Wrath, Ruin and the Red Dawn

That way, the nickname "Angel" would fit even better

And I kind of wanted to see Simon helping Grace fly again (there was ABSOLUTELY NO room for him to EVEN spread his wings on the Hail Mary)

I saw a fic like that! 

What I think would be really fun is if Simon’s universe was the one with wings.

I imagine in such a harsh universe, well taken care of wings are a sign of hard work and dedication—and in Eden particularly, they’re a sign of purity, of holiness. The people with the biggest, most beautiful and well cared for wings are lauded, put in higher up positions, afforded more opportunities than others. 

That’s part of how Simon managed to get so far at such a young age. He’s incredibly smart and hardworking, sure, but in Eden, there’s really only one thing that catches the Father’s attention.

Simon’s wings are big—so big he rarely ever has the chance to fully stretch them out. They’re black like oil and just as shiny, and under certain lights, there’s an iridescent quality to the feathers—purples and blues and greens, all layered beautifully under inky black. They’re gorgeous wings, the envy of anyone who lays eyes on them. 

It becomes both a blessing and a curse. 

If we still want to keep the ‘Angel’ nickname, I think it would be interesting if in Eden, a person’s wings are considered the most holy part of them. When they die or are killed, their wings are ceremonially harvested from their body and used—along with their blood—to nourish the Last Tree. 

When Simon first meets Grace, he’s stunned. He’s seen damaged wings, broken wings, wings with great swathes of missing feathers. 

But the only time he’s ever seen someone without wings is when they’re already dead. 

So when he sees Grace—living and breathing and smiling and wingless—he really does look like someone who’s died and miraculously come back to life.

It terrifies him. He’s delirious with pain and blood loss and infection, and he’s sure he must be dead. That Grace is just another poor soul who was killed for the sake of someone else’s plans, that he died and had his wings taken and was made an angel in the afterlife. And Simon is positive that his wings will be next, that as soon as someone finds his bloated body in the mortal world, the precious limbs will be torn from him, and Simon will lose them forever. 

So we get the reactive/defensive behavior, the posturing and the lashing out and the guilt and apologies after, the long explanations from both sides, the slow build of friendship and then something more.

Since he lost an arm, Simon can no longer groom his wings by himself, so Grace learns how to do it for him. The first few times, there’s this sense of hesitant trust—fragile, like an eggshell—but after they each get used to touching/being touched again, it becomes this deeply intimate act of care. 

Another thing: Simon has never flown before. Back in his universe, there was hardly ever any room to stretch his wings fully, much less actually lift off. 

Grace carefully brings it up one day, and after some thought, Simon agrees to try. 

Of course, they have to spend months conditioning the muscles in his shoulders and wings, slowly building up the strength it will take to get his body off the ground—especially since gravity on Erid is stronger than anything he’s experienced before. It’s tedious, exhausting, painful work, but Grace is there every step of the way, keeping track of his progress and gently massaging his sore muscles after his workouts. 

Simon will never admit it out loud, but the massages are most of what keeps him going. He might have given up a hundred times by now, if not for the promise of Grace’s careful fingers kneading his shoulders and soothing his wings. Over the past few months, he’s become addicted to the feeling. He both anticipates and dreads the day he takes flight—he’ll finally be able to do what his body was always meant for, but he’ll no longer have a reason to ask Grace to touch him like this.

The day it happens is the best day of Simon’s life. 

He takes to the sky like he was born to do it, because he was. He was made to be up here, safe, away from anything and everything that’s ever hurt him. He knows with certainty that he could happily spend the rest of his life up here, coasting on air currents and just breathing.

The sound of excited shouting breaks him from his thoughts, and he looks down to find Grace jumping up and down on the beach, clapping and pumping his fists in victory. 

And suddenly, what Simon wants more than anything is to be back down there on the ground. 

Hello i present more Vampire!Simon come eat

What they did have was a single spare bed in the small, comfortable, quiet, wildly expensive facility for girls with eating disorders.

They asked each of the young women currently living there if it was acceptable that I might occupy a bed in one of the rooms for a while, just the long weekend while I was waiting for a doctor's evaluation. I hadn't been violent, I had gone with the cops without putting up any fight at all, and I was still and I was small and all those things were sufficient for me to be deemed safe. So up they sent me, to somewhere high in Western Psych, above the smells and sounds of the denser-packed wards, above where the care workers were harried and frustrated, to a gentle space with seven or eight young women in it.

