Introduction to Chapter 8 ("Heralded by Columns of Smoke: Pee Dee River to Fayetteville, North Carolina"):
"Once across the Pee Dee River, General Sherman's army marched in the direction of Fayetteville.
"Resistance from Confederate cavalry under Generals Hampton, Butler and Wheeler was steady and continuous. Wheeler attacked at Rockingham on March 7, and Hampton surprised and captured Kilpatrick's camp on March 10. But Sherman's army marched steadily on.
"General Joseph E. Johnston, with headquarters at Fayetteville, was following General Lee's first instruction, 'Concentrate all available forces.' He moved his headquarters to Raleigh and directed the assembling of his army to Smithfield.
"Eighty-four years earlier, in January of 1781, North Carolina had suffered another march by an invading army. Lord Cornwallis and his army followed almost the same route on their way to Wilmington. This army had come three thousand miles to put down 'a rebellion'; and to pursue retreating 'rebels' through a wild and thinly scattered country. His army had passed through Cross Creek, which was now called Fayetteville.
"On March 11, General Sherman and his army entered this town. 'We have swept the country well,' he reported. 'The men and animals are in fine condition.'"
--------------------------------------------
"Miss Alice Campbell was President of the Fayetteville Knitting Society when Colonel A. H. Hickenlooper, of Sherman's army, chose her home for his five-day sojourn. Bummers also visited her."
--------------------------------------------
"'Sherman, with his hordes of depraved and lawless men, came upon us like swarms of bees, bringing sorrow and desolation in their pathway. For days we had been expecting them, and our loved boys in grey had been passing through in squads, looking ragged and hungry. We gave them food and clothing, especially shoes and socks, for many of them were bare-footed. The enemy seemed to be pouring in by every road that led to our doomed little town. Our Cavalry were contending every step, firing and falling back, covering the retreat of our gallant little band, Hardee's forces, with General Wade Hampton, Butler, and others -- the scene in our town baffled description, all was consternation and dismay. In less time than I can write this, Sherman's army was in possession of our once peaceful, quiet homes. Every yard and every house was teeming with the bummers, who went into our homes -- no place was sacred; they even went into our trunks and bureau draws, stealing everything they could find; our entire premises were ransacked and plundered, so there was nothing left for us to eat, but perhaps a little meal and peas. Chickens, and in fact all poultry was shot down and taken off with all else. We all knew our silver, jewelry and all valuables would fall into their hands, so many women hid them in such places as they thought would never be found ....
''They went into homes that were beautiful, rolled elegant pianos into the yard with valuable furniture, china, cut glass, and everything that was dear to the heart, even old family portraits, and chopped them up with axes -- rolled barrels of flour and molasses into the parlors, and poured out their contents on beautiful velvet carpets, in many cases set fire to lovely homes and burned them to the ground, and even took some of our old citizens and hanged them until life was nearly extinct, to force them to tell where their money was hidden; when alas! they had none to hide. They burned our factories, and we had a number of them, also many large warehouses, filled with homespun, and dwellings, banks, stores and other buildings, so that the nights were made hideous with dense smoke and firelight in every direction. The crowning point to this terrible nightmare of destruction was the burning and battering down of our beautiful and grandly magnificent Arsenal, which was our pride, and the showplace of our town.
''On our vacant lot behind our home .... were a number of Confederate prisoners who had been captured by Sherman's army, and placed there under guard. They numbered about one hundred, I think. They were hatless and shoeless and ragged ....'
"One of General Howard's young officers chose to stay in the home of Sally Hawthorne whose father and uncle owned two large cotton mills in Fayetteville. General Howard appropriated one of her uncle's houses and his men camped in the surrounding fields and grounds."For five days, Sally, her mother who 'refused to leave her room,' her father, and a houseful of young brothers and sisters and servants were under strict orders from the officers of invasion.
"'Never will I forget,' said the little girl, Sally, whose story follows."
--------------------------------------------
"'Those last days were busy ones for General Sherman and his staff. The beautiful arsenal was destroyed and, as it happened, several private residences also caught fire and burned down, no help being given to save them, and the helpless owners rescued little, thankful to escape with their lives. Also the office of the town paper was blown up, as the editor was an especially obnoxious person in the eyes of the invading army, having waged a bitter fight against the North, and as his office was in the centre of the business part of town, more buildings were burned. (2) Then came the last day of the occupation; the troops were gathering and horses and supplies were being moved. All horses found there were taken along and many in the surrounding country were rounded up. Then there were the warehouses of cotton and rosin. The cotton was brought out, the barrels of rosin piled on them, and all set afire in the street. If houses caught, they burned, and that was all; many did. So a pall of black smoke hung over everything and the people were in a sad state of excitement and nervous exhaustion. As many houses were without a man to help or advise, the men of the family having been killed or being still in the army, the women and children were alone with the servants. The servants, with very few exceptions, proved true to their trust; they had been left to take care of the mistress and children in the master's absence, and though much excited, and sometimes frightened, they looked after the household faithfully. Of course there were some foolish and giddy young men and women who followed the army as it moved on from place to place, but they were the exception, not the rule ....'
"'No spot seemed safe from Sherman's bummers, but homes in the country or suburbs usually suffered more keenly than those in a town or city. The experiences of an unidentified woman who lived near Fayetteville were shared by many neighbors who were visited by the men from Sherman's army."
---------------------------------------------
<< Fayetteville, N.C., March 22, 1865 >>
".... Sherman has gone and terrible has been the storm that has swept over us with his coming and going. They deliberately shot two of our citizens -- murdered them in cold blood -- one of them a Mr. Murphy, a wounded soldier, Confederate States Army. They hung up three others and one lady, merely letting them down just in time to save life, in order to make them tell where their valuables were concealed; and they whipped -- stripped and cowhided --several good and well known citizens for the same purpose.
"There was no place, no chamber, trunk, drawer, desk, garret, closet or cellar that was private to their unholy eyes. Their rude hands spared nothing but our lives, and those they would have taken but they knew that therein they would accomplish the death of a few helpless women and children -- they would not in the least degree break or bend the spirit of our people. Squad after squad unceasingly came and went and tramped through the halls and rooms of our house day and night during the entire stay of the army.'
"At our house they killed every chicken, goose, turkey, cow, calf and every living thing, even to our pet dog. They carried off our wagons, carriage and horses, and broke up our buggy, wheelbarrow, garden implements, axes, hatchets, hammers, saws, and burned the fences. Our smokehouse and pantry, that a few days ago were well stored with bacon, lard, flour, dried fruit, meal, pickles, preserves, etc., now contain nothing whatever except a few pounds of meal and flour and five pounds of bacon. They took from old men, women and children alike, every garment of wearing apparel save what we had on, not even sparing the napkins of infants! Blankets, sheets, quilts, &c., such as it did not suit them to take away they tore to pieces before our eyes. After destroying everything we had, and taking from us every morsel of food (save the pittance I have mentioned), one of these barbarians had to add insult to injury by asking me 'what you (I) would live upon now?' I replied, 'Upon patriotism; I will exist upon the love of my country as long as life will last, and then I will die as firm in that love as the everlasting hills.
''Oh,' says he, ' but we shall soon subjugate the rebellion, and you will then have no country to love.
''Never!' I interrupted, 'never! you and your blood-handed countrymen may make the whole of this beautiful land one vast graveyard but its people will never be subjugated. Every man, woman and child of us will sleep quietly in honourable graves, but we will never live dishonourable lives .....'"
"When Sherman Came: Southern Women and the 'Great March'" by Katharine M. Jones (1964). Chapter 8: "Heralded by Columns of Smoke: Pee Dee River to Fayetteville, North Carolina." New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Pages 273-286.

Introduction to Chapter 8 ("Heralded by Columns of Smoke: Pee Dee River to Fayetteville, North Carolina"):
"Once across the Pee Dee River, General Sherman's army marched in the direction of Fayetteville.
"Resistance from Confederate cavalry under Generals Hampton, Butler and Wheeler was steady and continuous. Wheeler attacked at Rockingham on March 7, and Hampton surprised and captured Kilpatrick's camp on March 10. But Sherman's army marched steadily on.
"General Joseph E. Johnston, with headquarters at Fayetteville, was following General Lee's first instruction, 'Concentrate all available forces.' He moved his headquarters to Raleigh and directed the assembling of his army to Smithfield.
"Eighty-four years earlier, in January of 1781, North Carolina had suffered another march by an invading army. Lord Cornwallis and his army followed almost the same route on their way to Wilmington. This army had come three thousand miles to put down 'a rebellion'; and to pursue retreating 'rebels' through a wild and thinly scattered country. His army had passed through Cross Creek, which was now called Fayetteville.

"On March 11, General Sherman and his army entered this town. 'We have swept the country well,' he reported. 'The men and animals are in fine condition.'"

"Miss Alice Campbell was President of the Fayetteville Knitting Society when Colonel A. H. Hickenlooper, of Sherman's army, chose her home for his five-day sojourn. Bummers also visited her."
"'Sherman, with his hordes of depraved and lawless men, came upon us like swarms of bees, bringing sorrow and desolation in their pathway. For days we had been expecting them, and our loved boys in grey had been passing through in squads, looking ragged and hungry. We gave them food and clothing, especially shoes and socks, for many of them were bare-footed. The enemy seemed to be pouring in by every road that led to our doomed little town. Our Cavalry were contending every step, firing and falling back, covering the retreat of our gallant little band, Hardee's forces, with General Wade Hampton, Butler, and others -- the scene in our town baffled description, all was consternation and dismay. In less time than I can write this, Sherman's army was in possession of our once peaceful, quiet homes. Every yard and every house was teeming with the bummers, who went into our homes -- no place was sacred; they even went into our trunks and bureau draws, stealing everything they could find; our entire premises were ransacked and plundered, so there was nothing left for us to eat, but perhaps a little meal and peas. Chickens, and in fact all poultry was shot down and taken off with all else. We all knew our silver, jewelry and all valuables would fall into their hands, so many women hid them in such places as they thought would never be found ....
''They went into homes that were beautiful, rolled elegant pianos into the yard with valuable furniture, china, cut glass, and everything that was dear to the heart, even old family portraits, and chopped them up with axes -- rolled barrels of flour and molasses into the parlors, and poured out their contents on beautiful velvet carpets, in many cases set fire to lovely homes and burned them to the ground, and even took some of our old citizens and hanged them until life was nearly extinct, to force them to tell where their money was hidden; when alas! they had none to hide. They burned our factories, and we had a number of them, also many large warehouses, filled with homespun, and dwellings, banks, stores and other buildings, so that the nights were made hideous with dense smoke and firelight in every direction. The crowning point to this terrible nightmare of destruction was the burning and battering down of our beautiful and grandly magnificent Arsenal, which was our pride, and the showplace of our town.
''On our vacant lot behind our home .... were a number of Confederate prisoners who had been captured by Sherman's army, and placed there under guard. They numbered about one hundred, I think. They were hatless and shoeless and ragged ....'
"One of General Howard's young officers chose to stay in the home of Sally Hawthorne whose father and uncle owned two large cotton mills in Fayetteville. General Howard appropriated one of her uncle's houses and his men camped in the surrounding fields and grounds."For five days, Sally, her mother who 'refused to leave her room,' her father, and a houseful of young brothers and sisters and servants were under strict orders from the officers of invasion.
"'Never will I forget,' said the little girl, Sally, whose story follows."
--------------------------------------------
"'Those last days were busy ones for General Sherman and his staff. The beautiful arsenal was destroyed and, as it happened, several private residences also caught fire and burned down, no help being given to save them, and the helpless owners rescued little, thankful to escape with their lives. Also the office of the town paper was blown up, as the editor was an especially obnoxious person in the eyes of the invading army, having waged a bitter fight against the North, and as his office was in the centre of the business part of town, more buildings were burned. (2) Then came the last day of the occupation; the troops were gathering and horses and supplies were being moved. All horses found there were taken along and many in the surrounding country were rounded up. Then there were the warehouses of cotton and rosin. The cotton was brought out, the barrels of rosin piled on them, and all set afire in the street. If houses caught, they burned, and that was all; many did. So a pall of black smoke hung over everything and the people were in a sad state of excitement and nervous exhaustion. As many houses were without a man to help or advise, the men of the family having been killed or being still in the army, the women and children were alone with the servants. The servants, with very few exceptions, proved true to their trust; they had been left to take care of the mistress and children in the master's absence, and though much excited, and sometimes frightened, they looked after the household faithfully. Of course there were some foolish and giddy young men and women who followed the army as it moved on from place to place, but they were the exception, not the rule ....'
"'No spot seemed safe from Sherman's bummers, but homes in the country or suburbs usually suffered more keenly than those in a town or city. The experiences of an unidentified woman who lived near Fayetteville were shared by many neighbors who were visited by the men from Sherman's army."
---------------------------------------------
<< Fayetteville, N.C., March 22, 1865 >>
".... Sherman has gone and terrible has been the storm that has swept over us with his coming and going. They deliberately shot two of our citizens -- murdered them in cold blood -- one of them a Mr. Murphy, a wounded soldier, Confederate States Army. They hung up three others and one lady, merely letting them down just in time to save life, in order to make them tell where their valuables were concealed; and they whipped -- stripped and cowhided --several good and well known citizens for the same purpose.
"There was no place, no chamber, trunk, drawer, desk, garret, closet or cellar that was private to their unholy eyes. Their rude hands spared nothing but our lives, and those they would have taken but they knew that therein they would accomplish the death of a few helpless women and children -- they would not in the least degree break or bend the spirit of our people. Squad after squad unceasingly came and went and tramped through the halls and rooms of our house day and night during the entire stay of the army.'
"At our house they killed every chicken, goose, turkey, cow, calf and every living thing, even to our pet dog. They carried off our wagons, carriage and horses, and broke up our buggy, wheelbarrow, garden implements, axes, hatchets, hammers, saws, and burned the fences. Our smokehouse and pantry, that a few days ago were well stored with bacon, lard, flour, dried fruit, meal, pickles, preserves, etc., now contain nothing whatever except a few pounds of meal and flour and five pounds of bacon. They took from old men, women and children alike, every garment of wearing apparel save what we had on, not even sparing the napkins of infants! Blankets, sheets, quilts, &c., such as it did not suit them to take away they tore to pieces before our eyes. After destroying everything we had, and taking from us every morsel of food (save the pittance I have mentioned), one of these barbarians had to add insult to injury by asking me 'what you (I) would live upon now?' I replied, 'Upon patriotism; I will exist upon the love of my country as long as life will last, and then I will die as firm in that love as the everlasting hills.
''Oh,' says he, ' but we shall soon subjugate the rebellion, and you will then have no country to love.
''Never!' I interrupted, 'never! you and your blood-handed countrymen may make the whole of this beautiful land one vast graveyard but its people will never be subjugated. Every man, woman and child of us will sleep quietly in honourable graves, but we will never live dishonourable lives .....'"
"When Sherman Came: Southern Women and the 'Great March'" by Katharine M. Jones (1964). Chapter 8: "Heralded by Columns of Smoke: Pee Dee River to Fayetteville, North Carolina." New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Pages 273-286.

‎ ‎ ‎[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]
‎
SWOOSH-!
‎
Ji Wuye arrived on the second floor, his expression tense as he surveyed the circular area.
‎
The sky above was brilliantly clear, not a single wispy cloud marring the bright expanse. Surrounding him were tiers of benches made of weathered gray limestone, arranged in five levels devoid of any ornamental flourishes.
‎
These rudimentary seats were shallow and showing signs of deterioration in places, in stark contrast to the solid, well-constructed terraces of a grand colosseum.
‎
Ji Wuye's brow furrowed slightly as he studied the structure, then spoke in a low, contemplative tone, "It seems to be an arena, or perhaps a gladiator arena of some kind."
‎
Though the architecture was unfamiliar to him, the notable difference between this structure and the Central Courtyard of his sect appeared to be merely the presence of spectator seating.
‎
In Jianghu, disciples stood to observe, without designated areas to sit.
‎
As his eyes roved over the surroundings, assessing, the details of his mission to clear this floor finally materialized before him.
‎ ‎ ‎

[>>[QUEST]<<] You have reached the 2nd floor of the Tower of the God! [>] Objective: Survive for 60 minutes! [!] Consequence: DEATH! 

‎
Ji Wuye's lips pressed into a grim line as he muttered, "The longer duration doesn't make this challenge any easier." His gaze swept over the deserted arena, taking in the scattered debris of crumbling pillars - no enemies in sight, at least not yet.
‎
Without further delay, he lowered himself to the ground, crossing his legs and beginning to channel his Qi. Gradually, his Qi emerged, coalescing into a protective sphere that enveloped his body from all directions in a shimmering aura.
‎ ‎

[!] The first test commenced with the Fire Element! 

‎ ‎

[!] Your objective: Survive for 15 minutes. Good luck! 

‎
The moment his Qi barrier solidified around him, Ji Wuye's crimson eyes glared to the side, instantly alert as the surrounding arena underwent a transformation. A wave of intense heat spread outward, dry grass crisping and igniting into scattered blazes.
‎
Outside the protective cocoon of his Qi, a small cyclone formed, rapidly growing larger until it became a massive, roaring typhoon whipping debris through the air.
‎
SWOOSH--!
‎
Ji Wuye groaned softly through gritted teeth as the vortex's powerful winds buffeted his barrier. But the mounting heat was the true challenge, seeping inward in an attempt to penetrate his fortified defenses.
‎
The temperature skyrocketed to the point where rivulets of sweat beaded on his furrowed brow and ran down his face. And that was merely the beginning, as the typhoon continued escalating in ferocity.
‎
Sitting rigid, cross-legged in concentration, Ji Wuye focused all his effort on channeling and hardening his qi, resisting and diminishing the punishing external heat that threatened to overwhelm him from all sides.
‎
His blazing crimson eyes remained open and defiant amidst the swirling chaos of the storm, which had transformed into a raging cyclone of flame engulfing his body in scorching waves.
‎
"Argh!" He cried out, face contorted, as the fiery vortex expanded even further, intensifying the ferocity of the infernal winds that battered his Qi shield relentlessly and caused the flesh of any exposed skin to sizzle and blister on contact.
‎
'Endure it!' His mind demanded through a haze of agony as the firestorm raged, sweat streaming down his face from the exertion of maintaining his wavering barrier.
‎
Though the reinforced Qi shielded his body from the worst of the searing flames licking hungrily at him from all sides, he could feel the insidious heat beginning to seep through, scorching his skin and emitting the acrid, pungent scent of burning flesh.
‎
The flickering of his barrier's light warned that his Qi reserves were running perilously low. A heavy, suffocating sensation weighed on his mind, making it difficult to keep his head upright as dizziness threatened to overwhelm him...
‎
"Just a bit longer..." Ji Wuye ground out through clenched teeth, battling against the fatigue clouding his mind as he poured every ounce of concentration into maintaining his defenses.
‎
Yet the inferno's fury showed no signs of relenting.
‎
The soaring, scorching temperature caused his entire body to redden painfully, and even the sturdy limestone surrounding him began to soften and melt into viscous rivulets. This was no longer a mere trial by fire, but one of searing magma!
‎
His lips were tightly pressed together, cracked and parched, a few stray beads of saliva glistening on them.
‎
COUGH!
‎ ‎
COUGH!
‎
Wracking coughs suddenly tore from his raw throat as he simultaneously inhaled searing toxic fumes that gradually corroded his lungs from within.
‎
"Damn it..." Each agonizing cough sent fresh waves of torment lancing through his abused organs. How much more could he possibly endure before his defenses finally crumbled?
‎
SWOOSH--!
‎
Then, abruptly and unexpectedly, the chaos transforming into startling stillness as a transparent screen materialized before him, bringing an end to his suffering.
‎ ‎ ‎

[!] Congratulations, Climber Ji Wuye, on successfully surviving the first elemental test! 

