“There’s another bedroom just down the hall, dear. You’re adaptable, I believe in you.”
Crowley groans and does his best to peek around Aziraphale’s shoulder and get a look through the slight opening in the door. Aziraphale frowns at him and pulls it shut with a click.
He’s not allowed in the master bedroom. He hasn’t been informed of why he’s not allowed in the master bedroom, but here they are, two days after moving into their new cottage, and he’s stuck out in the hall.
Changing tactics, Crowley puts on his best pout and leans sadly against Aziraphale’s side. “I miss my bed,” he says morosely.
Aziraphale lets out a bark of laughter. “You’ve never slept in that bed.”
“Yeah,” Crowley says. “I’m missing out on it.”
Aziraphale chuckles again and presses a kiss to his forehead. “Soon, darling. I’m not going to keep you out indefinitely. And the second bedroom is nice.”
“So’s the main one,” Crowley mutters. “Picked the bloody house for those south facing windows, and I don’t even get to enjoy them.”
“The windows will still be there when you’re allowed in.”
Crowley sighs, clearly unable to win this argument. He kisses Aziraphale on the cheek and heads down the hall to the other bedroom, still complaining about having gotten a cottage with a nice bedroom for him specifically as he goes.
Two nights later, Crowley decides to sneak in while Aziraphale is making dinner. He’s bloody curious, he wasn’t made for secrets and mysteries. What’s the fun if he can’t find out? So he goes upstairs under the guise of an afternoon nap, and then when he hears Aziraphale start pulling out pots and pans downstairs, creeps across the hall to the door of the master bedroom.
It does not go as planned.
“Ngk!” Crowley cries when he finds himself suddenly downstairs, the doorknob under his hand suddenly replaced by Aziraphale’s arm. “Don’t do that! Scared the life out of me!”
Aziraphale’s smile is smug. “I just wanted to see you, dear,” he says sweetly. “I heard you were up, so I thought I’d save you the trip down the stairs.”
Crowley rolls his eyes. “What the hell do you have in that room?”
“Just a few more days, dearest.”
Crowley squints at him, decides to call his bluff. “Nah,” he drawls. “Think I’ll just go up now.”
“It’s not ready yet!”
“Don’t care. Need a good night’s sleep, and I’m gonna get it in my proper bed.”
Aziraphale gives him a searching look. Crowley holds his ground, plastering a smirk on his face and exuding the energy of a saunter while standing in place.
Then Aziraphale shrugs and says “Alright,” and Crowley’s jaw drops.
“What?”
“Go ahead, go in.”
“Really?” Crowley says cautiously, looking for the catch.
“Of course. I, however, believe that I will be sleeping in the second bedroom tonight.”
“I think so,” Aziraphale says, distressingly calm. “It’s been a few weeks, a rest sounds nice.”
This time Crowley’s pout is genuine. “Without me?”
“Oh, no, darling,” Aziraphale says, cupping Crowley’s jaw softly. “I’d love to have you join me.” His smile goes sugary sweet. “In the second bedroom.”
Crowley doesn’t argue past that.
It’s their sixth night in the cottage before Aziraphale finally lets Crowley into the master bedroom. He makes a quip about six days of work and dragging the angel into bed for a full day of “rest” on day seven, but Aziraphale just smiles fondly and leads him down the hall. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob.
“It’s…” Aziraphale starts. He suddenly looks just a little bit nervous, and Crowley squeezes his hand even though he doesn’t understand why. It earns him another smile, though, and Aziraphale squeezes back. “I hope you like it, is all.”
Crowley’s heart is going a little fast when he finally steps into the room, but it stalls out completely when he sees what Aziraphale has done with it. “Oh,” he breathes. “Oh, angel…”
When they first toured the house weeks ago, the master bedroom had been painted an inoffensive, boring beige. They had bickered happily about colors a few times, and landed on a soft blue that would glow in the morning sunlight. Aziraphale had painted it onto the walls neatly, with crisp edges and a seamless finish.
It was what he had done to the ceiling that took Crowley’s breath away. Deep, midnight blue paint covered the whole of it, and scattered precisely over it were dots of white and warm yellow, with faint lines drawn between some of them. Marking out the constellations among all of the stars.
