filly

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Henry Winter x Reader

summary: Henry winter becomes infactuated with a girl, a completely normal girl, and that is for some reason what gets him.

cw: mentions of drugs, men yearning

word count: 855

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She was normal, completely and utterly normal; she was in the midst of a law degree, she wore a turtleneck and bell-bottom jeans, she had glasses, and she listened to rock. Henry was one of the campus weirdos with his insistent need to speak in Latin and prose and pinch his nose at those he considers normal. 

It was almost midnight, the library was still open, it was dark, and the warm lamps of desks in faraway corners pooled on tables and over open books. She was by the window, tapping a black pen on the table's wood, one hand on the back of her neck, her eyes glued to the small print in the comically large, heavy book. Henry was standing in an aisle; he kept coming back purely for the opportunity to gaze out of the corner of his eye at her. The light washed her in a golden flow, pulling every little shade in her hair, face, and eyes bright and glowing. Henry stared at the same verses by Plato for what seemed like hours. When he took the bet to look again, he got caught in her iris; she was looking right at him, and a well-known smirk pulled at her glossy lips. His heart jumped to his throat, and his pinkie twitched by the spine of the book he held so loosely it could have been blown out of his grasp. 

She smiled, her teeth pearly in the golden light. He did nothing; he couldn’t move a muscle. Some may say she could’ve been Medusa, but he wasn’t stone because this is the most alive he has felt in years, his heart pumped blood to every limb and orifice of his body, his mouth ran dry, and his mind kept going and going until somehow it was barely legible in his own mind. 

“Hi…Can I help you?” Her voice cut through the commonly silent library despite the fact that her voice was barely above a whisper. 

“Uh… Bonj-. Hi,” his mind flip-flopped between French and English. He was a deer caught in headlights

“Hi!” She whispered and sweetly smiled. Her eyes were squinted and her cheeks plump as she smiled. 

He silently fumbled with the book in his hands, unceremoniously shoving it between books, disgracing the Dewey decimal system. She stood up out of his sight and walked over; it took a couple of strong-willed steps before she tapped his coat's shoulder. He flinched and whipped around, staring at her, shorter than him and looking up with a daring eye. She passed him a note, legal pad paper, pale yellow, lined. 

“It’s my number, call it.” It was less so an offer and more so an order, flat out telling him what to do. 

Henry opened his mouth, but before anything slipped out, she walked away, sat back down and continued scanning and tapping her pen. He dutifully walked to his car, sat in the driver's seat and silently drove home. He was shocked. Once he had entered his home, he slid down into his big old armchair. He pinched the bridge of his nose and systematically diagnosed every detail he knew of her. She went to parties, loud ones with coke and K, she drank, occasionally in excess, but mostly only to the tipping point, she liked spirits more than beers and wine, she had glasses, two sets, one small and oval and one big and square, decently dated yet beautifully classy. She liked dark colours on her lips, brownish pinks, deep reds, nothing lighter. She was normal. Nothing heavenly or other-worldly, she was an ordinary girl with a normal choice of education. She wasn’t mundane, but she was nothing like the scholars Henry surrounded himself with in his Greek class; they were ethereal and above all that commonly beautiful, pale porcelain observed on high shelves of ego. She was real, tangible, she smelt of bitter pot coffee and ballpoint pen ink, when she smiled her whole face changed and wrinkled, she had colour in her cheeks and a radiance to her that made knowing how someone liked their tea something entirely romantic. 

He palmed the small note; her handwriting was a fast-paced cursive, scrawled more so than written. He dialled up the number on his landline; it rang once, then twice. There was a click, and he hung up. His heart was in his chest, and his elbows on his knees as he stared at the wall across from him. What am I doing? He repeated to himself over and over, mantra-like in nature and foolishly hopeless, as he tapped his foot against the wooden floor and kept huffing out his nose like this one decision weighed the weight of the world on his shoulders alone. He dialled up once more, there was one ring and then a click, she picked up. 

“I swear to god if this is some prank call, I’ll sue.” It was her, her voice was like a shot, it burned him. 

“I thought that was your job,” Henry joked, but it came out more like a choke. An actual feesible smirk tugging at the corners of his lips and his heart in his ears.

She laughed.

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Oh look, it seems like there's a Republican-led movement to purge voter rolls in the lead-up to the election! It's almost as if your vote matters and they don't want you to vote! Anyway, I whipped up a quick map (based on this) that shows when the voter registration deadline is in each state. There are a few deadlines coming up in the next week or so.

If you live in a state that regularly purges voter rolls for infrequent voters (the orange ones in the first map), or if you moved recently, it's good to check if you're still registered to vote.