‎ ‎

[!] The second test will commence immediately with the Water Element! 

‎ ‎

[!] Your objective: Survive for 15 minutes. Good luck! 

‎
"Didn't even give me a break..." Ji Wuye muttered hoarsely, barely able to catch his breath before the next onslaught began.
‎
His skin was scorched black in places and weeping a viscous mixture of blood and bodily fluids from the raw injuries.
‎
Most of the damage was concentrated on his hands and shoulders where his defenses had wavered, while his legs and torso remained relatively unharmed where he had focused his Qi.
‎
Despite the presence of his reinforced barrier, the damage had still been inflicted.
‎
Clenching his fist tightly, he could still feel the lingering throb of pain for a brief moment.
‎
The primal urge to scream welled up, but he swallowed it back, drawing a deep, composing breath before summoning another feature of the Tower - an inventory.
‎
"Inventory," he rasped, and immediately located the precious item he'd brought for just such dire situations.
‎
A small object around 1-2 chi in length and half a chi wide materialized in his palm, its elongated shape tapered like a stubby carrot with a creamy beige skin texture.
‎
Gently squeezing the pliable herb, Ji Wuye opened his mouth wide and consumed it in one large gulp.
‎ ‎ ‎

[!] You have consumed a one-year-old Ginseng! 

‎ ‎

[!] A portion of your Qi was restored! 

‎
Just as the transparent prompt indicated, a refreshing cool wave washed over Ji Wuye's depleted Lower Dantian, akin to biting into the juicy flesh of a perfectly ripe mango.
‎
He could feel the invigorating liquid rushing in, imbued with an intoxicating sweetness that was almost cloying, filling his core and even causing a faint urge to relieve himself - one of the lesser-known side effects of such potent ginseng that most were unfamiliar with due to its scarcity and exorbitant cost.
‎
"Not bad...I've regained approximately half of my Qi," Ji Wuye murmured with grim satisfaction as the restorative effects took hold.
‎
But as the initial burst of replenished energy faded, he noticed another profound effect emanating from the soft herb.
‎
A wash of soothing, familiar warmth bloomed outward from his stomach, enveloping his entire body.
‎
Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to fully embrace the comforting sensation as it not only began knitting together the scorched flesh of his wounds, but also repairing the internal damage to his organs.
‎ ‎ ‎

[!] A portion of your injuries has been healed! 

‎
"So it's really true..." Ji Wuye mused in quiet wonder, acknowledging the veracity of yet another lesser-known property of consuming raw, immature ginseng that even his Senior had only hinted at.
‎
His momentary relief was short-lived however, as the once brilliant azure sky above darkened ominously, roiling storm clouds quickly blotting out the light as fat raindrops began pelting down to drench his entire body...
‎ ‎
A/N
‎ ‎
\Chi (尺) - Equal to approximately 30 cm. Commonly used along with zhang to describe object lengths, room dimensions, etc.*
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]

Hi! This is the first chapter of my completed novel. I am currently doing what I hope to be the final edit, and I am looking for some feedback on just this chapter right now. In specific, does it come off as well-written, or is it lacking in some areas (bonus points if you provide those areas)? Was it intriguing? Did it leave you eager to continue reading, or if not, what deterred you? I'm not afraid of being torn apart with criticism, so long as it's all in the name of improvement :) Thanks so much in advance for anyone who reads!
Chapter One:
From the cover of the woods, I watched a man fall from the sky.
His figure was a dark silhouette before the bright sun, his arms lifted above a curved back, like they were still held by the hands of the clouds that had spit him out. He fell in silence, but the trees around me weren’t as quiet.
Just moments ago, they had spoken to me, beckoning me further into the thicket where something wanted to be found.
Come, Cerys, they’d said. Come.
A sigh had passed through the trees when I’d obeyed, an excitement of the leaves.
With me were my younger brother Talius—whose usually wide and radiant eyes were now narrowed—and our eldest sister Zeneida, wearing her perpetual scowl. Under the summer sun, our trio had scoured the woods with bows at the ready, prepared for a hunt. But since we’d crossed the threshold separating us from town, the woods had been too quiet. Not even the birds chattered here today.
My siblings and I had each been taught the ways of the hunt when we’d turned twelve. Now, Talius was sixteen, I was nineteen, and though Zeneida was twenty-two, she looked years older from the stress of her forced marriage. Her imposed husband was the reason we hadn’t seen her in almost a year, not until today.
And today, there was a body falling from the afternoon sun.
He cut through the air like he had been cast from the Heavens themselves. He was still, tranquil even, as he crashed toward the ground in a graceful freefall that lacked the screams and thrashes of panic I expected. I didn’t know if he was awake, or even alive at all. And yet he descended. Several beats of my hammering heart passed before his body met the tree line.
The grace left his fall when he collided with the leaves. He tore through the trees, filling the air with the splitting sound of snapping branches. I looked away at my siblings, the rocks, the dirt, anything to distract me from the rising nausea in my throat. How had he gotten up there? How was it possible?
Zeneida stood frozen beside me as she stared with head craned to watch the aberration above. Her green eyes had never been so wide. “No. No, not in Norandia. Not here.”
When the man finally crashed to the ground, a deafening roar sounded around us, like the very terrain splitting beneath his body. My siblings and I flinched in tandem.
As she recovered, Zeneida patted the ruffled sides of her stained blue blouse and scowled. “It’s a Dweller.” Someone who came from lands other than Norandia; a nonhuman.
Talius bristled in the middle of brushing a strand of dark hair from his darker eyes. “That can’t be true.” His hand remained suspended in the air. “How do you know?”
“Don’t be daft, Tal. How else could he have gotten in the sky?”
My hands shook at my sides as I glanced between the pair. There was no way to travel by sky, not without wings—wings that could only be possessed by Dwellers.
Talius, who was always the calmest of the three of us, gaped at the trees around him, as if he expected more bodies to fall between them. “What do we do?” When neither my sister nor I responded, his tone grew in urgency. “Cerys?”
Come, the woods whispered once more, in the soft voice of a mother rocking her infant to sleep. Cerys, come.
I drew in a shaking breath and met my brother’s eye. “We have to see if he’s alright.”
“What? If anyone finds out that we helped a Dweller instead of turning him in, we would be burned with him.” Talius’s eyes were wide, pleading. “The Treaty forbids this, Cer! It’s treason just for him to be in Norandia!”
Before the Norandians—our extinct Creators—were felled, they wrote for us the Treaty. For a thousand years, it had protected our human lands of Norandia from what we called Dwellers: they were the werewolves, vampires, and other creatures that dwelled in the dark corners of our continental Halivaara. Any being with an ounce of magic in their blood was labeled a Dweller and forever banished from Norandia.
If one was found in our borders, they were sent to the High King’s Pyre to be burned at the stake. And the punishment for those found consorting with a Dweller was even worse.
But I didn’t care about the treaty—I was different, too.
With my breath frozen in my throat, I managed a nod at the trees. “Come on.”
Though Talius sputtered a protest, his words were lost on me when I shuffled forward into the depths of the woods. All around us, the birds were silent. They watched us with ever-tilting heads while we pushed aside brush and branches to reach the man. The trees ahead beckoned me closer.
Come, they said.
I’m coming.
Zeneida was at my back as I made for the heart of the woods, and behind her followed a begrudging Talius. None of us said a word for several tense moments, leaving behind graying groves and their discarded leaves. Then we found him under an overpour of sunlight.
He was lying on the grass, his arms laid out beside him, legs straight, and all around him were broken branches and fallen leaves. I scanned the area with frantic eyes, searching for blood and broken bones, but there were none of either. How could that be? How could anyone survive a fall from the very sun that beamed down on us? My astonishment only grew as we neared him.
Here I saw that his chest rose and fell with breath; with life. He was alive. I stared at him with wide eyes and a slackened jaw as I was overcome with a sudden dizziness. Besides the wind’s ravaging of his hair, there was no evidence on his body that he had fallen at all.
In fact, he looked at peace. His eyes were closed, suntanned arms rested beside him, while wild curls fell across his forehead and nose in swaths of onyx. Though he was young, maybe only a year or two older than me, something in his demeanor, even in unconsciousness, demanded the authority of an elder. He appeared utterly human. There were no visible wings or claws on his body, no fanged teeth jutting out, no gills on his exposed neck. I almost believed he was human.
Almost.
Talius wrung his hands together. “If he’s a Dweller, Cer… We have to report this.”
“If we report this, they’ll kill him.” My voice was strained in my throat. I knew what Norandia would do to us if we didn’t.
“And what happens when they find out? They’ll burn us in the Pyres, Cerys!”
I took my bottom lip between my teeth and worried at it for a long moment as I stared at the man. He was alive now, but how long would that remain? We would sentence him to death if we left, just as we would if we reported his unexplainable descent. No, I couldn’t do either.
I glanced at Talius with a soft shake of my head. “Then don’t tell anyone we’ve helped him.” I knew why my brother couldn’t understand my view. Speaking to a Dweller wasn’t my first hangable offense; there was magic in my veins, too. Magic that long ago condemned me.
Zeneida, who had watched us in silence until now, nodded at the man. “You should help him, Cerys.” She understood; she always had.
“Right.” With my heart in my throat from Talius’s warnings, I turned toward the man’s unconscious figure on the ground. “Hello? Can you hear me? I’m—I’m a healer. I can help you, if you need.” Only he didn’t look like he needed healing at all. After our hour in the woods, my siblings and I had obtained more scratches from passing stray branches than he had in tearing dozens from their hosts.
“Look.” Zeneida tapped my shoulder and pointed at something in the man’s golden skin. “What are those?”
I followed her fingertip and frowned. There were designs carved in dark ink all over him. Lines spindled across his arms, collarbones, ankles. Every bit of exposed skin boasted some form of seemingly random pattern: I saw the hint of a leaf twist above his collar; stretching down the length of his forearm was a dagger with a chipped point; wrapped around the opposite bicep, halfway obscured by his sleeve, was the drawing of a snake. My gaze drew from symbol to symbol, until I caught sight of one on the back of his right hand.
I froze.
It was an eight-pointed star.
A gasp tore from my lips, sounding close yet far away in my ringing ears. For years, my dreams had been a recurring nightmare of a woman with dark hair and malicious amber eyes. Every night, she—who I called the Nameless Woman—met me in a dreamscape field on fire while she taunted me with cryptic messages. “Don’t you hear the drums of war, girl?” she had asked me for years. “I am practically on your doorstep already.”
In the last week, she had added more to our repeated exchange. “There’s something you must do before I can come to you.” With an acidic smile, she’d then pointed at something behind me. “Find the one who bears that crest. Your questions will be answered. He’ll tell you.”
I had turned and followed her fingertip toward the grass. Like the rest of it around us, it was blackened with char, having succumbed to her flames earlier in the night. But unlike the others, the ash there made a design in the ground: a star with eight points.
She had uttered the new phrase every night since.
Find the one who bears that crest. He’ll tell you.
And I stared at him now.
I stumbled backward and knocked into Zeneida, who caught me with her hand that didn’t hold her bow. The Nameless Woman—the one I was convinced I had created—was real. She had warned me about this from the safety of my dreams. I’d never understood her cryptic murmurs, never given them thought beyond the waking world. Now, her words played over and over between my temples.
Zeneida narrowed her eyes. “What is it?”
I blanched at her. “She was here.”
“She?” Talius asked, brow furrowing. “Cerys, that’s a man. Did I miss something?”
“I need to wake him. I-I need—” my voice faltered. I had never told anyone about the dreams for I had thought they were nothing more than petty nightmares. What could I say now? How could I explain that a woman in my dreams had warned me about this man? My head shook of its own accord as I dropped to a crouch beside his resting figure.
Up close, I could see the way his eyes darted under his eyelids. They dashed from side to side, like his sleep was plagued with nightmares of his own. Midnight curls stuck out on his head like a curtain, enunciating the blackness of the strange runes in his golden skin. Beside him, the eight-pointed star stared up at me from the back of his hand, taunting me with the mystery of its appearance.
Beside me, Zeneida aimed her readied bow at the ground and pulled taut on the arrow with stiff fingers. Find the one who bears that crest. I met her eye. “I need to talk to him. Just for a minute.”
She nodded softly. “I know.” And she did. Though she had no knowledge of my dreams or the star, she knew what I could do. Both of my siblings did. How it—my magic—endangered us every day, even as I used it to heal others. Zeneida’s body was rigid, mimicking the tension in the bow string she pulled back. “I’ll keep guard, just… stay alert. And hurry.”
The woods watched while I reached for the man’s shoulder. He looked almost too peaceful to stir. If I hadn’t witnessed his fall from the very grasp of the Heavens, I would have felt a pang of guilt at waking him. But he wasn’t sleeping, and something within me whispered that, like me, he didn’t belong in Norandia borders at all. That he was different, too.
The fabric of his shirt—silk, nothing like the threads the commonfolk of our village Southdale wore—was cool beneath my fingertips when I shook his shoulder. “Hello?” His arm was deadweight in my hand. I scanned his face, waiting for his eyes to flutter open and reveal their color to us, but they remained hidden. A glance at his chest showed that it still rose and fell to an inner beat.
Talius crouched beside me with a frown. “I know you’re the hopeful healer, but this doesn’t look good.”
“He isn’t dead, Tal.”
“I’m not saying he is. I’m just saying… well, maybe he’s in a sleep he won’t wake from.”
I kept my eyes on the man and shook his shoulder again, this time harder than the last. “He isn’t comatose. This is something else.”
Talius’s brows knitted together. “How could you know?”
“Because I just feel it. Now be quiet.” My hand was wrapped around the man’s upper-arm, preparing for another shake, when I felt it: a flicker of movement. I held my breath and leaned closer to scan his face with eager eyes. “Are you awake?” I asked. Though he didn’t respond, his arm moved again, and this time his muscles contracted, coming to life beneath my fingertips.
Then, a soft breath filled his lungs, and his eyes snapped open.
Zeneida shouted at me to move away. Before I could, she had wedged herself between the man and me with her bowstring pulled taut by the arrow in her fingertips. She stared down at his awakening figure as I peered around her body to look at him.
He was now awake and tense with panic. I felt a pang of empathy for him, but there was something else with it: The warning that, though he looked human, he exuded a danger that wasn’t customary of humans—the danger of a natural predator.
He was unmistakably a Dweller.
He pulled himself up with a soft groan and scanned the area through eyes that widened, likely realizing there was familiarity in nothing. His brow furrowed in bewilderment when he took note of the trees, the daybreak between them, the snapped branches above him from his descent, the three sets of bewildered gazes trained on him.
He jolted when he noticed us. It was then that he seemed to register my sister and her drawn bow looming over him. Brows rising skyward, he opened his mouth to speak, but not before his eyes—the color of smoke—planted on my own. His expression softened in a strange familiarity, something I had no time to decipher when he parted his lips and uttered one word:
“Cerys.”

