as a general rule if you see some “cool trick” on the internet that involves combining chlorine of any form (including bleach or tablets) with anything else, you shouldn’t do it because they are almost definitely trying to seriously hurt or kill people who don’t know any better. things like mixing bleach with other “household cleaning supplies” are especially huge red flags–it sounds harmless, but the chemicals in these things react to create extremely toxic gas, or worse
stuff like that almost universally comes from places like 4chan where it’s fun and cool to misinform people in the most dangerous possible ways, and it’s nothing short of evil that people use something as incredible as the internet to literally kill strangers for no reason
My name would be Mylah. With all apologies to anyone named Mylah, I am now very happy to be named not Mylah.
Okay, so the current name is cool and all, but in 1960 mine would have been Guadeloupe.
However, since this is based on popularity at time of Birth versus overall popularity at the time, in 1890 I would still have been my name, because my great grandmother was.
If I was born in the 1930s I would have been ‘Trinidad’, which. Yikes.
Probably my favourite of the not-super-amazing options is the 1980s, with ‘Vera’.
Weird coincidence: the main character in a story I’ve been working on for a while, is named Vera.
If I’d been born this year my name would be Ansley. Which is far and away the best of the options. Also, if I’d been born in the 1900s, my name would be ‘Dean.’ Okay.
i was at a grocery store really late one night and some old guy kind of eyed me as i walked out of the store next to this other lady. She and I made eye contact and i knew she was scared too. we loaded up our groceries into our cars as fast as possible and I had way more bags than her so she got done faster than me. I panicked because i was sure she was going to leave so i just hurried faster, shaking a little, and then i noticed she sat in her car, watching me and making sure nobody came near. She waited not until all my groceries were loaded, or until my cart was put away, or until I got into my car. No, she didn’t drive away until I drove away.
And that was the moment that I realized how much women need other women. That we can’t win this war without each other and we have to be looking out for each other, every second.
my last year in new york city, i got off the subway around 9 or 10p.m. i only lived about 5 blocks from the f train, but i hadn’t gotten more than two before a woman’s hand suddenly touched my arm.
“that guy behind us is following you,” she said. “he was watching you leave the train car and followed you up.”
i hadn’t noticed him, or at least not noticed him following me. when we stopped outside a grocery store, he stopped half a block back and loitered. the woman linked her arm with mine and walked me several blocks out of her way to my front door and made sure i got inside safely.
another time, nocigar and i were walking home and at a stoplight a stranger grabbed my arm when i wouldn’t respond to him and tried to physically drag me over to him. she—who is, by the way, not a very physically imposing girl—ripped his hand off my arm and snarled, “don’t fucking touch her.”
protect your friends. protect strangers. there are good men in the world, but don’t wait for them to do something if you can do it yourself.
I was at a club once and my friend left with her boyfriend so I finished my drink and was heading out to the parking lot when three girls came up to me and basically surrounded me.
“Those guys behind us were talking about following you. We can walk with you.”
I have MMA training but have never in my life had been offered the protection and sanction of my own gender. This is so important.
GIRL CODE. FUCKIN’ GIRL CODE. LEAVE NO GIRL BEHIND. EVER.
I have been the girl left behind, more than once, and it’s a nasty, nasty experience that will destroy your trust in people, even if you can take care of yourself. I make it an absolute policy to never leave someone to the mercy of whatever shit is going down if I can help it.
I fucking hate it when kinksters do their shit in public.
When I say public, I mean the general public. Not ‘the public at a fetish con’, the regular ass walking down a street, out shopping, minding their own business, vanilla public.
Do not. Do that. Shit.
When you ‘express’ your kink in public, aka engage in public play, you’ve decided that you WANT observers. You want attention. Meaning that the attention of others is PART of your kink. Being seen, judged, observed, watched, etc. You’ve decided you want that from the public to satisfy your urge…
But the public never fucking consented to your play.
Those people didn’t sign up to watch you walk your slave on a leash down the street or see two dudes dressed like dogs sniff each other’s ass in a park or worse, spy your nipples and gonads and shit hanging out of strategically cut clothing.
