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i don't openly talk about this but i'm heavily disabled and despite all attempts to do commercial work, apply for retail jobs, anything else, i haven't had much luck and it seems like the universe really doesn't want me to give up on my dream of illustrating full-time just yet... fingers crossed that this finds people! there's no pressure but a little reblog would also be nice if you wish to spread this around :D

here is my portfolio if you want additional references of my artwork <3 i love drawing anything! fantasy, creatures, literally anything!

❛  i will always be by your side.  ❜ ❛  i will always find my way back to you.  ❜ ❛  i will always make room for you.  ❜ ❛  i will be gentle with your heart.  ❜ ❛  i will be here when you wake up.  ❜ ❛  i will bring you flowers just because they reminded me of you.  ❜ ❛  i will choose you on the easy days and the hard ones.  ❜ ❛  i will keep your secrets safe.  ❜ ❛  i will keep you safe, as best as i can.  ❜ ❛  i will keep you warm.  ❜ ❛  i will listen, even if you need to say it a hundred times.  ❜ ❛  i will make the scary things feel smaller.  ❜ ❛  i will remind you every day that you are loved.  ❜ ❛  i will stay with you when you need me.  ❜ ❛  i will take care of you when you forget to take care of yourself.  ❜ ❛  will you be mine, even just for today?  ❜ ❛  will you come closer?  ❜ ❛  will you let me be your safe place?  ❜ ❛  will you let me make you smile?  ❜ ❛  will you stay a little longer?  ❜ ❛  will you stay close to me?  ❜ ❛  will you stay for breakfast?  ❜ ❛  will you tell me about your day?  ❜ ❛  will you wait for me?  ❜ ❛  will you walk with me for a while?  ❜ ❛  you will always be enough for me.  ❜ ❛  you will always be in my heart.  ❜ ❛  you will always be someone i want beside me.  ❜ ❛  you will always be worth waiting for.  ❜ ❛  you will always have a home in me.  ❜ ❛  you will always look beautiful to me.  ❜ ❛  you will be my number one priority.  ❜ ❛  you will be safe with me.  ❜ ❛  you will be the first person i want to tell.  ❜ ❛  you will be the reason i feel loved.  ❜ ❛  you will have all of me, even the soft and silly parts.  ❜ ❛  you will never be alone while i'm here.  ❜ ❛  you will never be too much for me.  ❜ ❛  you will never have to pretend with me.  ❜ ❛  you will never have to wonder whether i care.  ❜

St. Trina ( greedy as she is ever observing ) plucks her dainty hands from the pursuit of free will, instead watching those unfortunate battle the weight of their troubles against the fervor of their spirit. Many prevail, yet plenty wilt && perish tragically all the same.

the question pushes deeper into her chest than any blade could have , finding the places she has kept carefully hidden beneath prayer , beneath her tiresome duty , beneath the name she was given and the name she buried . no plea for absolution comes through her parted lips , nor admission of the things that haunt her waking hours ... there is only the stifling tremble of one who has spent so long expecting punishment that kindness feels far more frightening .

❛ i do not think the world has ever beckoned me home , ❜ she whispers . a bitter thing to say to a saint , perhaps , cruel to place such sorrow into gentle hands . her gaze lowers to the hands cradling her face , relishing despite herself the warmth she has convinced herself she does not deserve . ❛ it has only ever sought in me what i might offer it . ❜

there’s a moment where she is sure her eyes are deceiving her. that the darkness is playing tricks on her sight - blinking heavily in an attempt to clear away anything obscuring her. when nothing changes, she curses her traitorous limbs for bringing her out here. away from the safety of civilization and into the dark, dank woods.

lips part , though nothing comes for a beat . her gaze drifts briefly to the blood drying over her fingers , then back to the woman standing among the pines . odd , as there is no accusation to be discerned in her face⸺only mild but baffling concern . the unfamiliar kindness , if it is even that , leaves the undertaker grasping for something normal to say . ❛ ... no . ❜ she answers , her worn voice scarcely above a whisper . ❛ i ... maybe a little . ❜ her hands instinctively fold into the sleeves of her habit , hiding what little they can , though she knows her pathetic state easily undoes the effort . ❛ why would you come this far into the woods ? it's not safe out here ... child . not this late . ❜

speech is a lesser thing, too small for what coils through the dream and grinds its grief into every root that dares grow near the prince. lightning crawls along fortissax's scales in slow, branching veins, red at its heart and pale at its dying edges. it slips between the ridges of his wings. it gathers where claw meets earth. each pulse illuminates the deeproot depths for a single violent breath, revealing wet bark, blackened stone, and the vast, ruined body beneath his keeping.

cold and slick, difficult to grasp, the prince lies at his side, reaching for the warmth that blazes within fortissax. the dream presses against him from every side as well. it knows him too well. no shadow falls without carrying some echo of gold. sometimes the dark opens for half a heartbeat and shows him what the world used to witness instead of what lies before him: godwyn crowned in living radiance, godwyn laughing beneath an open sky, godwyn reaching towards him with a hand untouched by death. so ever-bright.

really, the dream has become cruel and fiadh's words move through the charged air. they find each sore place without haste. she speaks of the prince's future as though it waits beyond the storm and of fortissax's grief as though grief alone knots him here.