Good morning,
I am looking for possible interpretations for this dream. It's a long read and not very well structured because it's written when you wake up and rarely reread.
Thanks for reading :)!
I was moving, I think. I was looking for another apartment. I was in a town that looked like Lille in a large brick house that I must have seen yesterday while passing in the street. With gray lion heads. Or a mix of brick house. But I think I saw her going where where where this week?
It was a building with strange neighbors. P., my boyfriend was supposed to join me. And one evening he joined me. Maybe there was a mix up between two apartments. He was working so he couldn't be there before such and such a date I believe but it's more that in certain moments of the dream space-time authorized his presence in others not.
There were mixed temporalities and parallel stories, finally alternative universes which stem from the main story but do not stick together: they offer several destinies.
A mixture of the future that was past: living alone, a child who wanders through rooms in wonder and who discovers touch: touching with the gaze of materials, the self of the dream that synthesizes, etc.
This house on several floors which housed several apartments was strange.
I don't understand who I got it from. I told a neighbor: it was P. who helped me find him by hiding that he was my boyfriend.
In our apartment, there were 3 bedrooms but the beds were all inadequate. They were between my grandmother's and Russia in terms of decoration. I said and there it was me as a child: I am happy to live with what she did. Because in my dream she was producing clothes like my mother dreamed of doing, but clothes that resemble the idea I have of traditional Russian clothing. It’s true that she knitted and I was thinking about it yesterday too ok.
A door framed with Russian clothes, heavy carpets richly decorated with heavy black patterns enhanced with red, green and gold like the Russian objects lying around the family home. Red curtains, red curtains that surround the doors or certain areas of the room. The old beds, old dark wood, solid, like at grandmother's, overload and suffocation but I nevertheless say in the dream: I feel good, I am happy to have found this apartment even though it is hell. The neighbors are crazy.
The beds don't fit, they are overloaded. Bright red bedspread. Mine has two pillows but makes a place, a place and a half, maybe two, but it only seems like one. Not headboard but surrounded by fairly high sculpted pillars. He looks really familiar to me. There is a small faded orange rug next to the rug that looks like a bath towel.
This bed therefore covered in red as if already inhabited by another entity. Not my size, Goldilocks would say: I'm changing beds.
I'm going to see P. in his room. It seems to me that it is deep and his bed is big but he does not want to accommodate me. It's light, the parquet floor is dark, the room has a high ceiling but I stand, he makes me stand in the doorway. And the bed is almost too big from what I can see from afar. Or I'm already interpreting and his bed was green and very small. There was this bed yes. Small and green, almost like that of an infant.
Between the two rooms in any case: a large double bed in which you can sleep. Finally a 3rd bedroom. It is like mine but bigger but there are no pillars. Its design is rounder, less sharp, more welcoming. It's the cover and the smell too I think that scares me away. This shiny red bedspread that haunts me.
Hop, we change rooms like in the theater or the cinema, the scenery turns and we find ourselves on the other side. This is our apartment but I'm alone in the mess. Besides, writing it makes me think of my mother. I'm struggling in this. I moved in with a guy who died. I don't understand under what circumstances he died: did I actively kill him or did he die accidentally. He sold weed. A bit of a hub, but his life wasn't all about that. I spoke to him before moving in. He was nice. A side that lacks personality but is nice. In short, I moved in happy. In the apartment there was a cupboard that scared me in which a bunch of stuff was piled up. I can no longer identify them but Frédéric at the turn of a I touch your buttocks without seeming to, helped me put them away.
A clown box. There was something with living animals but I don't know which ones.
A dead monkey? A bit like the guy who played auto cymbals at home. I don't know but it was creepy.
I was navigating the mess. A middle-aged, blonde neighbor whose children I secretly hoped to look after showed up in my apartment like a mill. She saw the mess “oh yes everyone has their own way of life” she looked scared. It made me laugh but I knew I had wasted an opportunity. She lived above but further down the street.
Then there was the fire and I had to leave this apartment. That’s where it starts but I know that I’m already missing events.
The fire that licks the walls. We go to a basement that looks like a supermarket. P. is there sometimes he pops sometimes he is absent. It takes a long time to tell the guy in charge of putting away the shelves that there is a fire. Once it does, the alarm goes off and he tells us to get out quickly. There is an old guy, P.'s father perhaps, to whom I speak and to whom I lie before in the dream. I know he's dead when I talk to him.
We find ourselves outside in the street but this street leads to another garage, rather a warehouse in fact. All I remember in the other one is that it's the big hunt. Spiders everywhere threatening to bite the residents living there while waiting to find an apartment. A vermin remix (film). We're stuck. The cops are there but apart from throwing a disco with gyro games and causing panic they don't do much. What will save us are inflatable seals. They look like real ones but when the spiders bite them they pssssh like balloons and the spiders are magically expelled.
I woke up after that.
Ah yes when you wake up a little voice says baby blue baby blue baby blue.

‎[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]
‎‎
Ji Wuye's body materialized in a burst of blue flashes, his form slamming violently onto the hard floor.
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"Gasp!" A pained groan tore from his lips as he writhed, his muscles spasming uncontrollably.
‎
Deep crimson blood seeped from numerous wounds, pooling beneath his trembling form. Faint tendrils of azure radiance, his Qi, leaked erratically from the spiritual nodes in his lower abdomen and the newly-formed nexus blazing to life in his core.
‎
Using the potent Rejuvenation Pill had clearly taken a severe toll. Each of his Dantian, the metaphysical furnaces that refined his Qi, showed hairline fractures crisscrossing their surfaces like an intricate spiderweb, threatening to shatter completely.
‎
If this dire situation persisted, he would surely lose all his hard-won progress. However, before that calamitous outcome could come to pass, a warm emerald aura suddenly enveloped Ji Wuye's battered body in a protective cocoon.
‎
The ruptured meridians and cracked Dantian began knitting themselves back together with astonishing speed. Simultaneously, the newly birthed Middle Dantian pulsed hungrily, drinking in the seemingly infinite wellspring of Qi suffusing the chamber.
‎ ‎ ‎

[!] All temporary injuries had been healed! 

‎ ‎

[!] You have 30 minutes remaining before being teleported to the second floor! 

‎
Despite the miraculous healing, Ji Wuye remained frighteningly still and silent, his chest barely rising and falling with shallow breaths.
‎
The immense backlash from forcibly catalyzing the formation of his Middle Dantian had taken its toll, leaving him wracked with mental and physical exhaustion.
‎
...
‎
Time slipped by unnoticed as Ji Wuye's unconscious form lay motionless. Eventually, a translucent display flickered into existence before him.
‎ ‎ ‎

[!] You have 05 minutes remaining before being teleported to the second floor! 

‎
In that moment, Ji Wuye's eyes snapped open, the irises blazing crimson as they rapidly scanned his surroundings with a look of bewildered intensity.
‎
With deliberate movements, he rose to his feet, turning this way and that as he processed his situation. His gaze fell to his chest, and his brow furrowed quizzically as he registered the complete absence of pain or injury.
‎
Without a moment's hesitation, he channeled his Qi inwards, and his eyes widened palpably as he sensed the newly-solidified nexus of power thrumming at his core.
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A broad, triumphant grin slowly spread across his features. "It's a success!"
‎
Fully cognizant of the stark differences and heightened risks involved in transcending from the 2nd to the 3rd realm compared to his previous breakthrough, Ji Wuye had cleverly combined the restorative effects of the Tower's ambient energies with the catalyzing properties of the pill provided by the Elders.
‎
The potent tonic had fortified his physical form against the strain of forcing his meridians to restructure, while the Tower's intrinsic power had facilitated his body's subsequent recovery.
‎
Now that he had definitively advanced to the lofty 3rd realm, Ji Wuye immediately turned his focus inward once more, scrutinizing his status screen intently.
‎ ‎ ‎

STATUS SCREEN [->] Name: Ji Wuye [->] Level: 12 [->] Strength: 36 [->] Agility: 31 [->] Qi: 31 [*] Skills: - Quick Adaptation(F) - 

‎
A surprised bark of laughter escaped Ji Wuye's lips. "My level jumped from 7 all the way to 12, and every one of my core attributes increased by a staggering ten points!"
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He shook his head in amazement, recalling that his previous breakthrough to the 2nd realm had only elevated him to Level 5 along with comparatively meager stat gains.
‎
Now, standing at the apex of the Outer Disciples' power, Ji Wuye could rightly be considered one of the strongest amongst their ranks.
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"Though it's not a singularly remarkable achievement in the greater scope of things, it will more than suffice to deal with any annoying pests that cross my path."
‎
Having thoroughly inspected his updated status and with little time remaining before his impending transition, Ji Wuye swiftly accessed the enigmatic Shop interface.
‎ ‎ ‎

[*] SHOP [>] Skill [<] [>] Items [<] 

‎
"Item," Ji Wuye stated.
‎ ‎ ‎

[*] ITEMS TOG COINS: 900 Mana Potions - 50 coins Health Potions - 50 coins Training Wooden Shield - 75 coins Worn Farmer Boots - 25 coins Rope - 10 coins Healing Pills - 35 coins Cage of Light - 85 coins Stamina Potions - 50 coins 1-Year-Old Ginseng - 10 coins 

‎
A thoughtful frown creased Ji Wuye's brow as he rapidly scanned the list of available supplies. "For this floor's challenge, healing will likely prove crucial..."
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His gaze lingered momentarily on the health potions before he muttered dismissively, "But it would be wasteful to squander my limited coin reserves on such paltry restoratives."
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"Furthermore, I should conserve as much of my coin reserves as possible..." Ji Wuye murmured, his brow furrowing in contemplation as he surveyed the shop's wares with a calculating gaze.
‎
While the health potions represented a logical choice for their one-time restorative effect and immediate healing properties, he knew their utility would be fleeting at best.
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With a slight shake of his head, stray white locks swaying across his resolute features, Ji Wuye dismissed the potions from consideration.
‎
Just then, a shimmering notification materialized before him:
‎ ‎ ‎

[!] You have purchased item: Healing Pills! 

‎ ‎

[!] You have purchased item: 1 Years-old Gingseng x2! 

‎
"Hmm…" Ji Wuye nodded, a satisfied smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. The precious medicinal ginseng roots and concentrated healing pills would prove far more versatile assets for the challenges that potentially lay ahead.
‎ ‎
No sooner had the words left his lips than another ethereal display flickered into existence, its kaleidoscopic runes pulsing with a sense of urgency.
‎ ‎

[!] Time's up! You will now be forcefully transported into second floor! 

‎ ‎[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]

Welcome! Starting today, you are officially a part of the quaint and lovely Whispering Willows, and our tight-knit community is eager for you to settle in your new home and be our new friend. It is indeed wonderful to have some fresh faces around, given that our town is practically invisible to the world with its rather… inconvenient location and limited availability of recreational spaces. Please do not interpret this as signs of stagnation. All the needed facilities and amenities are always at your disposal; they simply do not have the ‘Wow’ factors to rival renowned vacation spots, thus they do not appeal to most joy-seekers.
Anyhow, as you can probably tell after touring Whispering Willows, our population situation was rather… despondent, much as we dislike admitting. Despite the town’s extensive size and abundance of mint-condition habitations, it has less than 1000 residents, including you as the newest addition. You might even find yourself among stretches of unoccupied houses as you walk down the streets, and we assure you, there is nothing to be concerned about. They are empty for conceivable reasons (though we’d like to warn against letting curiosity get the better of you and enter them unpermitted. Whatever you believe you see, it’s your eyes deceiving you. The houses are always absent of living beings). If possible, maintain a safe distance with these areas and keep to high-traffic parts of the town where you are certain that human companies are within reach. No harm will be done in being near them, but places that have been left uninhabited for a long time tend to attract uninvited pests, like mice, snakes, and others. It’s wise to leave them be and avoid unnecessary accidents.
That’s the primary rule to bear in mind. To acclimate you to Whispering Willows, we have made sure to include a brief list of secondary rules in this welcome message so that you can start acting like locals from day 1. We acknowledge that some might seem downright outlandish, but please put aside any slight inconvenience to comply. Whispering Willows is, after all, an old town, and like any places of antiquity, it presents problems and constraints that people used to the modern way fail to imagine.
(Rules for being outdoors)
Rule 1: Unless under special circumstances, you will not spot a single willow tree in town. Yes, we understand the incredibility of this rule, seeing as the whole town is named after the tree itself. But trust that we have our reasons not to let willows grow unrestrained.
If you happen to discover a willow tree on a path that you are about to cross, turn back and choose another route. Do not keep your eyes on the drooping branches or the lush, cascading foliage for too long, even if it begins rustling violently.
Rule 2: There are four council offices in total, each located at the border of the town in the South, West, East, and North. Now, you will not be able to find a mayor here. Standard management conventions do not apply in this town and we simply think electing one is not necessary. No issues have arisen so far since all the town officials have undergone intensive training, leaving them fully equipped to assist you under any circumstances. Knowing the unpredictable nature of emergencies, these devoted individuals will be available around the clock to offer help whenever needed.
(There are currently four officials, Victoria, Matthew, Crystal, and Alexander, representing the council offices in the exact mentioned order. Please flip to the back of this guideline for their photos.)
Rule 3: Whispering Willows is encompassed by miles of vegetation, completely cutting it from civilization. The plants are as old as the town itself, some might even predate its establishment. And, of course, the complexity and density of their assemblage should not be underestimated. For your own safety, do not walk out of town and into the treeline regardless of the situation, you are going to get lost, and there is no hope of being found in that maze of a forest. Even placing one foot outside the town’s boundary can put yourself at risk.
If, for any reason, you feel a strong pull towards the trees and your head is filled with thoughts to wander among their refreshing green, immediately seek out one of the officials to require their assistance.
Rule 4: The temperature might drop relatively low in areas fringed by the said mass of green. The reports we received sometimes mentioned the sensation of invisible frigid fingers raking down the spine, all the way from the brainstem to the sacrum; or having one’s whole body enveloped in an eerie see-through cocoon which drank up their warmth little by little, leaving their skin prickling and crawling.
As distressing as it looks, this is an absolutely normal phenomenon. With crooked and gnarly branches intertwining on the above to weave out a canopy on which rich foliages develop, the land around the town is basically deprived of sunlight all year round, drastically reducing its temperature. This shroud of somberness is then underscored by the lack of human settlement, which juxtaposed it and the whole town, so being near it saps the positive energy that has built up in more bustling areas rather quickly.
Rule 5: You can never, ever, ever find yourself having an affinity for the forest, or even the trees growing on the border of Whispering Willows. Their own properties have rendered them unlikable and uncomfortable to be around. Yet, there is a slim chance that you feel that the trees are calling out to you, beckoning you closer, followed by a drunk-like state that clouded your mind. If you find yourself going through these symptoms, immediately pull yourself together (a sharp pinch to the forearm will do the trick) and clear the area at once.
Should they persist in stronger form, and start manifesting in real voices or physical touches, break into a run and do not look back. Keep on moving until you arrive at the nearest council office. The first few minutes should be easy; as you will only hear feeble whimpering or pleading from a far distance, echoing on and off, and feel a few urgent pats on your back. Try to make use of this time to bring yourself to safety, as the situation will only deteriorate with each passing seconds.
After five minutes, the disturbing sounds will suddenly dull into a stretch of silence, and you will no longer feel ghostly touches on your body. This is an important interval. Be aware of your surroundings. Do you hear the bustles of the town from afar, the faintest of noise that indicates life? If yes, then you can exhale in relief now, they already deem you unworthy of pursuit for some reason. If the air is still and quiet as though all is dead, pick up the pace and do not glance behind you or stop to reassess the situation. You need to strengthen your mental fortitude, because it is going to be tested soon.
At the start of the sixth minute, vibrancy will be stripped from the world around you, as though a thin layer of gray paint has been coated on your own pupils. An unknown tension will envelope you to crush at your psyche, and your heart beat will accelerate until its thundering drums vibrate through your veins. An intense fear will be gripping you tightly, convincing you that only dangers await ahead. You must overlook your own bodily alerts and will yourself to carry on.
The next 5 minutes are going to be the most arduous to endure. Frantic footsteps are going to reverberate from beside, above, and in front of you, overwhelming you with a dread that your doom is impending. Your footsteps will falter and your brain will automatically link turning back with safety. No matter how close you come to choking on your own terror, DO. NOT. BACKTRACK!
You will start hearing a cacophony of screams from various distances. Some far away, some exploding by your ears, but they will all convey extreme pain and despair, tearing at your eardrums and giving you migraines. You will even develop a premonition that you are bringing yourself straight to a monster, tears might flow from your eyes. But don’t give up. The more serious the tricks they employ are, the closer you are to safety.
At some point, an unsettling voice will hum along with the anguished crying. We do not know how to describe it in words. It rings with the scratchy quality of hoarse throats denied of water, then creaks in guttural bursts, each tone jagged and incongruous, like a severely rusting hinge. But we could translate a sickening joy from the unintelligible croaking. The painful screaming will escalate in tempo and volume, and you might even pick up disturbing sounds of flesh being torn apart a few feet away. The fear is going to suffocate you, blinding your judgment. Your whole system is going to desire turning back.
The illusions they employ vary from time to time. Just keep in mind once the office is within view, be prepared for visual attacks. Gruesome and nauseating imagery will come into play from this moment on. Expected to discover pools of blood where human body parts and organs floating below your feet. Limbless or skinless figures will be dragging themselves towards you in crippling gaits, begging you to save them or warning you not to proceed further in gurgling voices. You might even feel the weight of a tortured person on your back, feel their blood drenching your clothes, sense the viscous outsides of the intestine that drape over your arms, and smell the foulness of their rotten flesh. The horror will be beyond your imagination. We are sorry for the suffering you are subjected to, but please do not let the fear overwhelm your senses. You are so close to escaping.
Before you set foot within the office grounds, the screaming and moaning on your back will abandon all control and rip through your ear with one final desperate screech. Your consciousness could be compromised with this level of strain, but make sure to push yourself onto the first step of the stairs leading up to the stoop before collapsing.
Rule 6: The offices could only be used as temporary shelters before midnight (only the official staff receive full protection inside the establishment). Details on how to join our management committee will be showcased in future update
Rule 7: As you take seat in the office, recount the events you went through to whatever official in charge of the area, and they will devise a fitting solution. Usually, the situation might transpire in two directions:
They succeed in warding off the entities stalking you. Colors will then return to your world and the abominations you encountered will vanish without a trace. It is likely that you can receive a protection amulet as a good luck charm before being sent back home.
In the worst-case scenario, their attempts to purge the entities will fail. Some of the town’s less benevolent inhabitants possess great capabilities and cannot be dealt with the usual way. He or she will bring you to an empty desk by the corner and demand you to sit down and state your problems in detail. You have to pray that Willow is in town and ready to defend you.
If Willow is in the right shape to play bodyguard, she will give signs, usually by alleviating your mental trauma and bringing warmth to your heart. You will be instructed to leave the office, and on its grounds, you can find a majestic weeping willow with elegant branches extending outwards. There is no wind, but you will be able to see her serene foliages cascading down in gentle sways. Stay under her canopy, Willow will walk you back home and keep the sinister beings at bay.
Unfortunately, Willow is not always in tip top conditions. When she deems that the situation is out of her control, her decision would be to grant you a mercy death, lulling you into a peaceful, eternal slumber as she hummed you one last lullaby. We are terribly sorry that you cannot be saved, but we guarantee this is the best possible outcome. You do not want to join the grotesque humans you ran into on the way to the offices, do you?
Rule 8: Willow lacks the energy to sustain her human form, which is why you will never see her around town. Delivering warnings to keep the townsfolk from harm and performing exorcism duties is a daunting task. If you happen to be stopped by any woman referring to themselves as our Willow, immediately put distance between yourself and them. It is possible that they will enter a rage and demand respect in a screeching tone, baring their bloodied teeth, or start creaking their frame into twisted, horrendous shape while wearing a sickening smile on their face. Ignore them and return to your activities. But if they limp after you, their crushed bones creaking and groaning in rhythm with their snickering, head towards the council offices as fast as you can.
Rule 9: Several locations in this town are concealed and can only be accessed during certain days, and you will be notified beforehand. If you sight strange stores, shops or entertainment centers that you are certain have never appeared in Whispering Willow before, pretend they do not exist. Entering a wrong place at the wrong time will result in permanent imprisonment.
Rule 10: Touring the discreet locations during their fixed opening day is mandatory for all Whispering Willow residents. It’s an ancient formality that not even Willow can interfere. The danger level is alarmingly high, since Willow has no jurisdiction over them, but their rules will be provided to reduce casualties.
Rule 11: Willow is not a God, nor is she a deity or a protector of any kind. Do not have high hopes in her kindness, empathy or consideration, and do not send your prayers to her as you will soon be disappointed. Willow is loyal to Whispering Willow, not the people. She will choose the well-being of the majority over a couple individuals. Please learn to depend on your own wits, you cannot always expect to count on her in dire situations.
Rule 12: Try to familiarize yourself with the sinister screaming coming from the woods throughout the day. If it does not sound human, there is nothing to be concerned about. Willow requires sustenance like anyone else.
Rule 13: The officials are humans, but due to the heavy workload of managing the town’s activities, they will usually not be found outside their offices during the day. If you happen to catch them off-duty during working hours, ask them to produce a branch of fresh willow from the right pocket of their shirt. When they fail to oblige and start contorting their features, inform them that Willow would be displeased with this act of impersonating, that should be able to ward them off long enough for you to reach any council office in the vicinity.
Rule 14: Do not be afraid of Willow. She loves the town and will do all within her power to keep it thriving. Besides, she is a fastidious eater, regular humans are not to her tastes.
For indoor rules and other imperative principles to follow, please wait until the paperwork of your new properties is completed. You will receive them together on the same day.
Once again, welcome to Whispering Willows!