It is absolutely fucking wrong to force people to be in on your kink and when you engage in public play that is what you are doing. That is not something you are entitled to. You do not have that right.
Aside from the fact that you have no idea whether or not your play is triggering to someone, they JUST DIDN’T CONSENT TO IT DUDE. Bottom line. I don’t care if they’re super chaste vanilla to the extreme or Mistress Sinfuck at nights and on weekends, if they didn’t consent to seeing your weird shit, they didn’t consent.
“The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.”—Donna Tartt (via geeksofdoom)
Baby bird season is incoming and I’d like to remind everyone that birds do not have a significant sense of smell. Bird parents will not reject birdlets because you have handled them.
If you see smol birbs with few or no feathers on the ground, you can safely put them back into their nest, bird parents will still care for them.
If you see smol birbs with some or most feathers on the ground, please leave them there, as bird parents are probably nearby watching and feeding.
nakey bird = accidentally fell out, is cold and scared, put back in nest! if you can’t reach the nest, try to put it on a wide branch or fork so predators can’t get at it as easily.
scruffy feather bird = starting to try the fly thing, not very good at it. only put in nest/branch if predators abound, i.e. you have four outdoor cats and they’re licking their chops.
fluffy feather bird = smol fly guy! do nothing. can probably get away from predators and will flip its shit if you pick it up.
Reblogging this because I’d always heard the ‘Don’t touch a distressed bird its mom will reject it’ thing treated as fact before now, I didn’t realise it wasn’t true…
So my time is running down to bitch about this writing class (I CAN SEE THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL, THE END OF THE YEAR IS SO CLOSE, GOD, I CAN PRACTICALLY TASTE FREEDOM) and I need to get some stuff off my chest here. An open letter to my class under the cut for ranting and cursing and general miscellaneous bullshit.
Instead of using that creepy ass quote Professor Sneep says about his obsession with his dead ex-friend as The Harry Potter Quote why don’t we use the one James Potter says to his son, whom he gave his life for, to comfort him as he walks to his death
“‘You’ll stay with me?’
‘Until the very end,’ said James.”
The other night, I told this story to my sister, who had somehow never heard it before. She demanded that I write it down. (I sincerely hope she’s not planning to use this as some kind of college life advice for my nephew.)
There are three things you need to know to understand this story, provided you are not my sister:
I started college at 15.
I almost immediately got mono and didn’t realize it, assuming that I was sleeping 16 hours a day because sleep was the best thing in the world and I’d suddenly gotten really good at it.
I made most of my bad decisions – like, most of the bad decisions I would ever make, and almost all the ones I could think of – before starting college.
These were not things I had in common with my freshman cohort. Any of them, as far as I could tell. They were all older than I was, they seemed to have all the energy in the world, and they had come to college to make those bad decisions they’d been dreaming of all these years but apparently couldn’t quite commit to until they were away from parental backup and support.
“If someone comes to you and asks your help, you shall not turn him off with pious words, saying, “Have faith and take your troubles to God!” You shall act as if there were no God, as if there were only one person in all the world who could help this man–only yourself.”—
You don’t expect to hear a rabbi say “act as if there were no God” and mean not “do whatever you feel like doing” but “recognize that the ultimate responsibility for doing good in the world lies with you.” I kind of love this.
#religion #… I mean if anyone were going to say ‘act as if there were no god’ to mean ‘it’s all on you mate’ #it would be a rabbi (via thetrollingchaos)
i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because:
i can recognize white people as a whole have systemically oppressed POC in america, which is where i live
most people when they make white people jokes only mean the shitty white people and i am not a shitty white person
im not a pissbaby
my white friends that have reblogged this give me life
4. Sometimes I am a shitty white person and the jokes remind me to FUCKIN STOP
If ur white and like this post I fux with u
^absolutely
5. It’s hard to be offended when white people jokes involve bland food/tourist dads in socks and sandals/white girls in yoga pants obsessed with pumpkin spice/suburban PTA moms and other harmless and mostly true stereotypes while jokes about POC involve them being called thugs/criminals/slurs/uneducated/illegal immigrants.
i fucks with u heavy if ur white and you reblog this
Knowing that trans women of color started the movement in the united states and were literally immediately erased and excluded from what they started is the most deeply jading knowledge.
