thematically relevant

all the little lead-ups:

the "so," the "well," the "in the end," the "if you think about it,"

all lead up to the same old thing

there's a story to tell

and so something must be said.

if you think about it —

and see, we did it again

— the story is the one we're living in.

the thing is, to get to the end

to get to the conclusion,

the satisfaction, the back-binding

you have to go through all these pages

from beginning to where we land.

in the end, that's all that matters

not the beginning and not the end

not if it's happy or if it ends bad

but the pages that lead up to that

and all the things we fill them with.

~xoxo, Love yoU (for @nosebleedclub November prompt #5, "result")

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016) dir. Gareth Edwards

I got the prompt medieval Kanera and immediately needed to make a painting based on Burton's Meeting on the Turret Stairs!

Sir Caleb Dume and his Lady 💜

On my Ao3 with a bonus triple drabble of them.

Elrond and Frodo in Rivendell.

You Came…. You Called…

@jedijune

Au where Rapunzel cuts her hair as a child ✂️

What is Star Wars if not a story about parents and their babies? (Both the tragedy and hope of that)

Sound - A Triduum Story

Malchus can feel the heavy gazes of the others. He ignores them. His own eyes are pinned to the door they guard, listening to the drip of water condensing and dropping onto the floor. There is no rain, but the air is damp, as if the heavens are drawing out the wet stores of the earth in preparation for a storm. 

Customarily, the chill would make him wish for his bed. He’d grumble with his fellows about the weather, about the work, peppering complaints with a few stout curses. But there is no discussion tonight. Malchus sits hunched forward, forearms braced on his thighs, and he waits.

What are they waiting for?

Cold fingers touch the lobe of his left ear. He turns to see Jesse, who’d touched him, withdrawing, fingers curling into his palm. The apology is gruff. “Just wanted to see.”

That’s a lie, thinks Malchus, turning back to the door. They’ve already seen tonight. What’s left is to believe.

Malchus doesn’t ask permission before he rises, taking the flask which hangs on a wall hook, and the keys there beside it. The eyes of the others follow. He unlocks the door and slips in, shutting it behind, and then pauses, palm flat on the wood. He takes a breath. 

Drip.

Drip.

The Nazarene’s hands are chained so that he must stand. His head bows, forehead resting against the bruised back of his right hand. He lifts himself when Malchus enters. His lips, which had been moving silently, still.

Malchus holds out the flask. Then, as an embarrassing afterthought—the man is in chains—he uncorks it. 

“It’s just water,” he assures when the man doesn’t move to drink. He tips the flask close enough to meet the cracked lips. The Nazarene swallows twice and then pulls back, chains jingling. His face is wet. Tears, Malchus thinks, until he hears the drip of water dropping onto the man’s head. It slides down his temple and dirty cheek, carving a clean track through the crust. Malchus re-corks the flask.

It’s not quite fear that he feels. He had felt fear on his knees in Gethsemane, blood down his neck and a howl on his tongue. The world was silent, then, and shrieking, dizzy with pain and the terror of new loss. When strong hands cupped his face, he clung to them. He grabbed hold of words he could not hear but lips he could see moving, breath he could feel on his face, brown eyes he could see.

And then, he could hear. 

It was as if he’d never before heard sound, not true sound, but only echos, half-formed, half-heard, until that very moment when he heard truly. Each noise was crisp and new. Around him were the night birds stirring in the trees, the puffed breath of the disciples, the crackle of licking flame, the creak of leather belts. He heard them all, and he hasn’t stopped hearing since. Creation is vibrating, uncountable voices overlapping in the same tremulous song. Even the breeze seems to have a voice, and the water running on stone. Even his own heartbeat. They cry out when the rest of the world is silent.

“What did you do to me?” Malchus asks, voice barely above a whisper, for everything is new and he cannot make sense of it. 

The Nazarene’s smile isn’t mocking. It’s as quiet as his voice, and it crinkles the corner of his good eye. “I know how long you’ve waited to hear.”

They’ve never met, of course. Of course not. This man doesn’t know him. How could he? Malchus has taken great pains to hide his gradual loss of sound. Each year, the muffle covers his ears a little more, stealing his senses, deadening the world to him. If he misses a call, he plays it off. If he cannot hear his wife calling, he feigns captivation by his task. He does it well, he thinks, well enough. Perhaps his wife suspects. But only he knows, only he and his God. And this backwater Nazarene with an accent pulled from Galilee’s fishing waters—because Malchus can hear the accent now—cannot know Malchus. How could he? No, he does not.

