request for more beer.
It sounds like the aftermath of a successful spring break, but these items are nearly 2,000 years old.
They’re just some of the finds from Hadrian’s Wall – the 73-mile stone wall built as the northwestern boundary of the Roman Empire, sealing off Britannia (modern-day England and Wales) from Caledonia (essentially today’s Scotland).
While most of us think of Pompeii and Herculaneum if we’re thinking of everyday objects preserved from ancient Rome, this outpost in the wild north of the empire is home to some of the most extraordinary finds.
“It’s a very dramatic stamp on the countryside – there’s nothing more redolent of saying you’re entering the Roman empire than seeing that structure,” says Richard Abdy, lead curator of the British Museum’s current exhibition, Legion, which spotlights the everyday life of Roman soldiers, showcasing many finds from Hadrian’s Wall in the process. A tenth of the Roman army was based in Britain, and that makes the wall a great source of military material, he says.
But it’s not all about the soldiers, as excavations are showing.
A multicultural melting pot
Hadrian, who ordered the wall to be built in 122CE after a visit to Britannia, had a different vision of empire than his predecessors, says Frances McIntosh, curator for English Heritage’s 34 sites along Hadrian’s Wall.
“All the emperors before him were about expanding the empire, but Hadrian was known as the consolidator,” she says. He relinquished some of the territory acquired by his predecessor Trajan, and “decided to set the borders” – literally, in some cases, with wooden poles at sites in Germany, or with stone in Britannia. Where those poles rotted thousands of years ago, the wall is still standing: “A great visual reminder” of the Roman empire, says McIntosh.
It’s not just a wall. There’s a castle every mile along, and turrets at every third-of-a-mile point, with ditches and banks both north and south. “You can imagine the kind of impact that would have had, not just on the landscape but on the people living in the area,” says McIntosh.
And thanks to the finds from the wall, we know a surprising amount about those people.
Although historians have long thought of army outposts as remote, male-dominant places, the excavations along the wall show that’s not the case. Not only were soldiers accompanied by their families, but civilians would settle around the settlements to do business. “ You can almost see Housesteads as a garrison town,” says McIntosh. “There were places you could go for a drink and so on.”
The Roman rule of thumb was not to post soldiers in the place they came from, because of the risk of rebellion. That meant Hadrian’s Wall was a cultural melting point, with cohorts from modern-day Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Algeria, Iraq, Syria – and more. “It was possibly more multicultural because it was a focus point,” says McIntosh, who says that the surrounding community might have included traders from across the empire.
Soldiers were split into two groups. Legionaries were Roman citizens from Italy, who had more rights than other soldiers and imported olive oil, wine and garum (a sauce made from decomposing fish).
They worked alongside auxiliaries – soldiers from conquered provinces, who had fewer rights, but could usually acquire citizenship after 25 years of service.
Soldiers carved their names and regiments on stones to show which part of the wall they built – around 50 of them are on display at Chesters fort.
But the wall shows that women and children were equally present.
McIntosh says that pottery brought to the camps – from the Low Countries and North Africa – shows that the soldiers “brought their families, who cooked in traditional style.” Archaeologists have found what seems to be an ancient tagine for North African-style cooking.
A tombstone from Arbeia fort for a woman named Regina shows she was a freed slave from southern Britain who was bought by – and married to – a Syrian soldier.
Another woman buried at Birdoswald fort was laid to rest with chainmail that appears to be from modern-day Poland. “Perhaps she married someone in the army,” says McIntosh, who calls the wall a “melting pot of people from all over the world under the banner of the army.”
“They brought their own religions, as well as worshipping Roman gods and adopting local deities,” she adds. At Carrawburgh, a temple to Mithras – an originally Persian deity – sat near a spring with a shrine to a local water spirit.
‘Wretched little Brits’
Some of the most extraordinary finds from the Roman empire are coming from one site on Hadrian’s Wall: Vindolanda. Here, archaeologists have found a wealth of organic remains because of what curator Barbara Birley calls the “unusual conditions onsite.”
At Vindolanda there are the remains of at least nine forts over 14 levels. “When the Romans would leave, they would knock down timber forts, and cover the area with turf and clay, sealing the layers underneath,” she says.
“Because it happened so many times, the bottom five or six layers are sealed in anaerobic conditions, so things don’t decay. When we get down there, we get wooden objects, textiles, anything organic.”
Vindolanda has the largest collection of Roman textiles from a single site in western Europe, as well as the largest leather collection of any site in the Roman empire – including 5,000 shoes, and even a broken leather flip-flop. “We probably had a population of 3,000 to 6,000 depending on the period, so 5,000 is a lot,” says Birley. For Abdy, the shoes evoke the conditions of the wet borderlands. “Women’s and children’s shoes are hobnailed – you needed it in the mucky frontier dirt tracks. They’re very evocative.”
There’s even a wig made from a local plant, hair moss, which is said to repel midges – the scourge of Scotland during the summer. A centurion’s helmet is also crested with hairmoss – the ancient equivalent of spraying yourself with insect repellent.
The first woman to write in Latin
One of the most famous finds is the trove of wooden writing tablets – the largest found anywhere.
“They give a snapshot of what life was actually like,” says Birley. “We understand so much more from written correspondence than from ‘stuff,’ and, archaeologically, it’s the stuff that usually survives – things like metals and ceramics.
“These were written in ink, not on a wax stylus tablet, and we believe they were used for what we’d put in emails: ‘The roads are awful,’ ‘The soldiers need more beer.’ Everyday business.”
The tablets – or “personal letters” as Birley describes them – were found on the site of a bonfire when the ninth cohort of Batavians (in the modern-day Netherlands) were told to move on.
“They had a huge bonfire and lots of letters were chucked in the fire. Some have been singed – we think it may have rained,” she says. One of them calls the locals “Britunculi” – “wretched little Brits.” Another talks about an outbreak of pinkeye. One claims that the roads are too bad to send wagons; another laments that the soldiers have run out of beer.
Among the 1,700 letters are 20 that mention a woman called Sulpicia Lepidina. She was the wife of the commander of the garrison, and seems to have played a crucial role. There’s a letter to her from another woman, Paterna, agreeing to send her two medicines, one a fever cure.
Birley says it’s similar to today. “If you’re a group of moms, still today we say, ‘Do you have the Calpol?’ It’s very human.” For Abdy, it’s a sign that women were traders. “She’s clearly flogging her medicines,” he says. “It’s really great stuff.”
Another tablet is an invite from Claudia Severa, the wife of another commander at a nearby camp. It’s an invitation to a birthday party. Under the formal invitation, presumably written by a scribe, is a scrawl in another hand: “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul.”
Presumably written by Claudia herself, it is thought to be the earliest example of a woman’s handwriting in Latin.
Without the organic finds – the shoes and the letters that indisputably belonged to women, unlike jewellery or weaving equipment – it’s difficult to prove conclusively that women lived in significant numbers. Vindolanda “illustrate the missing gaps,” says Abdy.
For Birley, they prove that women were as crucial a part of army communities as men. “Before the Lepidina tablets were found we didn’t really understand the interactions between the soldiers and their wives,” she says. Another tablet is written by what is thought to be a Spanish standard-bearer’s common-law wife, ordering military equipment for her partner.
