Akasawablog - Emblemata Aurea

TEAM KIRA in Gucci cruise 2018 collection :* 

*click for better quality ofc*

Loki: Adoption is just so difficult, I don’t know how Odin did it,

Thor: We’ve been here for hours, please, just pick a pumpkin already,

Loki: but I wouldn’t want it to feel like I was obligated to take it home and it inherently owes me for it’s life

Thor: Loki, Brother, please just pick one,

Loki: I sure hope none of these want to remain that orangey colour, because I’ll be painting over them in ‘proper’ skin tones later

Thor: LOki, pLEASE,

Loki: I’m having a hard time deciding which would react badly or well when they find out they’re a pumpkin when they’re older

Thor: LOKI, PLEASE, not in puBLIC,

Loki: because obvioUSLY I WON’T BE TELLING THE PUMPKIN THEY’RE ANY DIFFERENT TO THE REST OF THE FAMILY TILL THEY FIND OUT ON THEIR OWN– [thor tackles loki in the middle of the supermarket to get him to stop yelling]

no offense but will graham saved my life every time i get mad i just close my eyes and think abt him chomping biting and killing and how peaceful it made him and i immediately calm down

The Velveteen Rabbit: An Alternate Version

By Mallory Ortberg

THERE was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. Later he was different, but this was the beginning. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. It was Christmas, and the Rabbit was awake for the first time, and he moved in the world and he knew himself by his own name.

There were other things in the stocking, but the Rabbit was the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was ignored.

And the Velveteen Rabbit knew what it was to be ignored, and he remembered it, and he did not forget it.

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. Being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. He did not forget that either. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn’t know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself.

Sometimes at night he imagined what the other toys would look like stuffed and crammed with sawdust; sawdust jammed by the fistful into their open eyes and their painted throats and sawdusts in their hearts and in their stomachs.

Between them all the Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

Whose skin do you have, the Rabbit had asked him, and the Skin Horse had shivered to hear the excitement in his voice. Whose skin did you get.

Not like that, he explained. Not skin like that. And the Rabbit sat in silence, and the Skin Horse knew he had not liked the answer.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else.

And the Rabbit knew he would not be like the mechanical toys, and the Rabbit would not let himself pass away, and the Rabbit would not break for anything.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Can you hurt something else,” asked the Rabbit, “when you get Real?”

“I don’t know,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.

“Can you take someone else’s Real,” he asked, “or are you stuck getting it on your own?”

The Skin Horse looked at the Rabbit then.

“What I mean is,” the Rabbit said carefully. “If something else was already Real. Could you take it from them, and keep it for yourself.”

“No,” the Skin Horse said, and his voice was a crawling black thing across the floor. “You can’t take Real from another toy.”

But the Rabbit wasn’t finished. “Can you take the Real out of a boy? Can you take his heart in your own self and leave him with a sawdust heart on the nursery floor in your place?”

And the Skin Horse did not say anything.

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And the Skin Horse was afraid for the first time in a long time.

“Yes,” he said quickly, closing his eyes. “From the boy’s Uncle. That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

“How did you make him,” the Rabbit said, no longer lying down. “How did you make him give it to you.” But the Skin Horse did not move and did not talk. The walls of the room were yellow and old and streaked with shadows, and the Skin Horse felt he had lived too long.

And after that there was no more Skin Horse in the nursery, and the Rabbit’s eyes gleamed a brighter black and his ears glowed a livelier pink.

There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Sometimes she took no notice of the playthings lying about, and sometimes, for no reason whatever, she went swooping about like a great wind and hustled them away in cupboards. She called this “tidying up,” and the playthings all hated it, especially the tin ones. The Rabbit did not forget her either. The Rabbit did not forget anything, once the Rabbit had decided he had been cheated.

Nana had cheated the Rabbit, and he would remember it. Nana was not Real. Nothing in the nursery was Real; it was entirely possible that nothing at all was Real and that Real had been a lie from the beginning. But if there was Real, the Rabbit would find it. And if there was not, the Rabbit would decide what would happen next.

***

One evening, when the Boy was going to bed, he couldn’t find the china dog that always slept with him. The china dog slipped and the china dog was gone and tumbled into nothing and there was no more of the china dog, not that night and not any other night. Nana was in a hurry, so she simply looked about her, and seeing that the toy cupboard door stood open, she made a swoop.

