( 𝐟𝐢𝐠 𝐢. ) — white lily,

ON SEMI-HIATUS UNTIL MID-AUGUST.

ALL BLACK FIT, CALL ME DANNY PHANTOM!

trust, i'll be posting replies whenever i can—i just can't promise that that'll be Often. if you're in the mood for some shorter-form, not-that-serious (aka not-my-best-writing) discord threads, hit my line. mwah

' i, ' began lis, getting up. she stretched her arms, cracked something in her back, rolled out one ankle at a time. she looked like she was warming up for something: a sprint, maybe. or a marathon. depended on monroe, really, and how far she could run. how much she wanted to survive. ' need pants. the mosquitoes are killing me. '

' the fire, ' mumbled charlie, half-heartedly, ' needs wood. '

' be right back—if i don’t get murdered by a giant mosquito or an evil, masked killer! ' hahaha. lis thought this was funny; charlie thought it was annoying.

he frowned at the ground. ' if the fire doesn’t get another log, it’s going to go out. '

lis shrugged, pulling her hair back and over her shoulders. but charlie was right: the fire was eating itself out of existence, shedding itself to the bone. smoke was already veiling monroe in a funeral shroud. ' i’ll see if i can find naomi, ' she added, then made her way down the path—and right past the stack of wood.

the radio cut out again, tshhhhhhhhhhh. a loon let out its wistful, mournful cry. maybe it missed the music, as charlie did.

' … i thought … she was going to … ' charlie let the thought die, sputter out with the last few flames. he didn’t watch lis disappear into the night. he didn’t look monroe in the face. he didn’t look anywhere at all, because the axe was in his peripheral, propped against the pile of logs, and he thought that if he looked at it, it would give him away.

he started up again: ' the fire— '

@pixistic, ' —do something about it or shut up already. '

charlie went very, very still. he was looking at her now. it was the first time he’d done so all night, perhaps the only time he’d done so since they’d met.

he thought she had the biggest eyes he’d ever seen.

' no. ' he said finally, quietly, after far too long. the fire was nothing but coals, and the coals were quickly fading to nothing but ash. soon—in one minute or in two—the darkness would set in.

and maybe she was safe or maybe she wasn’t, and maybe he’d kill her or maybe he wouldn’t. no matter how the story ended, the fire, the night, the light could not protect her. but maybe it could keep her warm.

chris lee and delta wayside were standing over a broken-off side mirror, staring down at their own cracked reflections. objects may be closer than they appear. delta’s fault for trying to skate, really. and maybe chris’ fault for letting him. a straight beeline between parked cars (in the dark, after a drink or three): how hard could it be?

not very—if you didn’t care about property damage.

@cuntryjunkie, ' i mean, it’s not such a big deal. '

' no yeah—yeah no. for sure. ' he nodded, looking at the mirror with a speculatively canted head. (deal) is in the eye of the beholder. he kicked the mirror under the body of the truck. it went skidding across the pavement and disappeared, which delta thought might buy them some time.

' … should go back in there, ' he said after a while, gesturing across the lot to where music and mayhem were being held back by a vibrating door and some flimsy, greasy windows.

he could see the headline now: COWBOY AND INDIAN BEATEN TO DEATH OUTSIDE OF LOCAL BAR. no thanks. it was better, he figured—he gambled—to hide in plain sight. who’d be stupid enough to stick around? went the logic. whoever did this is long gone, if he knows what’s good for him.

delta was making this up, but he was doing it in a way that seemed both reasonably plausible and unreasonably dishonest. which it was: unreasonable. and not for any tactical benefit. what he was waving around was a flask, not a bottle, smuggled into camp in his waistband. and the top of it was silver, not black or white or even something in between. it reflected the hazy glow of the campfire, the sunset above. when held up to the ear, it echoed with the sounds of the lake, the gentle lapping of waves, the croaking of toads in discussion.

the flask, scholars agreed, was the degenerate man’s seashell.

' just shut up and drink, ' interjected @pixistic, which either meant that she didn’t believe him or that she didn’t care. or just that she was thirsty.

because delta was thirsty, and because he didn’t really care whether hanna cared, whether she believed him or not, he did as he was told. he threw back his head, took a gratuitous shot of ( it wasn’t even vodka ), and sat down, wobbling, on a tree trunk bench. there were three of them arranged around the campfire, the tops of them worn flat from years worth of asses and termites.

but delta being white-washed by a system that took him away from his community and placed him in the care of settler adopters isn't his fault. delta doesn't respect his indigeneity because, growing up (in a small, racially homogenous rural town), nobody else did either. he wasn't taught to love his own people. he was taught to hate that part of himself—so, by extension, he projects that internalized hatred outward. "what makes the red man red" fr. he was taught to associate his native identity exclusively with stereotypes—most of them negative.

tommy is very "power to the people" while, ironically, struggling to accept "the people" (natives) who can't or don't respect their roots because of colonial practices. and if he could get over his simmering, righteous indignation for one second, he would see that natives like delta—the disconnected, non-traditional, deeply and mentally colonized ones—are exactly the natives he should be helping. being a hero doesn't always mean saving cats from trees or stopping robberies or whatever. sometimes being a hero is helping the shittiest guy you know find his way back to the ancestors. sometimes being a hero is helping someone find their way back home.