Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

readera

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Sabbatical

This was ….. Amazing! Can we have more? * holds up bowl ala Oliver Twist

Sephie opens her eyes and the woman is still standing over her, but the asphalt is…cold.  And dry.  It’s dark, no rosy dawn colors fingerpainted across the sky, and the woman is dressed all in white–different white, not, thick swathes of cloth like burial shrouds draping down her arms and falling to puddle at her feet like water.  Sephie thinks something might be on fire to provide enough light to see, but the light is pale and wan rather than being warm and golden.  The woman is leaning on her scythe, and her eyes glint like the blade when the light catches them, metallic and sharpened to a cutting edge.

“You’re awake,” the woman says without looking down, and it doesn’t sound like she’s asking.

Sephie sits up and it’s easy, blissfully easy, no pain or tacky blood sticking to her skin.  She’s wearing something unfamiliar, a plain dress in the same white liquid cloth that the woman is wrapped in, leaving her arms bare, and when she presses a hand against the floor, she thinks it’s stone.  Marble, maybe, with only a trace of gloss, stretching away in all directions until it meets the walls, where it seems to merge seamlessly into the vertical climb to the cave-like ceiling, dripping with stalactites.  The throne at the far side of the room is plain, barely more than a chair with a table beside it, both apparently sculpted wholly out of the floor.  

“I’m not, though,” Sephie says, and it’s only by speaking that she realizes her voice works.  It’s strong and firm and not at all lifeless, and Sephie closes her mouth, gathers her will to stand.

“You know,” the woman muses as Sephie considers the matter.  The stone is very hard–if she tries to stand and falls, she might hurt herself.  Or, of course, she might not.  She doesn’t know if it’s currently possible to hurt herself.  “I expected a great many things when I went on my sabbatical, but you were not among them.”

“I’m sorry,” Sephie says as she pulls her legs beneath her and nudges the dress out of the way.  “I think.”

The woman looks down at her at last, startled, almost distressed, and says, “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that.  My sister may have some adjusting to do, but you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t quite attached.”

“Your sister,” Sephie repeats as she rises cautiously to her feet.  She doesn’t know if it’s that her mind still expects her body to be broken or simply that it’s been a very long day already, but she wavers dangerously, and the woman puts out a hand that Sephie catches hold of at once.  The hand is long-fingered and delicately calloused and pale–unhealthily pale, deathly pale, Sephie had always thought, and she bites back a titter now.  Deathly pale!  The hand is also strong, and the arm attached to it equally so, and the smile on the woman’s face is warm enough to make up for the cold stone still chilling Sephie’s bare feet.  “I’ve met your sister.”

“Yes,” the woman says.  “We fought in your coffee shop.  Or, rather, my sister came to yell at me in your coffee shop.  She has some strong opinions about my sabbatical.”

Sephie nods, slowly, and realizes that she’s still clutching awkwardly at the woman’s free hand.  The long, strong fingers hold her own in a grip as firm as stone, though, and so instead of trying to let go, she holds on tightly and asks the obvious question.

“Am I dead, then?”

“That’s correct, Persephone,” the woman says, apparently delighted.

“And this place is?”

“The audience chamber.”

Sephie nods again, even more slowly than before, and looks up at the woman.  It was less noticeable with the counter between them, but the woman is a full head taller than she is, her masses of white curls storming down her back like a crashing wave.  The scythe does not reflect light, for all its perfect polished shine, and the letters on it are in a language Sephie has never seen and yet seems to be a textual equivalent of a long-forgotten tune.  She can read them anyway, for all that they try to skitter from under her eye, and thinks of a Latin phrase she heard once.

“And…”  Sephie takes a deep breath with lungs that do not breath and listens for her heart that does not beat and thinks to herself–with neurons that do not fire–that she is hardly even surprised.  “And who are you?”

