Another Friday at school was done and now I just have to complete my first single tennis match. Then off to home to get ready for what I really love to do. On our bus ride to are tennis match which was just in the next town over. Julia, my best friend, tapped my shoulder while I had my headphones on. As I paused my CD player with a stern look on my face. She goes, oh sorry to bother you, I was just going to ask you were you nervous about your first match without me? She chuckled due to me and her always being double partners. No I said with a straight face I'm more nervous for tonight. Oh she says, for your church singing competition? As my body tense up a little I take a big breathe in and say no.. It's not a singing competition, my church youth choir got invited to sing at another church for the first time. She simply gives me a blank stare then says okay cool. Then goes back talking to the other kids. Finally we get back to our school and I see Sis. Jones and my little sisters waiting for me to pick me up. Right when I get in the car they ask me how did I do? I told them I lost but I really didn't care because, I was more worried about tonight. Once we got back to the house I took my usual role as the "family manger" and made sure everyone was ready to go. Me and my sister had made everyone in the choir T-shirts the night before. So I made sure Sis. Jones had them already packed and ready in the van. From our house to the church was a good 30/35 minutes so it was really important to me that all 7 of us was dressed and ready out the door. So we had extra time in case of Friday night traffic. Once we got to the church we started loading up the church bus. Also me being the church co youth department leader I made sure I had the right head count for everyone. While I was counting for everyone I had everyone on my list but the main person we needed the choir director! We had to drive 45 minutes out so we had to leave the church by a certain time. I immediately called Sis. Pam asking what's her ETA, she told me she would meet us there at the church. So we were then on our way, everybody knows how serious I take singing in the youth choir. So on our way there I put it on myself to take the lead to make sure everyone knew the songs, the lyrics, and their parts. Once we got to the church Sis. Pam still hasn't gotten there and now I just got a phone text notification saying, she wasn't going to be able to make it. I knew everyone here would be sad and their hopes would be down if we came all this way just not to sing. So a few of the head church members came to me at offering and we came to a conducive conclusion. They said it should be me to direct the youth choir. I was so surprised and felt so exhilarated. Something inside of me could not say no even though, I was only 15 and I never directed a choir before in my life! After offering I told everyone in the youth choir to get up. All there faces were a look of worried and confused. I put everyone in all their places, I told the musician's our first song 99 1/2 by Hezekiah Walker. Once my hands went up I just immediately felt embodied with God's spirit, a felling I will never ever forget. Before I knew it by the time the song was done everyone was up on their feet clapping.

Currently I’m happy with it, and that’s the issue. I’m not aware of any glaring flaws. I am aware that the narration is not as archaic as the dialogue, and that’s by design. Inspirations were the vvitch (obv) and a short snippet I read of The Croning.

Intro excerpt:
She never sleeps well, Penelope. Nightmares and the unending pulsation of a restless leg send her into a hell all too intimate every night. No real pain, more so a frustration so intense that agony would be a preferable alternative. On occasion, she has used pain to alleviate the frustration. A knife, or red hot sewing needle; small burns or cuts here and there on her arms and legs. Sometimes it helps her sleep, most of the time it doesn’t. 

Her husband sleeps too well, the unwashed piece of shit. In bed early and up late, and all too physical when his dear old wife attempts any sort of relief for herself; not that he’d understand anything about that. Hair everywhere, a walking tumor stuck to the earth. Yellowed teeth in a foxes smile and breath that smells like vinegar. Jaundiced eyes and no matter how much the bastard drinks he doesn’t die, no sir he doesn’t. 

A son, Marcus. Once a monstrous boy, born with fair skin, silk hair, and a woman’s complexion. Blessed with his mother’s face and cursed with his father’s brain. Nineteen years of age this harvest, and already he will foster six bastards into the world without so much as laying an eye on them. To young townswomen, Marcus is more than eye candy. Come in my abode, handsome young man, and fuck me til my eyes roll out, and he does. 

Did. 

Despite his father having the hygiene of dried semen and the complexion of boar shit, he still engaged in many the affair. One girl, twenty two years of age, caught his eye on a cold fall night. Into town he marched, head held high and seething for defilement. 

Drunk, she was, and lonely. Took what she could get. Hell for her—heaven for him and thank Jesus Mary and Joseph for a good bottle of wine. Blackened tobacco in his jaw, leaky bleeding gums, his teeth wedged into them like maggots biting into her neck and he was oh so happy. Cried herself to sleep that night. Debated suicide. 

Marcus caught eyes for her, unbeknownst to her previous endeavors. But, as fate—humorous cocksucker he is—would have it, he did not gaze upon her with his father’s eyes, but with his own. He saw not the pleasure between her legs, but the heart beneath her breasts, and her soul even deeper. On sight alone he knew things had to change. And if they didn’t need to change they would anyways. Consumed and transformed not by a blind love but a miraculous understanding that yes, good exists. Genuine good, capable of binding two souls together in an unbreakable link–damn the church and damn marriage. Good exists. 

It does, always has. I’m sure Marcus would have turned into a fine young man. Penelope never hated Marcus. Even when he brought the third whore home for the day, even when he berated her and whore this and cunt that, even when he beat her; a ruthless backhand and oh… thou art his son after all, but I could never hate you, my dear boy. 

And she couldn’t. Penelope couldn’t hate her son, it simply wasn’t possible. 

Marcus and the young girl spent more time conversing than making love—not fucking, but sewing the cloth of a real and intimate connection, as whatever quiescent god intended. 

Link to full story: https://www.reddit.com/r/scarystories/s/6PKLT85xFB

https://youtu.be/elItEy27dDg?si=6ywOP88UmRCBP32n
i made this little song and i would like your opinions on it

Are the dialogue voices distinctive enough to identify who's speaking? I’ve removed some dialogue tags deliberately after few sentences to test clarity. Is the exchange coherent, and can you tell who’s saying what even without the dialog tags? Advice on how to make the voice more distinct are welcomed.

Scene: Five characters trapped inside a room in another dimension planning an escape.

“What is the plan then?” Luna asked.

“The plan is to venture outside, like severing the connection as the hunter blubbered before he went limp,” Dawn suggested.

“No, the plan is to stay inside where it is safe and sound.“

“Yeah, dude! Outside is super packed with those damn flying octopuses.“ Derek hopped in.

“Shutup Derek! Dawn is right. If we all babble here, doing nothing, we all are monster toast one way or another!“ Ayla butted in.

Luna closes the distance with Ayla.“Excuse me! If you and your hunter brother want to go in for a suicide mission, by all means do so; leave us out of this.”

“Ahahaahaa…“ The hunter moaned in pain and turned to the other side of the couch.

“It looks like he is useless. How are we three going to face the monstrosity outside? We need to wait. A missing D-rank hunter is a huge problem, right? More people will come to rescue us.“

“How, Luna, how? We are in deep shit! Our unconscious body is now being slowly devoured by those tentacle shits. We need to move fast!, we don’t know what is happening to our physical bodies outside“

“Ok!, if you also want to die, then go ahead and leave me out of this. At least one person needs to be there to pass the death message to the family.“

“Add one more to that because I will be cooked if I even step one inch outside. “

“Is your sister always a bitch, Dawn!“

“Excuse me!“

“We all will be seasoned, well dressed, and cooked beyond recognition if we keep going back and forth like this.“

Sirens bladed and it’s lights flashed against the school walls, a group of police officers having to physically dragged kit out of the school, a bunch of news reporters tried to shove their microphones and cameras at her face, their questions went deaf to her ear, her grim expression non-changing even as the kid’s parents screamed and cursed at her, only then when her mother arrived, did she question her own actions.

Sharing my writings on a whim cuz ppl in my life tell me my writings are good but I want some outside perspective. Feel free to provide advice/ tiny improvements!!!

The perfect suicide

Being perfect, no matter in what way,shape, form, object or person is almost impossible to imagine, so the title poses a question in itself; what would constitute a perfect suicide?

The perfect suicide is intangible, unbelievable, it is one where the person is rid of all their problems with one slash of their wrist; it’s one where there isn’t a way out except for death…

The perfect suicide only happens when you have nothing to say to anyone, when you’ve drowned so far the sea floor is easier to reach than the surface, even if you want to take a breath. The perfect suicide, it’s only when you have no letters to write, no loved ones to think about, when you look out into the night sky and you can’t seem to appreciate the beauty of the view…

The truth is, the perfect suicide doesn’t exist at all, not even after all conditions are met, not even when you’d rather take your last breath, not ever, not when there’s always a way out if you breathe and take a backwards glance at the wide open door behind you..

1000 word limit is difficult for me, but this is the 1006 words of chapter 1. Thanks for reading let me know if you wanna read more - I wrote a lot of it already, but it's a work in progress. Love to hear what you think of it.

Chapter One ~ Red Tape:

A day like any other, Gail sat at her desk in school, waiting for the bell to ring. ‘One year left then I can do whatever I want,’ she thought as she held her head propped on one hand off the table. Her elbow started to ache, and she sighed as the teacher droned on. Slapping her desk, Mr. Sanders spoke up.

“Are you listening, Gail?”

Blinking, she shook her head a little as she looked up at the teacher and answered, “Sorry, I was thinking. What’s going on?”

“You’re a junior in high school now, how about taking your education seriously?”

Flashing him a weak smile, she replied, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, go and answer the question on the dry erase board.”

“Fine,” she groaned as she stood to walk to the board.

Picking up the marker, she pulled a loose strand of blonde hair from her green eyes as she examined the math question on the board with several coefficients. Slouching as she raised a brow, she pulled the cap from the marker. She started moving everything systematically to the other side of the equation to solve for ‘y’, but something happened as she was about to finish. Red light shined up from her feet, and she heard murmuring from her classmates.