“The Vindolanda collection is showing that there weren’t just camp followers and prostitutes; women were part of everyday life, and contributing to the military community in many ways,” says Birley.
Abdy says that Hadrian’s Wall is interesting because the resident women span “all classes of society,” from Regina – the dead freedwoman, who would have been “bottom of the heap” – to the trader Paterna and the noblewoman Lepidina.
And of course, there’s the wall itself.
“In the Netherlands and Germany the finds are often stunning and better preserved – you go to museums and are bowled over. But in terms of structural remains, Hadrian’s Wall must be among the best,” says McIntosh, modestly, of her site.
Abdy agrees: “I can’t think of many symbols so redolent of imperial will than that wall.”
Warnings: This work of fiction is intended for 18+ audiences only. Includes explicit sexual content, graphic language, etc. Author chooses to not extensively tag in order to preserve some elements of storytelling.
Word Count: 7,337
Moonlight slants through the suite’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the glow casting across the king-sized bed where Jisung and Olivia lie sprawled in drunken slumber. Jisung’s mouth hangs slightly open, his soft snores punctuating the room’s silence, while Olivia has somehow claimed three-quarters of the mattress, limbs flung out wide. The digital clock on the nightstand glows an accusing 2:17 AM, its red numbers a reminder that your wedding is now just over ten hours away.
You lie on the edge of the bed, wide awake despite the tequila still humming in your veins. The ceiling offers no answers as you stare at it, tracing patterns in the textured plaster like reading tea leaves, searching for guidance that doesn’t come.
On the nightstand, three empty quesadilla plates stack precariously, evidence of the late-night snack you’d ordered after stumbling back to the room. The conversation had flowed easily then, Jisung and Olivia debating the merits of various strip club performers while demolishing room service food with drunken enthusiasm. But eventually, exhaustion claimed them both, leaving you alone with thoughts too loud for sleep.
You slip from the bed carefully, not disturbing either of your companions. Your bare feet make no sound on the plush carpet as you move to the balcony door, sliding it open just enough to squeeze through. The night air hits your skin with a welcome coolness, salt-tinged and heavy with the scent of tropical flowers.
The resort slumbers around you, most windows dark, the occasional distant laugh or splash from late-night swimmers the only evidence that you’re not the sole person awake in paradise. The beach stretches below, a pale ribbon against the darkness of the ocean, moonlight turning the sand almost silver.
Without conscious decision, you find yourself moving toward it. You don’t bother changing from your sleep shorts and tank top; you just head back into the room, grab a room key and slide your feet into your flip-flops by the door.
The hallway is eerily quiet, the elevator empty. Your reflection in its mirrored walls looks ghostly: hair tousled from the bed, eyes too wide, skin pale in the harsh light. Tomorrow’s bride, tonight’s insomniac.
Outside, the air wraps around you like a living thing, warm but not stifling. The path to the beach is lit by small solar lamps embedded in the stone, guiding your way down to the sand. You kick off your flip-flops at the bottom of the wooden steps, letting your toes sink into the still-warm granules.
The beach stretches in both directions, largely empty save for the occasional lounge chair or abandoned beach toy. To your right, barely visible in the moonlight, stands the wedding setup, the reason you’re here, the culmination of months of planning and years of relationship.
Your feet carry you toward it without thought. The wooden aisle runner has been secured for the night, chairs arranged in three neat rows on either side, covered in white fabric that glows faintly in the darkness. Elaborate floral arrangements mark the entrance to the aisle, their scent subtle but present even from a distance.
At the end of the aisle stands the awning, a wooden structure draped with gauzy white fabric that billows gently in the sea breeze. It’s surrounded by more flowers and strung with tiny lights that are currently off but will twinkle tomorrow as you and Hyunjin exchange vows.
As you approach, a silhouette becomes visible beneath the awning. There’s a male figure seated on the small platform, facing the ocean. Your heart lurches painfully against your ribs, recognizing him before your mind fully processes who you’re seeing.
“Hey,” Chris says without turning, his voice low and slightly rough, as if he, too, has been awake for too long.
You freeze, momentarily wondering if your guilt has conjured him from thin air. But then he turns, and the moonlight catches his profile: the broad nose, the curve of his lips, the soft waves of his hair ruffled by the breeze.
Unmistakably real.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” you manage, your voice sounding strange to your own ears.
Chris shifts slightly, making room beside him on the platform. An invitation. You should decline. You should turn around, go back to your room, to Jisung and Olivia and the safety of not being alone with him. Instead, your feet carry you forward until you’re climbing the two small steps to sit beside him, careful to leave space between your bodies.
“It’s beautiful here,” he says, gaze returning to the water where moonlight dances across the gentle waves. “I can see why you picked it for the wedding.”
The word ‘wedding’ hangs between you, heavy with implication.
“How was the bachelor party?” you ask, desperate for neutral territory.
Chris’ laugh is soft, without much humor. “Predictable. Golf, which I’m terrible at. Cigars, which made me cough. Whiskey, which I drank too much of. Strippers, who were… professionally enthusiastic.”
“Sounds about right.” You pull your knees to your chest, wrapping your arms around them. “Our bachelorette had strippers too. Firefighters, actually.”
“Ah.” Chris nods, a small smile playing at his lips. “Your old weakness.”
The fact that he remembers this detail about you, a preference you’d mentioned once, years ago, sends a warm curl of something dangerous through your stomach. Hyunjin always acts surprised when reminded of your firefighter phase, as if each time is the first he’s hearing of it.
“That was Jisung, Olivia, and Sienna’s doing,” you explain. “They thought it would be funny.”
“Was it?”
“It was… nice. To laugh. To not think about…” You trail off, unable to finish the thought.
“About tomorrow?” Chris supplies quietly.
“About everything.”
Silence stretches between you, not uncomfortable but charged with unspoken words. The waves provide a gentle soundtrack, rhythmic and soothing.
“The groomsmen crashed the party first,” you continue, filling the silence because the alternative is too dangerous. “They did a strip routine. It was hilarious and surprisingly good.”
“Let me guess,” Chris says, turning to face you more directly. “Minho, with Jisung’s help, choreographed, Changbin showed off, Felix was adorable, Jeongin was embarrassed but committed, and Seungmin looked like he was performing a technical exercise.”
You laugh, the sound carrying across the empty beach. “That’s exactly what happened. How did you know?”
“Some things never change.” His smile fades slightly. “Some things do.”
The mood shifts, the pretense of casual conversation falling away like sand through fingers. You watch his face in the moonlight, the features so familiar yet somehow new each time you see them.
“Chris,” you begin, not sure what you’re going to say but knowing something must be said.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he interrupts, running a hand through his hair. “To the wedding. I told myself I was being supportive, that I could handle seeing you marry him. But that was a lie. I came because I needed to see you one more time, to know for sure that you’re happy. With him. That I haven’t been holding onto this… this feeling for nothing.”
His candor steals your breath. “What feeling?”
He looks at you then, really looks at you, and the naked emotion in his eyes makes your chest ache. “You know what feeling.”