Characters:
One Subject: Werewolf male
Two Subject: Mermaid female
Three Subject: Vampire female
Four Subject: Alien male
Once upon a time there were four occult infants being raised in the basement of a secret laboratory. As they grew they were forced to work very hard levelling up skills and basically ended up talented at everything and achieved all childhood and some teen aspirations. They cheated anything they couldn't accomplish from a basement, but they could fit in playground equipment for a couple days and four of them was plenty for successful sleepovers.
Sheltered from the prejudices of their respective species, One and Three fell in love as teenagers. Eventually they mastered the wellness skill and teleported their way out of the lab and used the proceeds their paintings to buy a small home in Moonwood Mills.
In Moonwood Mills One was finally able to receive guidance from the Moonwood Collective to help him learn to control his werewolf temperament and hone his werewolf abilities. He quickly became leader of the pack, building it up to over forty werewolves. He fathered some of them as science babies, but he has always stayed faithful to his now wife Three.
As a vampire, Three faced difficulty fitting in, but her charming personality soon won over even the most reluctant werewolves. After receiving two degrees she decided to get into politics and became National Leader.
As such important pillars of the community, One and Three spend a lot of time making social visits. Their favorite thing to do is take baked goods to households with new babies while making sure they have everything they need. Sometimes they find households with no cribs, toddler beds, potties or even toys! So they keep these things, and infant playmats, in their inventories, ready to donate them to anyone who needs them. Most of the toys are hand-knit in their spare time. The grateful families are thrilled to become werewolf allies, often becoming werewolves themselves, or they might prefer to donate some plasma to a hungry Three or be turned into vampires.
Eventually the happy couple decide to start a family. One is in the perfect position to be a stay-at-home dad since he can take care of pack business without leaving the neighborhood. Babies are just out into a back carrier and taken with him.
Three babies later (Quinton, Sessy and Octavian) Three is ready to step down as National Leader. There is nothing more to accomplish down that route and she needs something new. One is very content as leader of the Moonwood Collective and has collected all the relics, but despite careful analyzing of them all he cannot tame a cowplant or befriend Greg. Maybe neither of those things were ever possible.
Two and Four (mermaid and alien) have escaped the lab as well and are living on an oceanfront property on the island. They are sharing a home strictly because of convenience and financial reasons.
I am having a creative block (unusual for me playing Sims) and need ideas on where to go from here with One and Three, or if I should just let them be while pursuing another (suggested please) route. I've got every world except For Rent and most of the packs. I do not have home bakery or jewelry yet, but will add them soon. Tartosa, Mount Korombi and Batuu are my newest and I haven't played a household in either of the first two and haven't visited Batuu yet.

Here’s a list of 400 side hustle ideas across various categories. Keep in mind that the best side hustle for you will depend on your skills, interests, and resources:

Freelancing and Writing:

• Freelance writing
• Content marketing
• Copywriting
• Resume writing
• Ghostwriting
• Proofreading and editing
• Transcription services
• Academic tutoring
• Social media management
• eBook writing
• Scriptwriting
• Technical writing
• Grant writing
• Speechwriting
• Blog management

Online Business:

• E-commerce store
• Dropshipping
• Affiliate marketing
• Digital product sales
• Print on demand
• Niche website
• App development
• YouTube channel
• Podcasting
• Online course creation
• Self-publishing eBooks
• Niche blog
• Online tutoring
• Stock photography
• Domain flipping

Services:

• Virtual assistance
• Graphic design
• Web design
• Social media marketing
• SEO consulting
• Logo design
• App design
• Personal shopping
• Event planning
• Wedding photography
• House cleaning
• Gardening services
• Handyman services
• Pet sitting
• Dog walking

Crafts and Arts:

• Handmade jewellery
• Art prints
• Custom paintings
• Candle making
• Soap making
• T-shirt printing
• Custom greeting cards
• Crocheting and knitting
• Pottery and ceramics
• Leatherwork
• Woodworking
• Metalworking
• Sculpture
• Glassblowing
• Custom furniture

Consulting and Coaching:

• Business consulting
• Life coaching
• Health and wellness coaching
• Career counselling
• Financial coaching
• Parenting coaching
• Relationship coaching
• Fitness coaching
• Time management coaching
• Stress management coaching
• Public speaking coaching
• Nutrition consulting
• Legal consulting

Rideshare and Delivery:

• Uber or Lyft driver
• Food delivery driver
• Package courier
• Grocery delivery
• Pharmacy delivery
• Alcohol delivery
• Errand running
• Medical transport
• Pet transportation
• Ride-sharing for elderly
• Taxi services
• Courier services

Retail and Reselling:

• Thrift store flipping
• Retail arbitrage
• Garage sale hunting
• Vintage clothing resale
• Electronics resale
• Sneaker reselling
• Used book sales
• Antiques resale
• Handmade jewellery sales
• Collectibles resale
• Record and vinyl sales
• Used furniture sales
• Flea market booth
• Wholesale product reselling
• Pawn shop trading

Food and Cooking:

• Catering
• Personal chef services
• Baking and pastry
• Meal preparation and delivery
• Specialty food products
• Cooking classes
• Food truck or cart
• Farmers market booth
• Pop-up restaurant
• Specialty catering (e.g., vegan, gluten-free)
• Spice blends and sauces
• Homebrewing beer or wine
• BBQ catering
• Specialty desserts

Fitness and Health:

• Group fitness classes
• Cycling tours
• Boot camp classes
• Wellness retreats
• Weight loss coaching
• Nutrition coaching
• Meal planning services
• Sports coaching
• Online fitness programs
• Health and wellness workshops
• Sports officiating

Real Estate and Property:

• Airbnb hosting
• Property management
• Real estate photography
• Vacation rental cleaning
• Property flipping
• Airbnb property management
• Home inspection services
• Vacation rental consulting
• Real estate investing
• Property staging
• House sitting
• Airbnb experiences
• Real estate coaching
• Real estate wholesaling
• Real estate appraiser

Entertainment and Arts:

• DJ services
• Event photography
• Magician or illusionist
• Balloon artistry
• Face painting
• Clown entertainment
• Event caricature artist
• Comedy writing
• Children’s party entertainment
• Storytelling services
• Impersonator or look-alike
• Wedding singing
• Event planning for parties
• DJing for weddings
• Event lighting

Transportation and Logistics:

• Moving services
• Freight brokerage
• Vehicle rental
• Boat or yacht charter
• Limousine services
• RV rental
• Bike repair and rental
• Towing services
• Motorcycle repair
• Transportation brokerage
• Freight shipping
• Heavy equipment rental
• Specialty vehicle rentals (e.g., vintage cars)
• Trailer rental
• Auto detailing

Finance and Investing:

• Stock market trading
• Forex trading
• Cryptocurrency trading
• Investment consulting
• Financial planning
• Tax preparation
• Credit repair services
• Personal finance coaching
• Estate planning services
• Insurance consulting
• Wealth management
• Retirement planning
• Financial literacy workshops
• Investment clubs
• Peer-to-peer lending

Education and Teaching:

• Teaching music lessons
• Art classes
• Language tutoring
• Homeschooling assistance
• Exam preparation tutoring
• Adult education classes
• Continuing education workshops
• Substitute teaching
• Educational consulting
• Dance lessons
• Acting classes
• Cooking classes
• Writing workshops
• Educational YouTube channel
• Science experiments for kids

Pets and Animals:

• Pet grooming
• Dog training
• Pet photography
• Pet boarding
• Pet-sitting at home
• Pet-sitting in the owner’s home
• Dog-walking services
• Pet massage therapy
• Pet taxi service
• Pet waste removal
• Pet accessories and products
• Dog obedience classes
• Exotic pet care
• Pet nutrition consulting
• Animal adoption consulting

Beauty and Personal Care:

• Mobile hairdressing
• Makeup artistry
• Manicure and pedicure services
• Mobile massage therapy
• Skincare consulting
• Personal stylist services
• Eyelash extensions
• Hair removal services
• Mobile spa services
• Teeth whitening services
• Spray tanning
• Beauty product sales
• Personal shopping for clothing
• Hair extensions and weaves
• Mobile barber services

Home Improvement and Maintenance:

• Interior painting
• Exterior painting
• Roof repair and cleaning
• Window cleaning
• Pressure washing
• Deck and patio construction
• Basement waterproofing
• Home organising
• Tile and grout cleaning
• Fence installation and repair
• Chimney cleaning
• HVAC maintenance
• Pest control services
• Appliance repair
• Septic tank pumping

Counselling and Therapy:

• Marriage counselling
• Family counselling
• Individual therapy
• Addiction counselling
• Mental health coaching
• Art therapy
• Music therapy
• Play therapy for children
• Career counselling
• Trauma therapy
• Grief counselling
• Relationship coaching
• Divorce mediation
• Anger management counselling
• Stress reduction workshops

Travel and Hospitality:

• Tour guide services
• Travel planning
• Travel photography
• Language translation services
• Cultural sensitivity training
• Adventure tour planning
• Eco-tourism consulting
• Vacation rental management
• Local food tours
• RV rental and planning
• Destination wedding planning
• Travel blogging
• Adventure sports guiding
• Luxury travel planning
• Travel concierge services

Environmental and Sustainability:

• Recycling pickup service
• Composting services
• Solar panel installation
• Energy efficiency consulting
• Green cleaning services
• Sustainable gardening
• Rainwater harvesting installation
• Wildlife habitat consulting
• Environmental education workshops
• Eco-friendly product sales
• Zero-waste consulting
• Organic farming
• Sustainable event planning
• Environmental impact assessment

Technology and IT:

• Data analytics services
• Cloud computing consulting
• IoT (Internet of Things) consulting
• Network installation and setup
• AI (Artificial Intelligence) consulting
• Blockchain consulting
• Computer programming
• Database management
• IT project management
• Data mining services
• IT hardware repair
• Tech support for seniors
• Computer tutoring
• Video game development
• Drone services

Legal and Paralegal:

• Legal document preparation
• Paralegal services
• Mediation services
• Court reporting
• Legal research services
• Notary public services
• Intellectual property consulting
• Legal transcription
• Process serving
• Legal compliance consulting
• Estate planning
• Immigration consulting
• Legal blogging
• Contract review services
• Family law mediation

Science and Research:

• Scientific consulting
• Research assistance
• Lab analysis services
• Field research services
• Data collection services
• Survey design and analysis
• Scientific writing
• Environmental impact assessment
• Biotechnology consulting
• Scientific equipment repair
• Ethnographic research
• Academic research assistance
• Statistical analysis services
• Clinical trial recruitment

Transportation and Car Services:

• Mobile car detailing
• Mobile car wash
• Auto repair and maintenance
• Motorcycle repair
• Boat maintenance and repair
• Bicycle repair and customization
• RV repair and maintenance
• Classic car restoration
• Electric vehicle charging station installation
• Limousine services
• Electric scooter rentals
• RV maintenance classes
• Car customization services
• Automotive product sales
• Auto body repair
• Auto glass repair

Sports and Fitness:

• Sports coaching
• Personal training
• Yoga instruction
• Pilates instruction
• Fitness boot camps
• Swimming lessons
• Dance instruction
• Martial arts instruction
• Golf instruction
• Tennis coaching
• Cycling coaching
• Running coaching
• Sports massage therapy
• Sports injury rehabilitation
• Sports event planning
• Sports equipment sales
• Athlete nutrition consulting

Entertainment and Performance:

• Event planning and coordination
• Event lighting services
• Live event production
• Party catering
• Party supply rentals

Hobbies and Recreation:

• Hobby classes
• Photography lessons
• Art workshops
• Fitness classes
• Outdoor adventure guiding
• Gardening workshops
• Wine tasting events
• Craft workshops
• Writing workshops
• Birdwatching tours
• Hiking tours
• Astronomy nights
• Surfing lessons
• DIY repair workshops
• Stand-up comedy classes
• Pottery workshops
• Motorcycle riding lessons

Senior and Elderly Care:

• Senior companionship services
• In-home care services
• Memory care services
• Senior transportation services
• Assisted living placement consulting
• Elderly home modifications
• Dementia care services
• Senior exercise classes
• Meal preparation for seniors
• Elderly technology assistance
• Senior pet care services
• Hospice care support
• Elder law consulting
• Senior financial planning
• Senior move management

Kids and Parenting:

• Babysitting services
• Nanny services
• Childcare consulting
• Parenting coaching
• Children’s party planning
• Parenting workshops
• Kids’ art classes
• Children’s music classes
• Child safety consulting
• Infant sleep coaching
• Potty training consulting
• Pediatric CPR classes
• Child behaviour consulting
• Baby Proofing services
• Maternity consulting
• Newborn photography
• Kids’ sports coaching
• Child transportation services

Tech and Electronics:

• Computer repair services
• Smartphone repair
• IT consulting
• Software development
• Website development
• App testing
• Computer troubleshooting
• Data recovery services
• Home network setup
• Tech support
• Virus removal
• Cybersecurity consulting
• Tech blogging
• Social media tech support
• Online tech courses
• Video game testing
• Drone repair services

Fashion and Clothing:

• Fashion consulting
• Personal styling services
• Wardrobe organisation
• Clothing alteration and tailoring
• Vintage clothing restoration
• Personal shopping services
• Costume design
• Fashion photography
• Clothing rental services
• Shoe repair and customization
• Clothing resale
• Jewellery design
• Wardrobe makeover services
• Textile artistry
• Knitting and crocheting classes
• Clothing customization
• Fashion blogging
• Clothing swap events
• Fashion illustration
• Tie-dye workshops
• Fashion accessory design

Home Improvement and Renovation:

• Interior design consulting
• Home remodelling
• Landscape design
• Flooring installation and repair

These side hustle ideas cover a wide range of interests and skills, so you’re likely to find something that suits you. Remember to thoroughly research and plan your side hustle to increase your chances of success.
Side Hustles Canada

Warning: This post contains HEAVY spoilers for not only ACOTAR, but TOG and CC as well (the entire Maasverse). Proceed with caution!

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#1. Mab's crown and Feyre's crown have certain similarities:

Crafted of silver and pearl, fashioned into upswept wings that met in its peaked center, encircled with spikes of pure diamond, it shimmered like the moon's rays had been captured within...
A terrible, surprising weight, the cool metal digging into her scalp . . .
"Mab's crown," Maeve said. "Your crown, by blood and birthright. Her true Heir."
KOA, Ch 8
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My crown was crafted of silver and diamond, all fashioned into swirls of stars and various phases of the moon. Its arching apex held aloft a crescent moon of solid diamond, flanked by two exploding stars . . .
This crown was heavier. Not unwelcome, but . . . strange.
ACOWAR, Ch 41

​
Artist: Tamara Kadoura (t_kadoura on IG)

#2. The Bone Carver is an old god from another world—a death god who reveals words of truth . . . who whispers secrets and revels in bone. A god who wants to be forgotten . . .

