“Good morning, babe,” Clarke greeted with a grin that could only be described as mischievous. She looked way too pleased with herself.

Lexa eyed the box suspiciously. “What are you doing?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “And why are you holding that box like that?”

“No reason,” Clarke said, her voice dripping with fake innocence. “You should open it.”

Lexa squinted. “Clarke... What did you do?”

“Just open it!” Clarke urged, practically bouncing on her feet.

Lexa sighed and took a tentative step closer. She gave the box a skeptical glance before carefully lifting the lid. She blinked once, then twice, as her brain caught up with what she was seeing. Clarke’s very familiar anatomy was sticking through a perfectly cut hole in the side of the box, adorned with a little red ribbon tied around the base.

“Seriously?” Lexa deadpanned, lifting her gaze to meet Clarke’s. “You did the dick in a box joke?”

Clarke burst into laughter, clearly thrilled with her own antics. “I’ve been waiting all year to do this! Come on, you’ve got to admit it’s funny.”

Lexa couldn’t help the way her lips twitched into a reluctant smile. “It’s ridiculous,” she muttered, her cheeks flushing a deep red. She gently placed the lid back on the box, shook her head, and leaned in to kiss Clarke’s cheek. “Merry Christmas, you absolute dork.”

Clarke wrapped her free arm around Lexa’s waist, pulling her closer. “So… what do you think? Best present ever?”

Lexa rolled her eyes but smiled anyway. “You’re lucky I love you.”

“And this box,” Clarke teased, giving it a little shake.

There was blood everwhere.

He stared down at his hands. At the floor… at his axe.

There was a bloody axe in his hands.

Pieces o flesh are frozen on the ground… the eight bodies partially broken apart. 

Cut apart.

The screeches they made.

All of them.

The Drowners and the hag.

There was a hag.

A bloody hag.  A cursed nymph.

A hag!

No wonder more people disappeared. No wonder the drowners got that bold. No wonder everything got out of hand.

Henoch stared at the body. Deformed and mangled, just like the stories said, warped spine, hunched back… face contorted by strange magic.

And now the creature was… dead.

The bomb that could be made from the strange things the trader gave him… it stuck.It worked. It got her to freeze. It got the creature to freeze up and got stuck. Throwing balls of mud, but stuck. Bleeding.

The other bomb’s did much of a part as well. The drowners fell. Spikes of silver stuck in their bodies. Blood everywhere.

Only the last strike needed to be done with his axe. When the hag still moved. When one last screech came from a Drowner.

But now it was done.

Red everywhere.

A terrible stench in the air.

But he’d done it.

The village was safe. Finally.

His hands were shaking.

But he lived. He was alive.

They were safe.

All were safe.

And he could go home.

It was not… glorified.

He did not get a hero’s welcome.

They were suspicious, actually.

Seeing him covered in blood.

But he got home.

Now he had blood on his hands and a strange feeling in his gut… but he got home.

Hot Cocoa & Contemplation 

A piece of writing I did in 2009.

The first chapter, And God said… let them have dominion, in Attwood’s (1989) book, The making of the Aborigines, explains the role of Christian missionaries in ‘civilising’ aborigines. The chapter specifically follows the mission of the Hagenauer family. It was founded in the 1860s in Gippsland and was known as one of the most successful mission stations.

The chapter begins by describing the wave of missionaries as a “second onslaught” faced by the aborigines (p. 1). This gives the reader the idea that this was not only something that the indigenous people had already faced, but it was also a violent and destructive act, and definitely not a peaceful one.

One section that stood out to me was when Attwood talked about the aborigines survival strategies. One was that they faked interest in what the missionaries were teaching and the Christian message so as to attain the goods that the missionaries controlled. However, these strategies were discovered and then began to see the aborigines as “cool, calculating fellows” and therefore treated them accordingly (p. 6). Attwood explains that was not through any specific act by the missionaries, but in fact a gradual, and sometimes indirect, series of events, which resulted in the “civilising and Christianising” of the aborigines (p.7).