You do know. It’s the same one that’s been keeping you awake at night, making your stomach twist whenever you think about tomorrow, about forever with Hyunjin.
“Why did you tell me about the house?” you ask, the question that’s been burning in you since last night. “Why now?”
“Because I’m tired of what-ifs.” His voice roughens with emotion. “I’m tired of wondering if things could have been different if I’d fought harder for you, if I’d been brave enough to tell you how I felt before you went back to him. I’m tired of seeing beautiful places and wishing you were there to see them too. I need to know if I’ve been crazy all these years, holding onto something that was never real.”
“It was real,” you whisper, the words escaping before you can stop them. “It is real.”
Your fingers find each other in the dark, not quite touching but close enough that you can feel the heat of his skin. When his pinky brushes against yours, electricity shoots up your arm, making your breath catch.
“Then why are you marrying him tomorrow?” Chris asks, the question so soft it’s almost lost in the sound of the waves.
You have no answer that doesn’t sound hollow, even to yourself. Instead, you look down at where your hands are now touching, his broader fingers alongside your smaller ones.
“That night,” he says, watching your face carefully, “after we… after I told you how I felt. Why did you go back to him?”
The memory washes over you: Chris’ apartment, the way he’d held you as you cried over Hyunjin’s latest betrayal. How friendship had turned to something deeper. And his whispered confession.
“I didn’t go back to him immediately. I guess part of me was waiting for you to convince me that we didn’t fuck up. Plus… I was scared,” you admit, the truth you’ve never spoken aloud. “What I felt with you was so intense, so real. And Hyunjin was… safe. Familiar. He hurt me, yes, but I understood the shape of that pain. With you, it was like standing on the edge of something vast, and I was afraid of falling.”
A tear slips down your cheek, surprising you. You hadn’t realized you were crying. Chris reaches up, his thumb gently brushing it away. His hand lingers, cupping your face as if you’re something precious.
“I never stopped thinking about you,” he confesses, his voice breaking slightly. “Every relationship I tried to start ended because they weren’t you. That’s why I built the house. It was the only way I could keep my promise, even if you were never going to see it.”
More tears fall now, unstoppable. “I want to see it,” you whisper. “I want to see everything with you.”
The admission hangs in the air between you, irrevocable.
Chris leans forward slowly, giving you every chance to pull away, to shift your position. But you don’t. You can’t. When his lips meet yours, it’s like coming home after being lost for years.
The kiss starts gentle, but quickly deepens as years of suppressed longing surge to the surface. His hands tangle in your hair, yours grip his shoulders, pulling him closer. He tastes like mint and whiskey and possibility, and you’re drowning in it, in him.
“We shouldn’t,” you gasp when you break for air, but your body betrays your words as you pull him back to you.
“Tell me to stop and I will,” he murmurs against your mouth, his hands already finding the hem of your tank top, fingers skimming the bare skin of your waist.
But you don’t want him to stop. You’ve never wanted anything less. Instead, you lift your arms as he pulls your top over your head, leaving you bare-chested in the moonlight. His sharp intake of breath as he looks at you causes an eruption between your legs.
“I’ve dreamed about having you, being yours for so long,” he says, a hint of awe in his tone as his eyes roam your body.
His mouth finds your breast, and coherent thought dissolves. All that exists is sensation: his tongue circling your nipple, his hands on your skin, the cool night air contrasting with the heat building inside you. You arch into his touch, a soft moan escaping your lips.
Your hands push under his t-shirt, desperate to feel his skin against yours, desperate for more of his warmth, more of the way he makes you feel like the center of the universe. He pulls back just long enough to strip it off, then you’re chest to chest, skin to skin, the contact electrifying. His lips are at your jaw, your neck, your collarbone, sucking marks into your skin with bruising intent. You run your fingers over the lean muscle of his back, down to the waistband of his shorts, feeling him hard against your thigh.
“Are you sure?” he asks, even as his fingers find the top of your sleep shorts, sliding beneath the elastic, skimming the bare arc of your lower back, then lower still, cupping your ass as if he’s waited to touch you there for a thousand years. He pulls you closer.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” you tell him in a whisper, and it’s the truth, stripped of pretense or hesitation.
There, beneath the wedding altar where tomorrow you’re supposed to pledge yourself to another man, you give yourself to Chris instead. Again.
He shifts, and suddenly you’re cradled in his lap, his erection insistent and pressed hard against your core, even through the jeans and the thin fabric of your shorts. As he continues to kiss you and his hands squeeze and release your ass rhythmically, you grind down, your hips rolling slow and deliberate. The friction gradually increases, enough to make you gasp, to make him curse under his breath as if the world has narrowed to the slick heat and pressure building between you.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he says, and the words shatter you, because you know they’re true.
We shouldn’t do this, you think to yourself, but your body keeps grinding, shameless, greedy for every ounce of friction.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmurs against your lips.
You want to answer, to tell him he’s the beautiful one, that every molecule in your body has been missing him since that moment five years ago, but when his fingers curve beneath your ass cheek and gently sink into your vagina, all that comes out is a sharp, undignified whine.
You’re wet; obscenely, shamelessly wet. Chris discovers this immediately, his thumb tracing up and down along your slick lips, mapping the exact outline of your need. You rock against his hand, whimpering, desperate, and he pulls you closer, kissing you again, slower this time, like he wants to savor every second.
Clothes are discarded, tangled around ankles before being kicked aside entirely. He moves you, shifting so you’re lying back on the cool wood of the wedding platform, his body covering yours. The platform is hard beneath your back, but you barely notice, too consumed by the feeling of Chris’ weight above you, his mouth exploring every inch of your exposed skin. His lips lower to your hip, then your stomach, kissing a slow, tortuous path upward. You can feel the faint scrape of his stubble as he nips at your collarbone, his teeth teasing just enough to make you moan.
He’s trembling, and you realize you are too. You dig your nails into his arms, trying to pull him closer, trying to make him stop teasing. He doesn’t. He takes his time, kissing your neck and jaw and cheek before settling between your legs and looking down at you.
When he finally pushes into you, it’s with a gentleness that makes your eyes sting with fresh tears. His cock enters you, inch by agonizing inch, stretching you wide, making you feel every ridge and vein of his shaft until he bottoms out. He moves slowly at first, his forehead pressed against yours, his eyes never leaving your face. The intimacy of it is almost too much to bear…not just the physical joining, but the raw emotion etched in every line of his expression.
“I love you,” he whispers against your lips as his pace increases, each thrust sending waves of pleasure through your body. “I’ve always loved you.”
Tears prick at the corners of your eyes as the words spill out, the ones you’ve been holding in for years. “I love you too,” you gasp, your voice shaking with the weight of it. “Chris, I love you.”
His hips rocking against yours in slow, deliberate thrusts. Each one sends sparks of pleasure racing through your body, the friction of his cock dragging against your walls making you moan. His pace increases, his hips slamming into yours with a force that makes the platform creak beneath you.
Your climax builds steadily, intensified by the emotional release of your confession, causing your body to tremble. When it crests, it’s like nothing you’ve experienced before; it’s a total surrender, your body and heart finally aligned in what they want. As moans start to escape you, Chris’ mouth descends unto yours, swallowing the sounds. He fucks you through your orgasm, his thrusts start to come harder, faster, until he’s burying himself deep inside you with a guttural groan. He whispers your name as he shudders above you.