The Sin-Eater, who existed a millennium before TOG and was called the god of truth, had a temple filled with carved confessions in bone . . . and became a god forgotten:

“Legend has it that the Shadow Market was built on the bones of the god of truth.”
In every wall, skulls and bones were artfully arranged—and every wall, even the ceiling, had been formed from them . . .
“There’s writing on the bones,” Aedion said, striding down the steps and onto the bone floor . . . ‘I am a liar. I am a thief. I took my sister’s husband and laughed while I did it.’”
“Seems like this god of truth,” Aedion called from his wall, “was more of a Sin-Eater than anything."
. . . with a temple built from the bones of murderers and thieves and worse, she doubted this god had been a particular favorite. No wonder he’d been forgotten.
QOS, Ch 50
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Like the gates above, it was of ivory—bone. And in its surface were etched countless images: flora and fauna, seas and clouds, stars and moons, infants and skeletons, creatures fair and foul—
. . . The carver picked up the bone Rhysand had brought him and weighed it in those child’s hands. “I shall carve your death in here, Feyre.”
ACOMAF, Ch 30
The Carver purred to Cassian, “If I tell you a secret, warrior-heart, what will you give me?”
ACOWAR, Ch 22
“If they are death-gods,” I said, “then what are you?” . . .
“I am forgotten, that’s what I am. And that’s how I prefer to be.”
ACOWAR, Ch 23

​
Artist: CarolEspilotro on DeviantArt

#3. Lorcan's power, gifted from the dark god Hellas, is oddly similar to the Illyrian killing power . . . and their real-world counterparts are geographically connected:

Lorcan, with his unending cold rage and a talent for killing gifted to him by Hellas himself, never allowed himself to lose.
QOS, Ch 29
No, Lorcan’s magic was that of will—of death and thought and destruction. There was no name for it . . .
A wild smile danced on Lorcan’s lips as he let his magic rise to the surface, let its black roar fill his veins.
He had crumbled cities with this power.
EOS, Ch 9
His magic was strong, the strongest of any demi-Fae male in any kingdom, any realm.
EOS, Ch 9
-----------------
“Do you have any gifts?” I asked him . . .
“The power of stronger Illyrians tends toward ‘incinerate now, ask questions later.’ They have little magical gifts beyond that—the killing power.”
ACOMAF, Ch 16
Spreading his wings wide, Cassian took a final glance around the camp he’d razed to the ground.
Another reminder, too: of what he was capable of when pushed too far.
ACOFAS, Ch 3
First Cassian and Azriel appeared in the doorway. The High Lord’s general and shadowsinger—and the most powerful Illyrians in history.
ACOMAF, Ch 42

Hellas is the English alternative of Ἑλλάς, the Ancient Greek name for Greece, which is located on the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula.
The ancient peoples of Illyria—the Illyrians—also resided in a region of the Balkan Peninsula, populating much of what is modern Albania, one of the most mountainous countries in Europe.
​
From Brittanica Kids

#4. The number 7 is not only highlighted in CC . . . it shows up repeatedly throughout all three series:

THRONE OF GLASS

Dorian granted Celeana seven books:
"He granted my wish, and sent seven books from his personal library that I’m commanded to read.”
TOG Ch 11
-----------------
Baba Yellowlegs demanded seven gold pieces for her price:
Yellowlegs smiled at her . . . “Seven gold pieces, and I’ll answer your questions."
COM, Ch 40
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There are seven Great Hearths among the Crochan Witches:
And so it went . . . until the leaders of all seven of the Great Hearths stood gathered there.
KOA Ch 65

Other instances of 7 in TOG: Seven spiked goblets in the Champions test; seven chimings of the clock when saving Aedion (and seven minutes to spare); seven months in the Glass Castle; seven hidden portals; seven coppers for shoes Celeana couldn't afford; seven Fae Elide approaches; seven bells in Silba's Womb; seven slaves dying; seven ships disabled; seven Wyrdhounds; seven in Arobynn's inner circle; the seventh khagan who built a new throne.
ACOTAR

Seven High Lords and seven Courts of Prythian:
Then there were places like Prythian, divided and ruled by seven High Lords.
ACOTAR, Ch 5
-----------------
Cassian and Azriel have seven Siphons each:
If one Siphon was what most Illyrians needed to handle their killing power . . . Cassian and Azriel had seven each.
ACOMAF, Ch 42
-----------------
The War lasted seven years:
The War had raged for seven years. Years.
ACOWAR, Ch 38

Other instances of 7 in ACOTAR: Seven sons of Autumn; seven levels of the library; seven x seven years of Tamlin's curse; seven ash arrows in Rhys's wings; seven naga in Spring; the seventh volume of Lavinia's The Great War; a seven-headed inmate of the Prison; seven years of Cassian's training; seven pairs of breeding pegasi; seven priestesses singing where a bell rang seven times.
CRESCENT CIT Y

Seven is the holy number of the Asteri:
Seven—the holy number. Or unholy, depending on who was worshipping. Seven Asteri, seven hills in their Eternal City, seven neighborhoods and seven Gates in Crescent Cit y; and seven circles in Hel, with seven princes who ruled them, each darker than the last.
HOEAB, Ch 18
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The Prince of the seventh layer of Hel consumed the seventh Asteri:
The seventh and most lethal of the demon princes of Hel was in his mind . . . This demon prince had killed the seventh Asteri. Had devoured the seventh Asteri.
HOSAB, Ch 21
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Sigrid's resurrection lasted three sets of seven:
It took Hypaxia seven hours, seven minutes, and seven seconds to raise Sigrid.
HOFAS, Ch 48

Other instances of 7 in CC: Seven members of the Pack of Devils; seven gems in each gate; seven gold marks for drugs; seven stars on the Asteri's crest; seven files on Danika; seven Fae Kings; seven City Heads; seven years of Hunt's imprisonment; seventy-seven degree dip for demons; Justinian's seven day crucifixion; seven stair-steps to the Bone Quarter; seven mystics searching for sons; seven candles for the dead; seven shards of the Fendyr sword; seven digits for passcodes; Type-Seven demons; seven minutes to speak to Connor; the seventh dawning before Bryce left her room; seven declarations to trade souls; seven missed calls; seven x seven measurements for the Asteri's corridors, for the wall of the Northern Rift; seven comm crystals; seven family members rescued by Lidia; seven foot mech suits with seven foot swords; seven lbs seven oz of obsidian salt, cut into sevens.
Seven also plays an important role in ages . . .

SEVEN
The age Yrene took her healing oath. When Nesta's palms were beaten by her dance teacher. When Lysandra's mother threw her out of their house. The age of Falkan when Lysandra was born.
SEVENTEEN
The age Sam died. The year Celeana spent in Endovier. When Bryce and Mor lost their virginities. When Mor was left for dead. The age appearance of Rigelus. The age of the khagan's youngest son. When Borte competed in the Gathering. When Lysandra and Archer had their bidding. When Mordoc visited Danika. When Elain bought paints for Feyre and she painted the dresser of flames and flowers and stars . . . the age when Rhys first felt her.
OTHER SEVEN-RELATED AGES AND NUMBERS
Baba Yellowlegs was seven hundred years old when she was killed by Aelin; Manon is one hundred and seventeen; Lidia is forty-seven; Ruhn is seventy-five (note: seventy-five is said to be the age some ACOTAR Fae reach adulthood); twenty-seven is marked the ideal age for Danika and Bryce to make the Drop; Ruhn was twenty-seven during his Ordeal; two hundred three years and twenty-seven days after Lyria, Rowan shares his story with Aelin; two thousand two hundred and seventeen deaths Hunt has to atone for.

​
Artist: gabriella.bujdoso on IG

#5: Aelin and Rowan's rings are similar to ones described in each additional series:

“I don’t know the Fae customs,” she said. The thicker ring held an elegantly cut ruby within the band itself, while the smaller one bore a sparkling rectangular emerald mounted atop, the stone as large as her fingernail . . .
She took his hand, and he tried not to shudder in relief, tried not to fall to his knees as she slid the ruby ring onto his finger.
KOA, Ch 37
Aelin weighed the blade, a golden ring capped with an obscenely large emerald adorning her finger . . . Sure enough, a golden ring lay on the warrior’s own finger, a ruby built into the band.
KOA, CH 42
-----------------
My grip tightened on the leather as I tugged the horse to a stop, and the golden ring on my finger—along with the square-cut emerald glittering atop it—flashed in the sun.
ACOMAF, Ch 2
But I was ensconced in a cocoon of darkness and fire and ice and wind, a cocoon that melted the ring off my finger until the golden ore dripped away into the void, the emerald tumbling after it.
ACOMAF, Ch 12
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“I don’t believe we’ve met,” the Hind said, flexing and breaking the cards again. Her hands were deft, unfaltering. Unscarred. She wore a gold ring crowned with a square, clean-cut ruby.
HOSAB, Ch 33
Instead, with slightly trembling fingers, she pulled her ruby ring from her finger and laid it on the table between them. "I want you to have this . . . It's an heirloom of my father's household."
. . . Brann was staring with wide eyes at the obscenely huge ruby.
HOFAS, Ch 45

​
Artist: drawnexplore on teepublic

#6: There is more than one cave of glowworms . . . more than one cave filled with Crown jewels:

Overhead, clinging to the cavern ceiling as if they were stars trapped beneath the rock, small blue lights glowed.
Glowworms, like those in the lantern. Thousands of them, made infinite by the reflection in the black water . . .
A sea of stars—that's what the cave had become.
KOA, Ch 38
Aelin added another fistful of coins to her pocket, beginning a circuit around the treasure-laden tomb.
KOA, Ch 37
-----------------
The chamber was a cool, chill black, as if we'd stepped inside the mind of some sleeping beast. And within its round space gleamed glittering islands of light. Of jewels.
Ten thousand years' worth of treasure . . .
. . . carved into the rock was an entire wall of crowns. They each had their own resting place, lined with black velvet, each illuminated by—
"Glowworms," Rhys told me as the tiny, bluish blobs crusted in the arches of each nook seemed to glitter like the entire night sky.
ACOWAR, Ch 41

​
Waitomo caves in New Zealand, from geologyscience.com

#7: If Rhys's beast form is dragon-esque, Helion's is decidedly ruk-like:

The talons came first . . . Then dark scales or perhaps feathers . . .
It was a thing of nightmares. Nothing human or Fae in it. It was a creature that lived in black pits and only emerged at night to hunt and feast. The face . . . it was those creatures that had been carved into the rock of the Court of Nightmares. That made up his throne. The throne not only a representation of his power . . . but of what lurked within. And with the wings . . .
ACOWAR, Ch 74
-----------------
If Rhys was a flying terror crafted from shadows and cold moonlight, Helion was his daytime equivalent.
Gold feathers and shredding claws and feathered wings—
ACOWAR, Ch 74
-----------------
Not the sharp-tongued, brutal Helion, who watched my sister and me like an eagle.
A great, golden eagle . . .
Helion jerked his square chin to Rhys, the only one of them, it seemed, not surprised by my mate’s wings. But his eyes—a striking amber—fell on me.
ACOWAR, Ch 43
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The northern aerial cavalry of his people had long dwelled in the towering Tavan Mountains with their ruks: enormous birds, eagle-like in shape, large enough to carry off cattle and horses . . .
Each of the ruk’s golden feathers shone like burnished metal . . . her gold eyes had sized Nesryn up immediately.
TOD, Ch 2
. . . it was unsettling, to have the weight of that gaze wholly upon you. It was an eagle’s gaze—a ruk’s gaze. Keen and piercing.
TOD, Ch 6

Note: Full theory post on this here
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Artist: mftfernandez on IG

#8: There is more than one marsh with silence from beyond:

“What is this place?” Elide breathed, as if fearful the land itself would hear . . .
Silvery brackish water covered most of it, still as a mirror, interrupted only by grassy islands and mounds of earth—and crumbling, exquisite ruins.
“This is a bad place,” Elide whispered. “We shouldn’t be here.”
. . . “What do you sense?”
Her lips were bloodless. “Silence. Life, but such . . . silence. As if . . . "
Her words were a shudder of breath. “As if all the people who once lived here, long ago, are still trapped inside—still . . . beneath.
. . . "I don’t think this is a place for the living, Lorcan. The beasts in these waters . . . I do not think they tolerate trespassers. Nor do the dead.”
EOS, Ch 52
-----------------
But then gray, watery light hit her. And the air—the air was heavy, full of slow-running water and mold and loamy earth. No wind moved around them; not even a breeze.
. . . She had never seen a place so dead. A place that made the still-human part of her recoil, whispering that it was wrong wrong wrong to be here.
. . . He cleared the mist, banking to the left. “You sensed something?
“I don’t know what I sensed.” She swallowed. “Something is here.”
. . . Nesta strained to listen. Only silence answered. Empty of even a whistle of a breeze. “Who would bury their dead here?”
ACOSF, Ch 32

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Artist: RenoodleStudio on Etsy

#9. Crescent Cit y was not the first hint of eight—eight doorways, eight gates, eight courts, an eight-pointed star . . . but neither was ACOTAR:

“The eight guardians; you know of whom I speak.”
TOG, Ch 25
-----------------
The High Priestess walked onto the stone platform . . . An eight-pointed star was tattooed upon her brow in a shade of blue that matched her gown, its sharp lines extending to her hairline.
TOG, Ch 37
-----------------
There were no torch brackets here. The seventh portal revealed only a short passageway and one open door. An eighth gate.
COM, Ch 43
-----------------
A circle of eight dancers, both male and female—a holy number, Sartaq explained to a tentatively smiling Nesryn . . .
TOD, Ch 21

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Artist: izziesdrawings on IG

#10. The Suriel was not the only one in search of a warm cloak and kindness:

She should let Kaltain freeze to death for what she’d tried to do to her . . . But Kaltain had already curled in on herself again, conserving as much warmth as she could.
Celaena didn’t want to think about how frigid the cell must be at night; she knew what it felt like to curl up like that, desperate for any kernel of warmth, wondering whether you’d wake up in the morning, or if the cold would claim you before then.
. . . Celaena unfastened her black cloak.
COM, Ch 9
“The next time that fool Lucien gives you advice on how to trap the Suriel, you come to me . . . All you needed to do was offer it a new robe, and it would have groveled at your feet.”
ACOTAR, Ch 16
-----------------
Kaltain turned, that midnight gown swirling with her . . .
The woman was so small, so thin. The dress was barely more than cobwebs and shadows. It was cold in the mountain camp, even for Manon. Had she refused a cloak, or did they just not care?
QOS, Ch 31
I hadn’t known what to expect as I entered the ring of white trees . . . but it was not the tall, thin veiled figure in dark tattered robes. It's hunched back facing me, I could count the hard knobs of its spine poking through the thin fabric.
ACOTAR, Ch 14
-----------------
“Because Celaena . . . she gave her a warm cloak in a cold dungeon. And they wouldn’t let Kaltain take the cloak with her when they brought her to Morath, but she managed to save this scrap. To remember to repay Celaena for that kindness.
EOS, Ch 50
I took its hand in mine. “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think to say. I had done this—I had brought it here.
“I knew,” it gasped, sensing my shift in thoughts. “The tracking . . . I knew of it.”
“Then why come at all?”
“You . . . were kind. You . . . fought your fear. You were . . . kind,” it said again.
ACOWAR, Ch 60
-----------------
Her throat clogged, but she pushed past it as her trembling fingers fished out the little bit of cloth from her inside pocket.
“I think she kept this as a reminder of kindness,” Elide said hoarsely . . . And she died alone in Morath. She died alone . . . "
EOS, CH 57
Sprawled out, the Suriel’s bony chest heaved unevenly, its breaths few and far between . . .
“What—what can I do?” The words turned thin—brittle.
“Stay . . . ,” it breathed. “Stay . . . until the end.”
I took its hand in mine.
ACOWAR, Ch 60
-----------------
Kaltain unleashed the last of her shadowfire, tipping her face to the ceiling, toward a sky she’d never see again.
She took out every wall and every column. As she brought it all crashing and crumbling around them, Kaltain smiled, and at last burned herself into ash on a phantom wind.
QOS, Ch 82
“Give me your cloak. Please.”
. . . I didn’t bother to explain as I covered the Suriel’s body with the fine fabric.
“Thank you,” I said one last time to the Suriel, and stepped away.
Helion’s flame was a pure, blinding white.
It burned the Suriel into ashes within a heartbeat . . .
As warm light whisked us away, I could have sworn that the pile of ashes was stirred by a phantom wind.
ACOWAR, Ch 60

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Artist: Alice Power on ArtStation

“I don’t even know your name,” I whispered. The Suriel—it was a title, a name for its kind.
That small smile again. “Does it matter, Cursebreaker?”
“Yes.”
Its eyes dimmed, but it did not tell me.
-----------------
“Feyre Archeron,” the Suriel said again, gazing at the leafy canopy, the sky peeking through it. A painful inhale. “A request.”
I leaned close. “Anything.”
Another rattling breath. “Leave this world . . . a better place than how you found it.”
ACOWAR, Ch 60

_____________________
If you've read Throne of Glass and want to see a TOG exclusive "10 connections you may have missed" post, click HERE

