#tcatd

To Catch a Turtle Dove, being a fic inspired by a historical era, has had a lot more research put into it than my fics usually have. I talk a little about this and share some photo inspiration on Patreon exclusively for backers! See the inspirations behind the scenes and settings in chapters 1-4, with more posts in this series to come.

Behind the Scenes | "To Catch a Turtle Dove" Inspiration and References

I’ll post this on Patreon soon along with a bunch of other references and details, since this blog will be deleted at the end of Jan, but for now…

ILKAY | AURINKO | SIKULIAQ

from my deities au! please feel free to ask me questions about it :-)

[id: three companion art pieces of the Lighthouse Trio from the Penumbra Podcast as deities; Vespa as the moon, Buddy as the sun, and Jet as the ocean. the fourth image is combined close-ups of each of their faces.

Vespa is a slight, medium-brown-skinned Middle Eastern woman with brown eyes and a shaggy mullet hairstyle that is glowing white, with the sides of her hair dark green and shaved down. she is in profile facing the viewer’s right with a neutral expression. she has some slash-shaped scarring on her face and arms, and numerous facial piercings. she is wearing a dark turquoise headscarf that is billowing out behind her, and a dark green fabric tasset covers her groin. she is wearing a black form-fitting underarmour garment, and has a leather and steel belt decorated with persian moon symbols. her arms are bare except for steel vambraces engraved with lunar charts, and she has steel greaves on her legs. she is holding a knife with an ornate jade handle close to her chest. framing her head is a glowing crescent moon with lines circling it, and behind her legs on a dark background are dark geometric triangle shapes.

Buddy is a tall, fat black woman with a mass of curly dark red hair and a scar that appears as molten gold covering the left half of her face. she has a dark green right eye looking to her left, and is wearing glittery gold eyeliner, red lipstick, and a slight smile. she is wearing a glittery dress that is orange at the neckline and red at the hem, with a lot of fabric gathering at her feet. she has an even more glittery gold shawl draped around her shoulders, fastened by a shiny gold sun clasp. she has her right hand (viewer’s left) resting near her collarbone, and her left by her side, where gold nail polish is visible. behind her head is a white glowing sun, with radial lines coming out from it, and behind her legs on a yellow background are orange circular shapes resembling suns.

I have been following you for a while. I'm very obsessed with your writing style and creativity. I just joined patreon for more access to fanfiction and updates. Everything looks great! However, I didn't find anything related to the fanfiction ( to catch a turtle dove ) on there. Do you update the story here? Or in other pages? If so when? I'm very obsessed with the story. It's very interesting.

Thank you and good luck!

Hey anon!

Happy new year to you too, and thank you so much for subscribing!! I'm so glad you're enjoying that story :3 It's one of my absolute favorites and a small part of me despairs that some of (what I think is) my best writing and storytelling ended up in service to a wildly AU rarepair fic, so few people will ever read it 😭 So glad you're on the hype train!

I don't currently have anything relating to TCATD on Patreon yet. I only started my Patreon in spring of last year so I haven't cross-posted much content yet. I've been starting with oneshots and shorter multi-chapter fics ("What Tama's Seen" has been cross-posted, for instance), but between you and me Patreon's text formatting can be a real bitch sometimes so the effort has been slow going.

However!

I will be posting some outtakes and deleted scenes soon, along with... <drumroll>... Chapter 17!!! And let me tell you--I think you're going to like it! It's a turning point in the story with a ton of lore drops (and a monster of a chapter to boot at almost 10k words) which is why I've been sitting on it for so long. I cannot tell you how many revisions it's gone through. Lord help me.

To Catch a Turtle Dove has had an update!!

I'm SO EXCITED to be able to say, not only do I have a new LawNa Fic nearly complete at over 20k words, I ALSO have the next chapter of TCATD nearly complete! The writing mojo is back, babey! So please enjoy this excerpt :]

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Despite her confrontational first dinner, she fell quickly and smoothly into routine under Lami’s strict tutelage. Every morning she was roused at dawn and, after her morning ablutions, was served breakfast in her chambers by Bepo. He was an amiable-enough guard, often sitting with her as she tucked into her meal, engaging in timid small talk about the weather or how she slept. His efforts at making her feel welcome and comfortable were both painfully obvious and undeniably endearing; and his teddy-bear features only helped endear him further.

Lami arrived punctually every day after breakfast, keeping her busy with “lessons” straight through the day until shortly before dinner. Despite her better judgment, Nami couldn’t deny she was softening toward the woman. She could never detect anything but genuineness behind Lami’s kindness and friendly encouragement, and unlike her brother so seemed to enjoy doing, never dared to use force to get her way. On the (not infrequent) occasions that Nami insisted she was done with one activity or another, Lami never did worse than match stubbornness for stubbornness in her attempts to persuade her to give it just one more try.

Also to Nami’s frustration, this usually worked.

After all, Nami was neither blind nor heartless. It was Lami who took all of Nami’s snappy irritation, frustrated outbursts, and outright defiance in such stride—particularly given that she was not the instigator of Nami’s capture nor the enforcer of her indentured servitude.

The more time they spent together, the more clearly Nami could see, despite Lami’s efforts to hide it, an omnipresent loneliness hiding behind her ever-gracious smile. And Nami couldn’t help but notice that the more time they spent together—the more they bickered and worked and shared, the less heavily that loneliness seemed to weigh upon the lady.

Thus, as days passed and successes slowly mounted, a bond began to grow between them, and Nami found her level of cooperation gradually but steadily rising.

it’s called ‘the cosmic and the divine’

there’s still crime but it’s much more low key. it’s set in a post-pantheon world where your average mortal doesn’t pay tribute to the gods, so most of them have just scattered and are living as mortals, which for the lighthouse trio means they’re living their lives as criminals. it’s hardly a low-profile life but they are “laying low” as far as being gods is concerned.

other gods and demi-gods can sniff them out though, and once you know they’re gods it’s pretty damn hard to mistake buddy and vespa for anyone but the sun and moon. vespa’s hair is green most of the time but tends to turn glowing white when buddy’s around, especially when buddy makes her smile. jet’s identity is harder to pin though, most gods who meet him think he’s a minor god of journeys and voyages (that is one of his epithets).

the lighthouse trio mostly just faded in their godly functions and were cut loose but it’s also possible for gods to “break” especially if they’re based around a human construct. juno and ben were the twin gods of protectors and teachers, the sons of sarah who was a good of motherhood. sarah “broke” when she tried to subvert her godly function and kill ben (helped along by a particular god who seems to have numerous iterations, first as a god of wealth/plenty/harvest then of renewal/change/rebirth and so on) which caused juno to break because his godly function was protection. rita is a priestess of mysterious origins who helped to pick up juno’s pieces and they mostly try to stay out of the business of other gods, just... extremely badly.