But he’s not done with you yet. He pulls out slowly, watching as his cum drips out of you, a lewd smirk on his face. “You’re so fucking perfect,” he murmurs, before lowering his head between your thighs. His tongue laps at your slickness, cleaning up the mess he made. His tongue finds your clit and it’s gentle at first, then rougher, more insistent, as if he’s starving and you’re the only thing on the menu. Chris moans against you, the vibration sending shockwaves through your body.
Within moments, you’re shaking, gasping, starting to come apart in his hands. It’s not long before you’re cumming again, whispering, “Christopher,” as he drinks you in. He doesn’t stop; he licks you through it, anchoring you to the platform while your mind floats somewhere above the moonlight and the salt air and all your regrets.
Afterward, you lie tangled together, breathless and damp with sweat, the reality of what you’ve done slowly seeping back in. But there’s no regret, not now, not with him holding you like you’re the most precious thing in his world.
“Come back to my room,” he says against your hair, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Please. I can’t let you go yet.”
You know you should return to your suite, to where Jisung and Olivia sleep, to the life you’ve planned and the man you’re supposed to marry. Instead, you nod, gathering your scattered clothes, pulling them on with hands that still tremble slightly from pleasure and emotion.
The walk to his room passes in a blur, your fingers intertwined with his, occasional stops to press each other against walls and steal hungry kisses. A stop to ride the elevator leads to lips and hands pressing against skin, clothes nearly pushed aside before you catch yourselves, breathless and laughing at your own lack of control as the doors open. Instead, you tumble into the hallway toward his room, pausing again to pin each other against the wall, bodies grinding together, mouths devouring each other with greedy need.
Once inside, the door barely closes before you’re on each other again, tearing at clothes, insatiable. The bed greets you like a breaking wave, soft and welcoming as you fall onto it together, hungry hands and eager mouths picking up where they left off. The urgency that filled you on the beach is replaced with a languid, luxurious exploration, this time taking the chance to savor every inch of each other’s skin with the thoroughness that wasn’t possible half an hour ago.
Chris’ fingers trace along your curves slowly, memorizing the paths they take. He stops to admire the body he clearly worships, groaning your name as if it’s the only thing he’ll ever need. It’s a thorough dedication, the heat of his mouth trailing over your breasts, down your stomach, lingering at every spot that makes you gasp. His lips travel everywhere, kissing with a gentle precision that has you quivering beneath him.
You push him onto his back, eager to return the favor. You learn him by touch and taste: the sensitive spot just below his ear that makes him groan when you kiss it, the way his breath hitches when you take him in your mouth, the way his moans fill the air as you circle your tongue around the head of his cock. You move with a teasing slowness, reveling in the effect you’re having on him. Your mouth works up and down his shaft in long, slow pulls, hands stroking what your mouth can’t reach. He fists the sheets, trying to keep control as you suck him, and it only makes you want to push him further.
“Fuck, I’ve dreamed about this,” he gasps, hips bucking as you hollow your cheeks and take him deeper. “About how your lips would feel around my cock.”
You hum around him, sending vibrations through his dick, feeling it twitch as you work him with your tongue. He’s so hard against your lips, and you can taste a hint of his need as it leaks from his tip. His hands find your hair, not pushing, not holding, caressing, making sure this is real and that you’re here. You press tighter to him, letting him fill your mouth over and over until he’s panting, on the edge.
“Too good,” he chokes out, pulling you up to him. “But I want to cum inside you.”
You let him pull you up, straddling him, feeling the heat of his cock pressing insistently against you. You position yourself above him, breathless, and sink down. He fills you completely, a perfect, desperate stretch, and you rock your hips, setting a slow pace that drives you both mad.
Your bodies move in a seamless rhythm, a perfect give and take. The flirty grinding and desperate fucking on the beach gives way to something deeper, slower. Your hands find each other, fingers lacing together with the same intensity as everything else, as though neither of you will ever let go. Chris brings your joined hands to his lips, pressing gentle kisses on the back of your hand, your wrist, your forearm. Chris watches you ride him, his lips forming your name over and over.
“I love you,” he gasps between breaths, the words sending a shiver through you.
You lean forward, changing the angle and making you both cry out at the new sensation. His hips lift to meet yours, thrusting up into you as you move together in perfect sync. The pleasure builds again, his cock hitting so deep, the friction starts sending you spiraling out of control. He wraps his arms tightly around you, pulling you flush against him before sitting up.
He continues to thrust up into you while kissing you, then he whispers in your ear, “Turn over, baby.”
You comply, sliding off his dick and turning over just as he asked, getting onto your knees and facing the headboard. Your body is barely off of his before he’s pulling you back, guiding you into position with hands on your hips, kissing the length of your spine. You brace yourself against the gray wood with your hands, feeling exposed, a tremble racing through you as you wait and ache. The anticipation is fucking unbearable.
Chris groans your name, a feral sound ripped from the depths of him as his fingers trace the curves of your ass. You can picture him behind you, admiring the sight, savoring the moment like you’re the only thing he’ll ever want. His chest is just a hair’s breadth away from pressing flush to your back, and the anticipation of him, of his next touch, his next word, has your entire body practically vibrating.
He brushes your hair off your shoulder, sliding the straightened strands out of the way, so sweet and tender, before his lips find the nape of your neck and shoulders. He presses soft kisses from the back of your neck all the way up to your jaw, leaving you shaking beneath him. You can feel the heat of him, hard and ready, pressing against your ass, and you whimper, no room for pride, the raw need in you too reckless and wild. You’re so high-strung with need that you flinch when his lips reach the shell of your ear, but he just laughs softly, all found exasperation, and licks a stripe from your shoulder back up to your ear. He grins against your neck when he feels you shudder.
“I’ve imagined all the things I would do to you… if I ever got the chance again,” he whispered in your ear before kissing the corner of your lips. “You can’t imagine how many times.” Chris kisses your jaw, his voice raw and deliciously broken. He nips your earlobe, then sucks the soft flesh gently until you’re gasping and using your arms to brace against the headboard. “Every fucking night for years…” His hands slide down your sides, palms flat, greedy, possessive as they run along your hips, bringing your ass closer to him, using your own body to drive you mad with need. “...I thought about how I would ruin you so that you’d be addicted to my cock. So you’d never forget me, never think about another man. Not even for a second.”
His hands squeeze your ass, kneading, parting, then guiding you back more to grind against his cock. The head slips through your slick folds, teasing, testing, making you writhe, your body silently pleading with every pass as he threatens to split you open. You twist around, just enough to catch his eye, and the sight nearly undoes you, with his hair a wild mess, sweat beading on his brow, and his eyes so bright and lost in you it almost hurts.
Seconds later, he’s inside you again, pushing in from behind, filling you to give you what you need.
The first thrust is merciless, a perfect violence pushing the air from your lungs, leaving you open mouthed with your eyes squeezed shut. He pins your body between his own and the headboard, his forehead coming to rest on the back of your neck.