It all started with a lonely, old man at the edge of town named Patrick Hanes. He was practically a hermit and never interacted much with the outside world. He stayed in his dilapidated house on his small plot of land, surrounded by the jungles of weeds and husks of junked cars that littered his property.
I had a paper route and would ride my bike every day before school delivering newspapers. I hated having to wake up with the cold and darkness wrapped around the world like a noose. I was having a nightmare about some pretty girls from my high school turning into beautiful, demonic succubi who lured guys into a party just to bite their heads off while having sex with them.
My alarm clock suddenly went off with a shrill cry. I gave a soft shriek of terror. I jumped up in bed, still covered in sweat and terrified. For a moment, the dream world and the real world seemed to blend into one, horrifying tapestry. I blinked quickly, clearing away the cobwebs.
“Jesus, I have to stop watching so many horror movies before bed,” I mumbled to myself as I got up and put on my clothes. I could still hear the crunching, wet snapping sounds as succubi had beheaded their male lovers. I remember trying to cry out as they held up the decapitated heads toward me before opening their mouths wide and popping them in. But at least I hadn’t woken up screaming this time, like I had every other day this week.
My mother was in the nicotine-stained kitchen, smoking cigarette after cigarette and watching 24-hour news channels. Heavy bags hung under her eyes. Mom didn’t sleep much lately, ever since she had tried to quit drinking. She stayed in the house now all day, every day, just staring blankly at the TV like a zombie. Dad had already gone to work. I barely saw him anymore. It seemed like he worked all day, every day, yet still, I knew we had major financial problems.
“You going to deliver the papers?” Mom asked in a hoarse voice, her blank eyes looking right through me. I nodded as I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal and some milk.
“Yeah. If I don’t leave now, I won’t have time,” I exclaimed tiredly, trying to avoid looking at my mother. “Mom, are you OK?” She blinked slowly at this before taking a deep drag on her cigarette.
“I am not OK, Bobby. I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she whispered, looking so hunched over and tired in her bathrobe. “But I think the worst has passed. I’m not hallucinating anymore.”
“Is that AA stuff helping?” I asked. She shrugged.
“They’re right about everything, but it doesn’t mean they can help me,” she responded sadly. “I think I’m too far gone sometimes. Even if I win for a day, how can I fight against this monster for the rest of my life?” She leaned close to me, an urgent expression coming over her face. “Addiction runs in your family, Bobby. Don’t ever become like your grandfather and uncle. Don’t ever become like me. Drugs and alcohol are just a way of slowly committing suicide, like a coward would. It takes a piece of your soul every single day, until there’s nothing left but a scarred husk, an empty shell of misery and weakness. And once you’re in, there is no way out. No way out…” She repeated it slowly and methodically, like a sacred mantra. “No way out…”
***
I pedaled along the empty streets. The autumn wind howled in fury, scattering dead leaves and flying trash in my wake. Our town of Harville only had a few thousand people and absolutely nothing to do except hiking, shooting guns and swimming. The naked trees covered the gently rolling hills like a thick, brown rug. The lights of houses dotted the landscape.
I threw the papers as fast as I could as I flew by on my bike. I wanted to get this done, to get out of the cold night. As I got further from Main Street, the houses grew sparser, the forests thicker and darker. Patrick Hanes’ house was the last one of my route, and then I would be done. Still pedaling like a madman, I glanced over at his shabby little house while I chucked his paper.
I saw the door standing wide open. All the lights in the house were shut off. A smeared trail of blood ran up the front steps. I quickly pulled over on my bike, hitting the kickstand and setting it up in the jungle of tall grass that swayed in the breeze in his front yard. A cold blade of dread pierced my heart.
“Mr. Hanes?” I called loudly, slowly walking towards the open front door. As I got closer, I could see that it had been smashed open. It hung slanted, one of its hinges totally busted off and the other half-pulled out of the wall. “Oh, shit,” I whispered as I looked at the damage.
“Please…” a weak voice called out faintly from the bowels of the dark house. “Help me… Help…”
“Mr. Hanes, do you need an ambulance?” I tried calling back, but there was no reply. Shuddering, I crept inside. I tried the lights, but the power had gone off. I noticed the heat had stopped as well. I pulled my jacket tight around my body, zipping it up. I really did not want to go in there. Every part of my intuition screamed at me to get out. It was times like this that I cursed my parents for not giving me a cell phone. They said once I turned 16, I could get a better job and buy my own cell phone if I wanted.
Logically, though, I knew there was no reason I should turn and run. This old man had probably hurt himself and needed help immediately. There was nothing to be scared of. Unless, maybe, there was still an intruder still inside the house. What if the voice calling out wasn’t Patrick Hanes at all, but some psychopath who murdered him and now lay in wait in the shadows?
“Goddamn it,” I whispered, vacillating. I started to take a step inside the house, then to go back towards my bike. I figured I could go to another neighbor’s house and ask them to call an ambulance and the cops. Then a pained, high-pitched wail shattered the silence.
“Oh God, that hurts!” Patrick Hanes roared. Swearing, I tried to blindly feel my way through the house toward the screaming voice. The moonlight streamed in through the windows, giving some illumination. But now there was another problem.
The entire house looked like something from a hoarder’s documentary. And it smelled. I noticed odors of rotting food, decaying garbage and mold. I saw dishes piled up three feet high in the sink, ancient newspapers stacked up to the ceiling in the living room, black garbage bags strewn all over the place. As I passed through the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of an overflowing ashtray on the counter. Next to it sat a lighter. I immediately grabbed it, flicking it and holding it out in front of me to drive away the creeping shadows.
The place looked even worse than I had imagined with the extra light. Cockroaches skittered away through cracks and under doors. The sinister glint of tiny rat and mouse eyes glittered back at me from every corner of the room. And the pained gurgling of Patrick Hanes had now, finally, stopped.
I kept making my way back towards where I thought the crying had come from. I found a closed bedroom door. I reached out to turn the handle, but it felt sticky and repulsive under my grasp. I looked at it closer, realizing it was entirely covered in blood. I repressed an urge to gag and quickly pushed the door open before wiping my hand off on my blue jeans.
“Mr. Hanes?” I whispered as the door creaked. This bedroom was even worse than the kitchen and living room. It looked like a flea market had somehow fused with a dump and then exploded. I saw knickknacks, bags of trash, old, water-damaged books and empty prescription bottles all over the place. A small trail was cut into the towers of garbage, almost like a deer trail scouring its way through the thick brush.
From the back of the room, I heard groaning and pained, raspy breathing. I made my way through the piles of junk, worried that they might collapse on me at any moment. I turned the last corner, holding the lighter high in front of me as if it were a religious sacrament used to drive back vampires. Against the back wall, I saw Patrick Hanes.
He had wrapped himself in a giant, brown cocoon. Strands of thin, hair-like tendrils formed an oval shape over the entire corner of the room. They seemed to grow into the walls themselves. I could see cracks like spiderwebs in the sheetrock where the tendrils penetrated it.
Patrick Hanes lay half-out of the cocoon. He had ripped through some of the brown filaments and now stood, bent over and naked. His legs stayed inside the cocoon while the top half of his body poked out, as if he were some giant, ugly infant trying to make its way out of some alien birth canal.
“What happened to you?” I cried. He raised his face, and I quickly backpedaled, slamming hard into a tower of books and newspapers. I recognized some of the features of Patrick Hanes, yet at the same time, this wasn’t him at all. This thing seemed inhuman, even alien.
His mouth jutted out six or seven inches, narrow and fanged like a crocodile’s. His eyes were the same pale, watery blue eyes of Patrick Hanes, but his nose had rotted away. In its place stood a blackened crater of necrotic tissue. All the hair on his body appeared to have fallen off. His clothes hung in tatters all around him.
His skin had turned into something insectile. It glittered in the dim light of the flame, chitinous and black like the skin of some enormous beetle. Coming off both sides of his body, I saw lots of tapering, pointed appendages, each a few feet long and as thin as a pencil. They reminded me of the many sharp legs of a house centipede.
“It hurts…” Patrick Hanes groaned as more flakes of pale, white skin fell off his scalp and face. “Oh God, what’s happening to me? I feel… strange. Hungry.” His crocodilian mouth snapped together with a sound like a pistol shot. The corners of that strange mouth turned up into a grin. “Oh, so hungry…” He started to pull himself the rest of the way out of the cocoon. It ripped open with a sound like hay stalks being trampled.
I didn’t answer the eldritch creature that had once been Patrick Hanes. As I looked into his blue eyes, seeing all the agony, fear, confusion- and hunger- there, something in me snapped. I turned, running out of the house without looking back.
***
“What the hell, what the hell…” I kept whispering, repeating it as I pedaled hard across the dark streets. The nearest house was only about a two-minute bike ride. But with the adrenaline rush and the terror gripping my heart, I think I made it there in half that time. The trees flew past at tremendous speeds, but I didn’t slow down. All I could think about was that creature ripping its way out of that cocoon. And then what would he do?
I saw the white colonial looming up on my left. I gave a sigh of relief as I pedaled across the freshly-mown yard. I checked my watch, seeing that the sunrise would start in about twenty minutes. For some reason, that gave me hope.
I jumped off the bike, sprinting towards the front door. I started pounding on it with all of my strength, smashing it with the side of my fist over and over.
“Hello?” I shouted. “We need police and ambulances here! Your neighbor is… hurt, or something. Can you please call the cops?” I kept shouting and slamming my fist, but no lights on the house turned on. Just as I was about to give up and go to the next house, the front door slowly creaked open, as if it had done so on its own. I heard heavy, labored breathing from inside. I took the lighter out, flicking it in front of me.
I screamed as I saw the mutilated bodies strewn across the hallway. Their throats had been torn out. Their sightless eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling. I quickly realized it was an entire family laying here mutilated in front of me- a mother, a father and their two daughters. It looked like something had eaten away their stomachs and even ripped out the heart of one of the girls. The ribs in her chest jutted up like claws around the gaping, empty hole.
Behind the families, I caught a glimpse of something black and shiny, as if some enormous centipede crouched there in the shadows. It hissed, a shrill, high sound that pierced the silence. All I could smell was their blood and my own sweat at that moment. I slammed the door shut, turning and running towards my bike.
I had just reached it when the door exploded outwards as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. Another one of those insectile, humanoid monstrosities ran out. Its shrill, raspy hissing echoed through the night.
I jumped on the bike and pedaled out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t dare to glance back. The house was on top of a gently sloping hill, and I had a long descent to Main Street. I have never, in my life, gone as fast on a bicycle as I did during my escape from that creature. I heard more of its diseased growls and hisses. Its thudding footsteps followed me ceaselessly across the town. A few times, it sounded so close that it might have been able to reach out and brush its fingers across my back.
My house appeared up ahead on the right. I saw my Dad’s truck in the driveway. He stood outside on the border of the sidewalk with a 12-gauge shotgun. When he saw me, he gave a grim smile.
“Dad! Help!” I cried as I pedaled frantically toward him. He saw the monstrous, transformed shape sprinting after me and raised the shotgun. I ducked down on the bike as he fired, trying to make myself as small a target as possible. The boom echoed through the night like thunder.
A slug whizzed past my body. I heard the creature give a tortured gasp. Its body fell to the concrete with a heavy thud. I stopped my bike, still shaking. My heart felt like it might explode in my chest. I looked back at the creature that had chased me, seeing the same crocodilian snout, the same chitinous shell, the same centipede-like appendages.
Dad ran over to me, hugging me. He pulled me off my bike. I saw Mom standing in the front door, pale and trembling.
“He’s alive!” Dad shouted. “It’s started, but he’s alive, and we’re together as a family again.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I asked breathlessly. “I mean, thank God you’re not, but…”
“When I got there, I found my boss in his office, wrapped up in a giant cocoon,” Dad said, giving a strange glance at Mom. “Once I saw it, I knew what it meant, and I raced back here. When I realized you weren’t here, I thought…”
“We thought you were dead! Eaten!” Mom cried, tears flowing down her face. “But come inside, come inside. It’s not safe here anymore. Not until it’s all over.”
***
“It’s something in the water of Harville… something in the air. Every hundred years, this starts happening,” Dad said. Mom gave a cry of relief.
“Oh God, it’s finally time,” she wailed, her hair sticking up, her face a mask of insanity. “We can go to sleep and wake up without this burden of our humanity. No more pain, no more thoughts.” Dad nodded, turning to me.
“Don’t you feel it, son? The first creeping fingers of the sleep, the metamorphosis? I can feel it… like ice water in my veins. The tiredness. The sleep of the dead.” I opened my mouth to argue, to say no, but my mind felt blank. My body felt cold. I only nodded.
“Then it’s time,” Mom said, drawing us together in a hug. “It is time to start the change.”

“Deadly Attractor” (TOC)
by P. Orin Zack
[2003]
 
Chapter Three
 
… Saturday …
Frank arrived at the Kübler-Ross Hospice staff lounge before Healer Gutiérez the next morning, so he made himself a drink and got back to his book. A few pages later, he was interrupted by a quiet voice in his left ear.
“Let me know when you reach a convenient break point.”
He craned around for a look. Healer Gutiérez had an oddly androgynous appearance, even more so than in the still he’d seen. “Where do you want to do this?
She shrugged. “We can start here, then see where we end up.”
He motioned for her to take the seat opposite. “How shall we start?”
“Tell me what you’ve been doing so far, and how it’s been working for you.”
Frank sat back. “Well,” he said, “after the first few attacks, it was obvious that I couldn’t be a very effective Healer if I had to keep stopping in the midst of a session. I talked it over with Jerry, and we decided to see what we could learn about it.”
She raised a finger. “How is he, by the way?”
“Improving.” He nodded. “I dropped over to East-Side MedCenter last night for a visit. He’s stable. They’re reinforcing his immune system to counteract the agents used to clear out the poisons that got in through the wound. The nerves in his leg are responding to the knitting factor, and they loaded him up with nanobots to repair the bones that were shattered.”
“Go on.”
Frank rubbed his neck briefly. “Well, it seemed that there were similarities in the attacks I’d had until then, so we chose to focus on that to start. It had a tempo to it. Although the specific locations of the pain were different, it did tend to express itself in a repeatable way. I’d have an arpeggio of pain dancing in my right leg, for example. Then it would pause for an instant and do something similar in my left. The pattern was the same during each attack. It followed a complex sequence, then repeated at a higher intensity and greater speed.”
She waited as he paused to take a drink.
“Past a certain point, of course, I couldn’t resolve the components of the pattern any longer, and it just felt like a cloak of pulsating agony.”
“Okay,” she said, “so what did you do then?”
“Jerry shadowed me for a week. Some of my patients weren’t too happy with that. Fortunately, he had an opportunity to watch my energy field during an attack before we had to stop. As we’d suspected, my energy field was distorting as well. Since there’s a reciprocal balance of causality between physical and energy systems, we tried an experiment. We’d established the timing of the pattern by then, so we spent some time developing an energy pattern that would precisely offset the thing. The theory was that if we could cancel out the energy effects of the thing, it wouldn’t be able to reinforce itself, and would therefore fade out instead of getting stronger.”
“An interesting approach,” she said after a while. “How did it work?”
He shrugged. “At first, it seemed to do the trick. I went for a few months like that, but then the pattern began to mutate, and our counter pattern didn’t synch to it any longer.”
Healer Gutiérez cocked her head for a moment. “Do you have any idea why it did that?”
“Not really. In any case, we attempted to adjust the pattern, but all we succeeded in doing was to create a catalog of patterns, and I had to quickly pick the right one to use before it was too late. That brings us up to the incident at the courthouse.”
She sat silently for several minutes, her eyes darting about in physical reflection of the leaps among associated memories and ideas as she thought. Frank was reluctant to interrupt. Finally, she blinked a few times and looked down at her drink.
Frank spread his fingers on the table. “You said you had an idea?”
“Yes. It’s something that I’ve used for another purpose, but I believe that it would be effective in this situation as well.” She moistened her lips. “You may not want to risk it, though.”
He shook his head in confusion. “Why not? What is it?”
“Call it an active thought-form. Take the solution that you’d crafted, and give it a rudimentary intelligence. Make it want to balance out the chaos of an attack, and set it loose.”
Frank just stared at her.
She visibly drooped. “What?”
“You… you want to create an Elemental?”
She shrugged. “There are lots of names for them. What you call it really depends on your culture. Most of the names come with a big helping of emotional and religious baggage, though. They’re neither good nor evil in and of themselves, of course. I’m just suggesting that there’s a healthy use for one, that’s all.”
“And you’ve done this before?”
“Sure. Look, if this is going to be a problem for you, we don’t have to—”
Frank waved his hands in the air. “No, no. It’s not a problem. Just very surprising, that’s all. I’m curious, though. Have you had any trouble with these things after you created them? From what I know of them, they have a tendency to take on a life of their own after a while.”
“So we’ll keep an eye on it. We can always destroy it if—”
“Destroy it?” he countered.
“Sure,” she said flatly. “Why not?”
“Because once you create life, you must honor it. Like a baby. If your son misbehaved, would you kill him? Surely there’s another way.”
“Such as?” she said.
“Such as finding a new task for it. Such as helping it.”
Healer Gutiérez was silent for moment. She crossed her arms and considered the situation. At length, she nodded in agreement. “All right. If the thought-form gets out of control, we abandon the effort, and you do whatever is appropriate. Will that work?”
“Yes. How do we start?”
The lounge had begun to fill up by this time, so they adjourned to Frank’s office area and arranged to not be disturbed for a while. Soon enough, they were settled into what passed for comfort in Kübler-Ross. Frank was stretched out on the cot he kept in a corner for emergencies, and Healer Gutiérez was facing him in the comfy chair. She dimmed the lights, told him to relax, and started to talk him into a light trance.
“We’ll begin this much as you started the earlier process, Frank, by putting you into the moment when one of your attacks began. Cast back in your memory to an incident in which you were aware of what was happening from the very beginning. When you’ve found one, imagine that you have complete control over the passage of time, and pause the event just at the moment it begins. Now imagine that you also have complete control over the intensity of the experience, and turn it down so that you cannot be harmed by it. Let me know when you’re ready.”
Frank’s breathing was slow and even at first. Soon, it caught for a moment, and resumed a bit shallower than it had been. He nodded subtly.
“Okay,” Healer Gutiérez said quietly. “Now I want you to visualize your energy field as it appears when you are happy, healthy and well rested. This is the state that your new energy partner will want to achieve when it’s playing in your field, the state that you want it to return to when you’re having an attack.”
While Frank silently worked on that, she opened her palms towards him and moved them slightly as she reached out with her psychic sensitivity and familiarized herself with the feel of the energy flowing through his aura as it surrounded his physical body. Doing this, she learned what his resting field felt like. For their strategy to succeed, however, his imagined aural state had to be substantially the same. The only way for her to know if that were so would be to link with him and experience his imagined field as well. Then she could compare the two, and guide his progress.
She closed her eyes and took a few long, deep breaths. Focusing on the gentle psychic sensation of his energy field, she reached deeper and felt for the core of the interwoven pattern of consciousness. This was different for each person, and reflected the way they understood and interacted with the world. Frank would be doing a similar linkage with the witnesses in court, but they would be fully awake and distracted by the proceedings. Here, it would be possible for Frank to feel her presence as well.
Frank felt as though he was floating in a warm enveloping cocoon of dream. His physical senses were muted by the trance, and his mind was focused on the moment before an incident, imagining what his normal healthy aural field was like. In this state, time had no meaning, and a part of him wondered if he could reach through to the DreamTime from here.
Healer Gutiérez now adjusted her awareness slightly, so she could compare her experience of his cocoon with her direct psychic sensation of it. It was a difficult balance to maintain, one that could easily be used for other purposes in guided meditation, but without someone to help keep her poised on that balance, she had her figurative hands full. It seemed as though Frank’s visualization was distorted in a way, much like a person’s own recorded voice sounded different from the real thing, a bit tinny and weak, but substantially the same. Satisfied that they could begin, she withdrew from the link and resumed monitoring his actual field.
“Okay, Frank,” she said quietly. “Now we can begin creating your new thought-form partner. Are you ready to continue?”
When she saw him nod again, she smiled and took a long breath. “Imagine now that within your aura is a living energy being, a sprite that stays with you and wants to keep you healthy. It spreads throughout your entire field, and has the ability to affect how easily energy flows through you and around you. This sprite is a helper, a being whose happiness is dependent on your own. When your energy field is threatened, it acts like an energy version of your immune system and swings into action to make things right again. At the moment, your field is healthy, and the sprite is at rest. When you’re ready, we’ll show it how to help you.”
Frank’s breath deepened again, and a gentle smile crossed his face. Then he nodded.
“Good,” she said. “Now start playing back the incident we’ve queued up, and stop it once you have the first spray of pain.”
While she watched, Frank’s field puckered down the outside of his right leg, then stopped changing. He’d entered the first stage of the attack in a safe and controlled way. Everything was going fine.
“Okay, Frank,” she said. “Show the sprite where the problem is. You can do this by stroking it towards the area on your leg.” While she watched, a flow within his field began to gather over the affected area until the pucker was filled with the sprite.
“Play the incident a bit further, and do the same thing again.”
This time, a pucker appeared along the back of his left leg, then filled in. Frank repeated the process several more times before she suggested that he stop for a while. At her suggestion, he then restarted the sequence, and played through the same part of the attack in a single slow pass, but this time, with his pain control adjusted high enough to know how the sprite was affecting that as well. While she watched, his aura slowly ebbed and flowed as first the remembered attack and then the sprite affected each area in turn. When it was finished, she asked whether he’d felt pain.
He shook his head. “No pain this time,” he whispered.
With that aspect confirmed, they restarted the sequence yet again, but this time he let it run at normal speed. The sprite seemed to have learned its task. Satisfied, Healer Gutiérez brought Frank back out of his light trance state, and asked him to sit up.
“I think it worked,” he said happily.
“Maybe,” she cautioned. The real test is the next time you have an attack.
 