Looking down, the teenager was aghast as she took in the strange sight - drawn on the floor in glowing red lines were symbols she had never seen and a circle. Her feet left the ground, and her hair floated upwards beside her head as she dropped the marker. Feeling weightless, she pushed off the dry erase board but only spun around in place. Smiling as she faced her awestruck class, she spoke.

“Intens-”

In a flash, she was gone before she could finish the thought. Suddenly, she plummeted face first onto a cloudlike floor but bounced off the soft surface and eerily onto her feet in front of a desk with an old bald and bearded man sitting on the other side. The man was absorbed, typing at an ancient desktop computer, and completely ignored her presence as he worked. 

Gail waited, for what seemed like fifteen minutes, before she asked him, “So, where am I and why am I here?”

The man did not stop typing, nor did he look up to acknowledge her as he replied, “You’re in the space between. You’ve been misplaced, so I’m supposed to send you to the right place.”

Her eyebrows raised as more questions came to mind, and she voiced them, “The space between what, and what do you mean I’ve been misplaced?”

The old man, who appeared far too overworked with bags under his eyes and stress wrinkles all over his face, looked up at her with blue-gray eyes for the first time and answered, “The space between everything, and I mean you were misplaced in the wrong world. I’m in the process of sending you to the right one. Can you wait a moment, please? These forms are tragically long, and I’ve got a lot to fill out to get you on your way.”

Puckering her lips, she replied, “Yeah, I can wait - as long as you talk to me before you zap me off to God knows where.”

Squinting at her, he grumbled, “That’s interesting…”

Giving him a bewildered look, she asked, “What’s interesting?”

Looking back at the screen, he continued typing manically as he angrily shook his head and mumbled, “Of course, I’ll talk to you before I zap you off. I’m not a barbarian.”

Scanning her surroundings as she waited, she saw only stars in the far-off distance as she thought, ‘Great, he’s just going to ignore me.’ Noticing a chair beside her, she sighed and sat down. She waited… and waited… before she finally fell asleep to the manic tapping of the keyboard. Waking to a loud slamming noise, she nearly fell off the chair as her eyes shot open to his voice.

“Hey, you with me?”

Sniffing, she stretched as she sat up and nodded in response, “Yeah, yeah. I’m awake - I’m with ya.”

“Okay - I repeat. According to special code forty-two point six two four nine, you’re entitled to a few… concessions, since you were sent to the wrong world and forcibly relocated,” he picked up a book from a pile beside his desk and handed it to her as he continued, “The world you’re going to has a new system in place - it’s a little rough around the edges, so it might be difficult for you to understand. Did you play video games?”

“I played a few MMOs with my ex-boyfriend,” she laughed as she opened the book and scanned the pages as she continued, “He was such a nerd.”

Appearing amused, the old man chuckled before he replied, “Oh… brilliant. That’s going to make this a whole lot easier. We have lots of simple worlds with classes and skills, but this one is a little different.”

Looking up from the book a little worried, she replied, “Okay, well. That sounds a little daunting. How is it different?”

“Well… This world doesn’t have classes. Instead, you get three talents which are kind of like classes, but less intensive. You also get up to three special skills. Since you’re getting transferred, we’re going to let you pick instead of everything being randomly assigned. Once you’re there, you’ll be able to use status to check everything out by thinking ‘open status’.”

Returning her attention to the book and continuing to flip through the pages, she read the small descriptions of the talents and skills for several hours before she looked up and said, “So, for talents, I want Alchemist, Augmenter, and Guardian. For skills, give me Pocket Dimension, Magic Span, and Wellspring Regeneration. If you can let me have one more skill, I’d love to have Magic Potency too.”

Stroking his beard, he considered her before he replied, “Three years. I’ll give you the extra skill if you sacrifice three years. You’ll be fourteen instead of seventeen.”

So I'm using Gemini to give me writing promos so I can practice constantly.

This prompt was: "Write a scene about a character who finds a mysterious, heavy iron key left on their kitchen counter with a simple note attached: Do not unlock the basement."

Honest and constructive critiques please. I wrote this in about 2 days (between work and kids).

Thank you in advance! (Sorry for any typos I missed)

******

Tim walked in the house, exhausted after a long shift. After dropping his bag and removing his boots he headed for the fridge for a much needed beer.

He took a long swig and noticed something on the counter out of the corner of his eye. A key. A thick, heavy-looking, iron key lay atop a sticky note. Lifting the metal, he read the note:

"Do NOT Unlock The Basement."

His wife's handwriting seemed hurried and frantic.

Tim glanced at the basement door - a heavy oak door - and thought, "Why would she leave a note? I never go down there."

He knew of his wife's hobby of taxidermy and wanted no part of it. He'd went down there once, years ago, and couldn't hold back the vomit when he saw two stuffed squirrels perched on a shelf. At first it disturbed him but in the end he didn't care. He loved her; "till death due us part."

He took another sip then proceeded to his favorite seat in the living room.

Not 2 minutes into his relaxation he heard a thud coming from the kitchen. "No," he realized internally. "The basement."

Another thud, then 3 in a row, and then a voice. "Hello!? HELP! Let me outta here!" The voice shouted, muffled by the thick iron.

"What the hell!" Tim thought out loud -- beer now on the table and him now on his feet. His mind began to race as he stepped toward the kitchen.

"Do NOT Unlock The Basement," he remembered the note. He stood frozen in the hallway unsure of what to do.

Another sequence of bangs hit the metal door as the voice cried out, "PLEASE SOMEBODY, HELP!" The desperation it carried pushed Tim into motion. Quickly he stepped into the kitchen and grabbed the iron key. The cold of the metal combined with his racing mind sent chills up his arm and down his spine.

He turned toward the basement door and then remembered the note again. "Do NOT Unlock The Basement Door."

Tim's palms began to sweat. He looked at the door, then back to the key. He thought about the years he'd spent with his amazing wife. Then he thought about how you never really know someone, no matter how long you've known them.

Another stream of thuds came from the door.

Tim took a step toward the basement, key in hand, violently shaking and drenched in sweat.

"It's not what it looks like," he told himself unfaithfully. Slowly, trying to avoid making noise, he slid the key into its place underneath the doorknob.

"Tim. Are you okay?" His wife said as she enter the back door. He was too focused on the key and the door and the thuds to have noticed.

Startled, Tim fumbled and dropped the key causing a loud clang against the linoleum kitchen floor. "I-I umm..." he began but was cut off by more thudding and desperate pleas for freedom. "...that," Tim continued. "What... or Who the hell do you have in our basement?"

His wife sat a bag of groceries on the counter. Out of one came a smaller bag. A pharmacy bag. Out of the pharmacy bag she revealed a bottle of pills. "Darling, look at me... what basement?"

"What? What do you mean!?" Tim said incredulously. "The basement behind this big oak door? The basement that this metal key unlocks? You don't hear the pounding and yelling?" He gestured toward to door and was shocked to find it not there anymore. He heard nothing. No yelling. He looked down toward the key and, nothing.

His wife took his hands, "you're having an episode, honey. Here. This is your medication." She placed a pill in his hand then went for a bottle of water.

Tim stood still facing where the door should have been; considering what she'd said. "That's... that's not possible." He whispered to himself. He looked up and the door and the yelling had returned. He blinked and they vanished again.

His wife returned with water and motioned for him to take the medication.

Tim hesitated but took the bottle. "Me? Crazy?" He questioned himself.

The door reappeared, along with the yelling and thudding. "HELP ME TIM! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME THE FUCK OUT, TIM!" The yells were shrill. Distorted. Haunting. Demonic even.

Tim wanted to cover his ears but the pill and water occupied his hands. Without thinking about it any further he closed his eyes, tossed the pill into his mouth and washed it down.

Almost immediately, the yelling ceased. He opened his eyes to a smooth kitchen wall. No door, no key, no thudding. He hadn't even realized he'd began to sweat buckets.

"Are... are you okay?" His wife asked, concern coating her words.

"Um. Yeah. I-I think so," Tim replied. "I'm sorry hon. I don't know..." he trailed off but his wife jumped in to comfort him.

"It's okay, Tim. You just go relax, I'm sure you've had a long day." The sweetness in her voice put his mind at ease.

Still confused but now docile, Tim turned and went back to his seat and beer.

"Wait, what was i so worked up about? Something about a key that doesn't unlock a doors?" He shrugged and let his mind be soothed into passivity with another sip of his beer. He turned the TV on and began, again, to relax.

Consumed by sports highlights, Tim didn't see his wife bend down and pick up the iron key. He didn't hear the yelling continue as the door squeaked open -- and he didn't notice his wife entered the basement with a knife in her hand.

