The Bowery Presents
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NASA
Xuebing Du
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𓃗
hello vonnie
PR's Tumblrdome
Monterey Bay Aquarium
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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@theartofmadeline
Cosimo Galluzzi
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
EXPECTATIONS
KIROKAZE
d e v o n
YOU ARE THE REASON
Game of Thrones Daily
Kiana Khansmith
seen from Vietnam
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seen from United States
seen from Nepal
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seen from Bangladesh
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@thesunrisesdespiteyou
forgive me...
(( Just in case there is one person left in this universe who doesn't know... I've just signed with a literary agent. This is the last time I'll mention it, I swear. But holy cow after the year I've had it feels good to have a win on this massive of a scale. ))
Something's spooked him, Shai says. Or Shai tells me Eihann says, anyway. It's hard for me to imagine him spooked -- there's a kind of steadiness about him -- but maybe that's put on, just like the mannerisms of Shai's that he's borrowed. It would explain though why he's suddenly made himself scarce and why he used a "random" woman on a street corner to start pushing what now appears to be his primary agenda.
So that's what he's about. Trying to stop the Pact from killing the Elder Dragons, for some reason that appears to be... religious in nature? The woman was supposed to send us a letter giving us a place to meet and hear more about this nonsense, but I never got a letter, or else it was intercepted. I'm trying not to squirm, trying to be as nonchalant as I would be if it weren't my job to figure this all the fuck out.
Whatever's got Jason nervous, it must be something about what happened the last time he and Shai went hunting. They took on a group of bandits and Jason got shot in the shoulder. Shai went to get him some medical attention and when he came back with a few farmhands, Jason was gone. Best I can figure, Jason hadn't planned on getting shot, and he didn't want that many strangers getting all up close and personal and fucking with his open wounds. Real easy to fake an infection, right? He's still thinking like a man who expects to be assassinated, which is what makes this so fucking hard.
In his note, Shai abbreviated Eihann "S.O." for some reason, so I asked him if he meant superior officer or significant other. He told me he doesn't fuck plants, and it quickly devolved into a conversation about zucchini. I don't know what the Order of Whispers was thinking, hiring us.
(( OMG a gif of my Shai, made by the fearsome and talented Kelevra! And edited for tumblr-friendliness by Ellis. ))
Woman on the street corner tonight in Lion's Arch, handing out these flyers. Too tired to figure out what the hell to make of it.
We've taken to just assuming that we're being spied on, by ears or by tech, at all times. So we don't talk business out loud. But we've got to communicate, and we can't look like we're up to anything either. Can't make little document bonfires or have trash full of shreds.
So we chat about the sea or Shai's fucked up friends, and he writes me notes on rolling papers about whatever he really wants to talk about. And when we're done, we smoke them.
I literally breathe my work these days.
I've got a name for him, now, at least, thanks to Shai, who introduced himself like the polite boy he is. Jason Harris, he said his name was. How bland and Krytan is that, I mean seriously. I'd lay a stack of gold on no part of that being real. He acted startled when I said my name, said he was at my concert a couple months back, said he didn't recognize me with the new hair and all. Then he acted shy and left me and Shai there to finish our picnic. I don't even know what he's playing at. Is it possible I have the wrong guy? I'm starting to wonder. I brought up the charr/human peace treaty and he didn't even blink, like he has no interest in politics at all. Who is he exactly? I hate going into this knowing nothing other than that he needs to die.
my old man is a tough man
but he's got a soul as sweet as blood-red jam
I haven't been looking for him, because they said if I did the right things, he'd find me. And he did.
I kept wanting to believe it wasn't him. I'd pictured something... different. Exciting. Dangerous. I thought he'd slip out of a shadow and tell me I'd been Chosen. But instead I went to the tree I'd taken to eating lunch under in Queensdale and he was just sitting there, there smoking a pipe, looking a little bit like a hayseed, to be honest, in his second-hand clothes.
It had been so long without any sign of my target that I honestly didn't think anything of it until I tried to sit under the tree with him at a polite stranger-distance. As though my movement were one end of a lever and he the other, he got up and leaned against a different tree. Like oil on water, if I were soap. He doesn't let anyone get close enough to touch him. But it was so casual and effortless that I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been told to look for it.
We made the kind of conversation two single, moderately attractive strangers do when they end up sharing the same space for a few minutes. I asked if he wanted one of my apples, and he said no, he'd already eaten. He never takes food anyone else has touched. He didn't ask me my name, probably so I wouldn't ask his. With taciturn, feather-light subtlety he steered the conversation so that we ended up talking mostly about me: about my climbing, my weapons, the things I was good at. I laid the self-absorption on thick so that I wouldn't have to ask him much about himself and force him to find ways not to answer. He drew out of me that I was in the area habitually, helping out the same people a lot, and I think that was all he needed to know, because he got quiet after that.
He was still smoking his pipe, though, and sitting there, and putting me at ease despite all common sense to the contrary. So I told him some pretty entertaining stories about my recent adventures. He had a strange laugh: a sort of pause in front of it every time like he was making a decision about it. He finished his pipe before I finished my lunch and took his leave without much more than a grunt and a lifted hand.
I guess what threw me at first is that I was expecting him to be smooth. This is a guy who's gotten the better of Whispers three times, and who's rumored to be the leader of... something. They won't even tell me what, I guess so I don't have to feign my reaction when he eventually tells me. I had a kind of image in my head, I guess, having grown up around con men. But he didn't seem like a con man. He seemed earnest and intelligent and a little awkward. Shy, even.
And then it hit me. It hit me why I was so comfortable with him, and when I realized it, a frost crept over my skin.
The tilt of his chin as he exhaled smoke, the subtle, restless movements of his hands. The way one corner of his mouth outran the other when he smiled. The very rhythm of his silence, that soft uncertain laugh. Shai.
He didn't look like him, not in the slightest. There were just these subtle cues, behavioral things, posture, energy. Just enough to make me relax, to think kindly of him.
I know just enough about this guy to know that it could not possibly have been a coincidence.
The reason it has taken him so long to contact me is not that I haven't been making myself interesting enough to him. Oh no, quite the contrary. The reason it has taken so long is that he has been doing his homework.
Fuck, is it possible that I am already in over my head here?
Gemma Arterton for Empire’s Sexiest Movie Stars
((this is pretty much the greatest video ever.))
Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.
Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns (via larmoyante)
30 Days of Character Development - Day 12
12.) How is your character with technology? Super savvy, or way behind the times?
Sun doesn't make much use of modern engineering in her daily life. Having grown up homeless, she got in the habit of living cheap and spare, and what technological innovations she eventually had installed in her own home were only around for a few years before they ended up a heap of twisted metal and ashes. She's back to living like a drifter. When it comes to her performances, though she's been known to go overboard with flashy asura lighting and occasionally even charr pyrotechnics.