“Angel,” Crowley says again, still breathless. “Did… heaven, did you do this all yourself?”
Aziraphale smiles, a shy pride in his voice. “By hand. You should see all the star charts I had out while I was planning it out, there was barely room to step.”
“It’s accurate?” he gasps, but as soon as he asks he can see it, the oh so familiar patterns coming into focus as he matches up the paint with the specific patch of night sky it corresponds to.
“Wait. Wait, if Libra’s there, that means…” He drops Aziraphale’s hand to rush to the bed against the northern wall, stepping up onto it in one stride and staring at the pair of dots just above the bed, bigger than most of the others.
“I thought it seemed appropriate,” Aziraphale says, coming up behind him. “You wanted us to find a home on Alpha Centauri, once. Now that we’ve got one, I thought it would be nice to bring Alpha Centauri to us.” When Crowley doesn’t respond, Aziraphale reaches for his hand again. “Darling? Are you alright?”
Crowley nods, and then nods again more forcefully before turning around to jump off the bed and into Aziraphale’s embrace so he can hide his damp eyes in his husband’s neck. “I love you.”
Aziraphale squeezes him tight and leans up to kiss his temple. “I love you too, my dear. I’m glad you like it.”
“Love it. Adore you.” He pulls back to kiss Aziraphale soundly, then grins against his lips wickedly. “Come on, angel. Got a week’s worth of bed enjoyment to make up for.”
Aziraphale laughs, and happily lets himself be led to the bed, where they can lie together under the stars—their stars—for as long as they wish.
Often we think about expressing our love for others, though we often forget to express love for ourselves. Showing love for ourselves is a important part of staying healthy - physically, and emotionally
Name: Schattenriss (Schattengerissen on Tumblr because someone already took the other)
Fandoms: I only write for Dragon Age
Where You Post: AO3, links on Tumblr
Most Popular One-Shot: Moving In has the most kudos (all my one shots are also part of my series The Contours of Shadows)
Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: Departures has the most kudos & bookmarks (beating TRAITOR by one kudo), Hidden the most comments.
Favorite Story You Wrote: It’s a toss-up between TRAITOR and Hidden. Both are novel length with multiple plotlines involving everything from relationships to road trips, family visits to flat-out horror. And Easter eggs. I’m very happy with how they turned out. (But really, there are things I love about each work in the series.)
Story You Were Nervous to Post: There’s always a bit of nervousness/excitement when posting.
How You Choose Your Titles: Lately all the Scenes titles have been Cole Porter songs that fit the theme of the story (that started with Well, Did You Evah), for no particular reason. The rest of the series are one-word titles that have something to do with the over-all theme of the book.
Complete: Everything. I don’t post until the entire work is complete and edited.
Incomplete: See above. Any incomplete stuff is in my personal files.
Do You Outline? Loosely. Particularly for the novel-length fics, but I also leave room to allow the story to go where it wants to go.
Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: The follow-up novel to Hidden (working title Unbekannt so I don’t Thedas myself). It’s possibly about halfway done…give or take.
Do You Accept Prompts? Can’t really say; no one’s ever given me one. Suppose it would depend on the prompt.
Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: In fics, Unbekannt. I’m also in the middle of writing a second novel in my original fiction series.
I’ll tag (if you want to, no pressure): @shield-maiden-of-sherwood, @whenmysoulsings, @beckily and anyone who’d like to share
I’ve received awesome writing meme tags for “find the word” and “last line” from @dafan7711 @mordinette @aban-asaara and @enchantment1385
Y’all gave me these words to find: nod, step, hand, small, before, smile, shrug, brow, red, fall, flower, heat, table, bed, glass, people,
And asked for last lines at least twice!
I’ve been working exclusively on linguistics and biology for my @angaranexpansionproject lately, so here’s what you’re going to get - 1) The last sentences written for the biology introduction & accompanying narrative 2) If the word or an equivalent is already in my Shelesh lexicon - BOOM, you get it. If not, I make it! ... then BOOM.
[Narrative] Jaal stood swiftly, reaching out an inviting hand to Vakara. “Come. I am not the best person to explain this, but it will be good for both of us.”
[Codex] Their skin is flexible and smooth, with a slightly more rubberized consistency than human skin.
