I got my lips pursed kissing the mascarons

Cysalla saw my reaction before any other. She felt my heart recoil. Saw my body go tense as the sheer power of that collected pain and fear flooded over me. There are few quick or easy, and no clean deaths, in war. As I stood overwhelmed by the eternal echoes of the sheer terror felt by young men dying horribly she came to me and took me in her arms.

"You're here, Francois." She murmured into my ear as her love surrounded me and pushed back the roiling darkness. "You are here and this past is not your past. Stay with me. They don't need you. I do. Stay with me."

I am not ashamed to admit that I wept like a child, there in her arms. Her heart was a bulwark between the evils done and my soul. I have, many times, been utterly lost. Only she has ever rescued me so immediately and thoroughly. Only she has given me such pure and unconditional love. Because she is what we were once, long ago, and will never be again. Selfless and sweet and unburdened by judgment based in self-interest.

If you ever meet her you will see what all of us on that journey knew. She is worth dying for. She is worth everything.

.

"What did this?" Reilen asked me when, four days later, we came across the remains of a small long trader caravan scattered around a rocky spring. "It wasn't animals. Clearly. And scavengers haven't been at the corpses. Is this ground marked?"

Nigel placed his hand on my shoulder to offer reassurance and support because he understood what I was being asked to endure. This was a fresh kill. There would be no cushion of time to ease the impact of reliving the slaughter. Fortunately, for me but not the dead, the encounter had been very brief.

"The Wild Hunt. The traders set no night watch. They were taken in their sleep." I said and reached up to grip Nigel's hand in thanks. "Since none were awake I can't know why they thought they were safe. Out here? I just can't say why they would be so foolish."

"The Hunt?" Reilen said and looked around at the bleak landscape that stretched out to the horizon in every direction. "Out here? Can that be right?"

"This land was once thickly wooded." I said because the land remembers its past more clearly than any human. "You could walk for weeks without leaving it's cover. Variants of the Wild Hunt called this place hone for many millenia."

"The Wild Hunt?" Descartes, our master provisioner, made a gesture of respect to the earth and turned frightened eyes away from the mutilated corpses. "How big is it? To take so many in their sleep!"

"The Master. Two dozen hunters. As many hounds." I said and didn't have to take count from my vision. It was a classic pack. "They could take us as easily. If we were fools enough to sleep without setting a watch."

"They sound horns, yes?" Reilen said and I nodded assent. "Well this should serve to keep sentinels alert. Any who hear the horns? Wake all immediately."

"Can we defend ourselves against them?" Nigel asked me quietly. He trusted me without reservation. "Won't we be compelled to join them?"

"We need water. Thurlcroft, Wacken, and Childress, put feedbags on the mules to block the scent of blood." Reilen ordered, quickly asserting authority to refocus our groups attention. "Fill the barrels and make quick of it."

"You remember your lore. You're a quick one and clever." I said as everyone else gazed with a sick fascination at the gory spectacle spread before us. "We have salt, holly and nettlewort. A protective circle can be laid down. But we can't afford to waste resources by doing so every night."

"Careful will be mandatory then." Nigel said and then flinched as Reilen cleared his throat loudly.

"I don't know how you do it." Nigel said as he remained at my side and maintained contact. "You're the bravest man I've ever known. I couldn't stand to see all that you witness."

"It's what I've always done. It's how it's always been." I said, unwilling to accept praise for being what I was but had not chosen to be. "You are a good man with a strong heart. I am no better nor braver than you."

"If you weren't here I would have left the group in Mauthausen Station." The young man said and drew my eyes from the ground and up to his face. "I love them both but all of us do. I'm not that important nor useful. But you make me want to see. Whatever it is that waits at the end of this."

"I do? Me?" I said and couldn't look away. What I saw was something unfamiliar to me. "Why?"

"If the world, or at least our world, is ending? I want to face it properly." Nigel said and smiled gently as his eyes offered me love and adoration and belonging. "I want to face it with no regrets. I want to meet it at your side. If I am to come to a end as well I will do so with a heart filled with love."

"You're mad. Absolutely." I said but smiled because how could I not? "I love you nonetheless. But don't plan on ending soon. Accept the possibility, yes. It is always a possibility for any. But between Reilen, Cysalla, and myself I am hoping that we will survive to see what's next. And if I'm to be there, you will be too."

"You're certain of that?" my young friend said and raised an eyebrow as his smile matched mine. "But you can only see the past. Not the future."