The woman smiles at her, and gives a small twist of their hands so that the grip is less awkward, and raises the knuckles of Sephie’s hand to her lips.  The touch is electric–quite literally.  It kicks through Sephie’s chest like the time she let a finger rest on the prong of a plug as she touched it to the outlet, her vision flaring brightly for a moment until the woman’s lips leave her skin.  

“I have many names,” the woman says as she lowers their hands again.  “Many of them forgotten, some of them remembered.  You can call me Death.”

peradii:

forgive me if this has been done but please accept the following theory: anakin knows that women outside of tattooine do not die in childbed.

He’s travelled the length and breadth of the galaxy. He’s seen stars sing into being and empires topple to ash at his feet. He’s seen horrors and wonders and he’s a legend in at least fifteen different systems, and he’s seen medical droids work miracles, and he knows – he knows – that Padme is highly unlikely to hemorrhage, or succumb to eclampsia, or die of a slow mouldering infection.

(look, if you think Anakin ‘this woman is my entire life’ Skywalker didn’t research the fuck out of every possible way a woman can die in childbirth you are wrong. He’s a walking talking Web MD of the Worst Possible Result by the time she’s in her fifth month, and he shepherds her to every appointment, and arranges strange and obscure tests which he keeps concealed partly by subterfuge and mainly by Force-choking and mind-control. His eyes are turning a little yellow at the edges. He blames it on exhaustion.)

(since when did tiredness make you go – Padme will say )

(maybe it’s jaundice that’s something you could get, or the baby, or – )

Anakin’s every stereotype of ‘insanely overprotective father-to-be’ and it’s adorable except it really, really isn’t. Because there’s something he learned on Tatooine that he hasn’t shared with his wife: slave-children are property of the master, and are often sold young, and the mothers would protest. Of course they would. 

And when they protested too hard, they were punished, and when the punishment went too far and the woman remained in the dust where they’d pushed her (red red red) they would, euphemistically,say that she had died in childbed. Because, technically, it was true. Her children had caused her death. A few years down the line, maybe, but all the same: if she hadn’t borne the child, if she hadn’t become a mother, then she would have lived.

Anakin’s seen the aftermath of such a conflict. More than once. When they come for your children, you’re meant to say yes, a friend of Shmi’s had said to her. Watoo had been a good master. A kind master. He had never flogged Shmi’s back red because she would not surrender her son. 

(it hadn’t saved her, in the end. but that’s another story.)

Anakin knows that prophecy can come in strange and circuitous language, and dreams of Padme – his Padme! – dying in childbed, well. When they come for your children you’re meant to say yes, thinks Anakin. Be obedient, the council tells him. 

They will not have his Padme. He will save her. He will save his child. 

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

moana: what happens after

shanastoryteller:

so moana becomes a wayfinder, teaches the lost ways to her people, and becomes chief. she and maui never speak again, because there are rules

they don’t speak for the same reason that the ocean couldn’t just give maui back his hook, for the same reason it couldn’t return the heart itself, for the same reason the ocean couldn’t just simply deliver moana to it’s destination. there is a balance, a give and take, and they must make a decision. they cant talk about this decision of course, but they must make it, so they do. moana sees a red hawk above her for most of her life, but they never speak, never touch.

the ocean never forgets her, never ignores her. it answers her call, loves her, but moana only allows it to move and play with her in the dark of night, where her people cannot see her. she is already a legend, she who fought with maui, who traveled to the land of monsters, who returned the heart of te fiti with her own two hands, who saved the world. many of her people think her adventures a myth, and thats how she wants it - she never speaks of it. she won’t allow them to know how the ocean loves her, for they must follow her because she is their cheif, their master wayfinder, because she can lead them to new lands and new places. she must be followed for what she will do, not what she did.

she travels across the seas, from one end to the other. she starts three more villages, brings her people to new islands flush with greenery and hope and the promise of a future. she learns the earth as well as she knows the sea, because she needs to learn which of these islands can sustain her people, their farming, their building. and she marries. she chooses a man who has broad shoulders and smiles a lot, one who loves the sea. she has three children, and leaves him to raise all of them as she sails to find a new island. she never stops searching the ocean, the wind in her hair, the water below her.