The hard wood presses into your palms as he fucks into you, needy and unyielding, pulling you toward him every time he thrusts forward. You should feel trapped, caught in this position, but all you can feel is release. It’s like finally breathing after years of suffocating, every sensation bright and new, each stroke unraveling you a little more. His pace is delicious agony, hard and fast and full of pent-up longing, as he fucks into you relentlessly.
Chris wraps one arm around your waist, the other wrapping around your chest to squeeze your breast as he thrusts. You can feel him so deep inside you it borders on obscene. It is obscene, downright pornographic, and you don’t care. You can’t find words, so you just back up onto him, desperate for more, and he obliges, fucking into you with a hungry, relentless rhythm. It’s not graceful, not even close. The headboard rattles, the mattress creaks. You moan, lower lip between your teeth, passion and emotion unraveling you with every stroke.
“Look at me. Tell me you like it,” he murmurs against your neck. “Tell me you want more.” His thumb flicks your hard nipple, his teeth sink into your shoulder. “Look at me,” he whispers again.
Your body arches, hips grinding back to meet him, and you can’t help it, the reckless, needy desperation. You turn your head to look at him over your shoulder, eyes locking. You’re both beyond pride now, beyond shame, beyond anything but the heat and intensity of being together.
He sighs. “That’s the face I’ve jacked off to a thousand times.” He kisses your chin. “Tell me.”
You don’t hesitate. “I want more, Chris.”
He rewards you with rougher, uneven thrusts that make your eyes roll back as his pace turns feral and white-hot tension builds in your core. He’s fucking you out of your mind, no words or thoughts or anything but the surge of pleasure and the sound of your own moans. You hear yourself begging, feel yourself giving up everything— your name, dignity, caution—just to keep him inside you, to keep this moment from ever ending.
Chris leans in close again, lips at your ear. “You’re gorgeous when you’re fucked out. You know that?” You can’t answer, not coherently; instead you just nod wildly, not even fully comprehending what you’re cosigning. Then his hand on your stomach slides down until his fingers are on your clit, rubbing tight, fast circles that make your whole world contract. You feel yourself coming undone, frenzied and overwhelmed, coiling tighter until it breaks you. The pleasure is so sharp it’s almost painful, and you sob, unable to hold back.
Chris grips your hip with one hand, the other still working your clit mercilessly. You’re about to break. He knows it too, though he never lets up, even as his own thrusts grow erratic, his breathing ragged and broken.
“You gonna cum for me, beautiful?” he asks softly. “I want to feel you squeeze my cock.” You do, helplessly. You let your head fall back, cry his name as you clench and shatter around him. Your orgasm is apocalyptic, crashing over you as your vision goes white, sending him over the edge.
Chris continues to fuck you through it, holding you so tight, you’re sure you’ll have bruises in the morning. Your pussy clenches hard around him again, milking his cock and that’s all it takes. With a strangled moan, Chris buries his cock deep and you feel the warmth flooding your insides, pulse after pulse. There’s a look of complete adoration on his face when he cums inside you for the second time that night, before he goes limp against your back.
For a long moment, neither of you moves. You just stay locked together, just breathing, gasping, together, your heartbeats pounding in counterpoint. Chris nuzzles the back of your neck, then kisses it, slow and lingering. “Fuck,” he mutters, and you can hear the smile in his voice.
You want to laugh, but you can’t even muster the energy. He pulls out so slowly you both shiver from the separation, and you feel his cum leak down your thighs, hot and sticky and wrong in all the right ways. He watches, fascinated, then scoops it up with his fingers and brings it to your mouth. You don’t pull away; you lick the salty goodness of his fingers before taking them fully in your mouth. His grin widens as he watches you suck gently before withdrawing the digits. The intimacy doesn’t feel dirty; it feels necessary, like he needs you to carry him with you even after this ends. You let him.
Afterward, wrapped in his arms, your head resting on his chest where you can hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, you feel a peace that’s eluded you for years.
“Come to Sydney with me,” he murmurs, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on your bare back. “We can leave tomorrow. Start over. Build the life we were meant to have. What do you say?”
The impossibility of it should hit you like a bucket of cold water. Instead, you find yourself considering it, considering a future with this man who knows you so completely, who loves you not in spite of your flaws but because of the whole, complex person that you are.
“I love you Chris,” you whisper again, the words still new and precious on your tongue. “I think I always have.”
He tightens his arms around you, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “Then don’t marry him. Choose us instead.”
No answer comes to your lips, but as sleep finally claims you, safe in Chris’ embrace, you know that tomorrow will bring the hardest choice of your life. And for the first time, you’re not certain which path you’ll take.
****
A soft beep pulls you from dreamless sleep, the unfamiliar weight of an arm across your waist momentarily disorienting you. The room is still dark, dawn just beginning to lighten the edges of the blackout curtains. Chris sleeps beside you, his face peaceful in repose, dark lashes resting against his cheeks, lips slightly parted. The sight of him makes your heart constrict with a feeling too complex to name; it’s love tangled with grief, desire knotted with regret.
The beep sounds again, and you carefully extract yourself from Chris’ embrace to reach for your phone on the nightstand. The screen illuminates with a notification: a text from Hyunjin. Your stomach drops, guilt flooding your system like ice water in your veins.
You open the message with trembling fingers.
Jinnie: Good morning, beautiful. I couldn’t sleep tonight thinking about today. I know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding but I needed to tell you how much I love you. Thank you for continuing to love me through all my mistakes; I know I haven’t made it easy. You’ve made me a better man, and I promise to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve you and your love. I can’t wait to see you walking down that aisle toward me. Only a few more hours until forever starts. All my love. –HJ
The phone blurs as tears fill your eyes. You press your palm to your mouth, stifling the sob that threatens to escape. Beside you, Chris shifts in his sleep but doesn’t wake, his breathing still deep and regular.
You look at him, really look at him. The man who built a house by the ocean because you once mentioned it was your dream. The man who’s carried you in his heart for years, waiting and hoping, all while you loved someone else. The man whose body and soul melded with yours in the early morning hours in a way that felt like coming home.
And then you think of Hyunjin. Imperfect, sometimes selfish, deeply flawed Hyunjin, who nonetheless has fought to be better. For you. Who, despite his mistakes, has been your constant for over a decade. The man who’s woven into the fabric of your life so completely that cutting him out would leave you irrevocably altered.
The decision crystallizes in your chest like a shard of glass, beautiful but painful. You love Chris. You might always love Chris. But your life is with Hyunjin. The roots you’ve grown together are too deep, the future you’ve planned too tangible to abandon.
You slip from the bed with the careful movements of someone committing a crime. In the predawn light, you locate the hotel stationery on the desk, pulling a pen from the drawer. Your hand hovers over the pristine white page, words failing you for several long moments.
What can you possibly say to the man you’re leaving behind for the second time? What combination of words could ever explain the choice you’re making… a choice that feels simultaneously right and wrong, necessary and impossible?
Finally, you begin to write:
Chris,
I don’t know how to write this letter. Every sentence I start feels inadequate, every word too small to contain what I feel for you.
Five years ago was not a mistake. Last night was not a mistake. Loving you is not a mistake. In another life, a braver version of me would be packing her bags right now, ready to follow you anywhere.
