There's little more important to Stacker than the simple pleasures of keeping a thriving garden and good company.
Rugged and calloused on first impressions, it doesn't take much to reveal that right under the surface, Stacker is no more and no less than a big softy. When three strange women from the world above come tumbling suddenly into his humble subterranean life, he's quick to make himself a resource to them - always keen, hospitable, observant, though not particularly verbose.
Stacker is a fisherman by trade... at least, most of the time. The extent of his many skills and vocations is as much a mystery as his origins. He has no surname. No biological family. Despite his kind disposition, Stacker remains adept at keeping his cards close to his chest.
UM so i didn't write today but i DID make an official height chart for the main CavernousWIP cast
Taglist (bc I have not given y'all anything in a while so heres this 😭): @ultimatecryptid , @kainablue , @alcwrites, @saraheadriance, @maxgraybooks, @thelaughingstag, @artbyeloquent, @ellierenae, @calico-fiction @wildswrites @galaxy-writer @crazybunchwriting @rainbowsnowflake
Share photos of your OC’s favorite type of weapon, favorite texture, favorite accessory, and favorite game. Then tag four people and change up any one of the four favorite things categories for the next round!
Here's Stacker's!
hand-to-hand // terracotta // septum ring // street gambling dice games
(Stack's a non-violent guy so he wouldn't really go for a weapon but he's 6' 2" and could throw a mean right hook if pressed. Though, idk man, you'd have to be pretty stupid to look at this guy and try and fight him like, he's extremely nice and very big... ?)
I'll tag: @bardic-tales @penspiration-writing @worldstogetlostin @stjohnstarling and OPEN TAG for anyone who wants to join in!
For y'all - replace favorite Game with favorite Time of Day
👀👀👀 anyway! Another bit of update is that Writing Partner™ and I have parsed through what we’ve got so far and made the decision to go back and do an editing pass on some of the previous chapters (Ch 1,5,6,10,11 & 12 to be specific) before trucking along forward with new chapters.
The gist of it is problems with Joanna as the central character and inconsistencies in her arc are making her harder and harder to write as the story continues - the hope is to fix them before we really get into the meat of her romance plot (which is impending) so that it isn’t a hassle to fix later. We remapped her arc and changed some aspects of her personality and she needs to get adjusted on the page before things start misaligning catastrophically. I’m like... not very stoked about this because I wanted to finish a full draft before doing any edits in the name of Process™ but I think this will ultimately result in less work in the long run and will mean I’m connecting better with Joanna anywayyy so here we gooo.
Since I haven’t posted stuff from chapters 1-12 anyway I will be dropping excerpts from them periodically as I work! Thanks for following along y’all <3
Taglist: @ultimatecryptid , @kainablue , @alcwrites, @saraheadriance, @maxgraybooks, @thelaughingstag, @artbyeloquent, @stormbrightwriter @crazybunchwriting @elijahrichardwrites
text under the cut
Sevan squinted at her, mulling it over, then crossed the kitchen to crouch down at the foot of the chaise, knees popping as they did. Sevan’s fiddly grace and age-lined expression in the shadowy ambience read to Carmen as impossibly wise and forgiving. Easy to trust. A quality she had only ever known in her father.
“It is keen of you to protect your heart, but sometimes there are crossroads at which neither path offers shelter,” Sevan mused, “Like choosing between grief for things which come to an end, and grief for things which go unrealized. Both are painful in different ways, neither more nor less than the other. Both may also be inevitable sooner or later. Whichever knife you choose, know you have friends with you who will be there to help mend the wound.”
Sevan reached out and patted Carmen’s feet under the covers before rising with a creaky yawn and making their way back upstairs.
-
Without thinking, Carmen shoved the cloth littered with mushrooms and swept it all off the edge of the table. The basket and the knife and everything clattered to the floor as she clambered up onto the tabletop, craning across it to kiss him.
Her mouth met his clumsily as she fell forward, hands and knees on the stone tabletop, his fingers twisting into the fabric of her dress, tugging on her. She pulled back to let him slip the dress off over her head, and he tossed it to the floor without a second thought, as if he couldn’t wait even a second more to have his hands back on her. He pulled her, clamoring, down into his lap
Thank you @winterandwords for the tag!! My words are morning, night, sleep and awake.
Morning
Stacker came downstairs a short while later, and seemed surprised that she was up. He stopped on the last step, as if crossing the room would instigate a confrontation.
“What?” Irina said, giving him a once over, “You got a problem?”
“I do, it’s sitting on my floor wearing my shirt,” he retorted with a straight face, but still stepped carefully over their things to reach the storeroom behind the stairs.
She let him off. There was no point in starting a fight this early in the morning.
Night
All night he’d held the little scrap of parchment which had broken his heart folded in his hand, but he hadn’t looked at it. He usually kept it in a little unassuming box in his study, beside his writing instruments and ink bottles, but had toyed with the idea of being rid of it. He’d bury it, maybe, or burn it, tear it up and toss it off the roof. Taking it up to the garden had felt unimaginably foolish before he was even halfway there. He knew he wouldn’t have the heart to destroy it, even as the words of it echoed in his head.
“Do not ever try to see me again.”
Sleep
Irina drifted to sleep quickly, her head in Joanna’s lap. After a while, Joanna turned off her lamp, allowing them to be enveloped by the dark completely. Her eyes strained pointlessly to adjust in the dark, illusory blooms of light dancing across her vision. The sand under her was fine and silky and almost warm to the touch and there was no sound aside from their shared, shallow breathing. The air was such a moderate temperature that for a moment it felt like she was in an ordinary room. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them, half expecting to be back in that hostel in Tbilisi.
Awake
Irina seemed to calm down a bit after they had settled their sleeping arrangements, and promised that she would stay awake to keep an eye on Joanna, on account of her concussion, and to look out for Stacker. She was, of course, the first to fall asleep.
I’ll tag @reeseweston @leighsobczak @maxgraybooks @callmebyrose ! Your words to find are: pillow, fall, hazy, & doorway !
