#axtapor

I've been away so long and I know I've been tagged by a few folks but my batteries are recovering from being at like -50% for the past few months so take this as my thank you for all the tags 🥺 Shout out to @sarahlizziewrites @void-botanist @oh-no-another-idea and @tabswrites thank y'all for continuing to include me!

Anyway here, have some lines!

From AASOAF 3:

The vessel disappeared behind a swell, only to pop back up shortly thereafter. With its appearance came the faint sounds of women and babies crying. I hoped, dared, even, to pray, they were hanging onto something as firmly as the occupants of our boat were. And so it went on like that a little longer; us chasing them but never getting close enough to make contact, when finally, by some miracle, one of them spotted us. “HO THERE!” I boomed out over the waves, “WE BEEN FRIENDS, NO FOES!” There was a scramble on decks, but no response.  “Maybe they don’t speak Common!” Mariel offered.  So I tried calling out to them in any tongue I knew. Hamatian, Tlaxlian, Anatolian, Common again, even some broken Elvish I remembered Ophelia teaching me. Still nothing.  “There be nothing for it! Must keep on, full and by!” “Carefully!” “Aye!” I strained against the wind and sea, pulling my weight into my feet and the lines into my chest. The schooner’s yard groaned and threatened itself out of my grasp, as though it were a living thing, speared and gasping for life. I ground my teeth together, brewing a growl in my throat. And then, as a counter to the animal in my hands, a wave threw her head back beneath our keel and the sky opened before our bows.  “BRACE!” We took a nosedive over the wave, itself now a part of an angry churn, which tossed us, peak over peak, until our starboard dashed against the port of the refugee vessel. A torrent of terrified screams washed over our decks as I relinquished the lines with a cry of my own and, fighting against the list of our boat and the violence of the waves, lashed our decks to theirs with a pair of boarding hooks still dangling from my waist. A woman seated close by grasped one of the hooks and desperately tried to pry it free.  “Avast!” I called out as the sea sprayed between us, “I nay been a threat!” “You may not be!” she cried from beneath her veil, a terrified look on her face, “But they are! Please, you must let us go!”

Tagging all the lovely folks mentioned above and anyone else who wants to have a go at this!

To give my word and hers worth, the once faint outline [of land] took on a stronger contrast against the white horizon and showed its spine through the haze. It curved toward us and at its end was a proud, jagged ridge, raised high, the way a frightened bull might throw its head to the sky. The earth at the peak’s throat was bleached white from the sun and was made more blinding still by curling white foam produced by waves several stories high, crashing over and over against it. It was windblown, like a handsome hatchet’s head, sharp and ready to cleave flesh, and all along its shape lighted the first glimpses of color I'd seen on the horizon which were not the few cool shades of the noble sea. 

All along the peak and stretching into the mainland were long, brilliant green grasses waving with the wind as it danced over the curves of the land. Wildflowers in violet, cerulean, and buttercup hues clustered spaces here and there and a skinny path of brown traipsed from the mainland through to the point of the jutting peak. Along it descended a herd of wild horses, their coats golden in the morning light. 

As I followed them with my eyes, the sun rose higher, and the haze lifted. 

Mariel and I gasped.

The land rolled gently up, then down, then high, then low, though never as high as the peak, nor as low as the sea. It stretched across the horizon as far as the eye could see, its shape like gentle waters frozen in time. Tones of earth and lush green bowed and rose together all along it, occasionally taking the hand of the sea, and whitening the land with her foam. The sky lay comfortably over it all, opening its soft blue eye upon the world, as a woman might while peering over the shoulder of her man. 

Flocks of birds came into view next, finding a changing shape in the air as schools of fish did beneath the sea. I followed them. Their feathers shimmered in the morning light—hues of green and purple and silver. This place, it waved her grasses and her little flowers and though she was not made of diamonds like the sea, she sparkled in a way as enchanting.

Land, I thought, had never looked so beautiful. Something about it broke my heart. 

Mariel is a party girl who confesses her love for every other drunk girl in the women's restroom and then swears she's never drinking again the next morning while she bags groceries at the local supermarket and in the same breath planning her next outing with the cashier (Sartor, mayhaps lol)

Fay is a sigma grindset bro with a 4AM morning routine that includes one hour for 'Brainstorming' and insists polar plunges are life changing.

