#tho again

Time in Night Vale was normal now. Time in Night Vale had been normal for a few months now, but things didn't get easier. If anything, the dread of a time limit was only getting worse. This was especially the case for Charlie Bair, weekday shift manager at the Ralph's. He always wanted to be a ghost, but that was back when he, like many others, thought he had infinite time.

It was a regular weekday at the Ralph's, and Charlie Bair was pacing slowly around the shop. He couldn't get his mind off of how every minute he spent in the Ralphs is a minute he would never get back. He leaned against a shelf of leftover wheat free bread and sighed, shaking his head, as what he had said to Cecil popped back into his mind. "Every minute spent is a minute lost." He repeated under his breath, until he noticed he wasn't alone.

"I believe I can be of service here." Came a cheerful voice from beside Charlie, causing him to turn around. The man now in front of him was short. He had 2 antennae and 2 inhuman ears sticking out through his hair, but the two things that stood out the most was the man's bright red cape, and the fact that Charlie did not recognize this man.

"INTERLOPER!" He shouted, jumping away from the man and pointing at him aggressively. The man only chuckled in response.

"Not quite, buddy!" The man's already wide, fanged smile grew even wider as he spoke. "I'm here to help!" Charlie raised an eyebrow, before raising his arm back up to point at the man. But as soon as he went to continue shouting at the interloper, he continued. "Don't you listen to the radio?" The man chuckled again, shaking his head. "I am Kasper Rhodes, president of the Quality Cyborg Corporation! Again buddy, I'm here to help!" As Kasper spoke his name, it all came to Charlie. This was the man Cecil spoke of on the radio, the man offering a second chance, an opportunity to live forever.

I found miss in my novel WIP “To Be Honest”:

Micah sighs, short and sharp, and rubs the last of the sleep from his eyes. He's still in the same clothes as yesterday, gradually remembering that he'd crawled on top of his blankets and pillows out of exhaustion some time after midnight. No wonder he'd had that kind of dream. A dream about his brother, after all these years. And something about... his own magic? He feels his body tense at the thought, but he can't follow it very far. Not when his cell phone starts vibrating on the desk. It inches across the surface, threatening to fall into the seat of his chair and down onto the ground. He'd ignore the phone and let it fall, but he can't afford to miss a call from the people who can decide his future in the Renner family. His future as a witch. With a sound that feels like all his exhaustion compressed, he lifts himself out of bed and stretches his legs across the two and a half steps it takes to reach the buzzing portent of his potential doom. He's not awake enough for this -- not when it takes a missed lunge when the phone falls and a few clumsy grabs at his chair seat to finally get a steady enough grip to answer the call.

I found assist in an excerpt I’ve shared before, so to prevent redundancy here’s a little worldbuilding fact where I’ve used the same word:

There are 4 major types of magic in the Eisenrell universe. 2 of them, circle magic and wild magic, are a lot easier to do if the witches who use them have familiars to assist in managing their magic energy. Circle witches are prone to various illnesses, some chronic and others terminal, if their magic is left unchecked. They can fend off these illnesses by using a large amount of magic every single day, but this is usually unsustainable and exhausting. It’s more efficient to have a contract where one or more familiars can hold a witch’s excess magic in their own body/bodies and the work of expending it can be divided between multiple individuals. Wild witches project their symbiote’s desire to encourage life unconsciously, leading to plants growing wild around them or people suddenly acting very impulsive in their presence. They can put this magic into organic material to hold it, but they run the risk of that material coming to life and becoming a pet they have to look after or give away to a wild construct shelter – if one exists on their world. Again, it’s less risky to have a contract with one or more familiars who can take on that excess magic to prevent collatoral damage and ground their witch if the sense of self begins to slip. It’s not something every witch who uses either type of magic will do, contracting a living familiar, but it’s useful enough that it’s become popular on most worlds where magic is known. As for the relationship between witch and familiar, it can be anything from an owner and their service dog (sometimes literally, wild witches tend to prefer animal familiars) to a pair of best friends who help each other out, to lovers who look after each other, to family members who rely on each other to anything in between.

I found guess in my novel WIP “To Be Honest”:

He whips around, searching desperately for the person matching the voice, "David! You're okay! I didn't know if -- I've been looking for you! I've been... trying to find you."

"Oh, yeah. I guess I've been gone for awhile. What a coincidence that you disappeared to the same place I did," the voice isn't confused anymore, now it's closer to sounding like David is making fun of his brother. Echoing the kind of teasing he'd done when they were children. Micah can almost see the smug expression on his face, but no matter how he searches he can't find David himself. There's only the voice of his brother and the bristling of doubt. A voice that's casually speaking from somewhere in the dark, and a feeling that lingers on Micah's skin. The light is no help here.

I found issue in an old Good Omens fanfic/meta about Crowley and Aziraphale misreading each other’s signals:

Both look at the other's face and think "It's almost as if he's truly in love with me," and feel the way their physically manifested hearts react to that thought and go "It's almost as if I'm in love with him, too." The issue is that both of them believe this to be impossible. Until they confront humanity incarnate, and realize that being born a human to human parents is not necessarily the only way to have human experiences. Somewhere in the backs of their minds, it begins to dawn on them that they can do human things, too. After they save each other's lives in the swap, they even start to suspect that they might be able to feel human feelings. They're not the angel and demon they once were, after all. Heaven and Hell aren't really their domain anymore. Earth is their world, now. Even so, they keep quiet about these suspicions for awhile.

I found mess in my Danny Phantom oneshot fic “Lingering Scars”:

"I never thought about it... I probably didn't want to think about it, but..." at some point during all his monologuing, Dani had slid off her bean bag chair. She pulls her legs in close to her body, rubbing her shins as she quietly transforms herself. "When the other clones... destabilized, they turned into that goo that -- it was all this messed-up ectoplasm that Vlad made, and when they turned into those puddles some of the goo splashed on me. It was the same stuff I'm made out of, but it hurt. It... stung and burned and ate at my legs. They're like the burns you have, and I didn't realize it at all until today but they -- they come back. When I have nightmares. I'll wake up because my legs are hurting so bad I have to turn them into spirit mist just to get comfortable again. I always thought it was just the nightmare making me remember. I mean. Not like ghosts remember. Like, I think Jazz said there was a word for when you think something hurts but it doesn't really?"