Pornography is inherently exploitative. So is prostitution. But if someone freely chooses to do either, I don't find it inherently shameful. Or bad. What IS bad is the lack of any filter or guidance for people too young to even grasp consequences let alone have a healthy perception of their body and sexuality. I'm sixty-one. I grew up seeing Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler magazines. I also understood that what I was seeing was staged and not realistic. Health class explained sex (and STD's) and parents explained love and sex and relationships. On top of that I never saw anybody in real life who looked like the people in porn. Now there is exposure to images that are guaranteed to make young people insecure. The women are all flawless, the men all well hung. Porn doesn't portray reality. There is no real intimacy, passion, or sensuality. It's a distortion but it's how many young people think sex should be. It's like the difference between fast food in an ad and what you actually get when you order it. Fast food just poisons your body though. Not your self-esteem and ability to have healthy relationships.

The magatt infestation grows more and more Nazi even as it's failures become more pronounced. Amerikkka continues to show its colors. The comparisons are valid. Look at the leaders of the "Master Race". Hitler, who wasn't blonde haired and blue-eyed and who had an unhealthy relationship with a niece, never married (Eva Braun doesn't count. Fucking please!) had no kids and was on Elvis levels of prescription drugs. Heinrich Himmler, the man in charge of the SS, incredibly nearsighted and with no chin. Hermann Goerring, a bloated sadistic drug addict. Josef Goebbels, minister of propoganda and clubfooted. The fact that none of these people could match the standards that they insisted upon and yet people followed them? Lying hypocrites screeching hate. Yup. That checks.

All of you naive bumblefucks driving Teslas to "save the environment" clearly don't understand battery technology or power generation, but your boy Elongated Muskrat, besides being a drifter, druggie, shit dad, ahit husband, shit human and, oh yeah, a fucking NAZI, has already stolen your personal data and lied about the cameras in Tesla vehicles, and he's pushing data centers that literally use as much power as a small city each! Yay Earth?

The stress of having ethics, a conscience, and well established morals, while living in the U.S., more than offsets my 'freedom'. Which, BTW, is the freedom to overpriced healthcare, perpetual debt, a political system that is openly for sale, a broken justice system, a police state that never reforms itself because fuck you we ARE the law, legalized weed and gambling because that's the new retirement plan, a minority of religious zeolots forcing their religion into my laws, and a good chunk of the population who always believe in whoever shouts the loudest and the most.

The U.S is turning 250 years old. There are stalls in the bazaar of Tangiers that have been owned by the same familea for eight hundred years. I stood in the crypt of the Mainz Dom in Mainz, Germany, and saw the foundation stone that said 908 A.D. St. Augustine FL (U.S.) was founded by the Spanish in 1565 A.D. 210 years before the United States itself. I'll wager that most people in England have had a pint in a pub that's older than the United States.

The United States celebrated its Bicentennial 31 years after taking part in a World War to destroy fascism. 50 years later on and it's run by fascists. Really fucking stupid fascists. Fortunately for them the majority of the population is easily distracted and willfully and deliberately ignorant.

Back in the 1960's-1970's we had Norman Borlaug, "Father of the Green Revolution", the "Man Who Fed the World" and Nobel Prize winner whose work on increasing agricultural output and creating drought resistant crops is estimated to have saved a billion lives. 1,000,000,000 lives. He didn't patent his research and use it to get rich. He helped the poor and hungry because he could. What do we have in 2026? Cunts and con-men. Billionaires doing not one fucking thing to make the world better.

Just so everyone knows-the world had an economy before stock markets existed. Without stock markets companies would actually have to make a profit! An actual legitimate profit from the business itself! Crazy huh?

Use a.i. all you want. However you wish. Provided you're willing to admit that you're insecure, incapable of individual thought or creativity, and are so gullible that you will believe whatever you're told just so that you don't have to actually think for yourself. Just admit and acknowledge that a.i. is a massive scam by techbros who don't give a fuck about anything except making their dreams of creating a trillion dollar market come true.

The difference between the internet and an actual library of books is that nothing has to be vetted on the internet.

As far as "Mars Colonies", beyond the sheer logistical lunacy and pointlessneaa of such a thing, look up "winter over syndrome". Yeah.

Fortunately for the world, my favorite hand of doom, CMEs, are likely to annhilate any a.i. based society. I'm definitely Team Sol.

Socialism is bad. For greedy fucks. Who's rhetoric of 'stifled innovation' forgets to finish that up with 'that benefits shareholders and eliminates competition to ensure that economic disparity remains perpetual". There. Fixed it.

If your God needs YOU to carry out It's will, are you sure that your God is omnipotent? But remember! If God is omnipotent then everything is exactly as it's meant to be. So shut up with your "Sinner!" bullshit.

John Lennon was a nasty, misogynistic twat, but he had talent. Listen to The Beatles- discography and you'll hear the evolution of their talent. That's what actual human creativity does.

Tom Waits sounds better than any fucking autotuned, pitch corrected abomination.

Rock and Roll might not be dead but it's currently a childless old git mumbling to itself in a park.