But he knows. 

Malchus is sure, standing before this man who made him more than whole, that he is known. Known, and known truly. And here stands Malchus, his jailer. His enemy.

“How could you know?” he asks, eyes searching the Nazarene’s. The water drips, drips. A rat scritches at a bit of stone. “I can’t do anything for your case. They’re bringing you to Pilate.” His grip tightens on the flask—his only offering—and the stale water it holds. The words pour out of him. “I’m a guard. They told us to go, so we went. I had no stake in it, see? See, we were told to go. I was told to go. I never intended—”

“Malchus,” the man says softly, almost fondly, as if he is interrupting a brother and not one walking him to his death. “Will you pray with me?”

The request startles Malchus out of his own thoughts. He pauses, wary of some trick. Without meaning to, his hand rises to touch the warm outer shell of his ear, tracing the connecting point between the cartilage and his skull. There’s not even a seam to show where it had been severed.

Mouth dry, Malchus finally nods, and the Nazarene closes his good eye. The water slides again down his temples. His words fill the damp space, and Malchus recognizes them at once, joining the recitation:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

and naked shall I return.

The Lord gave—”

The man breathes in, and Malchus breathes with him.

“—and the Lord has taken away;”

Their breath stirs the stale air of the room. All has finally gone quiet. The Nazarene opens his eye and tips his head to look up, past the stone roof, past the courtyard and the trembling earth, to the heavens, spread out over them like a tent. The water no longer falls. The rat is silent. 

“Blessed be the name of the Lord,” he says.

General Syndulla, my beloved

As long as your heart is still beating, it can still be mine.

i do not inhabit my body i am my body, i am not a brain in a meat suit i am wonderful flesh and bone and veins and synapses and cartilage, my soul is not separate from my body they are one and the same and they are me, and if god did not care about the body he would not have promised to resurrect it

#Sorry Yoda #Sorry fake quote attributed to Lewis #Sorry Descartes and Spinoza and Berkley and all you perfect Albigensians secretly feasting in your castle #I am body and soul - they can be artificially and temporarily separated by death. (It’s really hard to live like this is true - to love #the integrity of my body and soul - but it’s so important.) (@siena-sevenwits)

every now and then I’ll think about the quote “if God did not love the body, He would not have promised to resurrect it” and I have to stop and breathe and cry a little

Thinking about... Grieving the undead.

You aren't dead, but you're moving 12 hours away.

You aren't dead, but you're leaving our friend group.

You aren't dead but you've moved to a different state and now we text twice a year.

You aren't dead but you blocked me.

You aren't dead but we stopped talking, not on purpose but so long ago that I wouldn't even know what to say to you now.

You aren't dead but you're a stranger to me now.

You aren't dead but we lost touch and now I don't even remember your username.

You aren't dead but I ended things with you and now we never speak.

You aren't dead but I still have to grieve you. Whether I'd change it if I could or not, you're still a presence that I'm used to and now you won't be there anymore.

And so I grieve.

The remnant there who survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down.

After the door in the air was shut, King Caspian brought together an assembly of his friends and advisors. There, he called the dwarf Trumpkin to speak concerning what he had seen of Cair Paravel.

“Well,” said Trumpkin, “I can’t say that there was much left of the place when I was there. The walls are in pieces and it’s all overgrown. You’d scarcely know it was ever a castle, if you weren’t expecting to find one.”

“But could it be restored?” asked the king. “In your opinion: as a craftsman and a Narnian?”

Trumpkin seemed to ponder this for a moment, but his answer came readily enough. “We’d have to rebuild it from the foundations. Quarry stone, cut timber, and tear out all the plants that have grown there by the root— and that’s all before we so much as lay the new cornerstone. But if we go about it the right way (I mean, with the good guidance of Aslan and all)—yes, I think we can manage it.”

“But is it the thing that we ought to do first?” asked Doctor Cornelius. “After all, the Telmarine castle stands, and it will serve. There’s much else that needs doing at present.”

“It is a worthy undertaking,” piped Reepicheep, who was now standing atop his seat almost at attention, one small paw on the hilt of his rapier. “One more urgent and noble than any other work before us now. Cair Paravel is the ancient seat of justice in Narnia, and the graves of Old Narnian kings are on its grounds.”

A silence fell, and when it became clear that no one particularly felt like disputing the Mouse’s words, Caspian nodded his head solemnly. “Very well then. We rebuild.”