Wilkes is that kid on the playground who 'has shields' OR that kid at the pool who asks you why your parents are divorced and hes NOT supposed to know that. As an adult, he schedules meetings at 4:30PM on a Friday, consistently.

I was tagged by @teamdilf here, thanks so much!

Tagging (gently): @acertainmoshke @void-botanist @oh-no-another-idea @paintedbutton and anyone else who wants to do this!

From AASOAF 3:

Helter-skelter. Kirik wouldn’t stop saying it when I arrived at his open-air berth in the crow’s nest the night before. He’d made room for me, I remembered, wide-eyed and disturbed as I’d never seen him. His face kept coming in and out of view as the night swell of the sea rolled beneath us, knocking his humble lamp about against the mast. It was as though he were a ghost, caught in its spectral wanderings, stunned and silent. The slick black shapes of the waves shattered the moonlight as they rose, bearing us along, frustrated and wishing for us to break, too. Whenever his face disappeared I wondered about Mariel. When it came back… “Helter-skelter.” “Aye, Kirik, aye. Helter-skelter.” But it wasn’t the roiling that set either of us adrift. It wasn’t pleasant and with the ship’s pitching magnified so many feet in the air, we were mostly rooted to the ground, but we’d flown in worse, we both knew as much. So we stayed down, passing a pipe between us with every confidence the other wouldn’t drop it, and waited for the turbulent waves to pass. No, this wasn't troubling, rather, it was the hidden space of our minds which tormented us, putting the same long, troubled look on our faces as we were beat back from the quickly receding shore of rational thought.

Its still Friday here so this counts! Thanks to @mysticstarlightduck for tagging me here!

Rules: From your Story/WIP, share a snippet of your characters kissing. It can be any kiss, from familial pecks on the cheek, platonic kisses, forehead kisses, to full-blown makeouts

This one is going to be kind of spicy because, well, because! Under a cut in case you don't want to read it 💙

Tagging (gently): @tabswrites @noblebs @captain-kraken @commander-krios @sarahlizziewrites and anyone else who wants to play!

Because this is, in fact, still a writeblr (hard to believe i know!), have a tag game! I was tagged by @oh-no-another-idea, here thanks so much, my dear friend!

This snippet comes from something I recently edited for AASOAF 3:

“Axtapor, I—” His head suddenly raised, regaling me with the fierce look in his eyes. “I will find a way. I swear it, Mariel. I will find a way.” “No, no, perhaps…” The world spun about me once more, “Perhaps this is all we were meant to do— We—” His lips crashed against mine. “Nay say that. Nay say it. We nay been wrong, ye hear me? We nay been.” “Axtapor, please, you’re not—” Another kiss. “You’re not listening—” “Do ye hate me so?” He asked, in the few inches of space between us. “H-How can you say that?” “Because this nay been the first time of late ye been tryin’ to send me ‘way.” My chin quivered and I shook my head. “It’s because I love you that I wish for you to go. I’m afraid you’ll keep losing things and people because of me and you’ll realize, when it’s far too late, that none of it was worth it! That I wasn’t worth it! I can’t let you lose your family. I won’t…” “Without ye, I nay have one.” “W-What?” “It been ye I want as mother of my wee ones. As my wife and woman, well and true. Without ye, I been dismasted…been floatin’, lost. But with ye, gods, with ye, been as if the sun shone on my face! My relations been family ‘nough, but I nay chose ‘em. But I chose ye, and ye been the best thin’ in my sorry life, do ye understand? If’n ye leave me, ye’ll cut my heart out, lass, and I will die. So if’n ye love me, as ye say you do, stay with me. Stay with me, lass, stay with me, because I canno bear to lose ye ‘gain. Cost what it may, I need ye darlin’, I always will!” I wept as he pulled me into his arms. Every logical, guilt-ridden corner of my mind screamed at me that I had failed again, that I was too weak to undertake what fate placed before me, that I was irresponsible and reckless. But that wounded part in the center of my chest was soothed. How afraid I had been he would let me go…

Tagging (gently): @mysticstarlightduck @void-botanist @acertainmoshke @monstrify