he is a young man, with a young, pregnant wife. they are
poor, and can’t afford much, so he sneaks into the witch’s garden at night to
steal away the rapunzel lettuce his wife so desperately craves.
when the witch gothel catches, him she demands the child
that her garden is feeding as payment.
he agrees, because there’s nothing else he can do.
he and his wife can have more children, but not if they’re
dead. they can have more children later, when they have the means to provide
for them, when they’re older and more sure of themselves, when the prospect of
being responsible for another mouth to feed isn’t quite so terrifying.
his wife is still slick with blood when he wraps their
daughter in an old pillowcase and brings her to the stone wall separating their
land from the witch’s. “are you going to hurt her?” he asks, clutching his
crying daughter to his chest.
gothel raises an eyebrow and says, “what a foolish
question.” she pulls away from him and is gone in the next instant.
his arms feel empty, but lighter too. he’ll never say this
aloud, but it’s almost a relief to give the child away.
they couldn’t even afford to feed themselves, never mind anyone
else.
he wants to be a father. he doesn’t want to be the father of
a hungry child.
~
this is not the first time gothel has bargained a child away
from its parents. and so she tucks the squalling little girl in bend of her
elbow, and goes where she always goes.
“caroline!” she calls out, “oh mother caroline!”
she stands in front of large house, one that has the general
appearance of being many houses stacked up on top of each other, all different
colors and sizes and styles. also, from the side, it does not look unlike a
rather large shoe.
the door bangs open, and a small wave of children run for
her, small sticky hands grasping at her dress and cloak, and gap toothed grins
everywhere she turns. “have you brought us another brother?” a girl asks,
wrinkling her nose. “i have too many brothers.”
the boys turn to her, glaring, but the girl is unrepentant. she’s
the only girl in among the younger kids, and is quite cross about it.
then the older kids surround gothel, the ones that had had
the patience not to go chasing after her at a sprint. the teenagers like to
pretend like they don’t care, but she has many eager and impatient eyes on her,
lots of twitching fingers eager to take the baby away from her. that’s fine by
gothel – she’s eager to be rid of the blasted thing.
“that’s enough!” a powerful, creaky voice shouts. “that’s
quite enough of that! make room, make room, let me through!”
the crowd of children part for mother caroline. like gothel,
caroline has dark skin and black hair, a strong, wide nose and plump lips. but
while gothel appears to be a woman in the prime of her youth, caroline is an
old woman. her back is straight and strong, and there is strength in the width
of her waist. but her dark hair is streaked with silver, and her skin has
started to bend to the will of time and gravity, causing delicate wrinkles to
frame her face. “little sister,” gothel greets, “you’ve gotten older.”
caroline shoots her an irritated glance, “while you haven’t
changed at all.”
“you could have became a witch like me,” gothel says, not
for the first time, “you were always quite good with physical magic. then
neither of us would age at all!”
“change is inevitable,” caroline says with the type of
finality that makes gothel’s skin crawl. “let me see the child.”
the children crowd impossibly closer as gothel hands the
baby over, red faced and new. caroline cradles the babe against her chest, then
stills, her lips pulling down at the corners. “what’s wrong?” gothel demands,
peering down at the baby anxiously.
she looks like any other baby gothel has seen. her face is
squished oddly and her eyes are a watery blue. she has ten fingers and ten toes
– gothel checked! – and she was crying when her father handed her over, but
she’s quiet now.
There’s only one thing worse than coming up with names for your ocs ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,it’s coming up with their surnames
Some good resources for that include cities, dog breeds, and less common first names. For instance the surname of one of my main characters is Bedlington, from the terriers, and another one is Myles-Morris, which is just the names Myles and Morris stuck together. If you have a baby names book or even a good dictionary, it helps. Also collect interesting surnames from your friends–as long as you ask them if they mind being immortalized in book form that works really well.
Additional ideas: Old timey trades are often surnames (blacksmith, mason, banks, fisher, ect.) Look at street names in your area, types of trees another common one (Maple, birch, cedar), Make anagrams of other words this could even be symbolic (traitor = Mr Attrior) this could recognized though so use carefully. Ask women in your family what their maiden names were or what their mom’s maiden names were. Twist around first names/add a couple syllables (Tanya = Mrs. Tanyani).
My favourite curse comes from The Color Purple. I think I must have watched that movie a million times when I was a little girl.
