…I SAID I was going to work my way through that whole prompt list, didn’t I? Probably should have done homework but instead here, have 2k of my feelings about Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul and his family.
Anonymous asked: 7 and whoever you want
7: I do not believe in love at first sight. But god damn. (Look at you.)
Two things. First, it’s a very dangerous thing to say ‘whoever I want,’ because I go straight for the niche fandoms that I love the most. Thus: Animorphs. Second! It has come to my attention that I accidentally swapped two prompts—this line is actually prompt 17, and prompt 7 got used for the Sith!Padme AU. Because I’m a fucking disaster area and my brain likes to pull switches like that on me. (Math classes suck for this exact reason.) But like the Sith!Padme AU is done? And I was halfway through this by the time I realized, so I am VERY sorry but I’m doing this.
Tobias could give you the exact moment he fell in love with Rachel, as a bruised thirteen-year-old kid in a body he barely remembered. Love at first sight was a fairy tale, but he could give every detail of the moment—it was like light being struck from a match, casting everything in a fresh glow.
Admittedly, he remembered everything about that night in the construction site, about Elfangor’s serious eyes and Visser Three’s terrible morph and the desperate giddy feeling in his chest of yes, yes, I knew it, there’s more to this world. Which made a lot more sense, in retrospect, but of course at the time he just knew that something had clicked into place. While everyone else was standing around being awestruck and wondering, Tobias had been too busy feeling a wash of relief that, oh God, he wasn’t crazy, there really was something else and it was exactly as spectacular as he had always believed it would be.
But even in that chaos, Rachel had been like a beacon.
He’d had a crush on her from the moment he arrived in town, of course, but then he could guarantee that about every boy at their school agreed with him, save the ones who were related to her. He could list five girls off the top of his head who were probably head over heels for Rachel, having a crush on her wasn’t anything special. She was clever and funny and fierce, her beautiful face was almost an afterthought.
And Tobias had needed something bright and strong to hold onto, and just being around Rachel, in the line of her sharp eyes, was a good start.
So it never did shock him, that he was in love with her.
It wasn’t her grip on his hand as they watched Elfangor die, although he was sure everyone would be shocked to hear it. That was just…Rachel, scared half to death and still with strength and ferocity to spare. She clutched his hand because it made her feel better, to steady someone else, and God Tobias had needed it. He’d almost bolted right then, run back to the Andalite’s side, because he barely had a life to live anyway and he’d felt something from Elfangor’s thoughts he’d never felt before. Some messy tangle of regret and pride and grief, all centered around a bright hard thing that made affection look like small fry. The loss of it hurt like broken glass in Tobias’ throat, sharp and bloody. And it was Rachel’s grip on his hand as he cried that kept Tobias hidden behind the wreckage, kept him sane enough to live through the night.
But it was later, that it really hit him.
They were running and, at the time, Tobias had desperately wished for wings. It was almost funny, now, but probably only to him—he’d never told the others how often he wished he could fly away, before he got a new appreciation for the dangers of wishes.
Here was something else the others never knew: he had three cracked ribs that night. There was no way, even with adrenaline pumping ice through his blood, that he would be able to outrun the Hork-Bajir on their tail. Tobias’ forgotten human body was tall, but skinny and out of shape, not strong like Cassie or fast like Jake, he was slow and hurt and shocky. And he had a moment of strange clarity, as if he could see the future as clearly as the Ellimist ever showed it to them. He would die, and it would be awful, but the others would live and that would be…good. They had people who would miss them, and he didn’t. They would live to fight the Andalite’s war, maybe save the world, and Tobias would get to rest.
And then Rachel, tall, athletic Rachel who could probably have outpaced every last one of them, even Jake, slowed, and dropped back. She was shouting, arms outstretched with a wild, ecstatic look of challenge on her face. Tobias could only catch about one word in three, but they were…vivid.
That was the moment. Tobias, tearing across the rough ground of the construction site with impossibility on his heels. Rachel, screaming curses in death’s face in order to protect the people she cared about. It was more like being struck by lightning than anything so polite as falling in love, but.