Vote.org makes it super easy to check your registration: https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/

Just put in your address and DOB and they'll tell you whether you're registered. (And they give you a quick link to register online if it turns out that you're not! Only the 9 states in white on my map don't have online registration, and for those they provide instructions on how to do it via mail or in person.)

gord downie & chanie wenjack fund

inuit tapiriit kanatami

reconciliation canada

honouring indigenous peoples

national centre for truth and reconciliation

true north aid

water first

free grassy narrows

+ my best friend who is a 2spirit inuit/ojibwe artist that you should totally check out here

métis community services society of bc

indian residential schools survivors society

The creator of the red handprint to represent mmiw probably chose it to mean what red handprint usually mean for modern day symbolism (death, murder, etc), and the fact that various warriors in Turtle Island would decorate themselves with war paint, including hands over the mouth (so the implication here is that mmiw are fallen warriors), and this is represented in art like below, which is a painting from George Catlin from 1882 on the left, and additionally, it mightve been homage to the American Indian Movement's logo, which was a red handprint. On the right is the AIM logo from 1973.

its not a "native version of nonbinary" or a "native version of bigender"

thats not what it means, that’s not what it’s ever meant

two spirit is an pan-tribal term coined by indigenous people in 1990, for indigenous people, to replace the term berdache, an offensive term that white settlers applied to indigenous people that fell outside of the western lens of gender and sexuality

two spirit isnt a "native version of nonbinary" because two spirit doesnt inherently mean someone is nonbinary. some of us are, but so many two spirited people arent. many people in our community also choose specifically not to label themselves with terms like nonbinary, gay, bisexual, etc, and solely use two spirit or another term from their tribe or language

we can be anything and everything and nothing you've ever imagined

when I drew this comic 3 years ago I had NO idea how far it would reach. I'm happy to finally share a corrected version with proper abbreviations, and even MORE state names of indigenous origin ♥️

however, the goal of this comic was to inspire people to do your OWN research on indigenous history. To question everything we have been taught, and everything that has been pointedly left out. This erasure, this “forgetting”, of history is not just of the past… it is happening now. - Across so-called Canada, the US, and US-occupied islands, native women are victims of murder at 10-12x the rate of non-native people, and are the most likely to go missing without being searched for by the law. - Native reservations have the highest rates of poverty in the US, with over HALF of tribal homes with no access to clean water (with more joining this list by the year) - Native people are 6-10x more likely to be unhoused than the rest of the population, and native teens suffer suicide rates higher than any other demographic. This list of modern day genocide goes on (thank you for compiling @theindigenousanarchist <3) and yet take a look at those environmental stats!

Native people manage to do SO much for the planet as a whole - thanklessly - and with all this stacked against them. Don't even get me started on kin fighting in south america. Could you imagine if there was help? #landback is resistance to genocide, and it is the key to saving our warming earth.

So look into it and the other hashtags, cuz a cartoon goose ain't a substitute for a proper education. Love to my grandparents who always kept a map of tribal territories of turtle island on their wall, to speaking on our Tsalagi & Saponi heritage. Love & solidarity forever, happy research, and happy #indigenouspeoplesday

LANDBACK.ORG

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Earlier this year, Arizona lawmakers sued the Biden administration over the newly created Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument — arguing that the establishment of national monuments should be state matters and calling the move a “land grab.” Now, the Hopi, Havasupai, and Navajo Nation, whose ancestral lands overlap with the national monument, have intervened in the case and joined with the federal government to protect the area.

“Even if the Tribal Nations and federal government share similar goals and legal positions in this litigation, the United States cannot adequately represent the Tribal Nations’ sovereign interest,” the tribes’ intervention stated. 

The nearly one-million acre national monument protects areas tribes called home before being forcibly removed by the federal government, as well as places where tribal citizens hunt, pray, and gather foods and medicines. The area is also important for wildlife migration routes and potential burial sites. 

If successful, Arizona’s lawsuit would open Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni to more economic development, and specifically, livestock grazing and uranium mining. Currently, there is only one uranium mine in operation within the boundaries of the national monument. The lawsuit argues that limiting mining of uranium around the Grand Canyon will make the U.S. more dependent on acquiring it from foreign countries for energy purposes.

hi this is your obligatory reminder from a Mi'kmaq-Saulteaux pal that:

1.) the ribbon skirt is a traditional ceremonial garment worn by many First Nations women to celebrate their connection to Mother Earth and reclaim their Indigenous identity from and in spite of colonization;

2.) the RCMP was literally founded as a colonial police force meant to drive Indigenous / First Nations peoples out of their territory to make way for settlers (see: the "starlight tours")

3.) racism towards indigenous people in Canada is still alive and well (the last residential school didn't close until 1996) and so the RCMP adopting ribbon skirts is not only incredibly tone deaf towards their own history and the role they played in wiping out Indigenous culture, but insulting to the practice of ribbon skirts and what they mean to many Indigenous people across the country

In the last few years (3-4 years) the WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America, which was originally created to improve the quality and coverage of native issues and native articles on wikipedia, has been hijacked by a small number of users with an extremist agenda. They have been working diligently over the last few years to change the definition of both what it means to be an Indigenous American and even what it means to be state and federally recognized.