… Monday …
Publicity about the impending court case was hard to ignore that weekend. It had been a while since the last great public scandal, and such things had a way of creating their own social weather. You could almost see the clouds of controversy starting to obscure the sky as diverse topics got drawn towards the developing squall, and bits of the story soaked into the communal consciousness. Start a discussion of just about anything, and it would find a way to involve medical politics.
Frank followed three others into the groundcar that left his residential cabstop that morning, and eavesdropped on them as he watched the city slide past. The first time their discussion found its way to the case he was reporting to, they all paused briefly before making an abrupt conversational left turn to escape its pull. The second time, they looked at one another anxiously, then shrugged and drove headlong into the storm.
Not that there was anything new about the situation, of course. In the hundred or so years since the Global Directorate had reunited the world, interregional conflicts over randomized environmental assets had given way to managed transnational economies. It didn’t hurt that one of the first things this latest successor to the League of Nations had done was challenge the world to plant a colony beyond our own sun’s planets. Audacious goals, even before the first moon landing, had served to focus the public’s attention beyond their own immediate problems, and this one was no different. Lately, however, it seemed that the only things worthy of that sort of attention were contrived, but it wasn’t clear what that might mean.
A crowd was already gathering outside the courthouse when Frank’s ride swung past on its autonomous way to the closest available cabstop. High-profile events, such as the class-action suit he’d been called about, usually drew a diverse following, in addition to those people who actually had a reason to attend. It wasn’t really necessary for the curious to travel to L.A., though, unless they wanted a chance to glimpse people they didn’t recognize on their way to explain things they weren’t interested in. More likely, they simply wanted a bit of chaos in their lives. Public gatherings never really got out of hand, but for some, even the possibility was enough.
As Frank approached the courthouse steps, he watched the swarm of people milling about. There were knots here and there, some moving slowly towards the doors, some parting as an uninterested party to the case blundered past, and one stationary knot, a standing wave with a powder blue glow at its center, that seemed to be growing. This latter would be the professional juror leading the inquiry. When the GD unified the world’s justice systems, it also introduced some long-overdue changes to how trials were carried out. One of these was empowering the jury, which was expected to render a verdict, with the ability to ask questions. This made it necessary for at least some jurors to be specially trained, and that led to the establishment of a new profession. Since then, men and women wearing formal powder blue outfits had gained celebrity status, because they truly represented the interests of the public in trials like this.
Curious to hear what was going on, Frank drifted towards this latter crowd, and stopped just close enough to make out the calm voice at its center. Unlike the people clustered about other parties to the case, this group was more interested in listening than in talking, and that made it easier to follow the conversation.
“I’ve been asked,” the juror said over the murmur, “whether I’m permitted to raise questions posed by someone here. The simple answer is yes, but in order to get a useful response, it’s important to ask the right witness, at the right time, and in the right way.”
“But how?” said a woman from the far side of the crowd. “How can you know that?”
The juror smiled. “An excellent question, and one that gets to the heart of the problem. Each party’s representation attempts to frame the inquiry by their theory of causes and effects, their choice of meaning and interpretation. This is how they try to control what is or is not relevant to understanding the case. This is also our starting point as the jury. If we want to explore an area that has been protected by their presentation, we first have to establish grounds for posing the question. Doing so requires knowledge of more than just the law, but also quite a bit of psychology, logic, dynamics and several other fields as well. In a sense, a trial is a three-sided balance, with the jury seeking truth while the contending parties seek to validate their positions.”
In the silence that followed, some members of the crowd drifted away, and were replaced by others. Frank looked around for an opening, and started towards the sparsely filled area to his left. He didn’t get more than two steps before someone grabbed his right arm from behind. Surprised, he started to pull it forward as he turned around to see who it was.
Somehow, he found himself staring into the woman’s green eyes before taking notice of anything else about her. A moment later, he was sure they were brown, and wondered how he’d made such a perceptual error. Now that he’d had a chance to see her face, it was clear that she was the kind of person who was hard to describe. Nondescript. Ordinary. There weren’t any distinctive things to hook a memory onto. Her brown hair was short enough to be stylish, but it wasn’t done in any way he could describe. Even her clothes defied easy classification.
Frank was about to ask her what she wanted, when the sight of an approaching L.A. Police officer sent her away into the crowd. Still puzzling over the incident, he worked his way around the juror’s crowd and walked up the steps to the courthouse.
Inside, things were far more orderly. The entry area was scanned by security systems that identified people as they crossed the lobby, and the locator board showed you where to go if you looked at the virtual display’s laser target. Since Frank was wearing his own display system, directions and information about the case against HealthTech Resources and Tanguru ProbliMetrics were shown in a far more convenient way. Brushing the details to the side as he walked, he made his way to the jury room, which was opposite the main entrance to the courtroom.
The apprentice juror, who was reading from a handheld unit at the time, looked up and smiled. “Good morning,” she said with what Frank now noticed was a French African accent, and indicated a nearby chair. “We have some time before they will call us in, so you might as well be comfortable.”
“Thank you.” Frank took a closer look at her Apprentice Juror ID as he sat down. “This is my first case,” he said, a bit unsure of himself. “Your ID doesn’t have a name on it, only a number. How am I supposed to refer to you?”
She flicked her book off and set it down. “That is probably the thing about my new profession that I like the least. When I was a researcher, I had a name and the objects of study had numbers. Now it is the other way about. During the case, it seems, I’m to be known simply as Juror #2.”
Frank chuckled. “I guess that makes the foreman Juror #1, then. He was taking questions outside when I arrived.”
“Yes,” she said, leaving the end of her word suspended, as if there was more to the answer.
Habits of language were important to Frank. They revealed a great deal of what went on inside, far more than most people realized. “Would you mind a personal question?” he said after waiting for the spoken ellipsis to fade.
When she nodded, Frank leaned forward a bit. “During the interview, you asked why I chose to work abroad as a Healer. I got the sense that you’d done something similar. Was I right?”
Juror #2 closed her eyes for a moment. To Frank, it was signal of a person’s attention to how things were said, a momentary inner focus, outwardly expressed. It also gave him a moment to look over the way her inner spirit had expressed itself in flesh, and how that form had in turn expressed itself in dress. Her intensely dark skin was set off by a carefully constructed sculpture of finely textured hair, and she wore a formal robe with a bold design done in colors associated by many peoples with earth, life and light.
“I have led several lives, you might say. Before this one, I performed research in Lambarene, above the western coast of the Central African Union. It was both fulfilling and sterile. I valued the rigor, the search for hidden truths, but not the solitude. There was no community in the process.”
Frank understood completely. He’d left First Nation for reasons that were similar, in an odd way. His sense of completeness had made him uncomfortable with any single method of approaching a problem, even if it was the traditional one practiced by generations of shamans in his family and tribe. They had long made use of western and eastern practices, but what Frank wanted to do was to develop a new synthesis of methods and philosophies. It wasn’t exactly a popular opinion, especially among his family, but it was the direction in which his personal truth lay, and that they could understand. So he had left to pursue his goal, and the path brought him to Los Angeles. He did not know why he was drawn here, but it had the feeling of rightness to it, so he became a Healer and joined the Hospice. That was several years ago. He was still awaiting the next bend on his journey when the request from the court had arrived.
Two other jurors walked in, greeted Frank and #2 briefly, and then settled down at the far end of the room to continue a discussion that had apparently started some time earlier. That made five, if you included #1, who was probably still carrying forth outside. Three jurors remained.
Refocusing from his memories to the moment, Frank glanced back at the door for a second before continuing. “And yet, even here, as a juror, you’re still somewhat isolated from the case you’re considering. Being known as a number instead of by your name must bother you.”
She smiled, and nodded slowly. “Yes, it does. But I find that it enables me to avoid the reluctance I might otherwise feel about probing into someone else’s truths.” She glanced down into her opened hands, relaxed them, and then studied Frank for a moment. “You moved here as well. Have you found what you were seeking?”
“That may be something I’ll only know in hindsight.”
Juror #1’s now-familiar voice preceded him into the jury room. He was still trailing a crowd when he entered, but only the two people that were part of the jury entered with him. That left one more to make their full complement of seven. Nevertheless, he closed the door behind him and suggested that those who were present take their seats around the conference table.
One of the two jurors who had entered after Frank tentatively raised a finger. “Shouldn’t we wait until everyone’s here?”
Number 1 shook his head. “He can catch up if he misses anything important. I want to make sure that the rest of you understand how this works.” He swung his gaze towards Frank. “Especially you, Healer Sanroya.”
“As Jurors,” he said strongly, “we are responsible for deciding the outcome of this case.” He then looked at each juror in turn. “We represent the people, and are obliged to find for the common good. There are many truths to this case, and each side will attempt to convince us of theirs. Before the reforms, courts were forced to choose one of those truths. As a result, precedents undermined the intent of well-meant laws, and justice became a servant of the powerful.”
Frank glanced around the table. Their foreman had quickly brought the group into unity. It was almost as if he had placed them all in a light trance. Even the rhythm of their breathing was coming into step.
“Your job here,” the foreman said evenly, “is to question those truths, to find the reality behind both of them, and bring it out into the open. You are not here to sit quietly and accept whatever you are told. Nor are you here to disrupt the proceedings. There is a well-wrought process for performing your job, and we, as a jury, will be far more effective if we all use that process.”
He paused for a moment. When he continued, his manner was looser, his bearing at ease. “During your interviews, I said that being a juror was a careful balance, that you would at once be both on public display and cloaked in secrecy.”
Frank watched intently, realizing that #1 spoke as performance art, as theatre. In a way, he was preparing the jurors to enter the courtroom as players in a sacred drama, to treat the room as sacred space.
A sudden rustling outside, followed by a resounding thump caught everyone’s attention, breaking the secular spell being woven by their leader. A moment later, the door swung open. The final juror stumbled over a thick black book and sprawled to the floor.
While their newest member stood up and brushed himself off, Frank leaned over and picked up the book. “‘A Pictorial History of the World’s Great Trials’,” he read. “Are you a historian, or just a book collector?”
The slight man took a breath. “There’s a difference? Virtual books can be changed. Authentic paper can’t.” He laid his hand on the book, which Frank had started to page through. “This one is from the time of the first space exploration, mid 20th century. It’s a record of western—” He froze when his eyes met those of the foreman. “I’m late, aren’t I? Sorry.” Then he took the book, walked to the far side of the table, and sat down.
Juror #1 waited until the historian stopped fidgeting, then spoke directly to him. “We’re here, all of us, to see that the common good is represented in a very high-profile case. It is important, not just for me, or for the court, but for the people following the proceedings, that we all treat the act of seeking justice with respect. That means not only showing up on time, but being prepared as well. Why did you bring that book with you?”
The historian cringed. “Perspective. I brought it to make sure that we kept this case, and our roles in it, in perspective.”
When nobody spoke, he laid his hand over the book and continued. “Courts, and… and their proceedings have changed over time. Some of those changes have been for the better. Others have not.” He cautiously studied Frank. “I’m not sure how I feel about you, yet.”
Frank smiled. This was, after all, the same juror who had asked him how he performed his special ‘magic’ during the interview. He was about to answer when they were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. A bailiff stuck his head in and announced that the jury had been requested to appear.
As they were getting up, the foreman said, “I go in first, followed by #2 here, then the other jurors. Healer Sanroya comes in last, and takes the seat closest to the witness box, beside #2. I sit farthest from the witness.” Before stepping through the doorway, he added, “Remember, a courtroom is sacred space. Treat it accordingly.”
The historian smirked, and followed the others across the hallway.
 
 
Mara was sketching something when Frank returned home that night. Pegwin was asleep nearby, and the calming sound of Mara’s favorite acoustic artist was stirring the silence. She looked up from her stylus and asked him how court went.
“Stridently comes to mind,” he said as he sat beside her. “For some reason, lawyers seem to think that they can change reality with the force of their rhetoric. They made their opening remarks today, and both sides portrayed their clients as the injured party.”
She shook her head and smiled. “Winning an argument through the strength of one’s convictions may quiet an adversary, but it doesn’t defeat him.”
Frank sat with the thought briefly. He knew that his wife spoke not only from her mediation experience, but from meditation as well. “What are you working on?”
She tapped the stylus a few times, and handed him the pad. “My brother decided to enter the Fancydance competition after all. This is a design I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Give it a spin.”
The virtual clothesform that Mara had built it on wasn’t exactly right, but it was close enough for the moment. Frank stroked across the image to rotate it, and then poked at a few places to see what kinds of feathers and other decorations she’d used. He wasn’t surprised to discover just how wide a swath of the Earth she planned to reflect in it. Before handing it back, he selected one of the canned dance sequences, so he could see how it would look in action.
The Fancydance competition, which had its roots in displays originally staged for reservation tourists before First Nation was founded, had become an industry in itself. Groupies bought knock-offs of the original designs, and people around the world and even from off-planet followed the careers of the best dancers. Her brother Alex’s publishing company sponsored several entrants each year.
Hearing her expectant non-verbal question in his head the whole time just made Frank relish the tension his silence had created. He even waited a while longer before answering. “Court went fine,” he said at last. “Thanks for asking.”
“Really?” she said gently. “Drop the other shoe.”
Frank sat back and crossed his arms in subconscious protection. “I can’t say the entire jury is completely comfortable with me yet, but they are willing to hear my reports. One of them is a historian, with a particular interest in trials and courtroom procedures. He actually brought a book with him, a pulp and glue book.”
“And the case?” she prompted, once again busy with her design. “What was the case about?”
“It’s a public action against two companies,” he said. “One runs MedCenters and the other sells Insurance. A group of prominent people contends that the two businesses conspired to treat them more expensively at MedCenters, rather than at a Hospice. Not that that’s news to anyone.”
“How are the companies framing their defense?”
“Pretty much as I’d expected,” Frank said. “They simply point to the jurisdictional rulings, and remind everyone that the disputed gray area is fair game for either side. But they have an even stronger argument.”
Mara stopped experimenting with the costume. “Which is?”
“Which is that most of the cases in question were brought first to a Hospice Center for evaluation, and then transferred to the MedCenter for treatment.”
She nodded. “So why the case, then?”
“Greed, of course. The result of routing patients like that is more money for both companies. There’s a far higher markup for the MedCenter’s flashy tech than there is for what we do. And the Insurance rake-off is better, too.”
Mara lowered her pad. “But then the Hospice staff would also be implicated, and that makes no sense. What do you make of it?”
“That’s hard to say. The results are certainly true; everyone knows that. So the only question is whether there’s intent behind it, whether there really was a conspiracy involved. Which reminds me…”
“What?”
He shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Some woman grabbed my arm before I entered the courthouse. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me. Then, for some reason, she freaked at the sight of a cop.”
“That is odd. What did she look like?”
Frank shook his head. “I wish I knew. At first, I thought she had green eyes, but they were really brown. Trying to remember her is like trying to wrestle smoke. Anyway, she disappeared into the crowd after that.”
 
(TOC)

The future Saint was born on December 13, 1889 to Emmanuel and Irene Makris and named Athanasios. He was born into a large family of simple, country folk. Even as an infant, Athanasios was devout, even observing the fasting rules regarding milk products while still an infant. When Athanasios was five, he convinced his newly-engaged godmother to spend the rest of her days in virginity. Athanasios, having preserved himself from worldly temptations, decided to enter a monastery at the age of seventeen. He asked his parents' blessing, which they were happy to give.
In March, 1906, he entered the Monastery of St. John the Theologian, Patmos; in August, having earned the love of the aging brotherhood, he was made a rassophore and given the name Amphilochios. To fight the passions and temptations, Amphilochios would employ strict fasting - ten mouthfuls of food at each meal on standard days, with seven or eight olives on fast days.
In 1911, the abbot of the Monastery of St. John the Theologian sent Amphilochios to Mount Athos in order to learn wood-carving; in March 1913, he was tonsured to the Great Schema by Elder Antoniadis. Two months later, the abbot had the agreement of the brethren of the monastery to ordain Amphilochios; but, because of a self-perception of inadequacy, he asked his traveling companion to continue while Amphilochios went to Egypt and the Holy Lands. Amphilochios asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem to receive him as one of the caretakers of the Holy Sepulchre. While the Patriarch was willing to do this, the Monastery insisted that he return, where they "punished" him by sending him to the hermitage of Apollo, alongside Elder Makarios, which made Amphilochios very happy as he was better able to pray.
However, in 1919, Fr Amphilochios was ordained to the diaconate and, soon after, to the priesthood. He was assigned to the monastery's dependency on the island of Kos, also serving as confessor throughout the Dodecanese. In 1926, he was sent to the Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos. He spent much time with students of the Ecclesiastical Academy, which produced numerous elders and abbots.
In 1935, the occupying powers of the Dodecanese were the Italians, who influenced the Church by forcing a system of governance that made it easy to manipulate the Church. However, the Patriarch of Constantinople demanded that this situation be rectified for the new abbot. In response, the brotherhood elected Elder Amphilochios as abbot. Soon after, the seeds of the future female Monastery of the Annunciation began to be planted: the first building housed a training workshop for knitting and weaving, a guise under which to teach children Greek. In response, in 1937, the Italians exiled Elder Amphilochios to mainland Greece, where the Elder received hospitality from the Zoe brotherhood in Athens, from whence he traveled throughout Greece; after which he traveled to Crete, where he became spiritual father of the island.
His exile ended in 1939, and Elder Amphilochios returned to Patmos, being received with great joy. He did not, however, reassume his abbacy, but rather, focused on dependencies and the female Monastery of the Annunciation. The changeover of power in 1942, from the Italians to the Germans, did not greatly impact on the Elder's life. In 1947, Elder Amphilochios organised a small group of nuns to assist the orphans of Rhodes (at that time, extremely poor) by establishing an orphanage, along with a unit for pregnant women.
At Easter, 1968, Elder Amphilochios received a forewarning of his coming repose, and was given two years to prepare himself and his children for his repose. Anxious for his spiritual children, he asked God with tears for more time to develop his children, after which the Mother of God and St. John the Theologian appeared to him and informed him that his request was denied. Soon after this, he received a bout of flu. Having made his final preparations, he reposed on April 16, 1970.
Source