This is a story I intended to make about martial artists this is chapter 1
Think about my story so far honest feedback only ( please keep it respectful)

Chapter 1: The Gathering at Midnight
The sharp, rhythmic hum of drone propellers cut through the damp sea air. High above the jagged black cliffs of the isolated island, spotlights sliced through the dark ocean mist, converging on a stone amphitheater submerged in knee-deep, murky water.
In the center of the stadium stood a sleek, raised glass platform outfitted with high-definition broadcast equipment, leather armchairs, and a polished silver tea cart.
Alistair Crowthorne stood at the glass railing, adjusting the cuffs of his bespoke three-piece charcoal suit. He lifted a porcelain teacup to his lips, took a slow sip of Earl Grey, and smiled into the primary camera hovering three feet from his face.
"Good evening, world," Alistair’s voice echoed across the international live feed, smooth, articulate, and carrying a terrifying undertone of aristocratic amusement. "Welcome to performance art in its purest, rawest, and most uncensored form. Millions of you are tuned in across seven continents to watch twenty-two formidable combatants vie for a one-million-dollar purse. They believe they are here for glory, athletic achievement, or a payout. How blissfully naive."
Alistair gestured lazily toward the beach docks where two military-grade hovercraft were currently disgorging twenty-two bewildered, heavily armed, or traditional-clad fighters onto the wet sand.
"They are here for my amusement," Alistair purred. "Let The Midnight Culling begin."
Down on the shores, the atmosphere was a mix of intense martial discipline, confusion, and raw tension.
"Look, I'm just saying, the lighting on this beach is terrible for a vlog intro!" Kelechi complained loudly, wiping sea spray off his portable camera lens. He wore a bright track jacket over loose street gear. "If I'm gonna be in a death tournament, my followers need 4K quality! Hey, guy with the big legs, move to the left, you're blocking my rim light!"
Kwame didn't even turn around. The Ghanaian Muay Thai practitioner stood tall, his iron shins scarred from thousands of hours on the heavy bag, his arms crossed over his chest. "Keep talking, entertainer. When the bell rings, your camera won't block a head kick."
"A bit hostile for a orientation meeting, mate," Marcus chimed in, leaning back against a rusted pier post with his hands behind his head. The Jamaican-American capoeirista stretched his legs with effortless fluid grace. "Ride the wave, man. Stress ruins your flow state."
A few paces away, a furious argument was already erupting near the gear depot.
"I don't care what your personal philosophy is, Mina!" Aaliyah snapped, her voice piercing through the ambient roar of the surf. The Arab-American Krav Maga expert stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes sharp and demanding. "We have been split into stables by production! As the designated tactician of the Obsidian Vanguard, you will follow my entry formation. Systematized efficiency is the only way to control the variables!"
Mina slowly adjusted the straps on his heavy combat sambo jacket. He didn't raise his voice, but his Egyptian-American eyes were cold as ice. "Your 'system' treats human beings like rigid chess pieces, Aaliyah. Real combat is unpredictable. I don't take tactical commands from someone who views martial arts as a board game."
"It's not a game, it's combat logic!" Aaliyah barked. "Your stubborn refusal to cooperate is going to compromise the team!"
"Then don't rely on me," Mina replied dryly, turning his back on her to inspect the wet terrain.
Watching the exchange from the edge of the rocks, Kenji folded his arms inside the sleeves of his traditional white Kyokushin gi. "Discipline without harmony breeds defeat," the Japanese karate master observed softly.
"Too right, brother," Bodhi nodded, sitting cross-legged on a damp rock while practicing slow Tai Chi breathing. "We need to align our ch'i before we cross the threshold."
"Or just hit them really, really hard," suggested Carlos, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a hyperactive boxer, rubbing his knuckles together with a wild grin. "Who cares about ch'i when you can throw a flying knee?"
The sudden, deafening blare of an air horn shattered the conversation. Overhead, Alistair’s voice thundered through the amphitheater’s speaker array.
"Fighters of The Midnight Culling! As you can see on the broadcast screens behind you, you have been divided into two initial stables: The Nightshade Syndicate and The Obsidian Vanguard."
A colossal LED board flickered to life against the cliff wall:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ STABLE DIVISIONS │
├───────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┤
│ NIGHTSHADE SYNDICATE │ OBSIDIAN VANGUARD │
├───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ • Kwame (Captain) │ • Aaliyah (Captain) │
│ • Kelechi │ • Mina │
│ • Marcus │ • Kenji │
│ • Mei-Ling │ • Tane │
│ • Mateo │ • Inés │
│ • Soraya │ • Fatima │
│ • Dev │ • Bodhi │
│ • Zayd │ • Sun-Hee │
│ • Chloe │ • Carlos │
│ • Kiera │ • Nila │
│ • Liam │ • Toby │
└───────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

"Your immediate task is simple," Alistair continued, taking another slow sip of tea on his screen feed. "At the bottom of the flooded amphitheater lie six heavy iron keys. These keys unlock the warm, fully stocked living quarters on the upper cliff. The losing team will spend the night in the wet, rat-infested sea caves below. Oh, and to make things interesting... the water level in the amphitheater is rising, and the perimeter is rigged with flame jets. Begin!"
The massive steel gates of the amphitheater slammed open.
"Move! Nightshade, tactical sprint! Form a perimeter!" Kwame shouted, instantly charging into the murky water.
"Wait, wait, wait! Is this real fire?!" Kelechi yelled as a 10-foot column of flame burst from a brass wall sconce behind him. "Bro! Vance said this was a stunt show! He said the fire was CGI!"
Before Kelechi could process his panic, Carlos came roaring out of the mist for the Obsidian Vanguard, launching himself into a reckless, mid-air flying knee aimed directly at Kelechi’s head!
"Whoa!" Operating purely on instinct developed from years of dodging angry prank targets and performing cheap Nollywood stunt falls, Kelechi ducked down, threw his hands up in a theatrical martial arts stance, and slipped sideways. Carlos flew straight over his head and splashed face-first into two feet of muddy sea water.
"Did you guys see that?!" Kelechi screamed, pointing his camera at the splash. "Frame one dodge! Pure skill!"
In the center of the flooded pit, chaos exploded.
Mei-Ling darted between fighters like a phantom. The Chinese-Canadian JKD practitioner didn't waste a single calorie; her eyes tracked body telegraphs and weight distribution. When a heavy-hitting opponent swung wildly, she simply tapped their lead knee joint, causing them to slip into the water while she calmly snatched a submerged iron key. "Sub-optimal footwork," she muttered deadpan.
Nearby, Toby scrambled through the mud, utterly terrified. "I'm sorry! Excuse me! Just trying to survive!" he whimpered, slipping on an algae-covered rock. As he fell backward, his flailing heel accidentally clipped a rival fighter right on the chin, knocking them cold. Toby landed harmlessly on a pile of soft foam padding near the barrier, accidentally grabbing a second key that had been kicked to his feet. "I... I meant to do that!"
Meanwhile, Aaliyah was trying to direct traffic for Obsidian. "Tane, hold the left flank! Mina, secure the third key on the right!"
Mina ignored her, diving into a swell to pull Fatima out of a dangerous surge near an active flame jet. Fatima used her Silat footwork to plant her feet and assist Mina in pulling a third key from the mud.
"Mina! You abandoned the right flank!" Aaliyah yelled, stepping through the water to face him. "That key was our priority!"
"People are the priority," Mina said coldly, tossing the key to Kenji. "Your obsession with winning is blinding you to basic survival."
"This is a competition!" Aaliyah snapped back, her eyes flashing. "If you won't follow orders, you are a liability to this team!"
Up on the viewing deck, Alistair watched the monitor with absolute delight. "Ah, delicious. Look at them fracture before the first hour has even elapsed." He pressed a button on his control panel. "Let us cap off our premiere broadcast with our very first official 1-on-1 bout. Let's see how our viral brawler handles a real daredevil."
The arena speakers chimed loudly, locking the spotlights onto two fighters still dripping in the arena pit.
> ALISTAIR: "Attention, viewers worldwide! To end tonight's broadcast, we have our first featured duel! From the Nightshade Syndicate: the internet sensation, Kelechi! And from the Obsidian Vanguard: the fearless stuntman, Carlos! Fight!"
>
Carlos emerged from the water, wiping mud from his face with a manic laugh. "Round two, video guy! Let's see if you can dodge a real brawl!"
Kelechi backed up, holding his hands out. "Hey man, look, can we talk about this? How about we fake a quick sequence? I do a back handspring, you do a sweep—"
Carlos charged like a enraged bull, swinging a wild, heavy-impact right hook.
Kelechi’s survival instincts flared. He snapped his head back, feeling the wind of the punch graze his nose. Honed by years of low-budget action skits where getting hit meant a real trip to the ER, Kelechi reacted with surprising speed. He dropped his shoulder, slipped under Carlos's guard, and drove a double-palm strike straight into Carlos’s sternum.
The strike hit with surprising force, knocking the breath out of the daredevil. Carlos stumbled back, thrilled by the impact. "Now that's what I'm talking about!" Carlos yelled, launching a wild spin-kick.
Kelechi sidestepped clumsily, tripped over an underwater cable, and threw his arms out for balance. His flailing arm caught Carlos squarely across the jaw. Carlos spun around from the momentum and crashed hard into the wooden barrier, going limp as the referee called the stoppage.
"Winner by knockout... Kelechi of the Nightshade Syndicate!"
The Nightshade Syndicate erupted in cheers, with Liam dramatic-clapping like he was at an awards show and Marcus offering a lazy thumb-up.
Kelechi stood frozen in the knee-deep water, staring at his hands in utter disbelief, before slowly turning to look at the nearest floating broadcast drone camera.
He wiped a mix of sweat and seawater from his forehead, pointed a bruised finger at the lens, and panted into the mic:
"Bro... Master Vance lied to me. These people are actually crazy. If I make it to Tuesday... please hit that subscribe button."
Up on his glass balcony, Alistair Crowthorne raised his teacup to the screen, taking a slow, satisfied sip as the global livestream faded to black.