his head lowers by degrees, bringing his skull nearer to her level without diminishing his colossal presence, filling the whole of her sight. horns rise behind him like the broken spires of some blasphemous cathedral. his breath leaves him slowly, hot and faintly sulphurous, disturbing the damp chill that gathers close to the prince. ❝ then thou knowest love is no ornament set aside when its vigil groweth inconvenient. ❞

he remembers another sky. he remembers the golden order before its splendour turns brittle with contradiction. he remembers a prince who does not look upon the dragons as relics fit only for conquest, but as beings whose strength may stand beside his own. kinship begins there, strange and difficult, forged from battle and reverence and the terrible tenderness of being seen clearly. fortissax stands at godwyn’s side in life. he does not abandon him, merely because some tarnished crawls forth from nothingness to lay claim to a thing whose weight and consequence their meagre mind could never hope to fathom. yet even a wretched ant may serve to keep a dying order in motion. his gaze fixes on fiadh, bright and narrow within the ruined grandeur of his face.

the prince is partly sheltered beneath the curve of his body, not held as property, but as the last promise fortissax knows how to keep. until his proper death. ❝ ere the chaos thou hast foreseen falls upon us, i would ask thee this: what right either of us possesseth to make a future from his silence? without his knowing. ❞ the storm gathers close around him. every pulse of red light reveals the terrible shelter of his folded wings and the ancient creature who has long since ceased to know whether he protects a choice or merely delays a wish. his head inclines by a fraction. ❝ when mercy demandeth that one faithful hand release what another would carry onward, by whose judgement shall the blade descend? dost thou not already deem thyself the rightful hand? ❞

because of you . she cannot pretend her laments do not find their truest mark within the dragon himself , though she takes no pleasure in placing them there . to salt a wound left unhealed is no victory of hers … still , conviction asks of her what kindness cannot : that she leave the truth untouched , even when it passes through an unmoving lichdragon's sorry heart .

❛ there is , as i believe , no shame in death . ❜ she continues , and knows not of what comes over her next : her hand rising and making its slow , devastating journey to rest against the roughness of fortissax's cheek . ❛ the world has already made too much of a prison out of it . your devotion only binds him more effectively than any blade or judgment ever could . ❜

feeling the breeze of his exhale , the raised scales beneath her moving thumb , she allows herself to marvel at the detail with which the death - prince's soulless body has chosen to commemorate such a vast and terrifying beast . she wonders , almost without meaning to , what there is to be learned of what once existed between them .

she accepts , with sadness , that this is a kind of love she will only ever come to know in dreams .

fia can only stand within her absence of grief as he does in the abundance of his own⸺their mirrored selfishness a self-devouring serpent of continuity . within it , she finds herself considering not what he has lost , but what proximity to loss must have done to the way he once experienced living itself . ❛ do you think your actions will let fate cast you a different die ? ❜ she says at last , voice low against the storm's hum , ❛ set him free , or keep him still⸺will you even remember him any differently at all ? ❜

       ❛  i’m merely charmed by your underground prison. ❜ cheek! it was perhaps why he’d been impressively unsuccessful in acquiring a tutor. at her unmoving silence & statuesque coolness, he looks over at her at last, from where he stands with his palm open. it was rather simple and uncomplicated, he thought, this truth she asked for. ❛  if you must know— i’ve never had a tutor before. or none too willing to see such worth in me. ❜ he said it without pity or a lack of pride though, as if it was a folly of others to come to this conclusion; but sellen, despite the wealth of evidence to suggest he was a hopeless cause in glintstone sorcery, hadn’t turned him away. ❛  hmm... true, but none i’d bother with calling a friend too. they can keep their chalk and academy hats, sellen; we can make it work right here. ❜

his jest earns no smile , though her gaze almost imperceptibly softens before discipline smooths it away again . friend . the word hangs strangely in the air within the cellar , ill - fitting amongst crystal dust and damp stone . under her breath : ❛ a dangerous criterion by which to select one's instructor , but i shan't repeat myself ... ❜

the sorceress stares upon the bruised hand he offers so readily to failure , reaching towards it before clasping it in her own , and finally turning his palm to the sky as though its answer might yet reveal itself beneath the skin . she has seen glintstone bloom in prodigies , in fools , in frightened children scarcely old enough to understand its chemistry . never has she seen it remain so obstinately still before a will as unwavering as his .

she wishes it was as easily dismissed as poor technique . ❛ you mistake my concern . it is not your resolve i question . if determination alone governed sorcery , there would be no distinction between scholar and soldier . ❜ the irony escapes her . were it truly separate , liurnia would not be tearing itself apart above their heads . she herself had once entrusted her work to the knights of the cuckoo , only to discover that military patronage offers no sanctuary once political loyalties begin to shift .

she takes a measured pause upon relinquishing kenneth's hand . ❛ glintstone , my dear , is not merely a conduit for sorcery . it is evidence that thought , matter , and the stars were never truly separate . there are minds to which its current clings as though it were merely returning to its point of origin … ❜ she stoops to retrieve a fragment of glintstone from her workbench , setting it carefully into his waiting palm . ❛ your flesh is transient . your mind is transient . but beneath both lies the same stellar substance from which glintstone was born . ❜