But I can’t be that person.
Hyunjin and I have built a life together… it’s messy and imperfect, but ours. I’ve forgiven him for his mistakes. I’ve watched him struggle to be better. I’ve made promises, not just to him but to myself about the kind of person I want to be. Walking away now would mean breaking those promises, and I don’t know if I could live with that version of myself.
You deserve someone who can give you everything, not someone who’s divided. You deserve a love without shadows or regrets. I wish more than anything that I could be that person for you. Please know that a part of my heart will always belong to you, no matter where life takes us.
I hope someday you can forgive me for not being brave enough to choose you. I hope you find happiness in that beautiful house by the ocean, even if I’m not there to share it with you.
With all my love,
You stare at the letter, tears blurring the ink in places. It’s not enough. It could never be enough. But it’s all you have to offer.
You add your initials before folding the paper carefully and placing it on the pillow where your head had rested. Chris still sleeps, unaware that his world is about to shatter again. You lean down, pressing your lips to his in a final, gentle kiss. He stirs slightly, a small smile curving his lips, but he doesn’t wake.
“Goodbye,” you whisper, the word barely audible even in the quiet room.
You dress, gather your phone and flip flops in your hand, and slip out, closing the door with a soft click that sounds to your ears like the period at the end of a sentence. The hallway stretches before you, empty and dimly lit. Your bare feet make no sound on the carpet as you make your way back to your suite, each step taking you further from Chris and closer to the life you’ve chosen.
The sky is lightening to a pale gray when you slide your keycard over the lock of your suite. Inside, the room is as you left it. Jisung and Olivia are still asleep in the massive bed, their positions barely changed. They look young and innocent in sleep, unaware of the turmoil raging inside you.
You move quietly to the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind you. You turn the shower on then pause in front of the mirror. The harsh fluorescent light reveals your reflection in the mirror: hair mussed from Chris’ hands, lips slightly swollen from his kisses, a small bite mark on your shoulder, eyes haunted by the choice you’ve made. You look like exactly what you are: a woman who has spent the night making love to someone who isn’t her fiancé.
The façade you’ve been maintaining crumbles all at once. You slide down the wall to the cool tile floor, knees drawn to your chest, and finally allow yourself to break. The sobs come silently at first, then with increasing force, your entire body shaking with the effort of containing them. You bury your face in your knees, trying to muffle the sound, but it’s like trying to hold back the tide with your bare hands.
You don’t hear the soft knock at first, lost in your grief.
“Hey.” Jisung’s voice, gentle with concern, reaches through your tears. “Can I come in?”
You can’t answer, can’t form words through the tightness in your throat and your sobs. After a moment, there’s a faint click as he picks the simple bathroom lock; it’s a skill you didn’t know he possessed. The door opens just enough for him to slip through before he closes it again, preserving your privacy from Olivia’s still-sleeping form.
He takes one look at you and understands everything. Without a word, he sits beside you on the floor, his back against the wall, and pulls you into his arms. You collapse against him, face pressed into his shoulder as you continue to weep, the sound of the water hitting the tiles in the shower providing additional background sounds.
“I slept with Chris,” you finally confess between sobs, the words muffled against his t-shirt. “Last night. At the wedding altar. And then in his room. And then I left him there with a note like a fucking coward.”
Jisung’s hand moves in soothing circles on your back. “I know,” he says quietly. “Or at least, I guessed. You weren’t exactly subtle about disappearing all night.”
“I had no intention of doing anything,” you start, your voice interrupted by shuddering breaths as you try to control your crying. “I was having trouble falling asleep and just wanted a walk on the beach to calm my thoughts, clear my head. And there he was, just sitting there, staring at the water. I should have turned around when I saw him.”
You pull back to look at him, expecting judgment or disappointment. Instead, his eyes hold nothing but compassion.
“Are you going to tell Hyunjin?” he asks.
The question cuts through you like a blade. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. How am I supposed to walk down that aisle in a few hours? How am I supposed to say vows I’m not sure I can keep?”
Jisung considers this, his expression thoughtful. “Do you love Hyunjin?”
“Yes,” you answer without hesitation, because it’s true. Despite everything, you do love him.
“And do you love Chris?”
This answer comes just as quickly. “Yes.”
“But you came back here,” Jisung points out gently. “You made the choice.”
You nod, fresh tears spilling down your cheeks. “I chose the safer path. The one that hurts fewer people. The one where I don’t have to blow up my entire life and start over. Does that make me a coward?”
“It makes you human,” Jisung says, wiping a tear from your cheek with his thumb. “Look, I can’t tell you if you’re making the right choice. No one can. But I know that you’re not a bad person for being conflicted. And whatever you decide, even if you change your mind at the last minute, I’m with you. I’ll be by your side. Okay?”
His unconditional support breaks something open inside you, releasing a fresh wave of tears. You sob against his chest until there’s nothing left, until you’re empty and hollowed out, wrung dry of emotion.
“What do I do now?” you ask, your voice hoarse from crying.
Jisung gives you a sad, gentle smile. “Now, I think you take a shower. You put on that beautiful dress. You do your makeup and fix your hair. And then you walk down that aisle and make a choice… again. Because, like Camille said earlier today, every day in a marriage is choosing that person, over and over. And if you can’t make that choice today, with complete conviction, then maybe you shouldn’t make it at all.”
You nod, taking a deep, shuddering breath. He’s right. The choice isn’t just this morning in Chris’ room; it’s every moment from now until forever.
“Thank you,” you whisper, squeezing his hand. “For not judging me.”
“Never,” he promises, pressing a kiss to your forehead before standing. “Take your shower. I’ll go wake the beast,” he nods toward the door, indicating Olivia. “She needs at least three hours to become human, and we’re on a tight schedule.”
As he moves to leave, you catch his hand one more time. “Jisung? Does it ever get easier? Making the hard choices?”
He pauses, his expression turning serious. “No. But you get stronger. And someday, you’ll look back at this moment and know whether you made the right choice. Until then, all you can do is breathe through it, one choice and one day at a time.”
With that, he slips out, closing the door softly behind him. You hear his cheerful voice rousing Olivia, her grumpy response, the sounds of normal life continuing despite the seismic shifts in your heart.
You rise on shaky legs and place your hand in the stream coming from the showerhead, adjusting the temperature until steam fills the bathroom. As you step under the hot spray, you close your eyes and try to wash away the scent of Chris from your skin, the feel of his hands from your body, the evidence of him from between your legs. But his love, and yours for him, clings to you like a shadow, invisible but ever-present.
In less than eight hours, you’ll walk down an aisle of white sand to where Hyunjin waits. You’ll say vows and exchange rings and begin a life together.
But a piece of your heart will remain behind, left on a pillow with a handwritten note in a room where dreams briefly became reality before dissolving with the morning light.
A/N: How are we feeling after this chapter? Let me know your thoughts.
Man, the concept of Chiss Navigators "losing" their Force powers is such an underrated and tragic plot point in the Thrawn books.
Disclaimer: I haven't read the Ascendancy books yet, so this is me speculating on a topic on which all the information I possess is based on snippets of the books I've read here and there, Wikipedia pages and A LOT of fanfiction I've consumed over the years.... But bear with me. I have Thoughts™ about this.