her husband never asks for her heart, and she never gives it. she’s loyal to him, and she brings her people into a new age of discovery and trade. when her eldest son is fully grown, when her hair streaks silver, she steps down and names him chief, allows him to lead their people and does her best not to let her shadow overpower him.

time passes. her husband dies, and she mourns him. her children marry, have children of their own, and each of them love the sea with a ferocity that is born of her blood.

all but one - her eldest child’s eldest child, the girl set to be the next chief, pania

Keep reading

presidentromana asked: Prompt: Animorphs AU where Tobias is raised by Loren, perhaps about how it'd change the nothlit thing or his interactions with Ax?

featherquillpen:

I spent several minutes considering whether this should be an AU where Loren has her memories of Elfangor or doesn’t. I went with yes because… why not?

---

I was sitting in front of the TV listening to the local news about the “fireworks” at the construction site when Tobias came in and said, “Hey, Mom. Jake invited me along to check out the Sharing meeting at the beach later. Can I go?”

Cold dread trickled into my veins. I had hoped the war would never touch us. It wasn’t our war to fight; we didn’t have the weapons. But finally, it had come to my doorstep. “No,” I said firmly. “I need you help to me clean the house this evening. You’re staying in.”

“What if we start now?” Tobias said. “We could finish early and then I could catch up with Jake?”

I hit mute on the TV. “Tobias. I know some of your classmates have gotten into the Sharing. But I’ve heard about this group through my church friends. They look harmless, but they’re a dangerous cult. Has anyone ever told you what you have to do to become a full member?”

A pause. “Jake’s brother Tom says there’s a minimum number of hours of service, and then you go to a couple of special meetings and you become a full member.”

“But did he tell you what the initiation is like?” I insisted. “The ‘initiation ceremony’ is full members only.”

“No,” Tobias said, a frown in his voice. “He said it was secret. He just said that it totally changed his life.”

“I don’t trust an organization like that and neither should you,” I said firmly. “I won’t allow you to go there. Stay home and help me clean.”

---

Then there was the news story about the man who found a piece of metal on the beach with strange writing on it. I asked my church friend Mary to describe it to me. It took a while for the image to form in my mind, but when it did, it was unmistakable. Andalite writing. Elfangor had taught it to me.

That night, I dreamed of a thought-speak voice calling to me from the sea. 

I woke up in a cold sweat. An Andalite ship had crashed somewhere off the coast of California. There was an Andalite trapped in there, using the ship to broadcast his thought-speech. And somehow, I’d heard his call. My heart ached. There was nothing I could do for him.

I got up and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I found that Tobias was already there. “Tobias?” I said. “What are you doing up?”

“Bad dream,” he said.

Oh no. Had the message reached him too? Because of his heritage? Because Elfangor had touched both our lives? “What was it about?” I said, tentatively.

“There was a voice,” he said. “Calling to me from the ocean. It sounded scared. Desperate.”

Part of me wanted to tell him, after a lifetime of keeping the truth to myself. But what good could it possibly do? There was nothing he could do to help the doomed Andalite, either. So I said, “Hey. Why don’t you read to me from the book you’re reading?” It was an old ritual of ours. We went to his bedroom, and he read to me until he yawned between every word, and went back to sleep.

---

A month or so later, Tobias came to the house with a new friend in tow. “This is Philip, Mom. He’s here to borrow some books.”

“Yes, my name is Phil-up-puh,” the other boy said. “Puh. I am here to read book-suh.”

Playing with sounds. Just like Elfangor did in the first couple of weeks being human.

Then the boy added, stiffly, “I am sorry to intrude, intrud-ud-duh, on your solitude. Tude.”

“Come on, Philip,” Tobias said, and took him to his room.

I sat and frowned over that remark. It took me a minute to remember Elfangor’s distaste for the disabled that I’d had to train him out of, the way he insisted that they should be secluded from society. It probably didn’t mean anything. It was a coincidence. There were autistic humans who played with sound, and plenty of humans who acted weird around a blind woman. But there had to be a way to know. To be sure.