It is the original sin of the so-called queer community and it damns it from the cradle.
The TSA gambled on millions of wealthy Americans opting out of its pornoscanner-and-shoe-removal process and signing up for its Precheck policy, which allows travellers to pay for the “privilege” of walking through a metal-detector with their shoes on, while their laptops stay in their bags.
It was a gamble that they lost. Americans have stayed away from the process in droves, but the TSA had already committed to cutting staff in anticipation of much lighter queues at their checkpoints. Instead of lightening, the queues have got longer, as the US economy has recovered and low fuel prices have kept the price of plane tickets down.
The TSA is now warning travelers to expect very long security lines this summer (Denver Airport warns that its TSA queues can take three hours to clear), as it scrambles to train more staff. In the meantime, whole airports’ worth of people are missing their flights, sending the airport managers and airlines into rare public displays of temper against the agency, calling the lines “unacceptable” (American Airlines), a “fiasco” (Brent D. Cagle, interim director of aviation for Charlotte Douglas International Airport) and accusing the agency of lying when it cites crowds as the reason for lines (Denver Airport).
The agency still hopes that more people will sign up for Precheck, which turns travel into a profit center for the agency, rather than a cost center. A cynic might say that this summer’s “fiascos” are an attempt to squeeze user fees out of American travellers, but whether or not the lines are a deliberate strategy is largely irrelevant, as it will certainly have the effect of pushing more fliers into the Precheck program.
However, even Precheck fliers aren’t immune: as the TSA diverts its staff to handle the three-hour-long queues, the Precheck lines have slowed down. The Precheck lines in Newark can take more than an hour to clear.
David Graeber remarked on the bizarre phenomenon of lengthening official lines in his brilliant essay The Utopia of Rules: for decades during the Cold War, long official lines were the symbol of the Soviet Union’s oppressive, incompetent bureaucracy. With the fall of the USSR, the lines have moved west, getting longer and longer, being joined by official forms and systems that disproportionately target the poor and vulnerable, while elites are exempt or exempt themselves by paying professionals.
In United States, Capitalist Pig sells you faster line! What a country!
and how many credible threats have we stopped with this security theater?
Wonderful :(
Also, I will say that I qualify for TSA Precheck because I paid for Global Entry which allows me to skip to the front of the customs lines when returning from international travel.
The last 3 times I’ve traveled, the Pre-check lanes at the airports I’ve been traveling through have been closed (San Diego, DFW, and KCI). So, there are people that have paid for a service that isn’t even being reliably and consistently offered.
Why is it that evil villains always find poison to inject into their victims like just literally fill the syringe with air and just stick the needle between their toes or something. It’ll mimic a heart attack and the victim will die pretty quick and NO ONE WILL ASK MANY QUESTIONS BECAUSE IT’LL LOOK LIKE A HEART ATTACK
first of all how do you know this information i feel like the government doesnt want you to know that
sure, peaceontheplanet. i mean i can’t promise it’s gonna be as funny as the internet apparently found the porn thing but like, HERE’S A STORY ABOUT THE TIME I GOT MUGGED AT KNIFEPOINT (BUT BY A GENTLEMAN).
so when i was studying in argentina, it was like a thursday, and they were having what’s called a “feria” which is kind a holiday?? in argentina sometimes they decide to CANCEL EVERYTHING, ostensibly to celebrate things like books and students but i suspect really so that nobody has to go to work.
argentina gets me.
ANYWAY, i decided that day to go the gym! this was new and different for me, a person who considers “intense chewing” to be exercise.