Hello all. I have been in a poet's block for a good while and just now got some inspiration to write this. If anyone knows Arabic and Arabic poetry I'd greatly appreciated your feedback. Thank y'all for reading and have a great day.
TW: Possible use of derogatory language regarding queerness (I am a target of said derogatory language though and I'm using it for effect. Hopefully this doesn't break any rules, but if it does, my apologies for breaking them)

طَرِيقَتَيْنَ عِينَاني يَرَيَانِ
طَرِيقَةٌ يَسْمُو عَلَى اليَمِينِ
طَرِيقَةٌ يَهْبَطُ بِالشِّمَالِ
هَذَا مَا قَالُولِي

أَجِدُ سَكِينَةً لَمَّا أَعْبُدُ
رَاضٍ عَلَيَّا النَّاسُ
لَو رَحْمَةً عَلَيْنَا أَتْبَعُ
وَ بِيَ مَحَبَّةُ اللَّهِ يَحُوطُ

أَجِدُ فَرْحَةً إِذَا أَكُونُ
بَيْنَ المَرْأَةِ وَالرِّجُلِ أَتَلَبَّسُ
بَيْنَ الذَّكَرِ وَالأُنْثَى أَتَصَوَّرُ
إِلَى أَحَدٍ مَا أَنَا بِمُسَافِرٍ

أَجِدُ حَسْرَةً أَيْنَمَا أَمْشِي
لَو أُسَارِعُ إِلَى هَوَيَيْنِ حُبَّيْنِي
وَ أَبْحَثُ سَكِينَةً بالتَّغَيَّرِ جَسَدِي
وَأَنَا أَشْهَدُ الإِسْلَامَ دِينِي
أَخَافُ جَهَنَّمَ مَقَامِي

فَبَيْنَ هَذَان أَنَا قَائِم
بَيْنَ اللَّهِ الَّذِي لَهُ أَنَا خَادِم
بَيْنَ حَسْرَتِي وَبِهَا أنَا عَالِم
لَو أَحْكِي عَنْ قَلْبِي وَ عَقْلِي شَقَّيْن يُخَرِّجُونِي
لِأَنَّ أَشُذُّ عَنْهُم ذَلِكَ قَرَارِي
لَكِن مَا قَرَارٌ هَذَا؟

Translation:
My eyes see 2 paths
1 path rises upon the right
1 path sinks upon the left
This is what they told me

I find peace when I worship
People are pleased with me
If I obey a mercy upon us
And Allah's love surrounds me

I find happiness when I exist
Between the woman and the man I clothe myself
Between the male and female I fashion myself
Towards one I cannot travel

I find despair wherever I go
If I race towards my 2 loves
And I search for serenity through changing my body
While bearing witness that Al-Islam is my religion
I fear Hell as my resting place

So between these 2 I stand
Between Allah, to whom I am a slave
Between my despair that I know of
If I speak of my split heart and mind they'll expel me
Because I deviate from them, that is my choice
But what choice is this?

Content includes self harm* The plot starts with a high school girl named sophie, she is a very introspective character suffering from major depression regarding her academics. She faces a break up from a relationship and her Friends shut her down one by one due to her declining social life. Her father dies due to cardiac arrest and her mother mentally affected still is to be recovering from the instances. Here at this point she develops a nihilistic or cynical viewpoint over life about how relationships and the society works. Sophie sees herself as a role to be played in society, Sophie decides to kill herself to flee from the torture, she is affected by a wave of mental trauma and is put into a state of coma or stupor when she runs into a woman with a mask and extensively covered peculiar clothing by accident in a secluded part of a park. Then she spawns in a mysterious place named the 'framed society' where people live to act on films with each of their role as a normal person in daily life, only Sophie realizes that each person playing their roles in the films are people from her own life. there are also different personas as the playwrights who run the framed society. There's a master director behind the screens who is controlling everything. she says that there are five arcs or acts to be rolled and each roles has to be played perfect or the respective characters will be killed or tortured. Sophie but with no choice acts on the arcs only to realize she has to decide and play through difficult circumstances of sacrifice of the characters to film all acts wearing various masks called sense of soul or SOS (I cant come up with a name). Each masks denote their specific roles to be played in that specific arc and takes control of the character itself. Sophie learns that she still loves the people around her and realizes that life isn't the way of how she's looking at it. She blends in to complicate things by taking in the masks of other characters to play their roles and understanding them. Finally what happens to her and how she escapes the framed society, her confrontation with the enigmatic director makes the rest of the story.  Ideas and critique welcome.

I borrowed The Return of the Native from the library on a Wednesday, mostly because it was thick enough to justify the walk, and found on getting it home, that someone before me had used the book rather generously as a filing cabinet. Strips of paper — not bookmarks exactly, more like offcuts, the width of a till receipt, the kind of paper that seems to exist only to fall out of things — drifted from between the pages as I opened it. First one, then three more in quick succession, then a small flurry of them, coming to rest on the desk like moths that had given up mid-flight.

Each one had a single word written on it, in a small, careful, slightly old-fashioned hand — the hand of someone who wrote using a pencil wetted with the tongue. I laid them out in a row, the way a tarot reader lays out a hand of cards, hoping they will do the thinking for her. SAILING. POSTAL. BEFORE. NATIVE. COLD. THEREAFTER. GREEN. THUNDER. BREATHING. WHENEVER. SICKNESS. Eleven words, sitting on my desk like eleven small hatchlings waiting to be fed a meaning.

I tried them in alphabetical order, which proved nothing at all, the words looking faintly embarrassed at having been asked to stand in a line for no reason. I tried them in an order that I imagined made more sense, which gave me something worse — a sentence that sounded like a telegram sent by someone short of cash.

By the third arrangement I had convinced myself I was getting somewhere — a note passed inside a book between two people who couldn't otherwise be seen speaking, a confession, or a plan of some kind, abandoned mid-sentence, the way a bird abandons half a nest when the weather turns. NATIVE, I thought. Something about travel. Someone going overseas, or returning from it. Had they lost their nerve, or lost the book, or both. Was SICKNESS to blame? Or perhaps THUNDER.

I spent the whole of that evening on it, moving eleven small strips of paper around a desk as though they were the last unmapped territory of somebody's private life, and I was the only cartographer left alive who cared. But to no avail. I tried anagrams, acrostics, even a brief and ill-advised experiment with alphanumeric substitution, which only left me more confused than the words had managed on their own, like trying to translate punctuation into a language that didn’t need it.

I could not let them go. I copied them onto a slip of paper and carried them in my wallet, the way other men carry a photograph or a rabbit's foot or a very small, folded piece of luck. I began saying them to myself, almost like a mantra, every morning while brushing my teeth and at night, lying in the darkness that arrives just before sleep when the day has stopped pretending to be necessary. They were now inscribed on paper and in my mind, in a totally random order that made sense only to me. But that no longer had the same importance. The words in their new order had a meaning of their own — a small, rhythmic prayer I offered up before leaving the house, before starting the car, before eating a meal alone — and reciting them settled something in me, the way a superstition settles a person who no longer quite believes in it but has grown fond of the shadow it makes.

A few days later I borrowed another book from the same library; a slim volume of poetry, the kind that looks unread out of principle. A strip of paper fell out as I opened it. Three words, in the same careful hand, or a hand so similar I chose not to examine the difference too closely, having already thrown the originals away: FIRE AND ICE.

I added them to the end of my sequence, where they seemed to fit with the treacherous perfection of a jigsaw piece that belongs to an entirely different puzzle but has, by pure luck, the right shape.

SAILING. POSTAL. BEFORE. NATIVE. COLD. THEREAFTER. GREEN. THUNDER. BREATHING. WHENEVER. SICKNESS. FIRE AND ICE.

The following afternoon, reading the poetry book over afternoon tea, I came across a poem by Robert Frost and sat up so quickly I nearly choked on a chocolate digestive. Fire and Ice. There it was, on the page, doing nothing more mysterious than being the title of a poem I had simply not yet reached.

I sat with that for a while and mulled over the significance of my latest discovery. And the more I mulled, the more obvious the solution to the mystery became. Someone before me had simply devised a small, sensible, entirely unmysterious system for finding their place again — jotting down the next word before closing the book, the way a person ties a bit of string around a finger, trusting the finger to explain itself later.

I felt, for a moment, exactly as foolish as I deserved to. And then, a moment after that, something closer to grief — a faintly ridiculous grief for a lost companion who had never existed, a fellow-traveller I'd invented out of eleven scraps of paper and my own willingness to find intrigue hiding between the covers of a book. I took the slip out of my wallet that evening and looked at it for a long time under the kitchen light, the way you might look at a key to a door that, it turns out, was never locked.

I did not throw it away. But before returning the poetry book to the library the following week, I tore a fresh strip from a notepad and wrote on it, THE END. I then slid it into a completely random page in the book.

The Bookmark is taken from my collection of short stories, The Small Print, that follow Douglas Fitzgerald through the absurd embarrassments of English life.
I'd love to now what you think.

Nine Fields

Chapter 1: A Bell Not Yet Cast

For eleven years I have heard a funeral bell that no one else can hear. I believed I knew whose it was. I tried to save her, and that is how she died.

My name is Pasco Kitto. I am twenty-eight years old and the oracle of Verrow, which means the Crown pays me to listen for what is coming and to tell it what it can bear to hear. I am right about small things: the oven in the palace kitchen that would crack on a Tuesday, the courtier whose horse would go lame. Those I report, and nobody minds. The last man who held the post was right about something large, and the Crown drowned him for it. I watched.

On the morning I am writing about, the old king’s daughter came home. Her name is Tamsin. She was sixteen. She had been five when her father died, and her uncle Corentin, who rules in her place as Regent until she is old enough to sit on the throne, had sent her up the coast to a salt works to be raised where nobody would think to stab a child. Now she was coming back to be presented to the Court, and custom required the oracle to give her a reading: one sentence about her future, spoken before everyone and written down by the royal clerk.

I had mine ready. It was a lie.

I live in the belfry above the city gate, where the Crown keeps its oracle and its old bells. The palace is built onto the gate tower, so the throne room and the royal rooms lie a few floors below me. That morning I was dressing at the window, and my apprentice Pip was supposed to be sweeping. Pip is ten. He sweeps the floor, and he carries the bowl of rainwater I hold during a reading, which does nothing and is expected. He had been sweeping the same board for some time and watching me.

“Is it far?” he asked.

“Is what far?”

“Whatever you listen for.”

I did up the brass buttons of my robe from the bottom, because the top one sticks, and told him I wasn’t listening for anything. Pip is small for ten and has a flat patient look, like someone who has heard the forecast and does not plan to argue with it. “Yes, Master Kitto,” he said.

He was right. I was listening for the bell.

It rings a long way off, and for eleven years it has been walking toward me. I measure the distance in fields, because that is how far a sound carries over the Verrow flats before the sea air eats it. Nine fields away is faint. One field away is almost on top of me. That morning it was nine, and it had come closer in the night.