When Philip and Tobias came back out of his room, I was ready. If I was just being paranoid, I could say I’d gotten the phrase from a fantasy book. But if I wasn’t…

“Nice to meet you, Philip,” I said. “May your blade stay sharp, and the four moons guide our paths to cross again one day.”

Dead silence fell. Then I heard a sound I thought I’d never hear again – of bones grinding against each other, organs liquefying.

“Philip,” Tobias said, a little hysterically, but not hysterical enough for the morph to be a surprise. “What are you doing?”

“He’s demorphing,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. “Tobias, close the curtain on the window of the back door. Just in case.”

“Mom?”

“Do it,” I said. “What if someone walks through the backyard and sees?”

I heard the whistle through the air, and the lightest press of the edge of a tail blade against my throat. «Demorph.»

“I can’t,” I said.  “I’m not an Andalite. But I had a child with one.”

---

I told them everything. I gave enough details that they even believed me. 

“You never told me,” Tobias whispered. “I met my dad, and I didn’t even know. I would have known if you’d told me.”

“And you’re fighting a war I swore to myself you’d never have to fight,” I whispered back. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, Mom.”

dwoodchip:

elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:

me: i don’t really care about all these disney live action remakes
disney:

me: 

I’ve always wondered why the people in the town thought Belle was so weird and more importantly how does a bookshop stay open if it only has one single regular customer who is also not wealthy? The only explanation is that there must be something else about Belle that is considered to be odd or strange that was never addressed or thought of in the animated film.

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

kyraneko:

the-negotiator:

ifitgivesyoujoy:

i just realized something: think about padme amidala’s public image. nobody knew she was married. nobody knew who anakin skywalker was at all–he was just some random jedi trainee, and by the time anybody would have started paying attention to him in the public eye, they would have known him as darth vader. to the public, anakin became a faceless villain who always was who he was, no fall from grace needed.

so, padme. i’m sure she had supporters across the republic. i’m sure her time as queen of naboo was EXTREMELY well-documented, and honestly, based on her rotation of outfits, she was probably a full-on celebrity. she was young and brilliant and a passionate defender of her people, and even though the empire seized power in the end, i wouldn’t be surprised if the rebellion decades later directly descended from the ideals of her followers.

but think about the circumstances of her death from the outside. people probably knew she was pregnant by some unknown father, of course, but this is a universe with robot doctors–saying “she died in childbirth” would probably be like saying “she died of the common cold” today. not something that happens, especially for a celebrity politician with unlimited resources. and there must have been a child, but what happened to it? did it die too? as a media narrative, it’s flimsy at best, ESPECIALLY considering the timing of her death.

padme amidala, the woman who ruled a planet at 14 and sat stony-faced while every other senator cheered on palpatine’s rise to power, died under mysterious circumstances just as the government she’d defended crumbled. from the outside, it seems pretty obvious that she was assassinated.

if this was a universe that at all made sense, padme amidala would have been a household name among republic loyalists. her tragically short life, her noble self-sacrifice for the ideals she believed in, would have been LEGENDARY. when the rebellion rose, she would have been the name on everybody’s mind–do it in her honor, people would have said. finish the fight she started.

i know we can’t go back in time and change the original trilogy, but the sequel movies? come on. don’t tell me darth vader is the only looming icon in this franchise.

To make it extra tragic - in the EU it mentions that the coroner used some kind of hologram technology to make it look like she was still pregnant at the time of her death, to protect the twins from the emperor and Anakin by telling everyone that the children had never been born. Padme Amidala’s death would have been the tragedy of the century, the face of the lost democracy.

Okay but what if that celebrity factor got used? By, like, everybody.