BIKINI BOD: ON TRACK.
so i went to the gym. it went the way that trips to the gym usually do for 5'8" girls with severe pigeon toes and a total lack of all motivation.
badly.
as i’m walking home, past the college of dentistry, i was fussing with a lighter that i had in my pocket because i was also, at that time, dealing with my fear of intimacy by smoking. so this guy comes up to me and is like, “hey, can i borrow a light?”
here’s a list of things i should have said:
“sorry, no.”
“ahhhhhh you know what, i would, but i’m super busy right now??? i actually have a dentist’s appointment, as evidenced by this College of Dentistry that i’m standing outside??”
“NO HABLO ESPAÑOL.”
“don’t you know that smoking gives you cancer? let’s commit to quitting, right now, to each other. bring it in. go team. together we can.”
here’s what i did say:
“claro que sí, amigo.”
he’s trying to light his cigarette, and his hands are shaking a little? so he can’t. and i’m like, dude, calm down, it’s okay. what is this, your first cigarette or something? lol.
after a few seconds, he kind of goes, “fuck it,” and drops the lighter into his pocket. and i’m like, “excuse me??? that’s my lighter?? also you didn’t even manage to light your cigarette???” but before i can vocalize these protests, he gets rEALLY close to me and pulls out a knife. then he goes, “you have three seconds.”
what i should have said:
“okay. you can have whatever you want.”
“here’s my wallet.”
“wow, what a very sharp-looking knife, in what way can i avoid being stabbed with it today??”
what i actually said:
“haha, uhhhhh, until what?”
UNTIL WHAT. “UNTIL WHAT, MR. SIR WITH THE KNIFE? LIKE, WHAT’S ON THE MENU HERE????”
BUT HE DIDN’T SAY DEATH!!! it turns out that the gentleman attempting to rob me was like, maybe a rookie? it’s possible that he had never robbed anybody at knife-point, before. this as an experience that we were going through together for the first time.
because what he said was: “….i have a knife.”
i said, “yes. i can see that. it’s very nice.”
IN MY DEFENSE: IF YOU ARE GOING TO ROB SOMEONE, THE ONUS IS ON YOU TO GIVE CLEAR DIRECTIONS.
“i have a knife”??? come on, buddy. be better prepared. come with a to-do list. practice in a mirror.
“then i’m going to pull out the knife and say: give me _____.”
clear, concise, quick. that should be your motto, buddy. it is not MY JOB, as the ROBBEE, to read your goddamn mind. I AM NOT DRIVING THIS SHIP. IF YOU ALSO AREN’T DRIVING IT, WE ARE IN TITANIC-LEVEL TROUBLE.
at this point, clearly realizing that he had gotten in tOO DEEP with this dumbass tourist who didn’t even know how to get robbed properly, he blurted out, “uhhhhh, do you have a phone?”
i did have a phone! i had a broken claro go-phone that i had purchased upon entering the country which had 2 argentine pesos worth of text messages left in it and a inbox message from a boy name juan that said, “you like me a LOT.”
i had responded, “actually, i just like you the normal amount.”
i felt bad about that when i realized that he was trying to say, “i like YOU a lot,” but feelings verbs in spanish are mostly reflexive.
SORRY JUAN.
i handed the man with the knife my phone. he looked at it. looked back up at me. “r u srs?” his face seemed to say. “this is what you’re giving me right now? a janky ass claro go-phone that is CLEARLY MISSING THE NUMBER 7 KEY????”
look, the shoddy workmanship is a source of frustration to you and me BOTH, okay. we’re BOTH victims here.
but the beautiful thing about this story is that HE TOOK IT! he looked at me, looked down at his knife, sighed, and put the phone in his pocket. THEN HE REACHED BACK INTO HIS POCKET AND RETURNED MY LIGHTER TO ME.
we looked at each other.
here’s the thing that no one tells you about daylight robbery: there’s like. an afterbeat.
there is a moment in between “robbery-in-progress” and “going home to your homestay and explaining that you can’t answer phone calls anymore” where you and your robber have to look at one another and figure out HOW TO WALK AWAY.
listen, friends: in robberies, as everywhere, goodbyes are never easy.
“thank you,” he said.