Lexicon ‘Find It’ - * means I just created the word today, which was most of these!
* nod - till - (n) an affirmative tilt or twist of the head, a nod
* step - let - (n) a step, a single placement of the foot
small - rini - (adj) few, small in number or size, little
before - blaenaal - (conj) (prep) before, former, previous, previously
* smile - maw, voll, skon, twy (n) - a smile can convey many emotions. polite greeting, happiness and joy, malicious/vicious, love and affection (respectively).
* shrug - lovw - (n) a shrug, a rise and fall of the shoulders indicating uncertainty
* brow - ridge - (n) the bony brow over the eyes
* red - kosh - (n) red, scarlet
* fall - ibrar - (v) to fall, trip, fall down
* flower - gemma - (n) flower, colorful pollinator-attracting reproductive part of a stationary organism
* heat - jiik - (n) heat, high temperatures
* table - lynnoa - (n) table, countertop
* bed - nyslee - (n) bed, bedroll, place to sleep
* glass - tasiint - (n) glass, a transparent object, something that can be seen through
people - goh, gara - person, people
Bonus word-find from the narrative: Jaal shrugged one wide shoulder. “Your translation program mixes our personal words together in very awkward ways that are… frequently incorrect.”
The problem, when you got down to it, was that the concept of ‘up’ hadn’t been properly invented yet. Aziraphale was looking out, instead, out over the inky blackness of something as yet unnamed. ‘Sky,’ he had heard one cherub call it; ‘universe,’ whispered an angel who worked as a scribe in the records department. Once it became clear that nobody really knew what it was or what it’s purpose was to be, Aziraphale stopped worrying about it. He just liked the way the little dots of light out in the distance reflected on the tile of the hallway, if he left the door open and sat on the edge. He wasn’t afraid of falling. There was no such concept, no down to fall into without an ‘up’.
So Aziraphale came to the sky-ink-universe door whenever he was on a break from his swordsmanship lessons, and stared into the Away From Here, and, when he was sure there was no one else around, admired the way his loosened, shed feathers glowed as they floated out into the black.
“That’s where those have been coming from!”
Aziraphale started, and turned to see an angel with an armful of scrolls and long red hair drifting towards him. The angel grinned as he held out one of Aziraphale’s feathers. “I’ve been catching them, but nobody would admit to grooming while we’re working. I was starting to think someone was pulling a joke on me.”
Aziraphale blushed and took his feather back. “Not a joke, I’m afraid. Just me.”
“You don’t work out here, do you?” the angel asked.
“No. I’m a principality. I’m training to be a guard.”
“A guard of what?”
“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t think it’s been made yet.”
“Wow,” the angel sighed. “That’s so exciting.”
“Where do you work?” Aziraphale asked, wanting to be polite.
“Over there.” The angel pointed in a direction. Aziraphale had no idea how he could tell one place from another in this endless shell of black. “You can’t see it from here,” the angel explained when Aziraphale looked lost. “It’s way out…” He waved his arm at the universe. “You know. Far off. Takes a long time to get there.”
Aziraphale blinked. “Oh. Er.” Maybe that explained why he was confused. “I don’t think we’ve got ‘time’ in my department yet.”
“Really? We got it ages ago.”
“I’m sure they’re working on it. They didn’t implement shadows where I’m from until we tried on armor for the first time and none of us could see anything for all the light reflecting.”
“Ah, yeah, darkness was a huge update, loved that one. Especially out here, you know, this whole thing,” again, the whole-arm gesture, “doesn’t really work without the dark. It was just all light, with a little bit of lighter light where the stars are.”
“Stars?” Aziraphale looked out at the sphere of black cocooning them, and all the tiny pin pricks of light shining through. “Is that what these are called?”
“Yeah.” The angel’s smile went soft, and he turned so he could sit on the ledge next to Aziraphale. “Brilliant, aren’t they? I got to help build a few of them.”
“Really?”
“Mhm. There’s one, way out far away, that I designed, and She approved it and now it’s real.” The angel’s feet kicked excitedly. “It’s nearly done. We just have to finish heating up the second star.”
“That’s amazing,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t get to make things, mostly. I did invent a new sort of parry last practice, but that was mostly by accident.”