To the Naboo people, she’s their beloved Queen. To much of the galaxy, she’s a loved and admired public figure and stateswoman. To the Republic loyalists, she’s their martyred supporter, the vanquished—murdered, they think—face of Democracy. To the Empire, she’s a useful idol, the Emperor’s colleague, murdered, they say, by Separatist forces or by Jedi, tragically dead and conveniently silent, beautiful and glamorous and perfect for starting a cult of personality on her behalf. 

And here and there, among the various cultures, there are religious concepts like sainthood, ancestor worship, legends of dead protectors coming to life again to fight when they’re needed. And conspiracy theories, and wishful thinking turned speculation, and the Star Wars equivalent of tabloid newspapers.

The result? Padmé is the most popular and famous woman in the galaxy, a combination of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, Che Guevara, Joan of Arc, Elvis Presley, Arthur Pendragon, Chuck Norris, and the Virgin Mary.

One of the most important Imperial holidays is Amidala Day, devoted to celebrating service to the Empire, the official story of the Empire’s birth, the Emperor’s home world, and the heroic Queen and Senator whom Palpatine claims as his staunch supporter. People paint their faces and make elaborate hairstyles or headdresses and put on their fanciest clothes; there are plays, and parties, and traditional Naboo dances and foods.

Vader hates it. This is about 60% of why the Emperor has made such a production of it.

Among Republic loyalists, a different story is told: a Queen Amidala who loved peace and democracy, who opposed war and worked tirelessly for ceasefires and peace treaties, who stood silently or wept as all around her cheered the newborn Empire; a Queen Amidala who was murdered by the Empire so he could create the fiction of her support.

Vader hates this too. It feels uncomfortably true, and threatens to undermine his resolve that she would have been at his side had she lived.

Rebels paint images of her on their fighters, hang holos of her on their walls, wear icons of her as good-luck talismans. There are exhortations, penned semi-anonymously by people who knew her, that she would have wanted people to join and support the Rebellion. The minimalist image of eyes, cheek dots, and paint-split lips are graffiti’d onto public monuments accompanied by words from her speeches. “Amidala Needs You” is a common phrase on Rebel recruitment posters.

Vader hates this most of all.

Statues and icons of her are made in a hundred different artistic styles and adorn the altars of a thousand worlds’ faiths. Mythologies are written about her: she stopped a Separatist advance with words once, appeared in a dream to a slave telling her where her transmitter was hidden, shot five destroyer droids with pinpoint accuracy before they got their shields up, stormed her own palace to take it back from the Trade Federation, cheated death at the hands of the Empire’s assassin, escaped with the help of the last of the Jedi, is still out there somewhere, mourning for the Republic on some uninhabited planet somewhere, training in secret lost Jedi arts to kill the Emperor, working as a Rebel agent or a disguised vigilante.

Vader dislikes this. But he also seeks them out and reads them, when he’s in a certain mood.

The tabloids regularly claim that she’s been seen working as a roast-traladon restaurant in some backwater suburb of Corellia, or navigating a spice freighter to and from Kessel, or singing at a nightclub on Nar Shadda.

Vader dislikes this too. He has to talk himself out of keeping an agent or three just to visit the places in question and make sure.

He isn’t often in a position to see teenage girls with Padmé’s face emblazoned across their tunics, or walls with familiar face paint next to “So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous applause” printed next to it. When he hunts down Rebels with her image on a chain around their necks for luck, he can tear them apart with the Force: a quick death, which is, ironically, the luckiest outcome available to them. Tabloids and legends can be read and dismissed, and he’s never had the opportunity to happen upon the fanfiction.

But when the Emperor commands, Vader stands at his side through parades and parties and celebratory addresses to the Senate, with Padme’s image on banners and holos, with Padmé’s image on stage saying words Padmé never said, with all the women and half the men wearing Naboo royal face paint, and accepts the pain of memory almost like a form of self-harm.

And when the newly-elected Junior Senator from Alderaan with a quiet grace that reminds him of her and a fire in her eyes that reminds him of himself asks him, at some interminable party, if he knew what she was like, he troubles himself to answer honestly.

It hurts him.

But he’s good at that.