The four or five key players (Mainly Editor Yuchitown, Bohemian Baltimore, ARoseWolf, (now retired editor CorbieVreccan, Netherzone and Oncamera) who are part of the “Native American Articles Improvement Project” started implementing these changes slowly, but they started pursuing their goals aggressively after November 2023, when state-recognized tribes retained their voting rights in NCAI. Essentially, after the movement to delegitimize state-recognized tribes failed officially, the key players doubled down on altering and controlling the flow of information about Native Americans through Wikipedia.

The talk page of Lily Gladstone’s article has a relevant discussion here. Initially, the leaders of the WikiProject removed any reference to her being a “Native American Actress” and instead had her as “Self-identifying as Blackfoot” and “Self-identifying as Nez Perce” because her blood quantum was too low to be enrolled in either tribe.

You can see some of the discussion here:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lily_Gladstone

Eventually they relented and changed her category to being “Of Nez Perce Descent” but you can see in the discussion that they are referring to an article that these editors (Yuchitown, Bohemian Baltimore, and CorbieVreccan) themselves appeared to have mostly written and revised:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_identity_in_the_United_States

This statement is very much at odds with even the government’s description, as seen below;

The DOJ Office of Tribal Justice Office on their webpage “Frequently Asked Questions About Native American”, question “Who is an American Indian or Alaskan Native” states:

“As a general principle, an Indian is a person who is of some degree Indian blood and is recognized as an Indian by a Tribe and/or the United States. No single federal or tribal criterion establishes a person's identity as an Indian. Government agencies use differing criteria to determine eligibility for programs and services. Tribes also have varying eligibility criteria for membership.”

In addition, “List” pages have been created on Wikipedia for federally and state recognized tribes. The Wikipedia “List” page for state-recognized tribes is inaccurate in its interpretation of state recognition and not supported by expert reliable sources--(1) Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law 2012 edition, (2) NCSL.org current stand on state recognition (not the archived list from 2017 which NCSL no longer supports), (3) Koenig & Stein’s paper “Federalism and the State Recognition of Native American Tribes: a survey of state-recognized tribes and state recognition processes across the United States” (both 2008 & updated 2013 in book “ Recognition, sovereignty struggles, and indigenous rights in the United States: A sourcebook”)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-recognized_tribes_in_the_United_States

State-recognized tribes who have received recognition through less formal but acceptable means have been moved from the Wikipedia list page on state-recognized tribes to the Wikipedia list page of unrecognized or self-identifying organizations.

The Wiki page "List of organizations that self-identify as Native American tribes", in particular, is being used to purposely defame legitimate Native American individuals who are members of the tribes/Native communities that are on this list. 

By the parameters set up on Wikipedia, only the colonizer’s governments can acknowledge who is Native American through either federal recognition or state recognition. If an individual is not a member of a federally or state-recognized tribe, then it is determined that they cannot be Native American and are, instead, considered “self-identifying” or only “a descendant of ...” (example Lily Gladstone). As a result, Native individuals are currently being tagged as “self-identifying” and their names are put on “list” pages that strongly imply they are “pretend” Indians.

These editors have indicated that they would like “self-identification” to be the default setting for any people who they deem do not fit within the parameters that they themselves created within Wikipedia.

Moreof, these editors are admin and senior editors within the Wikiproject Indigenous Peoples of North America, and are being called in specifically to weigh on Native Identity, and any project involving any Indigenous Group.

Any attempt to correct misinformation, add information, or change any of these articles is often met with being blocked, reported for various offenses, or reported for having a Conflict of Interest, whether or not that is actually applicable. They have use this strategically in many different pages for many different individuals and groups within the scope of their Wikiprojects.

While changing things in Wikipedia does not change the truth, it is a way to control how most people take in information, and thus they hope to manipulate the narrative to better suit their goals.

This is quick and messy but:

Here is a link to the google document with the other state recognized tribes (Including yours) that were edited by these editors. This is an incomplete list so far that only goes back to September 2023 but I am going to add to it. If you can add to your own part of this list, and send your complaints and information to the arbitrator committee (the email is below) with the involved editors, this will help our case.