Accident or not, the angel’s eyes lit up. “Tell me,” he urged, and for lack of a reason not to, Aziraphale did.
He came back during his next break, but the angel with the red hair and the questions wasn’t there. But the stars had taken on a new layer of beauty, now that he knew what they were, what they were called, what they meant. That they were built. So much of the world was made for them, and Aziraphale treasured every wall, every tile that She had manifested for the angels to exist on, but the thought that they themselves could create things to love alongside her made him crave the experience himself.
A long while later—they had finally gotten around to adding the time update everywhere; Aziraphale wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole idea—Aziraphale met the angel at the door again. He was already sitting on the ledge, and Aziraphale nearly walked right into him when he opened the door.
“Oh! Oh, dear, I’m sorry.”
The angel just tilted his head to look at him. “Hello.”
“Hello.” Aziraphale maneuvered around him to sit. “I hoped I might see you again. Have you finished your stars?”
“Yep.” The angel stretched, popping his back, and tucked his feet under himself. “She’s got us doing a new thing now. All hands on deck for one specific star. ‘S not even a big one.”
“Really? I’d heard a few departments were very busy, but I hadn’t thought it would include yours.”
“Is yours busy?”
“No. We finished training a little while ago, now we’re all assigned to troupes of angels to lead.”
“Lead to what?”
“I don’t know. But they’ve told us to be ready. Whatever it is, it must be coming soon.”
“I hope it comes before we light this new important star up. It’s gotten so boring.”
Aziraphale gasped. “You can’t say that!”
“It’s true!” The angel laughed, and the little flare of panic in Aziraphale’s chest faded out. “I’m not the only one, either. There’s a bunch of other angels bored of their stations, too.”
“I’m not bored of mine,” Aziraphale insisted.
The angel smiled at him. “No. I’m glad you’re not.”
Again, there was a stretch of time before Aziraphale saw the angel next. Again, he went back to the door every chance he got to look out at the stars.
This particular time, the last time, he went with a sword at his hip.
Construction on all projects had stopped when certain angels started to disappear. They slipped through the tiles of the floor, some said, while others swore they’d seen them crumble to soot, burned into dust. None of them had come back. The principalities had been sent out to ensure they didn’t try to.
Aziraphale brought his group to the door and sent them out in all directions, out to find any angels still working out there and bring them back to heaven where they would be safe. Aziraphale stood on the ledge and tried with everything he had to remember which way the angel had pointed when he told him about his stars.
He blinked. He tried to figure it out again, to orient himself via the door and where the angel had been standing, but the sphere of the universe shifted whenever he moved. It was different. It was no longer all out. Aziraphale tilted his head back, and saw the stars above him. They had been there before, but they had not been there, not there in relation to him.
He looked down, dizzy with the change, and caught himself on the door jamb before he could tip over. There were stars there, too, in the brand new below him.
And there was a flash of red. A streak of white, pure as an angel’s robe, going deeper, falling down. It faded to black before Aziraphale could comprehend it.
He stretched out his wings, stepped cautiously off the ledge. He did not fall. He did not float, either, not the way he had before. It was different. All very different.
Aziraphale sat heavily down on the ledge, and looked up at the stars.
The sleek yacht cut across the waters of the Nocen Sea, silent and ghostly in the night, the talents of a weather mage ensuring its sails stayed full and its course swift.
-- Chapter one, Unbekannt (working title)
The first day of Oliver’s visit, even the weather cooperated in making Minrathous look wonderful—it was warm, not scorching, with a light breeze that brought the scent of the sea (rather than the docks, thankfully).
-- latest chapter; they’re not numbered yet since I don’t publish until the whole book is done and edited
Unbekannt is the next novel-length fic in my Dorian/Kai Trevelyan series The Contours of Shadows.
With thanks to the ever-creative @dafan7711 for the tag!
Tagging @whenmysoulsings, @tessa1972, @shield-maiden-of-sherwood, @rachelleofalltrades and anyone who’d like to share.
Inviting you to post the first line of one of your WIP’s, and/or the first line of the next chapter to be published.
It took only a few wrong turns before I found my way, though one of those had been down a narrow street where someone had painted DIE SCREAMING MAGE SCUM in huge red letters along a building side.