From the window I could see the causeway, the only dry road out of Verrow, running two miles across the tidal flats to the coast road beyond them. Halfway out, at the causeway’s edge, stands the drowning post, with its iron ring. That is where Oswin died, the oracle before me. He told the old king, in open court, that the king would be dead by spring, and he was right. The Crown chained him to the ring at low tide and let the sea come in. I was seventeen, his apprentice. I held his satchel because nobody had told me to put it down. Nobody knows how the gift passes from one oracle to the next. It passed to me, I think, because I was the one standing closest.

The bell began that night.

I worked it out the way a frightened boy would. The Crown had drowned a man for foretelling a royal death, and the same hour a funeral bell started in my head, so the funeral must be royal. The Crown does not drown a man to protect a king who is already dying. It drowns him to protect whoever comes next. The old king died that spring, as Oswin had said, and I heard his bell rung properly over the flats, gold in the throat, and mine carried on underneath it. So it was not his. Then it was the next in line. Tamsin was five. Everything fit if I pressed on it, and I pressed.

I told no one. If an oracle says a royal funeral is being rung, it makes no difference whether he is right. I told myself I was protecting a child. I was protecting a place at the Court’s table, twelve bowls of barley a season, and my neck. Every quarter the clerk comes to ask whether the oracle has heard anything touching the Crown, and I tell him I hear a coronation bell, far off, joyful, years away. He writes it in his record in a good clear hand. I have told the Court everything I hear. Nearly.

At noon Pip pulled me to the window, and we watched her come.

She walked, which nobody had expected. The Regent’s coach crawled a quarter mile behind her because she had refused it at the toll. A thin brown girl with a sack over one shoulder. Hobb, the toll-keeper, straightened up for her, and she shook his hand, which is not done.

“She’s carrying her own sack,” Pip said. “Princesses have servants for that.”

I looked at the sack, and then at the post, and went down to lie to her.

The Receiving Hall holds two hundred people, and that afternoon it held all of them. I stood on the dais with Pip beside me and the bowl of rainwater in his hands. Corentin sat in the Regent’s chair in a coat of flat brass buttons, thirty-six of them, which I know because I count things when I am frightened and Corentin frightens me. I have never counted the buttons on my own robe; nobody counts what he is wearing. He is thin and kind-faced, and he has never raised his voice in my hearing. The clerk had his pen ready. Tamsin stood in the middle of the floor with salt still in the hem of her skirt.

“The bell that rings for you will ring late, and ring gold,” I said.

It was the whole reading. It sounded like a long life and a crown, and it could be written down without anyone being drowned.

The Court made the sound courts make. Tamsin looked at me, and then at the bowl.

“What’s the water for?”

“Nothing,” said Pip, who had not been asked. “It’s for show.”

A courtier laughed. Corentin looked at Pip until the laughing stopped, as he might look at a chair he meant to have moved. I put a hand on Pip’s shoulder. He has been mine since spring, and it was the first time I had touched him.

She found me at dusk. I go up to the belfry when the Court is eating, because the old test bells hang there in a row, dull and unfinished, cast to try new metal and never rung, and none of them is mine. I heard the ladder take weight. She came up with the sack still on her shoulder, looked along the row of bells without touching any, and sat on the sweeping box without asking.

“You went quiet in the middle,” she said.

“It’s a short sentence.”

“Not that. Before it. There’s an old woman at the salt works, Marl, who hears weather two days before it comes. She goes quiet exactly like that, as if she’s left the room and left her face to mind it.” She waited. “What do you hear?”

The bell was at nine fields. I gave her what was written in the record.

“A coronation bell.”

She waited. People who boil salt have the patience for it; you cannot hurry a pan. I counted my breaths and lost count at eleven.

“Is that what you tell everyone?”

“It’s what is written.”

“That’s not what I asked,” she said. “All right. Different question. How far?”

No one had asked me that in eleven years. They ask what, and who, and when, and I have a lie ready for each. I had none for how far.

“Nine fields,” I said.

She counted on her fingers, as if fields were something you could hold. “That’s close.”

“It’s a measure. About how far a man could walk.”

“Is it for me?”

The belfry had gone dark enough that I could not see her face and she could not see mine, which I think is why I managed it.

I have two voices for the word no. One is for the clerk and for Corentin: flat, a little bored, a man reading off a list. The other I keep for things that are true, and I almost never use it.

“No,” I said, in the first one.

She heard it. She nodded slowly.

“All right,” said Tamsin. “That’s one. Now I know what your lying voice sounds like.”

She climbed down the ladder. I stayed where I was and listened again, as I do when I am frightened. It had come up a field while we talked.

Eight.

Chapter 2: A Kitchen, Not a King

By the third week Tamsin had stopped asking whether I was lying and started asking which part.

The Court had spent those weeks trying to carry her. In Verrow the heir does not cross a threshold on her own feet on the first morning of a season. Two palace guards in grey take her by the elbows and the knees and bear her over, like a chest of eggs, and they had rehearsed it for eleven years on an empty chair. She stood in front of the Receiving Hall door with her sack on her shoulder while a guard named Tolliver held out his arms, and she said, “I walked from the coast. I can manage a door.”

Tolliver said it was the law. She asked which law, and what it said about the days the guards were sick, and Steward Dray, who wears her keys on the outside of her coat so that you can hear her disapprove, said nothing at all, loudly. Then Tamsin stepped over the threshold. Nothing fell. Tolliver stood there with his arms out until the noon bell.

I watched from the dais and said nothing, which is my one art.

At supper she sat in the heir’s chair, which was too tall for her, and ate her barley with a tin spoon she said she had found in the sweeping box in the belfry. It was bent a little at the bowl. I looked down and found I had stopped eating my own.

In Verrow every funeral bell is cast from the dead person’s own things. When someone dies, the family hands over whatever it will give up, a ring, a door key, the gold out of a mouth if the mouth had any, and the Founders’ Hall melts it down. What rings over the grave is the dead person made into something the wind can carry. The Hall casts the bells and also keeps the Book of the Dead, because in Verrow a death is only real once a bell is owed for it. The palace guards keep a copy and carry it to the Steward. A death is made by the knell: the oracle strikes the duty bell three times and says the name, and a guard writes it in the Book. By law the Hall owes every dead person a bell. It has never cast one for the drowned. Custom says the sea has already taken its share.

The bell I hear has not been cast, so it is not finished, and it changes. Until the spring Pip came it was a great many brass buttons and one metal I cannot name. Then a fish-hook joined it. That summer, a tin spoon. I knew the hook the day it joined: it had my father’s boat in it, the long creak of an eel-hook on a line. I told myself every fisherman in Verrow owned one. The bell comes nearer when I evade, and when my silence costs somebody something. It is the only rule of it I ever worked out.

Now the spoon was in the hand of a girl who was using it to point at Steward Dray. The bell was collecting her, I thought, a piece at a time. The worst of it was the relief, the small mean relief of a man whose guess has held. There was a bend in it I felt I knew, and I let the feeling go. I did not ask whose spoon it had been. Things left in the belfry belong to Pip by right of sweeping.

She came up the ladder every night after the Court had dined, and by the end of the month it had stopped being an event and become weather. The old test bells knocked softly together in the wind while she asked her questions in order of danger. First the harmless ones. How many bells hang here: eleven old ones and the duty bell. What becomes of a bad casting: it is melted down and the founder pays the metal back. Whether I slept: no.

On the eighteenth night she asked about the post.

“Tolliver says you can walk out to it at low tide. There’s a ring.”

“There’s a ring.”

“Did you know him? The oracle.”

So I told her. I had never said it aloud, not to the clerk, not to Pip: the tide coming in with no hurry, the satchel I forgot to put down, the whole Court on the causeway with their hats in their hands. The kettle.

“What kettle?”

“He asked me to tell his sister it was under the stairs.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Eleven years,” said Tamsin. “Why not?”

“Her name is Brenna. She lives on Dyer’s Lane, and she has had eleven years of no funeral and no grave and no word. The Crown keeps a list of who visits her. If I knock on her door, the clerk knows by morning.” I heard how that sounded. “That is the reason I give. The real reason is that I’m a coward.”

She didn’t laugh, which was right. “Does it get lighter? Carrying it?”

“No.”

She tilted her head. “That one’s true. It’s a different voice. I’m keeping count.”

While I told it, the bell had come up a field. I had told her everything except the one thing I owed Brenna, which was a visit. I decided it was the hour of the evening. I am a man who decides things, and in those weeks it cost me nothing.

Pip brought my barley the next morning, warmed at the kitchen fire and carried up in both hands, and set it down by my elbow with the face he uses for reporting the weather.

“You laughed,” he said. “At supper, when she asked Dray what a threshold was for. I’ve been counting. That’s four times since spring.”

“Counting what?”

“You.” He pushed the bowl an inch closer. “You used to do none.”

I had no answer. The bell was at seven fields, the princess was in my belfry every night, and a ten-year-old was keeping a ledger of my laughter. He was the only person in the kingdom who would notice if I stopped.

She came up again that evening, later than usual, and did not sit on the sweeping box. She stood by the ladder with one hand on the top rung, ready to leave.

“Corentin stopped me at the long window,” she said. “Very friendly. He asked what you and I talk about up here.”

The old bells hung in their row, not moving.

“What did you say?”

“I said barley.” She almost smiled. “That’s the first lie I’ve told in Verrow. It was easier than I thought, and I think that should worry both of us. How would he know we talk?”

I said I didn’t know. After she had gone down, I sat with the cold barley and looked at the gap in the floorboards by the sweeping box. Below it is the guards’ post. Somebody on the other side coughed, politely, the way a man does before he writes. He had been there for the kettle, too, and for what I said about the Crown’s list. I found I did not care, which should have told me something.