I was five foot three, and I weighed about 115 pounds. I was underweight for my frame, as a fair amount of that weight was martial arts muscle; I would probably have been ten pounds heavier if I were healthy, with the amount of activity I got.

I was at least two inches shorter than pretty much every other young woman there, six or seven inches shorter than one of them, and I had at least thirty pounds on several of them. The tallest was not allowed to walk, she had to sit in a wheelchair and be pushed around, because her condition was so advanced that the motion would undo what good her hard work had done.

And over the course of the four or five days I was there, multiple of them came up to me alone to quietly tell me that I had the *perfect* body, and they wished they could be as skinny as I was. That I needed to live, because I was beautiful, and if they were as beautiful as I was, they wouldn't need to be here.

Their eyes were on me all the time, in the hours that I wasn't sleeping. I spent a lot of time sleeping, and we took our meals separately (I not needing to be monitored while I ate, and not having my food weighed), but we spent a fair amount of time sitting around in the little shared living room space, talking about movies and magazines and books we'd loved, talking about our families. I didn't talk about my family; they didn't pry.

They were all so fucking nice.

And I could have broken any one of them over my narrow knee. They each thought they were bigger than I was.

Their brains lied to them, every time they looked at a mirror. Every time they looked down at their own thighs. What they saw was not what I could see. They had bright, beautiful eyes in dark hollows, and I could count their vertebrae, could see their ribs winging when they breathed, could see the motion of every tendon on the backs of their hands.

They weren't celebrities. They weren't being paid to have particular bodies, nor were they deep in the toxic sea of having strangers take photos of them to sell to gossip rags if they stepped out of doors in old jeans. They had families and loved ones who were doing everything that they could to protect them, to uplift them and help them be healthy. They were just everyday people--a nurse, a couple of students, a couple of recent college grads, a young woman who had decided it was time to really get help because she wanted to be a mother--and still they'd been so injured by the neverending fucking deluge of body-image bullshit that they were dying of it.

I had like one, maybe two friends who were all like FUCK YEAH YOU PAINT IT WHATEVER COLOR YOU WANT, PURPLE BEDROOMS ARE AWESOME.

But when they actualy saw the finished bedroom, every single one of them was like, “Oh yeah, that’s really pretty.” (Well, the ones who supported me from the beginning were more like WOOHOO.)

MEAN YOU HAVE TO ABANDON

WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY.

When I bought my house, the kitchen was multiple shades of dingy white. It was dismal, but it was now mine! So went to the hardware store for paint (well, several trips, painted swatches on panel, etc — I’m very picky. But this was the final, ‘real’ trip). It was a busy day in the paint section. There were at least five people behind me in line.

Now, remember, latex paint is slightly lighter and brighter when wet than it is when dry. And I’d decided to paint my kitchen candy-apple red. The hardware store employee took my gallon off the Paint Jiggler and cracked it open to put a dab on the top, revealing the most incredibly deep pink, and behind me I hear the entire line of people say,

“Oh my god.”

…in perfect chorus.

This is the door to my garage. It used to be white. Live your best life.

Mischief the cat says “Who goes there?”

Every visiting friend says “This is so cool.”

my garage. It used to be

white. Live your best life.

not decorating trends; those have always existed. but the idea that color and decoration is inherently childish

this is the dining room at the Eustis Estate in Milton, Massachusetts, from 1878 (where I used to work, briefly). the walls are TEXTURED MICA SHIMMER on a green background. Adult Space For Adults!

A jewelry shop in Paris c. 1901. kids can’t buy jewelry!

who can forget the classic 1950s colorful bathroom? I’m not a huge fan, but still! adult space! bright colors; decorative designs!

So here’s two examples of traditional Norwegian farmhouse interiors. You know. The kinds of places peasants live in.

This type of painting is called “rosemaling” and today you usually find it on, like, carved wooden bowls and such that are only used for decoration. But back two centuries ago, it was very common to find the interiors of homes covered in it, in projects that were painted little by little over the decades. Because it’s beautiful to look at, paint is the cheapest way of decorating your house, and what else are you going to do on the long winter nights when it’s too dark and cold to work outdoors?

But mostly, they did it because it made them happy, and it was beautiful.