From my just-relaunched, revised and expanded version of Departures, first book of my Dragon Age series The Contours of Shadows.
Thanks to the ever-gracious @dafan7711 for the tag! Tagging @beckily, @rachelleofalltrades, @sulevinblade, @whenmysoulsings and anyone else who’d like to share.
It may have happened one night, but I don’t want to hear it from your personal perspective!
I’m going to take a few moments away from posting pretty pictures to talk about something writing-related that vexes me no end.
Namely, the prejudice (at least in fanfiction circles) against first person POV (that’s Point of View) amongst enough readers that it keeps arising as a topic.
Now, I fully admit I’m biased because my DA series The Contours of Shadows is entirely first person, and I would love it if every one of my followers and everyone reading this would also read it.
I know that’s unrealistic, just like I know the series would honestly suffer were I to rewrite it in third person to satisfy those people who refuse to so much as look at a first person story.
The sad fact I’ve had to face is there are people who will hit backspace so fast they’ll be in danger of hurting their finger the moment they discover my series is written in first person. I’ve had to simply resign myself to knowing there are people who will refuse to read my work for that single reason.
They won’t read a little to see if it’s well written. They won’t meet my narrator. They won’t give it so much as ten minutes to grab them. Because it’s first person.
And that’s what baffles me. If it were third person, they’d probably check it out at least. It it’s not their cup of tea, that’s fine. We all have our preferences.
But...
Where does this knee-jerk hatred for first person POV come from? I’ve read a plethora of reasons:
“YA is mostly first person, so first person is juvenile.”
“It’s too easy to write. I did it when I was twelve and it sucked, so all first person sucks.”
“I feel like it’s telling me I have to be that person.”
“No one who writes fanfic can write first person well.”
And the oddest: “I’ve read a few first person stories, and none of them were well-written.”
To respond to those common complaints in turn:
First person POV was being written long before anyone ever considered there might be a market for novels pandering primarily to adolescent readers. Just because you read some first person POV books as a teenager doesn’t mean that’s when and why people started using it, or that it’s only suitable for people under twenty.
Well done first person is not easier than third person. If anything, there are extra restrictions that one must consider due to the narrator’s limited knowledge of the events they’re relating. In addition, if the writer doesn’t know their narrator deeply and intimately, it will come across as disingenuous. You have to be able to inhabit your narrator completely, and the fact that twelve-year-old you couldn’t does not mean it’s an impossible feat. It means you were twelve, and your third person narratives were probably not wonderful either.
The “telling me what to do” complaint is confusing first person with self-insert. First person should feel like the narrator is sitting across from you telling you their story. It’s not demanding anything extra from you. The narrator is just hoping you find their story interesting.
The “no fanfic writers can write first person” complaint is just weird. I’m sorry, but there’s so much poorly written third person fanfic, I don’t understand this one. It ties into the last objection about having read some poorly executed first person stories.
Sure, there are bad first person stories. Bad writing is not exclusive to one style or genre. The people who make this complaint have no doubt also read terrible third person fanfic, but for some reason they give it a pass while first person is condemned.
For anyone still reading at this point (thank you for sticking with it!), I have no problem with those who just don’t care for first person. I don’t like second person present tense, and can’t get into anything written in that mode so far. But if the writing was good enough, I’d give it a shot .
To my mind, the calibre of the writing is everything. Some stories work best in third person POV. Others work best in first person, or present tense, or when set to music. But to reject something out of hand without at least giving it a chance is…sad. You’ll never meet Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden, or Patrick Rothfuss’s Kvothe, or Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan—just to name a very few in the Fantasy genre—because of a conviction that first person is no good.
If you prefer classic literature, would Moby Dick really have been a better book if it had begun, “He told people to call him Ishmael”?
I’m not telling anyone they have to love first person POV, but at least give the stories the same benefit of the doubt you extend to third person. I’ve yet to hear/read one person saying they refuse to look at any third person story because they read a few that sucked.
If you give them a chance, you just may be surprised. You might discover something wonderful that makes you laugh, or makes you feel something real, or even touches your soul.
And why would you lessen your chances to experience something lovely over something so arbitrary?