After that we talked at the far end of the belfry, by the biggest bell, where the floor is stone and no one below can hear.

The next morning I tried to catch a ten-year-old in a lie, which tells you what kind of man I had become. I stood with my back to Pip while he swept and said to the air, as if I were reading it off the wall, “Did anyone ask you about me?”

The brush did not stop. He did not look up.

“Tolliver asked what the oracle mutters at night.” Pip pushed his hair back. “He had his other hand on my head. I said barley.”

“Barley.”

“It’s what you say when you’re chewing.”

I took the brush out of his hand, which is not my place, and swept the board he had swept. For eleven years I had been afraid for a princess I had never met. The boy I actually had was standing under a guard’s palm telling lies in my name, and I had never once asked him to.

Tamsin came up that evening smelling of smoke. She had spent the afternoon at the Founders’ Hall on Cinder Row, where the furnaces are, and she had got in, she said, because no one had told the door she was not allowed.

“I asked the bellmaster what a king’s bell is made of.” She sat on the sweeping box and put her boots up on a bucket. “She got out a book. Royal bells are the exception to the rule: the Crown casts them early, from the crown plate, and keeps them waiting. A royal funeral bell is a ton of gold and silver. It has to carry over four villages. A king’s bell nine fields away would rattle your teeth.” She looked at me. “You told me you can hear what a bell is made of. So tell me.”

I said it to the rafters, because I could not say it to her face.

“Forty brass buttons, the flat kind. A tin spoon. A fish-hook. A thimble, which joined the rest the morning you came. And a metal I can’t name, under all of it. It sounds like a slate dropped on wet stone.”

“Forty? You counted?”

“I count when I am frightened. I counted Corentin’s coat once, to see whether the bell was his. Thirty-six. I decided I had miscounted.”

She said nothing for long enough that I looked. She was laughing, silently and with her whole face.

“Pasco. That’s a kitchen.”

“It’s the metal that matters, not the list.”

“It’s the drawer in every kitchen where nothing has a place. It’s a kitchen, not a king.” She wiped her eye with her wrist. “Nobody at the Hall would let you cast the Crown from buttons. They’d throw you in the furnace for the weight.”

“A poor bell can ring for a rich girl,” I said, and heard what I was doing. I was building it plank by plank, a bridge over a river I had already decided to cross. “A bell is made of what the family hands over. Suppose she gave everything away.”

“Who’s she?”

The old bells turned a little on their ropes, each in its own direction.

“I told you what I hear,” I said. “I never said I knew whose.”

“You said no. Fast, and in the clerk’s voice.” She took her boots off the bucket. “A kitchen belongs to someone who cooks. Who in this Court cooks? Because you’ve had eleven years, and I think you know.”

I could have told her. I have turned it over many times since, in this cell, where I have the leisure: the moment was sitting right there on the sweeping box with its boots off. I said instead, “Tell me about Marl and the weather.”

She looked at me for a long while. Then, because she was kinder than I deserved, she told me about Marl.

Marl had once heard a storm that never came. She had gone around the salt works for two days telling everyone to cover the pans, and they had covered them, and the sky had stayed the colour of a boiled plate, and the works had lost two days of salt. After that they stopped asking her. Then she was right about the next storm, and nobody covered anything.

“So Marl hung a bell for herself. It’s what you do on the coast, when someone has been told they’ll die. You hang one early, to fool Death. It never works. Marl says it makes you feel dealt with.”

“Don’t say that in the Hall.”

“Why not?”

“Because they keep the Book of the Dead. If a knell has been struck over your name, they have to write you in it, and once you’re in it, the law says you are dead. Even if you’re standing there eating dinner.” I made it lighter. “They are literal people.”

“Then I’d save on dinners.” She stood and shouldered the sack. At the ladder she turned. “Marl says nobody argues with a bell. They only argue about who heard it first.”

She went down.

The bell had been at seven fields for three days. While I sat there it came to six, and I made a decision. I was going to go on believing it was hers, because the alternative was a sentence I did not know how to say. Pip, on the far side of the biggest bell, pretended to be asleep, and I let him.

At six fields I heard the metal I cannot name as more than a note under the others. It was what the rest were set into, like stones in mortar.

Chapter 3: Mourning Early

The Regent sent for me with a plate of figs, which is how I knew it was serious.

Corentin keeps his rooms warmer than the rest of the palace and barer. A desk, two chairs, a brazier. He sat with his face turned to the window and pushed the figs towards me without looking.

“Tolliver stands where the floor lets him hear,” he said. “It is his post, and I have told him there is more to guarding a person than hearing her.” He took a fig and did not eat it. “He heard my niece ask whether something was for her. And he heard you say no.”

I said nothing. It is my one art.

“Pasco, I loved my brother. I did not love how Oswin died. I am not asking so that I can catch you.” He set the fig down. “I am asking whether the girl will live to be crowned.”

It was a good offer. It was the only one I had ever had. I believed him. I believe him still, about everything except what the law would let him do. It was the same desk. I am told the old king said almost that sentence to Oswin, with figs, and Oswin told him the truth, and I held the satchel. A royal death foretold in that room, before the Regent and a guard, is the crime Oswin died of.

Truth mattered, and so did she, and I could not have both. For eleven years I had told myself that silence was a way of carrying her.

“I hear a coronation bell, Regent,” I said. “Far off. Years away.”

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded and rang for the clerk.

“Tolliver will sit in the belfry with you from tonight.” He ate the fig at last. “Not to catch you. To keep you company.”

The bell was at five fields. At the pace it had been coming, it would reach me within the month. Tolliver would leave his post and climb up in the third watch of the night, with a lamp and a stool. I had until then.

I sent Pip to sleep by the kitchen ovens, where there would be people. He gave me his weather face and said, “You want me out of the room,” and I said yes, and he said, “Then I’ll go slowly,” and went down the ladder one rung at a time, to make me wait.

In Verrow a person dies in two steps. First the knell, struck from the belfry so the city knows to stop its hands. Then a guard under the floor writes the name in the palace copy of the Book of the Dead, which goes to the Steward at first bell and from her to the Hall. Once it is written, the law treats that person as dead: no bed, no bread, no crossing the causeway.

I had a plan, and I want it known that it was a plan. I thought about what Tamsin had said of the coast, that you hang a bell early to fool Death, and I had no faith in Marl’s trick. I had faith in the bell, which in eleven years had stopped for no one. If it stopped for this, I would know I was right. And on paper, a dead girl is a girl nobody looks for. At first light Tolliver carries the Book down to the foot of the stair to hand it to the Steward, and for ten minutes the stair above him is empty. In those ten minutes I would go down the back way and bring her up to the belfry and hide her there for the three days until the Hall sat. She could sleep on the sweeping box and eat my barley. On the third day I would stand before Corentin and confess a clerk’s error, and the Hall would cross her out of the Book.

I knew a false knell is punished at the post. I had thought about that too. I had been thinking about the post for eleven years.

I did not tell her. To warn her I would have had to say yes to a question I had answered no.

The duty bell hangs between the third and fourth old bells, small as a hat, with a rope that has a knot in it for every knell I have struck. There are fourteen knots. I took it down from its hook for the first time in my life without a name already in my mouth, and I held it a while, and I could hear Tolliver below me, shifting his weight.

He coughed once. It is a thing he does before he writes.

“Tamsin,” I said, “heir of Verrow.”

I struck it three times. A knell is meant to carry. This one only had to reach one guard.

“Dead.”

The cough below me stopped. Then, through the gap in the floorboards by the sweeping box, I heard the small dry sound of a pen.

The bell went quiet.

I want to be exact, because it is the part I will have to answer for. For eleven years it had been there when I woke and when I slept, as constant as my own pulse, and at the instant I said the last word it stopped, like a hand lifted from a string. There was a rope creaking. There was a draught under the eaves. There was a clock somewhere in the palace being patient. I lay down on the boards with my cheek on the grain and listened to nothing, and it was the best night of my life.

Tolliver came up in the third watch with his lamp and his stool and the Book on his knee, to hand it to the Steward at first bell, and found the oracle of Verrow lying on the belfry floor, smiling at the rafters. He said, “Master Kitto?” I said I was well. He looked at the duty bell, which was on the floor beside me instead of on its hook, and he did not ask. He sat with the lamp between his boots and said nothing for four hours, and I did not care. For four hours nobody in the kingdom was making a sound inside my head.

It came back with the light. Before I had opened my eyes I knew it was there, and that it was closer.

Three fields.

Marl had said it never works. I had thought she meant for other people.

I had meant to use the ten minutes. Steward Dray, who is never early, was early. Her keys met Tolliver on the stair before he had gone down three steps, and by the sound she was not alone. He gave her the Book there. Two floors below, Tamsin was asleep in a bed she no longer had any right to, and I had not told her. I had been going to tell her at first light.

Chapter 4: Everyone Obeyed

They carried her.

I saw it from the gallery over the Receiving Hall, where I had gone because I could not stay in the belfry. Four guards in grey, and between them, on a door lifted off its hinges, Tamsin, in her own blanket with her boots on and her sack on her chest. The dead are carried. It is the one courtesy the law insists on. For the first time in her life nobody asked her whether she could manage a door.

Dray walked in front, reading the order in the voice she uses for inventories. “The knell having been struck and the name written, the person formerly styled Tamsin, heir of Verrow, is dead. Her bed is returned to the palace store. Her bread is stopped. She may not cross the causeway, and no person may feed, shelter or assist her, or carry her beyond the gate. The Hall may cross her from the Book when it sits, which will be in three days.”

“Dray,” said Tamsin from the door. “You’ve forgotten my sack.”

“The sack is hers by the custom of effects,” said Dray, to the air. Tolliver held the nearest corner of the door level with tears running into his collar.