I don't think the books ever explicitly explain why the Chiss "sky-walkers" lose their Sight, so this might be headcanon on my part, but from what I understand there's enough evidence sprinkled in about the fact that it might be linked, at least to some degree, to the trauma and stress Force-sensitive children are put under in Chiss society. It is well established in Star Wars lore that Force powers can't just "disappear", so unless Zahn is messing with established Force lore, it cannot be interpreted as a natural occurrence linked to, idk, a quirk of Chiss biology.
I think this speaks loudly about the underlying dysfunctionality of Chiss society. From what I can gather, it seems to me like a system that demands the complete subjugation of the individual to achieve a collective goal... or at least, that's how it's sold to its citizens to keep them compliant. In reality, we readers know it is all in service of a select few (the heads of the Ruling Families). Man, the Chiss are such a dark mirror to the Empire, when you think about it.
Anyway, I think that the fading of Force powers in "sky-walkers" HAS to be linked with the inherent dysfunctionality of Chiss society. It's probably a (subconscious) reaction to the brainwashing and forced compliance to a fundamentally selfish system, which is purely aimed at ensuring the dominance of the Ascendancy over the rest of the Chaos. I think it is deeply symbolic that Vah'nya, the only Sky-walker whose powers don't fade, is one of the few who seems genuinely content in her role among the CEDF. For her, it was a choice to serve, so this attunedness helps her preserve her connection with the Force. I think we are meant to understand that for other Chiss girls it wasn't so, and that this led to a sort of subconscious suppression of their Sight, which man. It's so tragic. I can easily imagine how they would eventually become resentful towards the power that basically ensured their enslavement.
I think it's also possible that, since Chiss culture lacks the mystical tradition that appears to be foundational in order to properly nurture and develop Force powers among Force user communities, this would probably accelerate the suppression process. The navigators really have no support whatsoever.
It's also very interesting how this all relates to Thrawn. I've always thought there's a contradictory quality to his character when it comes to his attitude to the Force: on one hand, his utilitarian and analytical attitude causes him to be... almost in denial of the Force's capabilities. Yet, at the same time, his love and understanding of art means that, on an instinctual level, he's also deeply attuned to things that are impalpable, whimsical, mystical and symbolic. It's almost like there's a deep cognitive dissonance in Thrawn himself, which prevents him from seeing the full picture of what the Force is and how it actually works.
Man, they are all so trapped in a prison of their own making, and they can't even see it due to their own cultural biases. ç_ç I just want to hug them all ç_____ç
A plan to halt housing solutions will hurt people, businesses and the city.
Last week Mayor Ken Sim announced that he plans to stop new supportive housing in Vancouver and dramatically alter the Downtown Eastside Local Area Plan that has preserved low property values and encouraged social housing for the last 10 years.
We write to set the record straight as members of the Order of Canada with years of experience living, working and volunteering in the Downtown Eastside, or DTES.
The DTES Local Area Plan, intended to last for 30 years, was co-developed by the city and a local planning process with representatives from the community’s diverse groups, organizations and businesses. They came up with a plan that moves toward a livable and supportive place for all its middle- and low-income residents, local businesses and services.
The plan is working as intended. One of the eight sub-areas of the DTES, the Oppenheimer District, has rules that keep condos out and require developers of private rental housing to include social housing in 60 per cent of the building.
Research by University of British Columbia assistant professor Kuni Kamizaki shows that 41 social housing buildings have been built or acquired or are in progress in the DTES. [...]
Last Sunday, on December 7, Mydelle Wright, a well-regarded preservationist, filed a declaration before a court, saying that President Donald J. Trump is trying to get around the law to bulldoze four historic federal buildings. The four are the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, named for the first Black Cabinet member, completed in 1968 and on the National Register of Historic Places as a building worthy of preservation for its historical significance or artistic value; the New Deal–era General Services Administration (GSA) Regional Office Building; the 1919 Liberty Loan Building, which is the last of the World War I era “tempos” erected as the city grew to accommodate a changing government; and the 1940 Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, full of priceless murals that date from its start as the home of the Social Security Board, the precursor to the Social Security Administration.
Now retired, Wright spent 20 years working for the GSA, the agency that oversees federal buildings. She said she had heard and believed that the White House was circumventing the GSA and its legal procedures to solicit bids to recommend the four buildings for demolition. By law, GSA has sole authority over this process; nonetheless, she said, “key GSA personnel have only just learned of the White House’s activities.”
White House lawyers told the court that Wright’s declaration was “impermissible and factually inaccurate.” But the buildings are in styles popular in the twentieth century, ones Trump denigrated in an August executive order when he called for public buildings to be built in a style of classical architecture based on that of ancient Athens and Rome.
Wright’s declaration came as part of a lawsuit launched in November by the DC Preservation League and the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners after Trump told Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham he was planning to repaint the grey granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building—a National Historic Landmark built in 1888—white. The proposed change had undergone none of the required expert consultation, public input, or consideration of potential damage.
By suing over potential damage to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building before the president could damage it, the plaintiffs seek to prevent the sort of damage Trump inflicted on the White House when he bulldozed the East Wing in October without any of the required reviews, environmental studies, public input, or congressional approval.
In 1949, Congress chartered the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation to “facilitate public participation in the preservation of sites, buildings, and objects of national significance or interest.” On Friday, December 12, the trust sued to stop Trump from building his proposed 90,000-square-foot addition to the White House. It noted that he had torn down the East Wing without securing any of the legal approvals he needed and that the White House greeted public concerns about the demolition by issuing a press release claiming that “‘unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies’ were ‘manufactur[ing] outrage’ and ‘clutching their pearls’ over President Trump’s ‘visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House.’”
The White House has expressed its opinion that the president does not have to have permits or permission to tear down buildings, only to put them up. But now, without permissions, it appears to have begun construction on the ballroom, despite the fact that the first architect Trump initially picked for the project has stepped aside.
“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever—not President Trump, not President Joe Biden, and not anyone else,” the lawsuit says. “And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in.”
It turns out that Trump arranged for the dirt from the demolition of the East Wing to be dumped on the East Potomac Golf Links, one of three public golf courses in the Washington, D.C., area Trump is hoping to renovate after pushing aside the nonprofit group that holds a 50-year lease to restore and operate the courses and keep them affordable. All three of the courses—East Potomac, Rock Creek Park Golf, and Langston Golf Course—are on the National Register of Historic Places. Trump says if he takes control of them, D.C. residents will pay a lower fee to use them than golfers from outside the area.
In an interview on Friday with Meridith McGraw of the Wall Street Journal about the economy, Trump took repeated calls from friends and allies, including one from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who, McGraw wrote, “joined by speakerphone to discuss the administration’s plans for Washington, D.C. golf courses.”
Today Trump told reporters that chief of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Vince Haley, has “a policy thing that’s going to be unbelievable happening…. We’re building an arc like the Arc de Triumph,” he said, mixing English and French, “and we’re building it by the Arlington Bridge, the Arlington Cemetery, opposite the Lincoln Memorial. You could say, Jefferson, Washington, everything, ‘cause they’re all right there, and it’s something that is so special. It will be like the one in Paris, but to be honest with you, it blows it away, blows it away in every way.”