The future elder was born on December 13, 1889 to Emmanuel and Irene Makris and named Athanasios. He was born into a large family of simple, country folk. Even as an infant, Athanasios was devout, even observing the fasting rules regarding milk products while still an infant. When Athanasios was five, he convinced his newly-engaged godmother to spend the rest of her days in virginity. Athanasios, having preserved himself from worldly temptations, decided to enter a monastery at the age of seventeen. He asked his parents' blessing, which they were happy to give.
In March, 1906, he entered the Monastery of St. John the Theologian, Patmos; in August, having earned the love of the aging brotherhood, he was made a rassophore and given the name Amphilochios. To fight the passions and temptations, Amphilochios would employ strict fasting - ten mouthfuls of food at each meal on standard days, with seven or eight olives on fast days.
In 1911, the abbot of the Monastery of St. John the Theologian sent Amphilochios to Mount Athos in order to learn wood-carving; in March 1913, he was tonsured to the Great Schema by Elder Antoniadis. Two months later, the abbot had the agreement of the brethren of the monastery to ordain Amphilochios; but, because of a self-perception of inadequacy, he asked his traveling companion to continue while Amphilochios went to Egypt and the Holy Lands. Amphilochios asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem to receive him as one of the caretakers of the Holy Sepulchre. While the Patriarch was willing to do this, the Monastery insisted that he return, where they "punished" him by sending him to the hermitage of Apollo, alongside Elder Makarios, which made Amphilochios very happy as he was better able to pray.
However, in 1919, Fr Amphilochios was ordained to the diaconate and, soon after, to the priesthood. He was assigned to the monastery's dependency on the island of Kos, also serving as confessor throughout the Dodecanese. In 1926, he was sent to the Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos. He spent much time with students of the Ecclesiastical Academy, which produced numerous elders and abbots.
In 1935, the occupying powers of the Dodecanese were the Italians, who influenced the Church by forcing a system of governance that made it easy to manipulate the Church. However, the Patriarch of Constantinople demanded that this situation be rectified for the new abbot. In response, the brotherhood elected Elder Amphilochios as abbot. Soon after, the seeds of the future female Monastery of the Annunciation began to be planted: the first building housed a training workshop for knitting and weaving, a guise under which to teach children Greek. In response, in 1937, the Italians exiled Elder Amphilochios to mainland Greece, where the Elder received hospitality from the Zoe brotherhood in Athens, from whence he traveled throughout Greece; after which he traveled to Crete, where he became spiritual father of the island.
His exile ended in 1939, and Elder Amphilochios returned to Patmos, being received with great joy. He did not, however, reassume his abbacy, but rather, focused on dependencies and the female Monastery of the Annunciation. The changeover of power in 1942, from the Italians to the Germans, did not greatly impact on the Elder's life. In 1947, Elder Amphilochios organised a small group of nuns to assist the orphans of Rhodes (at that time, extremely poor) by establishing an orphanage, along with a unit for pregnant women.
At Easter, 1968, Elder Amphilochios received a forewarning of his coming repose, and was given two years to prepare himself and his children for his repose. Anxious for his spiritual children, he asked God with tears for more time to develop his children, after which the Mother of God and St. John the Theologian appeared to him and informed him that his request was denied. Soon after this, he received a bout of flu. Having made his final preparations, he reposed on April 16, 1970.
Source

It was yet another midnight, and as usual the sky was as black as the hours were long. Still, the darkness was interrupted with the illumination of a campfire that warmed the surrounding tents, as well as the members who sat around it.
As he usually did, David was droning on about a speech directed at the others. Lee watched him through heavy eyelids, a shared trait of the other tired group members who dealt with the burden of a watch-shift. He’d normally ignore his lurking grogginess in favour of the relief that at least Clementine and AJ would be getting their sleep, but the back of his mind itched with the reminder of the infant's newly-brought-on sickness.
“I don’t know what I should do,” Clementine had confessed to him earlier in the day. Her voice was shaky and she looked to him desperately, seeking any chance of him having a solution.
Lee felt sorrowful for them both, as well as helpless; the restraints from the arduous New Frontier bounded him firmly, something he detested. The community's tight-knit allegiance proved well at protecting them all, though maybe at certain times it was all too much. Perhaps those restraints were too tight for one to move freely. After he had protected the girl for so many years, and AJ alongside her for more recent ones, helplessness was a feeling he’d grown to resent for how often he felt it. It reminded him of the man that kidnapped Clem, of Carver's tyrannical rule, of all the other bastards who have tried to come in-between them. He couldn’t allow such a sensation anymore.
“Listen, Clem...” he had said, bending down and placing his right arm - now his only fully usable one after cutting off his left what felt like millennia ago - on her shoulder. “There’s a bottle of vancomycin in the medical tent-"
“-The one they use for your arm?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Use it, it helps with the infections. AJ needs it.”
She had nodded at him, but chewed her bottom lip worriedly. “There won’t be a lot left for you.”
He smiled. “I’ve lasted a lot longer without it before, haven’t I? I can deal with a little fever up and down this old thing every now and again. It’s him who needs it, sweet pea,” he reassured.
“Okay.”
That was what they agreed upon earlier. It was risky - and they knew it. But they were determined to help nurse AJ back to health however they could, especially as everyone else had simply given up on trying. David had protested a few times before, reminding them of their low-stock and the unlikeliness of AJ to be saved, but Lee disagreed. Something had to be done.
He worried for Clementine, how right now she would be sneaking towards the tent and trying not to be caught, but he couldn’t show any sign of apprehension, especially not in front of David. He had to keep his cool, to be innocent, to appear like nothing was wrong at all.
“Lee, are you listening to this?” David’s voice snapped.
“Yeah, sorry-” Lee said. He had to make an excuse. “I was just thinking about our plan for Richmond.”
That eased David, bringing him back to his speech and focus. “I’m arranging things with Joan already, we have the basics of our plan but we still have to develop our strategy before we can even think about putting it into action. That'll take us at least a few months. Now…”
Lee relaxed into his seat, his tension easing. But he still had no way of knowing what was going on - whether Clementine had managed to even make it far enough. Or worse, if she’d been caught already. It was already known to the both of them, back when Ava first met the trio and invited them to come, that the group didn’t take well to ‘thieves’, how acting without approval was their equivalent of someone spitting in their faces. It was another thing Lee disapproved of, but they were safer together that way. No matter the outcome, he was prepared to take the blame. As long as she and AJ would be safe, protected by the group if he couldn’t do it for them... that was all he wanted.
Everyone’s ears perked up at once with the noise of a child crying. Only, it wasn’t coming from a sleeping tent, but the medical one. Lee knew instantly that nothing good could come from the situation, a sense of dread bubbling with a slow stir.
David rushed over towards the noise, frowning at the sight. “What the hell is this?”
The others collectively joined him, with Lee pushing past them all to reach the front. He sneaked a glance at David’s face, already twisting with anger.
At his side appeared Clementine, clutching her boy closely in her arms and looking at Lee worriedly. He looked back at her with knowing, then back to David, already ranting at Dr. Lingard.
“What’s going on, Clem?” Ava asked, staring almost through her guilty expression.
Before either could respond, David had returned his attention once more to the girl. “What the fuck were you thinking? You were told-“
“David, man, please-“ Lee started.
“No, Lee! Keep watch of your god-damn girl, okay? She knows the rules and so do you! There’s no fucking excuse here, this was your responsibility,” he scolded, pointing a finger at him.
The wails had begun again, softened by how AJ had been buried in Clementine’s shoulder. “I couldn’t give up on him, not when everyone else did. Not when we knew we could do something about it,” she defended, angry tears spilling.
“We? You knew about this?” His glare snapped to Lee, waiting impatiently for his response.
“I told her to do it, David. Think about the boy here! We can’t just stop trying.”
“Bullshit. Don’t you know what this has done to us? The medicine we use on these people, on you, is gone for nothing more than a gamble. An act of selfishness! And that’ll cost someone’s life down the line, maybe even yours now.”
“I warned her,” Lingard stepped in, his voice sounding recognisably spaced away from reality.
“And neither of you listened to him? To me? We’re your superiors, and-“
Ava walked closer, looking with concern. “David, come on. She was just trying to help the kid.” Lee looked at her thankfully, but seemingly she didn’t notice it.
“So have we! We helped and helped, and it’s not enough for them. We’re repaid with stealing! With selfishness.” His eyes narrowed on Clementine further. “Well that’s not how we do things. You’re done here.”
Both herself and Lee stared at him with disbelief. It was over. Their worst doubts, their worries and fears had some truth.
David had noticed their vacant stares empty of acceptance and went on to defend his choice, “You broke our rules, you violated our trust. There’s no place for you in the New Frontier.” He raised his chin and looked down on them.
Clementine clutched onto AJ tighter and felt her heart rise in her chest with fury. “You’re fucking assholes!”
“This isn’t necessary! You don’t have to do this,” Lee said, walking closer to him. He could feel that shock building into anger, into frustration. It was all too quick of a judgement to make. David was a rash man, he knew that even when he first met him, but this was unfair.
“She brought this on herself, Lee. I do need to do this. If I don’t, where do we draw the line?”
He stared at him, a realisation creeping in. The fact that he was singling only her out irked him, itched him even. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying she’s out of here.” He turned to her again. “Get your shit, and get out.”
She shook her head at him. “Fine. We don’t need this place anyway, you know. We’ve survived before on our own and we can do it again.” She went to walk away, with Lee following, only for him to be stopped by a hand outstretched.
“No,” David said. “AJ stays with us.”
“What?” they both asked, mouths agape. Clementine looked back and forth from Ava to Lee with desperation, suddenly uncertain of what to say or do.
“That's not happening. Nobody is leaving, then,” Lee firmed.
"That's not your choice to make, Lee. And right now, I'd be quiet, especially considering your place in all of this." David stepped closer towards him. "I'm letting you stay here. I know you're not so innocent, helping out your girl here, but for the most part you've been good to us. Something that I can't say for this one." He looked to Clementine with disapproval, to which she glared back at him. "You're a good man, Lee. And I know you'll take care of AJ here. I was a father too. I can tell. Respect it, even. But I can change my mind, you know. Even if not, you've still got to make up for breaching our trust like this."
The words were supposed to be comforting, but they had all the opposite effect.
"Then respect this. Clementine is not leaving here, and that's that. You don't know what we've been through, but I need you to picture it. For nearly a decade I've looked after this girl, and for almost half of it we've looked after AJ, too. You said you had a daughter, didn't you? Maybe I don't have kids myself like you do, but she's the closest thing in this world I've ever gotten, and I'd be damned if you try to separate us over a bottle of antibiotics." David opened up his mouth to speak, but closed it just as quickly when he saw Lee stare him down. "I've been through it before, long ago with a group I knew when it all first started. The paranoia, the distrust... it doesn't do anyone any good. It just leads to us all turning on each-other. That can't be what you want." He stopped for a moment, gaze unbreaking and unblinking. "Let her stay, give her another chance. She wasn't doing it to hurt you, was she? But this will hurt her. It'll hurt the entire group, even. Be fair, David. If not, I'll go with her, and there won't be anything you can do about that. All of us or none of us."
His address had silenced the watchful crowd. They all looked at the two men engaged in a bilateral glare, waiting for one to react, for a penultimate decision to be made.
"Fine.” He gave Clementine a direct look that signalled warning. “You can stay. One last chance. Don’t waste it, be smart.”
She stepped forward, still holding AJ, ready to return back to her tent. David walked closer, causing her to back up. “But I mean it. One more fuck-up, one more thing that makes me doubt my trust in you, and you’re out of here. For real this time. Hear that?” He flicked a hand near her ear, both tauntingly and assertive.
Clementine stared at him, biting her tongue from saying something in response. She nodded instead.
“Good,” he finished, walking off. The rest of the group followed behind him, every so-often turning back to give the pair a glance that weighed with judgement.
Ava made her way back over to the fire, stopping near Clementine. “You need to be careful in here,” she said lowly to her. She brought her gaze to Lee as she walked away. “Both of you.”
It was just the three of them now. AJ was silent in the arms of Clementine, thankfully asleep and breathing normally. “I can’t believe he was going to do that,” she hissed.
“I know, Clem.” He looked at her regretfully. “I’m sorry you got caught like that. We took a risk, and I don’t regret it if it means AJ will get better-“
“Me neither.”
He smiled. “Good. But we should be extra careful from now on…I don’t think David trusts us anymore.”
Clementine looked away in annoyance. “Neither do I. Not after what he did.”
He lay a hand on her shoulder before telling her to go to sleep with AJ. He then walked over to his own tent, basking in the silence of the evening that had promptly taken over after the situation resolved itself. It wasn’t fully over yet, he knew that for sure, expecting a similar tension in the air when he awoke the next day. The day after that. And the day after that, too.

My sim recently gavebirth and now her child (Gizzard) is an infant. Ever since it aged up, I am unable to get it fed. I have High School years pack, Nifty Knitting stuff pack and the Backyard stuff pack, would any of those be cuasing this issue?
When I interact as the mother with Gizzard, the only choices that show up are "Change feeding preferance" and "More options" which only shows up with "Read a child book" and when I interact with Gizzard as Gizzard, the option to get fed by someone is shaded out and says "There are no avalible sims" even when the mother is standing right next to Gizzard.
The game won't even let me interact with highchairs, it's quite upsetting. I've resorted to googling fixes and not saving game propgress so I can restart the game and try again, which makes no changes. I am up to date with all updates and installed origin to repair EA with no luck. ):
I really want to solve this problem before the mother's next child comes and before Gizzard gets taken away. I am still new to the sims and this is my first time using reddit, my appologies if I made any mistakes. Please help <3

I've seen a lot of speculation about Miquella's goals in the upcoming DLC, but honestly, they're not a mystery. They're not even really framed as one. There are two important item descriptions about him in the base game. One teases the DLC more blatantly than anything else in the base game, and the other states his character motivation in plain English.
Radagon's Ring of Light: "One of the incantations of the Golden Order fundamentalists. A gift of gratitude to the young Miquella from his father, Radagon... And yet, the young Miquella abandoned fundamentalism, for it could do nothing to treat Malenia's accursed rot. This was the beginning of unalloyed gold."
Malenia's Armor: "My brother will keep his promise. He possesses the wisdom, the allure, of a god - he is the most fearsome Empyrean of all."
Helping Malenia is Miquella's purpose. It's the whole reason he created unalloyed gold in the first place, and with it, the Haligtree (the unalloyed gold spell sigil is an image of the Haligtree). To this effect he created the unalloyed gold needles, which there's a quest about returning to Malenia in the base game, and used his body as fertilizer to grow the Haligtree. As a sidequest, he also attempted to give his brother Godwyn a true death. His work was interrupted by Mohg's abduction, thematically leaving his works unfinished in the same way that Miquella himself failed to finish growing.
Gideon: "So. The Haligtree, now but a husk... I heard speculation Miquella embedded himself in the Haligtree, but before he could finish, someone cut the tree open and absconded with his infant form."
Haligtree Knight Armor: "Its left breast is emblazoned with the crest of the Haligtree. Though watered with Miquella's own blood since it was a sapling, the Haligtree ultimately failed to grow into an Erdtree."
Miquella's Needle: "One of the unalloyed gold needles that Miquella crafted to ward away the meddling of outer gods. Capable of subduing the flame of frenzy if inherited, allowing one to cheat fate and avoid becoming Lord of Frenzied Flame. However, the needle is as yet unfinished and can only be used in the heart of the storm beyond time said to be found in Faram Azula."
Now we know he abandoned his flesh to go the Land of Shadow. The Japanese website description (repeated in Famitsu's interview by Miyazaki) mentions two specific things in its very brief description of the Land of Shadow. Google Translated: "The place where Marika became a god and the Golden Tree was born." (Golden Tree = Erdtree in Japanese, for those who didn't know)
So. We know Miquella wants to grow his own Erdtree and heal Malenia, by "warding away the meddling of outer gods" (Miquella's Needle). We know he currently lacks the ability to do these things, at least to the extent that he wants to. We know that he made a promise to Malenia before he disappeared (presumably, before he embedded himself in the tree), and that this promise is narratively important enough to be our biggest DLC bait (nothing is as clear in the base game, not even Gideon speculating he might wake up). We know from Malenia that, whatever this promise was, being "like a god" would help him accomplish it, with her mentioning his worthiness for divinity in the exact same entry she mentions that she's sure he'll keep it. And now we know that Miquella went to the place where Marika grew her Erdtree and became a god.
I wonder what he could possibly want there, and why?
Totally unrelated, but in the DLC trailer we also see Miquella with seemingly non-child proportions (note the relative size of his head and the length of his arms), sheathed in golden light, and holding his hand out to do something involving a big magic tree. The tree looks noticeably healthier at the end of the trailer than at the beginning after Miquella does his thing. Again, we have no idea what this could possibly mean, it's a total mystery.
If only cut content could give us a clue. Perhaps by having his ending specifically tied to the renewal (or replacement) of the Haligtree. Or through other dialogue where a character explicitly states he's seeking godhood after abandoning his flesh in the cocoon. Or maybe via an alternate boss intro where he kills himself to revive his sister while saying the same thing he would've said in his ending route? Nah.
Rhico: "Finally, I have found it! St. Trina's, no, Lord Miquella's cadaver. I have partaken of untold secrets. Such that I might aid you, O Lord. So please, I hope you can welcome your humble servant Rhico, Into your dream, the world of your heart. Indeed, I beg you grant my wish. That when you transcend from empyrean to god, allow me a place by your side."
Miquella: "My dear twin, accept this gift. A gift of abundance, my last drop of dew. Let all things flourish, whether graceful, or malign."
Miquella: "Young seedling, young seedling. Return to the bosom of earth. But remember well, Thou’rt mine. So shall I give of myself. This is for thee. Mine abundance, my drop of dew. Quench thy thirst, throughout thy frame. Blossom and burgeon, time and again. Grow larger, stronger. Until the day cometh. When thou canst share in my dream. Elden Ring, O Elden Ring. Beget Order most elegant, from my tender reverie."
Miquella: "If thou covetest the throne, Impress my vision upon thine heart. In the new world of thy making, all things will flourish, whether graceful, or malign."