As they passed under the gallery she looked up and found me without searching. She did not say anything about the bell. She said, “Gate. Eleven,” and then they were through the arch and the courtyard was empty.

Corentin came up the belfry ladder himself, which a Regent does not do. He stood among the old bells with one hand flat on the biggest, and said, “Explain it.”

So I did. I told him what I had not told the clerk in eleven years: the bell, the funeral of a person I had decided was her, the nine fields and the three, the silence and the dawn. It took less time than I would have guessed. A great many years fit into a short speech once you stop arranging them.

“I asked you yesterday,” he said. “I put figs on the table.”

“Yes.”

“You rang a knell for a girl who was alive because you heard a bell for a girl you thought would die. The Hall has a name for that, and a ring at the end of the causeway.” He took his hand off the bell. “I cannot unwrite a knell. Neither can you, who struck it. Only the Hall can, in three days. Until then the law is very kind to the dead. It lets them rest. And understand what this looks like, Pasco. If my niece is dead in law, I am the Crown with no one to hand it back to. Anyone who feeds her is plotting against me or against her, and I cannot be seen to do either. I sent a loaf to the gate and Dray sent it back with the statute attached.”

He almost laughed, and it was the worst sound I heard that week.

“Everyone is obeying me beautifully. I wrote that law. I was proud of it. It was the thing my brother never had, a rule that did not care who was asking.” He turned to the ladder. “Tolliver will take charge of you at noon. I have bought you until then. It is all I own.”

She was on a bench outside the toll-house when I got there, eating a heel of bread with her boots on the cobbles. The guards had set her down and drawn back, all of them gazing out to sea. The law says the dead are not to be seen.

“You rang it,” she said.

“Yes.”

“For me.”

“Yes.”

She looked at the sea for a while. “You could have asked me. I’d have said yes.” She tore the heel of bread in two and held out half, and I took it. “I’m angry. I’ll be angry on the road. Hobb gave me this. He says he found it on the step.”

“Hobb’s a bad liar,” I said.

“The worst in Verrow, after you.” She wiped her hands on her skirt. “I’m going back to the salt works. They’ll feed me there. It’s three days by the coast road.”

The coast road starts at the far end of the causeway, and the causeway starts at Hobb’s gate.

Hobb stood in the doorway turning his cap in his hands. He has kept that gate for thirty years and never been rude to a cart. “Miss, I can’t write you. Everyone who crosses goes in my book. Everyone in my book gets the horn if the tide catches them on the flats. If you’re not in the book, there’s no horn. I’d carry you across on my back. I can’t write you.”

“Then don’t write me.”

“That’s all I am, miss. A man who writes.”

She stood and shouldered the sack. “There’s the low path. Shellfish gatherers use it when the tide is far out. It’s an hour and a half across, and the tide turns at one. I have to be on the sand by twenty past eleven.”

“Wait three days.” It sounded like something you say to a child. “Let me find some way to…”

“And do what? Be carried?” She said it kindly. “For an oracle, you ask for a lot of waiting.”

“Don’t go.”

“That’s not a no,” she said. “Say it in the other voice. Then I’ll know.”

She sat back down on the bench with the sack on her knees and waited. The toll-house clock said twenty past eleven. I stood in front of her and could not make it come out. A quarter of an hour went by on that clock. She nodded at last and went down the steps onto the flats, and I watched her get small.

Tolliver took my arm at noon, and he kept it. He is a gentle man, and he apologised twice.

The sea fog came in at one, with the turn of the tide, as it does on the flats in autumn: a white wall that climbs the sand at the speed of a walking man. By two I could not see the post. Hobb stood by the horn rope with his hand an inch from it. Dray stood in the toll-house doorway with the order in her hand, and each time Hobb reached for the rope she said, gently, “Master Hobb.” Each time, he let go.

At two he took hold of it and did not let go. “I’m not blowing it for her,” he told Dray. “The tide’s turned. I’m blowing it for the flats. That’s the rule, and you can write it down.” Dray looked at the order for a long moment. Then she wrote it down: horn blown for the flats, two o’clock. He blew a long note and a short one, over and over, into the white.

It was an hour after the tide had turned. He told me later, through the grating, that he had had his hand on the rope since the fog came.

They found her when the tide went out again, a quarter mile short of the far shore, with her sack still on her shoulder, because she had never let anyone else carry it. The moment they found her, the bell moved. It was at one field. I felt it go.

That night, at the next low water, Tolliver walked me out along the causeway. There is a cell built into the stone base of the post, with a grating on the causeway side and a stair of seven steps cut down to a sea door. On an ordinary night the tide reaches the third step. On the highest spring tides it reaches the seventh. The sentence is carried out on a spring tide, and the next one was three nights off, the night of the day the Hall would sit. They did not chain me. They told me the date.

Hobb came to the grating the next morning and worked it out for me on the back of his hand, because I asked. The low path took an hour and a half. She had gone down onto the sand fifteen minutes later than she meant to. The tide turned at one, and the fog came in with it. If she had left when she first stood up, he said, she would have been across with ten minutes to spare.

Fifteen minutes. That is what my silence cost.

Chapter 5: Wet Slate

The water is at the third step of seven now. On an ordinary night the sea reaches the third. Tonight, on the spring tide, it will reach the seventh, and the sea door will open under its own weight.

I have written all of this on the backs of Hobb’s toll sheets, over three nights, by a lamp he brought and a rule he made up himself, that a man on the post may have a lamp. Nobody ever wrote a rule about lamps. Tonight he stood outside the grating with his cap in his hands and spoke to the wall beside my head. “She was a good girl, Master Kitto,” he said. “I had my hand on the rope.” I said I knew. I said it in my own voice, the one I hardly ever use. He nodded and went away along the causeway.

This afternoon the Hall sat. It found there was nothing left to uncount, and it rang her funeral over the flats. It rang gold in the throat, loud enough for four villages. The Hall had kept the heir’s bell cast and waiting for eleven years, like the empty chair the guards rehearsed on. I had told her it would ring late and ring gold. It did not ring late. And underneath it, mine carried on, as it had under the old king’s.

Pip had been sitting outside the grating since the evening, on the dry stone of the causeway, mending his net and saying nothing. The causeway stays dry on even the highest tide; that is what it was built for. Now he spoke, for the first time all night.

“I brought your robe,” he said. “It’s cold in there.”

He pushed it through the bars a sleeve at a time. It was the good one, the one I wore to the Receiving Hall. Then he told me the rest, because he reports everything.

“Hobb found the spoon in her sack. He said you’d want it, so I’ve got it. And I took the thimble out of your drawer the day she came, when the net needed one. I should have asked.”

I held the robe in my lap. I count when I am frightened, and I did not decide to. My thumb went down the front, button by button, and I had the number before I knew I was counting.

Forty.

I looked up. Pip was holding the net in the lamplight with the hook through the mesh. The thimble was on his thumb, too big for him, tied on with string. The spoon was in his lap, tin, bent a little at the bowl. I bent that myself, the week I got his wooden ball down from between the belfry beams, and then I left it in the sweeping box and forgot it, and Tamsin found it and pointed it at the Steward. The thimble was my mother’s, the only thing of hers I kept; I had put it in a drawer and never looked at it again. The hook was my father’s eel-hook. I gave it to Pip the spring he came, to make him smile, and he bent it to suit his hand.

I had heard every one of them join the bell. When my mother’s thimble joined it, the morning Tamsin came home, I decided it was Tamsin’s, because a thimble in Pip’s hands meant the bell was mine.

It was mine. It was always mine.

A kitchen belongs to someone who cooks. For seven months the person who fed me, who warmed my barley and carried it up in both hands, has been ten years old. It is a poor man’s bell, as she said, and she was right, and I was too attached to my own guess to hear it. It will be cast from the buttons of a robe, a spoon, a thimble and a hook, and every one of them is already in Pip’s keeping, or will be by morning.

There is an iron ring set into the wall of this cell, at the height of a man’s hand when he sits. It is the one thing in here nobody tried to make comfortable. I put my hand on it while Pip was talking. It is iron, wet through, set into wet stone, and when I tapped it with a fingernail it made the sound I have been hearing under every other note for eleven years: a slate dropped on wet stone. No bell in Verrow has that sound, because the Hall does not cast bells for the drowned. Oswin has none. His sister has no bell, no grave, and no message about a kettle.

“Dray read me the law,” Pip said through the bars, as if he had heard me thinking. “About bells. She read it twice, like she hoped I’d fall asleep. It says every person dead by law is owed a bell. It doesn’t say except the drowned.” “I’m going to ask for one. I’ll have to give them things.”

Then I understood the last of it. The Hall owes me a bell, and a boy is going to ask for it. Someone must strike my knell first, and after tonight the oracle will be him. The knell I struck fooled it for one night, which is all an early bell ever buys, and it came back for the right death. I don’t know whether my knell killed me or only agreed with the bell.

The bell is not at any number of fields now. It is in the room. I can hear every part of it at once: the buttons, flat and bright; the tin spoon with its small tin cough; the hook; the thimble, like a fingernail on a cup; and under them, holding them, the iron in its wet stone. It sounds the way it did the morning Tamsin came home. It has been mine every day since Oswin, and I am only now close enough to hear who rings it.

Pip has started humming. It is the buttons. It is the exact note of the buttons, which I have never hummed for anyone, and which he has never heard. He is looking down at the net and does not know he is doing it. I think the gift goes to whoever is standing closest. He has been standing next to me since spring.

The water is at the fourth step. I have only this left that is any use to him.

“Pip,” I say. “Dyer’s Lane. Oswin’s sister is called Brenna. Tell her the kettle is under the stairs. I should have said it eleven years ago. And when the bell comes to you, and it will, say it out loud to the first person who will listen.”

He nods without looking up from the net. He is still humming.

I fold these sheets and push them through the bars into his hands, beside the spoon. “Read her the kettle first,” I say.