“you’re welcome,” i answered.
he hesitated. “have a good day,” he said.
“………….okay,” i answered. “you too. enjoy the phone.”
ENJOY THE PHONE?????
IT WAS BROKEN. IT WAS CLEARLY BROKEN. WE BOTH KNEW THAT NOTHING BUT HEARTACHE WAS GOING TO COME FROM THAT PHONE.
i think about this a lot, and i wonder if he ever thinks about me. i wonder if he ever thinks, “that goddamn asshole knew i was going to have to press the 7 key four hundred times before it registered anything.“
i’m sorry, man with the knife. i panicked. in the heat of the moment, we all say things we don’t mean.
oh my god i was going through my facebook last night and LOOK WHAT I FOUND
i literally fucking hate broadway’s policy of not filming until the show is over, if at all. im going to compare it to sports games
seeing a football or basketball game live is amazing for sports fans, right? like most players would probably recommend seeing it live, you get to go with your friends and buy food and the players are really there and the games are usually sold out. but because seeing it live is a more favorable way to experience the game, that doesn’t mean they don’t let anyone watch it on TV and demand anyone who wants to see it has to go to the game. what about people who don’t live in the area or don’t have money to go? they still get to see the game with everyone else, and the fact that they put the game on television doesn’t drive down ticket sales. people still love seeing football or basketball or whatever in person
broadway is the same way. it’s so fucking inaccessible if you live anywhere other than new york, and even then it’s so expensive and hard to get tickets. why wouldn’t you also film it? there’s no reason not to, if your show is sold out for a full year, you’re not going to lose ticket sales because you’re also letting people watch it on TV. you will not be losing some random girl from Tennessee’s ticket sales if it would be impossible for her to go in the first place, in fact you’d make money by spreading it to a wider audience.
i love legally blonde, ive seen it upwards of 10 times because theres a professional recording on youtube for an MTV special. this doesnt mean if i had the opportunity to go see it i’d be like nah, id rather watch it alone on youtube. i’d JUMP at the opportunity to go see it live.
tldr: people arent going to stop seeing stuff live just because you also monetize on a recording of the show to be released to a wider audience, you dumb fucking shits
(I’m making this post for a friend, but I figured some other people might get some use out of it as well.)
I know it can be super difficult to find the time and the energy to cook things sometimes. Even just looking up recipes can be super stressful when you’re low on spoons, because everything seems to take so much effort. But please, friends! You should still eat something! D:
This is a list of sites and blogs that house good, simple, cheap recipes which hopefully will help. Everything is easier if you have a crock pot/slow cooker!
http://no-more-ramen.tumblr.com - this site has a “no chopping” tag and a “crockpot” tag for if you really just can’t today, and also makes sure to note gluten/nut/egg/dairy and vegetarian/diabetic-friendly recipes! Super awesome!
http://lowspoonsgourmet.tumblr.com - they organize things by spoon number in the tags, from 1 spoon to 7 spoons! Unfortunately their mods aren’t 100% consistent on tags BUT it looks like you can find good recipes under either the “recipe” tag or the “mod fae” tag.
http://www.budgetbytes.com - This site has a ton of crockpot recipes. Just throw the ingredients in the cooker and walk away, come back whenever!! These recipes have a lot more ingredients than some other ones but you can always ignore half of the list if you don’t have them, or substitute.
http://ridiculouslyeasyfood.tumblr.com - not a lot here, but what they do have is really good and easy to make, especially on a budget! Plus, good directions!
The tag “low spoons food” on tumblr itself also has a good number of recipes and advice, from what I can see.
That’s it for now! If you know of any other good resources or have any feedback, please let me know. Hopefully this helps someone!
watchers’ council: our slayers keep dying
watchers’ council: let’s take our slayer that has successfully not died the longest and make her powerless and battle a vampire
watchers’ council: 👍👍👍
Alright, but that’s… Exactly the point? The moment a Slayer turns 18, there’s a bigger chance she would go against the Council in some way - Buffy cuts ties with it, Nikki gets pregnant and raises a child, Faith kills people. For the Council, a Slayer can’t have that kind of independence, the Cruciamentum was created exactly to kill Slayers when they get too old.
