Paper Hearts

A hundred monarchs resting on their long flight have lit here, on these green needles.  You reach out.  The tired creatures crawl onto your arms, wings slowly parting and closing, parting and closing, as they breathe.  They rest, covering you in magic.  You spin in the sunlight, laughing.  You are very small, and they glow like candles behind colored glass.

I will trade you one awful, inescapable thing for this one golden moment in time, this moment of honeycomb light and a warm autumn day tapering to endless evening.

Look, you have made the trade.  You can take your memory back anytime, but you do not need to bear it always.  Now I will hold it for you so that for a while it can be smaller and further away.

Look at the butterflies.

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.

ice tucked in a hair bun = great cooling.

Or soak a baseball cap or other cloth hat that won’t be damaged by water.

Water needs energy to evaporate. As it dries, it consumes a little heat in its immediate vicinity.

Therefore any significant amount of water — buckets, wet towels, damp laundry— in a small room can cool it a degree or two, although this doesn’t work as well if the air is already humid.

Here's mine:

It’s late, too late for the early day that is to come. You rest in a cabin with a few others on a camping trip outside city limits. It’s been several days, but you haven’t seen what you came here for.

You stumble past the cots resting on the floor, the artifacts of a recent s'mores session still hanging in the air. Across a hallway you tip-toe ever so slowly to avoid the old floor’s whines and creaks. You should be asleep, but a rush of adrenaline pulses through you. At the end of the hall you push a flimsy screen door out of the way and climb a small set of concrete stairs to the front porch of the rented cabin. Taking great care to avoid the thistle leaves, you walk out into crab grass and dry soil to stare up at the night sky.

It is still cloudy, as it was on previous nights, but you see a patch of darkness around the back of the house. You weave your way back to the front porch and creep into the cabin itself. It’s small and simple, only housing a basic kitchen and dining area, a little laundry room, and a single tiny bathroom. The music of a game long forgotten echoes in silence. Past all this is the door to the back porch, and it isn’t long until you reach it.

From this door stretches a decent clearing, and beyond that an impressive pine forest. Not a thing stirs in the dark encampment, with only the faintest breeze brushing your skin. It tastes a bit like oncoming rain. But while the nature around you is beautiful, you instead look up at the sky. Up and away is the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy stretching across your vision. A hundred million twinkling little stars fill your view, shimmering and shining down on you without the burden of a moon.

Then, all at once, you see one. Two, three. Five meteors, streaking across the sky. The Perseids shoot off into the distance, each one leaving a twinkling trail. Dozens more follow those first few trailblazers, giving you a night full of stars. You only wish your friends could see them with you.

Intimacy isn't always just the spicy stuff! Here's a few ways to show it through your characters in a few, simple ways...

Kissing their S/O's hand, knuckles, wrist...bonus points for eye contact!

Speaking of which...eyes. Glances across the room, prolonged eye contact, staring at each other

Tending to the other's wounds/ injuries

Knowing the other's tiny habits

Reaching out to the other when in pain, trouble, ect

Whispering jokes to each other

Carefully wiping off a stain from their clothes or face

Taking care of each other when sick or hurt

Hand over the heart/ ear over the heart just to hear it beat

Pressing their thumb over the pulse point for the same thing

Tracing scars, tattoos, birth marks, freckles

Giving the other something tiny that means a lot, a picture, a shiny rock, a flower

In fantasy settings, helping the other put on/ take off armor...trusting the other to know where daggers, knives, poisons are hidden

Telling each other secrets/ thoughts they've told nobody before

Tucking back the other's hair

Putting a piece of jewelry on the other or letting them borrow clothes

Keeping each other warm in the cold

In cases with chronic illness, letting the other care for/ know symptoms

Brushing, braiding hair, applying skincare, etc.

Nightmare comfort

Wiping away tears

Proximity- sitting near each other, sticking close, standing beside each other while doing a task such as cooking, laundry, painting...