In The Guardian last week, Judith Levine noted that Trump is erasing the face of a federal government that served the American people, replacing it with his own.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the looming loss of the Cohen building, with its murals by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, and Seymour Fogel. On December 10, Timothy Noah, who has been following this story, posted images of those murals in Backbencher. They were designed to showcase the 1935 Social Security Act that established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. It was a sweeping reworking of the relationship between the government and its citizens, using the power of taxation to pool funds to provide a basic social safety net.
The Shahn murals show the evils of a world of economic insecurity, showing “endless waiting, men standing and waiting, men sitting and waiting, the man and boy going wearily into the long empty perspective of a railroad track.” He showed the “little girl of the mills” and “breaker boys working in a mine. The crippled boy issuing from the mine symbolizes the perils of child labor…a homeless boy is seen sleeping in the street; another child leans from a tenement window.” He showed “the insecurity of dependents—the aged and infirm woman, the helpless mother with her small child.”
Shahn illustrated the alleviation of that insecurity through government action. He showed “the building of homes…[and] tremendous public works, furnishing employment and benefitting all of society…youths of a slum area engaged in healthy sport in handball courts…the Harvest— threshing and fruit-gathering, obvious symbols of security, suggesting also security as it applies to the farm family.”
Now the government is focusing not on protecting everyday Americans, but on protecting those in the “Epstein class.” On Friday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released 89 of the more than 95,000 photos it received from the Epstein estate. Those include images of right-wing Trump media ally Steve Bannon in a relaxed selfie with Epstein, Bannon talking with Epstein across a desk that has a framed photo of what appears to be an unconscious woman, Trump surrounded by young women, and a picture of “Trump condoms,” priced at $4.50. They feature the president’s face as an older man and bear the caption “I’m HUUUUGE!”
These images are not part of the FBI Epstein investigation files, which by law must be released in full no later than December 19. Yesterday, Aaron Blake of CNN reported on a Reuters-Ipsos poll which found that only 18% of Americans think it’s “somewhat” or “very” likely that Trump didn’t know about Epstein’s behavior with children. Thirty-nine percent of Republicans say they think he knew, compared to 34% who think he didn’t.
Yesterday, Meryl Kornfield, Hannah Natanson, and Lisa Rein of the Washington Post reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is cutting up to 35,000 healthcare positions by the end of the year. Most of those positions are currently unfilled and include doctors, nurses, and support staff. Already this year, the VA has lost almost 30,000 employees from buyout offers and attrition. The reporters say the cuts will reduce the number of VA healthcare employees to about 372,000, down 10% from last year. The administration is trying to steer veterans to the private healthcare system.
On Thursday the House passed a measure to overturn Trump’s elimination of union rights at federal agencies. A bipartisan group of members forced the vote past House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) with a discharge petition, but it is unlikely to pass the Senate, where Republicans oppose it. Trump said ending union rights was necessary to protect national security.
Last week, Sharon Lerner of ProPublica reported that the Environmental Protection Agency announced it is nearly doubling the amount of formaldehyde it considers safe to breathe. Formaldehyde is used in products from building materials and leather goods to craft supplies. It causes cancer, miscarriage, asthma, and other health issues by altering DNA. Lobbyists for the chemical industry have been working to water down government regulation of it for years. The method of assessment behind the proposed new rule for formaldehyde could change government regulation of other carcinogens, as well.
While the government under Trump and MAGA Republicans is backing away from measures that benefit everyday Americans, it is finding the energy to chase Maryland man Kilmar Ábrego Garcia. Ábrego Garcia is from El Salvador, a country he fled in 2011 at age 16 after the Barrio 18 gang threatened his life. In 2019, a judge denied him asylum but granted him protection from removal out of concern for his safety, allowing him to live and work in the U.S. In March, despite the protection from removal, the administration arrested Ábrego Garcia and sent him to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT terrorist prison, where he was beaten and tortured.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to bring him back to the U.S. It appealed; the Supreme Court unanimously ordered it to “facilitate” Ábrego Garcia’s return. The administration claimed that “facilitate” only required it to let him into the country if he arrived; it did not require the government to seek his release.
It brought him back in June, after Tennessee indicted him for transporting immigrants, landing him in prison in that state. While he was in prison, the government tried to remove Ábrego Garcia to several other countries but claimed falsely that Costa Rica, where he asked to go and which had offered to receive him, refused to take him. Instead of sending him to Costa Rica, they continued to imprison him while proposing to send him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia, countries where he faced harm or the threat of removal to El Salvador and which didn’t want to take him.
In August, Ábrego Garcia was released on bail and went back to Maryland, where officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him when he checked in with them. In October, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw found there was a “realistic likelihood” that the Department of Justice had sought immigrant-trafficking charges against Ábrego Garcia as punishment for challenging his removal to El Salvador.
On Thursday, Judge Xinis said ICE could not hold Ábrego Garcia because there was no final deportation order for him, noting that the judge had not ordered one in 2019. Ábrego Garcia was released at the end of the day, but the administration ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore field office at 8:00 the next morning. The Department of Justice had gone to an immigration judge—immigration judges work for the Department of Justice; they are not independent—who issued an order to correct a “scrivener’s error” in the original 2019 order protecting Ábrego Garcia from deportation to say there was a deportation order all along. This appeared to be a precursor to arresting him again.
On Friday, Judge Xinis granted the request of Ábrego Garcia’s lawyers to bar the government from arresting him again until she hears from both parties.
On Friday, Ábrego Garcia checked in at the ICE field office in Baltimore, where he told supporters: “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws, and I believe that this injustice will come to its end. Keep fighting. Do not give up. I wish all of you love and justice. Keep going.”
Amber skies question: I'm very interested in the postal service mouse folk in your setting! What sort of initation/training would someone need to go through to join the postal service? Also, in the rig cartalk show, they talked about the rigs used by the postal service, so I'm curious if there's rig-smiths within the postal service, or if it's a situation of them just having long running trade agreements and favored models of rig when trading?
Hope you're having a good one, love your work!
It's actually a rabbinical system. Becoming a posthand is an arduous process that involves a lot of memorizing philosophy around the importance of proper archive management and information flow, library sciences, and the importance of the preservation of history. You have to have a current posthand who acts as a sort of sponsor/mentor through the process, and you are eventually evaluated by a panel of higher ranking posthands.
It takes roughly four years of training to join as an initiate posthand, and then another four of active route service under a mentor before you become a full member. It's a dangerous job that many small communities rely upon. The standards are taken quite seriously.
Rigsmiths are generally part of a guild. Recently, the postal service contracts with a rig shop out of the Teykile, where they produce the ALBATROSS, PELICAN, and KINGFISHER model rigs, which are themselves pattered after 2nd era reframes of an old-world military shipping surplus rig, the EXO U4. The postal service custom-orders these models in bulk, and they we're designed to postal service specifications.
Generally they contract for new models every four to five years depending on need and price point. However, postal outposts generally have an on-site pit crew. (Usually one guy, who charges reasonable prices for civilians if you need a tune up.)