It’s not a test they’re supposed to pass, because it’s easier to train a new weapon than to have a wild weapon you can’t control.
well that’s even more fucked up than I originally thought
Seriously though. With only Donald Trump on the Republican side of the presidential election, it’s really childish to say you won’t vote if Hillary gets the nomination. This is about all of us, and while she isn’t Bernie, she certainly isn’t Donald Trump.
I want to write a fic where Lilo goes to college and her roommate is Boo from Monsters Inc. Boo is the first person to think Stitch is adorable and cuddly, and Lilo is the first person not to act like “Mike Wazowski” was a weird name for a goldfish. They get on like a house on fire which is kind of bad for Nani’s blood pressure.
But then one night they wake up in the middle of the night because something is in their closet. And the door starts to creak open so Stitch tackles whoever (whatever) is in there. They fall back into the closet, the door slams shut… and when Lilo runs over and opens it there’s nothing but an empty closet.
Then Boo tells Lilo all about this weird thing that happened to her when she was a kid, and how no one ever believed her but she knows it was real.
And cue Lilo and Boo busting into the Monster world to rescue Stitch and wreaking mad havoc in the process.
SEE THIS IS A WORTHY SEQUEL
This needs to happen
Petition for the movie to be hand-drawn in Lilo and Stitch’s style when they’re in the human world, and computer animated once they go through the door into the monster world.
Okay but it ends with Lilo and Boo saving the day and having a celebratory ‘we lived’ kiss and being girlfriends, right? Because it should end with them being girlfriends.
narcissa malfoy was probably the most powerful occlumens in hogwarts history and nobody knew
she literally stood up to lord voldemort and lied that harry potter was dead and i don’t know about you but if i were an evil ruler i would probably want to triple-check that my nemesis was, you know, actually deceased
voldemort had actual doubts about snape
narcissa swans on by without a whisper, without a second glance
narcissa malfoy understood from a young age that she was meant to do only a few things: look pretty, say nothing, and marry well.
narcissa malfoy understood those rules, and she layered her mind with them.
look pretty. wear the most expensive robes. grandmother’s pearls. curl your hair every night. think only of clothes and dimples and the way your hair falls when you flutters you eyelashes at a boy.
say nothing. don’t speak when mother and father are screaming at each other. demurely look down as another boy asks you to dance. retreat into the reading room when your family friends, known death eaters and criminals, pay your parents a visit and speak in hushed voices over tea. think of pretty things.
marry well. marry into a family of your parents’ friends. bear children. wear pearls and look demure and think of nothing but pretty, pretty things, like the way your husband’s hair gleams in candlelight.
masters must learn the rules before they can break them. narcissa learned the rules so well that they wrapped around her; sank into her skin and her mind. they protect her from enemies. they conceal the quick, strategic plots ticking her brain into gear every moment of every day. they hide the calculation of each smile, each movement.
narcissa is so good, so perfect, that no one will ever know.
But what if the princess was in the tower because she was the dragon?
Like the queen gives birth and oops it’s this adorable little scaley lizard with tiny wings that she can never quite seem to fold right
None of the King’s advisors or doctors can explain it, no one can remember anyone who might have cursed the royal family, plus sire she’s clearly yours still I mean look at those eyes
They just kind of accept it and keep her in a tower so no one tries to slay her
The queen or castle servants reading bedtime stories to the toddler princess, who’s made a nest of her favorite toys and some jewelery she stole off her mother, and when she laughs little puffs of smoke come out of her mouth
The king being so proud when she flies across the room for the first time
And once the princess comes of age, confused knights breaking into the tower to find a twenty foot long dragon sitting at the vanity getting her horns polished by her handmaidens
and the “kidnapped” princess is her girlfriend?
this feels like a minotaur myth gone amazingly right.
Okay, who brought this back? Because I haven’t seen notes on this thing in literally months.
She goes flying around the surrounding kingdoms, just watching and listening.