The bell is in the room, every part of it, close as a hand, and for the first time in eleven years I am not afraid of it. It is only everything I ever gave away, ringing, and a boy keeping time.

CW: self harm

The Angel fluttered her magnificent wings, the blinding gleam of her marble skin and golden hair contrasting the grey sky. She cast herself forth, every cloud in the elysian sky parting to make way for her imposing form. The Sun smiled down on her, rejoicing in the prospering of his realm’s most formidable warrior. But as she conducted her patrol of the sky, The Angel could not help but be consumed by a despair unbefitting the heavens.

With every beat of her magnificent wings, her spine ached, and she felt a beat of sorrow within her breast. Every time she unsheathed her glimmering sword to part the clouds, she felt a magnetic pull at the center of her being imploring her to redirect her flight downwards.

Knowing that she could never indulge such a desire without permission, The Angel instead redirected herself upwards, her wings producing heavy gusts and she rose effortlessly up to The Sun. 

“Sun,” she spoke, her voice delicate due to centuries of little use. “I wish to descend from the sky and become the mother of the land, and all the creatures upon it.”

The rays emanating from the star before her intensified, blasting heat across her pale flesh.

“Foolish child,” The Sun boomed. “You were crafted from starlight with a blade in your hand. The meteors did not rain upon this land with the intention of creating a mother; they rained so that a warrior may be born. Someone who reflects the beauty of our sky and is always in coordination with it. Do you think that the clouds part for you because you are their mother? It is not so. They part for you because you are the air.”

The Angel looked down, both in dejection and in pain as The Sun blared into her ears and retinas.

“Would you like for me to strip you of your sword and your wings? It is surely what you deserve after coming to me with such idiocy.”

The Angel winced. 

“No, Sun,” she murmured, already turning back to her clouds.

“I have seen how you’ve cradled your sword since birth. How the growth of every feather on your wintery plumage has excited you,” The Sun spoke to her back. “Do whatever you wish within your domain, child. I am certain that you will find immeasurable joy in the sky.”

And somehow, that last line of encouragement is what hurt her the most. 

The Angel could still feel the searing heat on her back as she carried herself off and, as soon as The Sun had turned the other way, downward. Her wings pulsated with pain as she descended, sword in hand, parting the clouds with an unforeseen ferocity. Surprisingly emboldened by The Sun’s denial, The Angel continued to free fall until she could see the green land below. 

With every foot she fell, The Angel covered the sky with yet another cloud. The Sun could not stop her if he could not see her from his perch atop the sky. 

Once she’d finally touched a soft foot down on the grassy meadow, The Angel immediately began looking around for children that she could care for. 

After no time at all, a rabbit bounded forth from the tall brush.

“Rabbit!” The Angel called, and after a moment, he hopped toward her. “I am your mother, The Angel. Please tell me if there is anything I can do to make the world a better place for you.”

The rabbit cocked his head to the side, thumping his foot as he considered her proposal. “Mother Angel, the leafy greens that I so enjoy eating are endless. But with so much space to grow, I fear they may grow so far that I will spend my whole life with time for little else than eating.”

The Angel was puzzled by this request.

“I will see what I can do,” she exhaled, walking away and rubbing the joint at the arch of her wing. The pain had begun to flare up once again.

As The Angel made her way to the forest, she encountered yet another animal; a squirrel. 

“Hello, squirrel. I am your mother, The Angel. Please tell me if there is anything I can do to make the world a better place for you.”

“Mother,” the creature squeaked, nibbling on an acorn. “There is a feeling in my body that no food can satisfy. It’s a dry, choking feeling in my throat, Mother.”

The Angel was despairing even more than the tiny beast before her. She hadn’t any clue how to heal the animals of the land. Perhaps The Sun was right, perhaps she was not meant to be a mother.

“I will see what I can do,” The Angel choked out, a throb of pain emanating from where her wings connected to her back. 

This pattern carried on forth until The Sun had retired for the night, leaving The Angel alone with her clouds, her empty promises, and her mothers, the distant stars.

After being met with what seemed like the thousandth request that she could not grant, The Angel did not merely walk away from the animal who gave it. She ran, ran as fast as her porcelain legs could carry her. She ran until she lost her foothold and found herself cascading down into a grassless ditch.

The Angel coughed dryly, dust choking her as she struggled to get a foothold. She accidentally stomped down atop her own feathers and palmed her own grimy golden locks in frustration.

“Curse you, Sun, and your poisonous words!” She yelled upward, though thankfully, her hoarse cries could not penetrate through The Sun’s slumber, and she was fairly certain that The Moon would not inform him of what she had said. “You have made manifest my despair! I could have been a mother, had you not filled my head with doubt!”

She was unsure if she herself believed those words. 

It was hard to think with the pain in her wings gradually spreading throughout her insides, tainting her divine body more and more with every breath she took. 

For the first time since she had touched down upon the ground, The Angel’s eyes wandered toward her sword, her one and only possession in all the sky and land.

Seemingly automatically, The Angel unsheathed her holy weapon and raised it above her head, plunging it downward with the same tenacity as when she had plunged through the clouds.

The blade missed the disarrayed mess of hair that sat atop her head by a fraction of a centimeter, instead curving and directly clashing with the joint that connected The Angel’s right wing to her translucent flesh. 

The Angel wailed in agony, feathers flying, as she wrenched the limb from her body. She dug the blade deeper and deeper, further and further, removing chunks of silky flesh alongside the wing. The pain was unlike anything ever suffered before, and the color of the chunky blood that flowed out into pools around her was a previously unseen one. 

She took not even a second to breathe before shifting the tip of her sword to the feathers and sinew of her left wing, slashing and hacking until her body grew numb to the spikes of agony raging from her brutalized back. 

In The Angel’s self-mutilating trance, she failed to notice that, despite the hundreds of blood dampened feathers falling from her body, not a single one of them had hit the ground.

Even after The Angel had pried the wing bones entirely free from her body with a piercing crack, not a single feather remained a feather when it hit the crevasse beneath her.

Every molecule of her once celestial appendages had gradually begun to morph into a new state of being; something between the land and the sky.

The Angel’s deformed body was now adrift in a steadily expanding pool of crystalline liquid. 

It took a minute of floating silently before she began to flex her bloodstained shoulder blades, and another minute still before she realized the pain that had been building up inside her had vanished. The Angel swirled her arm around in the liquid around her, which had by this point built up to fill the entirety of the once dry crack in the earth. By the time The Angel had figured out how to maneuver her body within the substance, there was no longer any land in sight for her to swim back to.

And in her moment of isolation, separated from the land, restricted from the sky, she inhaled deeply the scent of the sea.

And she reclined upon her creation in bliss.

The current carried her on aimlessly for the rest of her short life as the blood leaking from her back painted the sea floor with a vibrancy that could’ve only come from a celestial mother. 

Once her creation had cradled her into an eternal sleep, The Angel’s serene form began to melt. Her pale and gleaming flesh morphed gradually into the white foam atop the waves as she crashed down onto the shore for the first time since she first landed upon the earth.

The Angel, now one with the sea, rapidly spread across the world, nourishing her children and wrapping them all in an all-encompassing and tender embrace.

To this day, with every trace of sunlight that hits the water, a strand of her golden hair still rises to the surface to provide the world with a glimmer of beauty and a small statement of defiance against the star who had once denied The Angel’s will.

The next time that you are at the shore, I implore you to thank your mother for her disobedience.

In particular I'm afraid the narration is *implying* Malicia and Peter are having some kind of meet-cute because they are not *supposed* to.

Fanfic

____

It’s the first Human-Mutant alliance meeting since Peter has met the mutant kids from the Wallenberg pavilion. The day before, he had excused himself out of doing Cyclops’ training despite Petro and Rémi’s invitations. He goes to take the shuttle out of Westchester. He scans his resident card on the reader at the entrance of the shuttle. As did everyone else : most of them tired nurses and orderlies of the night shift going home. 

He recognizes Anne-Marie Paquin and Evan Daniels, who are also there. They wave at Peter. He goes to sit next to them, but they do not talk. Malicia is sketching a super-sentai character - a pork-bellied little fat boy in a shirt and a gigantic reversed cap doing an henshin pose, and Spike is playing Mario Golf on a Switch. The speech bubble takes almost half the page, allowing Malicia to draw a full page illustration with minimal background. It says : 光拓火. Peter recognizes 火, the kanji for “Fire”, but does not dare ask Malicia about the rest of it… he knows the kanji for fire because it looks like 人, the mandarin for “man”,  and Mr. Rosler taught them a little mandarin script and a little cyrilic back in 7th grade. Said he wanted them to re-experience struggling with literacy as an experience in empathy. Peter didn’t know if it had worked… Anyway, yes - Mr Rosler had taught them a little mandarin script, and then UFO Turtle and Lady Assailant of Flame and Fire Princess were fire-Attribute monsters in Sy’s dreaded Gravity Bind deck, and fire-attribute monsters had two fire kanji on them in the upper right corner which Peter remembered what they looked like because they looked like a man with little arms and so he remembered that one kanji and not one more…and wait! Malicia’s silly little guy is also spreading his legs and placing his hands close to his sides such that the perspective and composition of the silhouette evokes the same 火 shape as in his own speech bubble… And Malicia really had to work overtime to make a pose like that look visually dynamic while also letting the silhouette be recognizable. 

The shuttle approaches the control at the cordon. It stops. A large man in riot gear and a woman in black get in the shuttle. The man scans the reader. The woman points at every passenger : 

-23.

-23.

-The count is good. Carry on.

And they exit the shuttle. The shuttle starts and moves on. They arrive at the train station, everybody gets up and leaves. Peter taps his pockets : no train pass. He forgot. He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Listens to the comings and goings around him.

And then he leaps off the platform, and runs towards Midtown High.