The  more tribes who complain, and the more Wikipedia editors complain, the better our case will be. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YNDEjLTrrZ_mMIRCVxtvt69FwCYpJWKs71lBhWa5a9M/edit?usp=sharing

The place to make complaints on Wikipedia is oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org , and

arbcom-enwikimedia.org . It is most helpful to have an editing account on Wikipedia, because Yuchitown and the others will try to defend themselves using Wikipedia methodology and make anyone who confronts them look like the aggressor (see the other tribes who tried to fight back on Wikipedia I found).

The more people and tribes make complaints the more likely it is that this will work and we can rid ourselves of these monsters.

Some of the tribes I have spoken to are taking legal action against these editors. Any groups affected by their policies should also reach out to the news to make knowledge of this more widespread.

Thank you

And yet no tears are shed as Palestinian archives and libraries are bombed.

Saint Porphyrius Church, a structure built in the 5th century and the 3rd oldest church in the world has been bombed.

It's not an accident.

Israel aren't simply killing Palestinians, they are trying to erase that there ever were Palestinians in the first place.

Destroying their livelihoods, trying to to destroy their culture and history and pretend this land was never there's.

It's easy to deny someone's existence when there's no record of them.

Which is why it's so important to look at the atrocities and bear witness to what's happening.

But to also recognise that Palestine is more than it's suffering.

There is a living breathing culture, of art, history, literacy which all come from the Palestinians.

Traditions they've carried for centuries.

So while we mourn the dead, we shall fight for the living. Fight for the preservation of their crafts, amplify their voices as they speak on their culture.

same reason. we don't know that. all articles i've read have said that he was found in his car in a wooded area. i can't even find where it was mentioned that his braids were cut off.

he could have been killed. he also could have killed himself, or even died of natural causes and it just so happened that he was in his car. since journalists weren't actually there, they have to rely on what they're told by the police.

Cole's hair had been cut off the night he went missing, which occurred at a mosh pit in Lawrence, Kansas: he had gotten some wire tangled into his hair, which there is photographic evidence of. While one person attempted to help Cole untangle the wire from his hair, someone had come and cut it off, without his consent. Below is the photo of him that was taken while another person was trying to help him.

Later, a White woman named Alexis Zabala admitted on social media that SHE was the one who had cut his hair, and that she was the one who had accused him of domestic violence & called the police on him. But I'm suspicious of this alleged "domestic violence" considering the fishy circumstances of which it was reported, and the woman who accused him of it committed a hate crime against him. This post of her admitting that she cut his hair no longer exists because she's since deleted ALL of her posts on Facebook after he was found dead. I don't have a screenshot of it either, but there's been multiple witnessing confirming that they saw this post, but if anyone else has one please add it.

Below is where Alexis Zabala alleged that Cole had "assaulted" her, and said this and had called the police over this alleged "domestic violence" only AFTER he was reported missing. So allegedly she knew something about his disappearance but didn't bother to give her input or file a report despite him assaulting her?

To elaborate on the second stacked screenshot: both Alexis Zabala and her sister Emma Zabala had been making remarks about Cole's disappearance and death on facebook & tiktok, only for both of them to delete these remarks, retract them, and then Emma proceeded to private her tiktok account. Here is a still existing audio of Emma Zabala on tiktok saying that Cole "deserved to die", but then as you can see in the screenshot on the right, when asked why the fuck she said that, she says "well everyone says things they don't mean when they're upset".

Below is a screenshot of what Alexis Zabala had to say when asked if she had something to do with Cole's disappearance.

Furthermore, as this facebook post claims, despite that the Zebala's claim that Cole had gone "on the run" after the alleged assault, we also dont know for a fact that it was COLE behind the wheel, just that it was his VEHICLE that had been seen leaving the area. And what's worse is that Cole was found in the exact same way as his sister, Kyla Red Bear, who was murdered and ALSO found in a wooded area not even a year ago, and police will often report Native American murders as "suicides" despite evidence pointing towards hate crimes & murders.

So THAT'S why people are saying he was likely killed, and that this was a hate crime. Cutting off someone's hair without consent is already legally designated as assault in Kansas, and doing it to a Native American where hair is so important to so many tribes (including Cole's) & that the cutting of our hair has been weaponized in cultural genocide, is a hate crime. And Cole was found in suspicious circumstances and accused of "domestic violence" by two racist White women (with a sketchy story, who bragged about his disappearance & death) and we know racist White women have often falsely accused men of color of rape & domestic violence. Something's not adding up.