And pretty soon she has a dozen girls sharing the tower with her.
Some were being pushed to marry, or promised in marriage to someone they hated. Some were already married.
Some were poor, or hunted, or enslaved.
Some were thrown out, abandoned, banished.
There’s a princess there, yes, one who would rather sit in the solar and read books than marry a boorish prince and interact with her subjects all day.
There’s a wizard-student who fled her university after one of the professors tried to curse her for disagreeing with him.
There’s a girl who ran away to be a knight, and a girl who was thrown out for being pregnant, and a wife who ran out the door with her toddler carried in her broken arms, her belly swollen and unwieldy, and stories circulate from the bar the next day about how the dragon swooped down and stole away a man’s wife.
Probably ate her, he says. Good riddance.
There’s a formerly-wealthy merchant wife, cast out by her husband in middle age so he can wed someone young and pretty.
There’s an elderly grandmother who’s outlived her family and her usefulness.
A street child, rag-clad and starving. A baby, left abandoned on a hillside.
It begins to filter through the land, spoken from fathers to daughter, husbands to wives, employers to servants: if you are bad, the dragon will take you. if you are stubborn, or willful, or refuse to marry, the dragon will find you. if you are useless, or slovenly, or disobedient, you will be thrown out and the dragon will pluck you up in its claws and take you back to its lair filled with bones.
They do not understand that this is not a threat but a promise.
They do not know that the version their servants tell each other, their wives tell their daughters, their mothers tell circles of friends, is “if you are desperate, the dragon will find you. if you want out, the dragon will rescue you. if you pause outside, and tell your fears to the soft beating of wings somewhere in the sky, you will fly, and the dragon will carry you home.”
There are bones, but they are surrounded by living flesh.
The tower, the Princess’s Tower in the central kingdom, is hidden by the finest spells and left alone by longstanding tradition. The nature of the Princess’s curse is a matter of speculation, but most likely, people say, she is under some fairy’s enchantment, and she will sleep for a hundred years until the right prince finds the way in.
The wizard-student was fairly advanced in her studies, and is quite good at teaching the runaway scullery-maid and the young unmarried mother turned out when her belly showed. The gates to the far reaches of the tower grounds open to a hillside two kingdoms away, and to an alleyway in a major city, and to a deep tideswept cave near a fishing village and a harbor, and to a storage room in the oldest wing of the Princess’s home palace.
The rich former merchant’s wife sorts through the dragon’s hoard of gold and gems, and delivers instructions to the runaway postulant and the worn old farm wife; dressed as a young clerk and a common tradesman, they go to call on this merchant who sets the best prices, and that factor who has misplaced goods available for a low price, and this manufacturer of looms and that seller of books.
The farm wife knows the best sheep to buy at market, the ewes who will bear twins and the lambs which will have the finest wool. Another country over, this time in the company of “his” elderly “father,” she buys cows that will give good milk, and chickens that will lay good eggs.
An elderly wizard visits a university, and inquires after their library; she is let in, and watched as she pages through books filled with arcane topics in languages she can’t understand; back at the tower, the wizard girl and her students capture the pages in a scrying crystal.
A pretty young fishwife smiles at the vegetable-seller as her daughter clings to her skirts, and soon the girls and women of the tower have seeds to plant. Looms hum, and dyestuffs are boiled, and even the poorest in their former lives wear bright dresses, or breeches and tunics if they prefer.
The dragon brings back a pirate woman from the harbor, stolen from the hangman’s noose while the crowd cheers; she knows where there is treasure stored, and soon the young girls have gems to play with, and the girl who ran away to be a knight has someone to learn proper swordwork from.
The little girl whose first flight was in her mother’s broken arms wants to be a blacksmith; when a swordblade breaks, the dragon breathes on it, as long as needed, while the child determinedly hammers it back together.
The dragon princess surveys her kingdom with approval. It is small, and tonight she will fly over a small town, where she heard breaking crockery and yelling last night, to see if someone steps out into the darkness and wishes for a better life, and tomorrow there may be one more.
