Neverafter Tonight Like

A happy little family <3

Ame is a child when she first wonders through Grandmother Wren’s cottage. She wakes to the stomps of a fierce rooster, the smell of juk, the chorus of small sounds that builds the cottage.

Ame is a child when she falls in love with magic, the scent of it, the purity and the heart that lives at the core of it. Magic, the ability to connect with the earth, to provide for the animals and the trees, for the Spirits and honour their works. To help humans with sickness and mending.

The humanity in magic, the spinning of life to vow service to all that breathes on Umora.

Yet Ame is still a child as other children scowl at her, throw piercing gazes and words, “you’re a witch!” and see nothing but body, a little girl disconnected from the flesh of their own, a witch, nothing but a witch, an orphan, a stranger, a child. All but human.

But Ame had never thought herself anything other than human.

Ame, a child that never was, never could be, and forever will be.

She is a child when she is given to Grandmother Wren. Unwanted, strange child. She is a child when she is othered by the other children. Witch and apprentice, and still a child.

Ame never experiences childhood. She knows the wonders of magic and medicine, of healing and earth. But she never experiences the wonders of friendship, of connections in childhood. Ame never experiences the wonders of playing make belief, the warm hug after a heated argument, the small secrets shared in childhood.

But Ame is a child when finds more to her little family. A wizard, a witch and a wild one. Each child with a deep and profound sadness etched into the core of their beings and yet all too young to form the words to it.

Ame is still a child when she waves goodbye to her best and most True Friend. Tears wet her cheeks and the summer falls to her feet in a sweet breeze and a distant memory unforgotten. Ame is a child when she whispers her final goodnight to her brother, her True Friend, without and fully knowing so. She wakes up to the smell of moss and nothing but moss. She finds the cottage all too quiet.

Ame gains more than childhood during one summer and looses more than it when it is over. She finds fellowship and family in two True Friends. A secret and bond in childhood that cannot be simply broken. A thread that stretches across over water and mountains that no matter how far they are, they know they have a piece of themselves, of a simpler yet complicated summer in childhood somewhere across the lands. A small shard of childhood, of their true humanities stuck in memory of the scent of honey and magic and fur, a time long ago.

Every dropout subscriber loves comedy, and beneath that we love psychological horror. And beneath that? Comedy again, but weirder and gay.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Emily Axford <3

And the little flower in Brennan’s hair!!

(I started A Court of Frey and Flowers)

A flower, clutched and crushing in her hands, the blue-white staining and eating her fingertips— a cyanotype. She gazes across the battlefield. She sneaks into the bedchambers of a beloved she kept too close, kept too far. 

Karna stands in replaced positions. A Colin sized position. An Ariana sized position.

Her heart skips a beat as she skims over Deli’s haphazardly hidden notes. She finds motes of anger, of resentment, of despair and heartbreak at the corners of rapid heartbeats. She pulls and tugs at them, rearranging herself. Presentable. Useful. Disposable. 

She slides her note underneath the pillows of Delissandro Katzon’s bed. A quiet confession. A hopeful confession. She must survive.

She is dying, she is a child, she is in love. She hopes and she fears as tears crawl down her face and the rot eats her body. She knows the ways of war and the smell of murder better than the scent of a well prepared meal in the comforts of home. She knows the quick breath of death and the slow of a pulse better than the warmth of a family and the embrace of a lover. “She died nine years ago”.

At the bottom of the earth, in the embrace of Heart of the World, her story ends in a realm unknown to the rest. All the fighting to survive, the lies and the murder, the whispering of secret secrets and the blood dripping from the end of a blade. It all comes to a rest. Karna gives in to her exhaustion with an exhale (exhale, exhale). Eyes closed and a prayer to no god. A Hunger greets this tired warrior.

Cold steel rips apart her torn body. She dies and no one will mourn her. She dies and no mother, no sister, no lover will leave flowers by her gravestone, no eulogies sung, an insignificant name. 

She dies and she looks at the face of her lover. A letter remains underneath his pillows. Will he mourn for her?

“The only secret I have left, is that I love you” and in a title that was never made for her— “Signed, Sklad Karna Solara of Scoville”.

The Pawn resigns.

Evan and Jammer, Raphaniel and Deli

Something something about Brennan and Lou’s friendship across the table

Our ragged, bloodstained girl in red. Flesh stained teeth, earth crusted nails. An animal-girl.

Girlhood knows red. She knows of blood and the hollowing hunger that resides in the pit of stomachs. She knows her way around organs and the fresh scent of danger. Girlhood knows of red eyes, red hands, red tongue licking a full, satisfied smile.

Red waits with the Creature resting on her grandmother’s bed. It lies with one paw over the other. It yawns and sleeps and bares its neck. It waits for inevitability. Fear wears the clothes of love.

“If you cannot eat, you will die. This is the Law.”

Tears swell at the corners of the girl’s eyes. Who are these tears for, my child? Humanity lays at the corners of her eyes. She wipes them with the back of her hand.

Hunger and hunger and hunger grips the girls stomach. Starvation. Instincts. Animal.

She lays the iron weapon into the Creature’s skull.

Red Riding Hood devours her shadow. She rips apart fur, finds the critical spot where the meat comes apart the easiest, where the heart pounds and fades the quickest.

She splits the skull apart, pulling the strings that have tormented her Story many times told. She strays the path and follows her instincts. Animal.

She eats. She eats and drinks and swallows. Bright red. Raw meat. She picks the fur and guts out of her teeth. She wipes her mouth on the collar of her white dress and her hands at her thighs. “My teeth were made to eat you”.

Unrecognisable child. People fear you the way they feared the Big Bad Wolf. What have you done? Predator claws and ears grow from her body. Alien, familiar. Maturity, mortality, humanity, innocence— the blood at the end of girlhood.

“I met death, and Death wants me to live.”

Thinking about Evan Kelmp and Raphaniel

okay but when Older Adaine said "I don't know why I was so easy to discard" and "our parents didn’t love us and maybe there is a part of us that made that easy"

and when Illusion Fig asked "what do you think will happen when Ayda sees the real you?" and Fig said "i hope she finds something in me that I didn’t know was there"

and when Ayda said "the fact that i can’t find a redeeming quality in myself doesn’t mean that someone as brilliant as Figueroth can’t find something in me worthwhile"

and when Baron said "time will pass and everyone will find someone who matters more to them than you" and Riz said "I'm the little shrimp of this crew"

and when Fabian said "I don't know what I will be, but I like the direction I'm going"

and when Adaine said "I think the only answer is that we have to keep looking for love"

fuck you Brennan Lee Mulligan & Gang for making me cry my fucking eyes out