#tilling

The field to the east that shows in sunrise shots this this morning was only lightly planted in grass to prevent erosion over winter.

The grass is gone now 👇

The field has been tilled twice but I am not sure if it got planted yet. This tiller is a lot smaller than the one I posted here yesterday that was in the south field. I was doing more running around today and was not able to watch.

This next shot is my second grouping of lilacs.

They are blooming now and when I go by on the mower, I can have a sniff or two 😂

Helen follows behind him, more sedate. She enters as Raylan, wide eyed, offers Arlo’s full, pristine heart to Boyd with both hands. Helen almost imagines it beating still, a trick of the light as sun shines through the window while dust flurries in the air.

“For me?” Boyd whispers, kneeling down to Raylan’s height, drenching his jeans in blood.

“Mate,” Raylan growls, pushing the heart up, pressing it to Boyd’s lips.

Helen has heard tales of Omegas. She has told the stories herself. She knows what an Omega will do, driven by instinct. Boyd Crowder’s eyes have light behind them. He makes a choice when his Omega asks him a question.

Boyd bites down, his canines splitting apart muscle, teeth sinking deep into sinew. Blood trails down his chin, his claws sink deeper into the organ, and blood slides down his fingers, along his arms, indecent veins of inhumanity. Flesh is rendered apart from itself, ripping with his movement, taking another bite. He swallows.

Helen turns around, vomiting out her breakfast of coffee and toast into Frances’s beloved azalea bush.

She wipes her chin. She allows herself ten seconds, twenty seconds of thought, of stewing, before she forces herself up, forces one foot to step back into the threshold, and then another, because she owes these kids more than she owes time to herself.

Raylan’s eyes never leave Boyd, he holds his gaze steady on hands and teeth and lips and Arlo’s heart, as Boyd eats the flesh like it’s a burger.

Helen steps around the scene, grabbing Arlo’s car keys from the kitchen table, grateful to whatever there is that he had left them so far away from the carnage. She has to save her precious son, so she drives the car a long, long way, driving up into the hills where her cousin Mary lives, Omega Mary who had once been the star of all the stories her mother had told her, whom Helen had pictured when her mother had warned them of the madness of Nature.

Helen drives and drives and drives, drives all the way up to a large cliff, in the middle of nowhere, and she puts the car in idle and helps push it down the mountain.

And then Helen walks. She walks for longer than she had driven, and she tries not to think about how grateful she is to have an excuse to leave, or how awful she feels for leaving her nephew in the hands of just another child. She thinks of Raylan’s claws in his father’s guts, of Boyd’s teeth in Arlo’s heart.

She finds herself blaming Arlo. He’s easy, like that.

She arrives home, dark in the night, tired and hungry, empty and empty and empty.

She opens the kitchen door, and catches Raylan and Boyd curled around one another in the moonbeams from the window, more kitten than human child, and takes it all in, not willing to shy away from the sight once more.

Arlo’s eyes are glassy, his lips curled into an ironic smirk, as if he had the last laugh, and Helen sighs. She grabs some pillows from the couch in the living room, shoving them under the boys heads, blanketing them with a throw from the same place, and Helen watches blood seep around the edges of a quilt her own mother had once sewn together. Little ducks on blue squares dye red, and Helen finally turns her head away again.

Oh, I'm happy to answer for "Tilling" as well!

I love that you picked this scene, haha. I'm happy to answer for other scenes as well, but this one was sooooo much fun. I definitely believe it's under 500 words and I have no doubts and I definitely trust you, haha. But if it was over 500 words (I know it's not), I wouldn't mind anyway ;)

God bless, my first fic in this fandom contained graphic cannibalism, and I haven't looked back since. To be honest, when I first wrote this scene, I churned my own stomach! How far I've come, haha. Now it reads pretty well, to me, at least. Just what I was going for. Even reading back, I appreciate the word choices, to strike the right balance of horror and romance, which I love often. So even though this fic is so old, it still holds a nice place in my heart!

I really enjoy Helen's POV, to be honest. You see her again in "The Body of the Beast," haha. I feel like this fic really allowed me to explore her pragmatism and compartmentalization, which I love so much in part because you see it in Raylan as well. I love that it feels like he learned it from her, and yet he gets so angry when he sees her exercise it sometimes. Both of those skills are as much coping mechanisms as anything else, and I feel they both hold it against each other sometimes too. I love how in this fic, you see how she switches gears, how she makes priorities, and then sticks to them without question, because I love that Raylan does this in canon, and then in fic as well.

Here, I had a lot of fun playing with instinct v. consciousness, which is a theme I love to use in a/b/o fic. Here, Raylan is mad with omega instinct, he knows not what he does, but when he clears his head, he will not be disgusted like Helen was. He will be proud that he provided a heart for his mate. I mention in the sequel that Raylan dreams of shooting Boyd in the heart, a scene from canon. I supposed he must be a little more touchy toward Boyd's heart. He needs Boyd to be secure, too, as his mate and the sire of his children.

I have Helen leave, in part to practicality of how logistically you need certain steps to disguise a death, but also because it allows Raylan and Boyd to play house. Raylan feeds Boyd and they hold one another and Boyd talks Raylan down from his instinct fueled fugue state, and they get to take care of each other, just how they will want to do so for the rest of their lives. Children can't actually take care of one another, but even in non-omegaverse au's, children see how they are cared for and when lacking control over their lives, want to exert that care as well. When Helen comes back, she acts as an authority figure, covering them in blankets. They were playacting at her care specifically, and she proves it by making it so the law never finds this, by covering them in a blanket and keeping them warm once the heat has been lost from the blood itself.

SHUT UP IM BOOKING A TICKET TO AUSTRALIER RN SO WE CAN MAKE THIS REALITY sorry my swag ass got us redacted from getting cool trinkets tho. But ill do it again with you any time 🥺💃💕💜

Got the front all tilled up.

My “backyard” is a vacant lot.  I really want to plant some grass but it’s all hard dirt and rocks.  Is there anything I can use myself to turn the soil or would I need to hire someone? I remember then that GARDEN WEASEL tool was advertised, but it looks pretty flimsy and this is hard WTX dirt. I thought about asking someone to come plow but I’m sure that is hugely expensive and I think my landlord/lady would FREAK.