And while I can still quote most of the movie from memory, the scene where Celie curses her husband will always stick out most in my mind. Until you do right by me, everything you think about is gonna crumble. Until you do right by me, everything you even think about gonna fail.
I curse you.
Everything you touch will crumble.
Everything you even dream about will fail.
So how do you cast it? I did it like Celie. With anger. Finger pointing is optional. But I did it. I summoned every shred of heartbreak and anger and hate I had in me and I laced every word with it.
There were no candles.
I did not pray.
No jars were shook.
I was broken, but still a witch, and it was going to damned well happen without anything other than me needing it to happen, anything other than me demanding that it happen, or else I wouldn’t make it through.
Hi, Anon! This is a great question and goes hand in hand with the ask you’re referring to. There’s no real lore, as best I know, about this in particular and it’s one of the things that I think about a lot, too. This answer is gonna be totally UPG, but that’s kinda what happens when there are holes, I guess.
So, my opinion is that all (or most) afterlives are interconnected. Kinda like how I mentioned in the previous ask that the various names of the Otherworlds might be alternate names for the same place or might be various spheres within the Otherworld. Sometimes I also conceptualize it like a forest of Yggdrasils, if that makes sense, each culture’s cosmology contained in its own tree, but all part of the same ecosystem. In that way, it would be possible to travel from one to another. So when I think of my family, who are all Christian afaik, I think it would likely be like it’s been in this life: I live several hours away and have for all of my adult life, but I can hop in the car and go home. To some degree, I think our afterlife is what we make it—a point I didn’t really touch on in the last ask. Of course, this contradicts many Eastern teachings that view hell as another realm of rebirth where the soul has somethin to learn and I’d be lyin if I said that didn’t stick with me.
In that vein, I think it’s possible that some people go to “hell,” but it’s because they believe they deserve it. I think one of the things I’ve had trouble lettin go of most from Christianity is the idea of hell in that there are some people I have trouble believing won’t face some sort of punishment. I don’t mean the average asshole, but people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Mussolini, etc. and the idea they get to enjoy the afterlife like everyone else sounds like some bullshit. Maybe they go to a hell, maybe it’s permanent, maybe it’s not. Maybe souls like that cease to exist or maybe they never had a soul and that’s how they were able to enact such evil. I don’t know and I don’t know exactly what I think about it, but these are things I muse about, too.
But part of the issue for me, personally, is that I study religion professionally, so there tends to be a lot of bleed-over. And at the same time, it goes back to the fact that we Know™ so little about the Gaelic view of the afterlife. So really, these are all just musings of a religious scholar and religious person. I know that’s probably frustrating and I totally wish I had a more concrete answer, but until we discover the Emerald Isle Scrolls or invent time travel, scholastic musings is likely all we have. But ultimately, I think most afterlives are interconnected in some way because for me, as it seems for you, an afterlife without family would be a hell and I don’t think that’s what most of us are destined for.
those little things on ur nose aren’t blackheads, don’t try and get rid of them they’re sebaceous filaments and they’re permanent and literally everyone has them
every girl has that little pouch of fat on her lower tummy, despite what magazines try n show u, you have important organs there that need to be protected don’t try and get rid of ur pouch
ur body is smarter than u think and it knows what to do when u eat more than normal. one bad day, or even week, of eating poorly isn’t gonna ruin anything at all I pinky promise
if u think u look good up until u try taking a selfie, it’s not ur fault – our faces are asymmetrical and when u see ur face flipped it will look unnatural to u, since u don’t see it that way when u look in the mirror. to everyone else it looks perfectly fine
no one’s stomach looks the same at 8pm as it does at 8am. no one has a chiseled six pack after a day of eating, not even the super fit people u see on tumblr, because ur stomach naturally expands after eating and expecting to have a flat tummy before bed is very unrealistic
no one notices if the bags under ur eyes are bad today. no one pays attention to the bump in ur nose or the zit on ur chin or the piece of hair that u missed when u were straightening. literally no one notices these things except you so stop worrying about it ur gonna be fine
A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life.
Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.
this fucks me up every single time
I never expected this to be my most popular poem out of the hundreds I’ve written. I was extremely bitter and sad when I wrote this and I left out the most beautiful part of that class.
After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.
She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.
Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.
The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.
The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.
Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.
I no longer fear the day someone who swore I was their universe can no longer see the stars in my eyes as long as they still choose to look until they find them again.
This is so fucking important and I think it’s something I needed right now
I love this
This
I’ve always said this. Love is deliberate. Love is a conscious decision.
Candlelight-magick 