Goddamn.
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?
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.”
Anonymous asked: If you are in the mood to write pain (and, really, when aren't you in the mood to write pain): Rachel/Tobias during the early war
*mean cackling* So when I’m in a very particular mood about the little girl I used to be and how much she was screwed over, I tend to take it out on my characters. Ergo, I am banned from touching my Alleirat story until our houseguest leaves, and will instead be writing Animorphs because how much worse could I make it. Sorry. And since this got pretty long and also there’s not exactly loads of Animorphs fic, I crossposted it to AO3. If you like Animorphs, maybe comment on that shit or something.
here we stand (with our arms folded)
It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since the disastrous attack on the Yeerk pool, the sun still over the trees at the edge of the forest where it butted up against Cassie’s farm. The horse she’d morphed, whose quick legs had saved Cassie and one single woman the night before, was loose in the field, and Rachel was cross-legged on a crate in the barn as Cassie murmured to a wounded rabbit. Rachel felt dazed, with exhaustion and shock, as if every blink and turn of her head demanded a fresh calibration of her brain, a new moment of I’m alive and nothing is okay. She’d spent an hour in the shower after getting home, with the water as hot as she could stand, but she could still feel the grit of the Yeerk pool floor on her palms and feet, and kept expecting to catch a glimpse of Hork-Bajir blood on her human teeth in the mirror.
Cassie didn’t seem much better, her hands still where she would usually be smoothly going through her tasks and her voice mindless nonsense, as if she was as numb as Rachel. The silence wasn’t quite tense, but there was an unmistakable taut feeling that kept even the noisiest patients subdued and quiet.
“Did Jake say why he wanted to talk to us?” Rachel finally asked, and Cassie glanced up, shaking her head.
“No,” she said.
![chromatographic:
“ bunnypunker:
“ Description: A bird flies through a clouded sky. The text reads “Forget the crying child. Imagine how amazing it must feel to be that balloon floating away.”
[original]
[photo source]
”
These are all amazing but I...](http://68.media.tumblr.com/0ef2cc0b92bbbb85377157f20970b25d/tumblr_ne3tbdTReA1ryppqfo1_500.jpg)
Description: A bird flies through a clouded sky. The text reads “Forget the crying child. Imagine how amazing it must feel to be that balloon floating away.”
[original]
These are all amazing but I think this is my favorite so far.
biophilie asked: "u dont know tragedy until you ship a dead girl and a bird" i feel it
son. it was sad as fuck when i first read it when i read it nearly 15 years ago and it is even sadder now because i was cold as fuck as a kid and now as an adult i have the fragile emotional state of an infant that’s been shown the first 10 minutes of the movie “up”. animorphs has destroyed me and showed me how to feel, and most of that is bad and i regret it.
Moran Rereads Animorphs
Book 3: The Encounter
AKA “The first named character attempts suicide and suffers the first breakdown regarding humanity”
Moran Rereads Animorphs
Listen to me, kiddies. I read these books for the first time when I was SEVEN. (Well, it took me about three years to collect most of them and get to the end, so I read the first half of the series about twelve times by the time I was ten or eleven.) And let me tell you a thing: if you have passed these books up because of the ridiculous covers or because they’re ‘kids’ books’ you need to reevaluate your life. Immediately.
ANYWAY, I found them all for free on the internet (GET THEM HERE) and I’m rereading them/reading them out loud to Adler, because we are actually DISGUSTINGLY domestic. And I was originally planning to comment on them like five at a time, because otherwise I’d have way too many posts, but I wrote like a solid page of things down about the first book alone, so….yeah. I guess books-per-post will be flexible based on how much I say about the book in question. Here be spoilers, obviously. If you don’t want to hear about it, please feel free to block my Animorphs tag, I won’t be offended.
Book 1: The Invasion
AKA “The first named character is murdered, a main character is trapped as a bird, and five kids sign up for a lifetime of PTSD”