“Here,” she said, “take your old Bunny! He’ll do to sleep with you!” And she dragged the Rabbit out by one ear, and put him into the Boy’s arms, and the Rabbit felt the Realness of the Boy’s warm heartbeat and the Boy’s soft and fluttering throat and the Boy’s arms.

That night, and for many nights after, the Velveteen Rabbit slept in the Boy’s bed. At first he found it rather uncomfortable, for the Boy hugged him very tight, and sometimes he rolled over on him, and sometimes he pushed him so far under the pillow that the Rabbit could scarcely breathe. And the Rabbit waited.

And the Rabbit missed the long dark silence of the nursery, when everything else in the house slept as if it had died. The Boy did not sleep like something that had died. The Boy slept in motion, and snored, and rolled over, and grunted, and chapped his lips and muttered in his sleep. The Boy had jam on his bedclothes and ate crackers with his flat and flabby mouth, and the Rabbit kept perfect silence.

And the Boy would talk to him too, and tell him the secrets of his stupid and inane Boy’s heart, and made ridiculous tunnels for the Rabbit under the bedclothes that he said were like the burrows the real rabbits lived in. And the Rabbit thought, So there are others like me, and you have kept me from them, and he did not forget that. And the Boy made him play his insipid games after Nana had gone for the evening, and the Rabbit burned in shame and anger.

But when the Boy dropped off to sleep, the Rabbit would wriggle down underneath his small hot chin and above his small hot heart and listen to his dreams. And then it was the Rabbit’s turn to play.

And some mornings the Boy would wake up dizzy and hot-faced and cross, and some mornings the Boy could not get out of bed at all. And one morning the Boy woke up and was sick in the hallway and afraid of his own body. The Rabbit was his only comfort then, on the mornings when his limbs were so sluggish he stumbled on the way to the kitchen and spilled his breakfast with a trembling hand and his nose ran blood down his mouth.

And so time went on, and the little Rabbit was very happy.

Spring came, and they had long days in the garden, for wherever the Boy went the Rabbit went too. He had rides in the wheelbarrow, and picnics on the grass, (the Boy could not make it past the flower border now without getting quite short of breath and complaining of dark stars behind his eyes). And once, when the Boy stumbled and fell and had to be carried inside, the Rabbit was left out on the lawn until long after dusk, and Nana had to come and look for him with the candle because the Boy couldn’t go to sleep unless he was there.

He was wet through with the dew and quite earthy from diving into the burrows the Boy had made for him in the flower bed, and Nana grumbled as she rubbed him off with a corner of her apron.

“You must have your old Bunny!” she said. “Fancy all that fuss for a toy!”

The Boy sat up in bed and stretched out his white and shaking hands. His breath was hot, and his eyes were hot and shimmering gloss.

“You mustn’t say that. He isn’t a toy. He’s REAL!”

When the little Rabbit heard that he was happy. Too happy to sleep that night. And that night he grew fatter and sleeker and stronger and into his boot-button eyes — that had long ago lost their polish — their came a look of happiness so that even Nana noticed it next morning when she picked him up, and she smiled to see it.

That morning the Boy was very ill, and complained of a thick and a dusty feeling in his lungs, and his eyes had lost all depth to them. And Nana was cross in her heart at him, for there is nothing the healthy find more tiresome than the chronically ill.

Is there anything else you need, love, she would say, and the Rabbit could see in her false mouth the words Why don’t you get up and get better.

It was Summer, and the sun shone so and the wind blew so that all for the next month the menservants found fox after fox lying on the grounds, mouth open and flecked with white, quite dead from the heat. The Rabbit knew they were gifts for him.

Near the house where they lived there was a wood, and in the long June evenings the Boy liked to go there after tea to play, on the evenings that he could. He would march off brokenly, dragging a wheelbarrow with the Rabbit in it behind him. Some nights when the sun set his ears bled, and the Boy would cry a long, stupid, noisy child’s cry, and the Rabbit would endure it with perfect patience. And the Boy would build him a nest and tell him all his stupid child’s sorrows.

One evening, while the Rabbit was lying there alone, watching the ants that ran to and fro between his velvet paws in the grass, he saw two strange beings creep out of the tall bracken near him.

They were rabbits like himself, but quite furry and brand-new. They must have been very well made, for their seams didn’t show at all, and they changed shape in a queer way when they moved; one minute they were long and thin and the next minute fat and bunchy, instead of always staying the same like he did. They moved like liquid, and like they were their own masters. Their feet padded softly on the ground, and they crept quite close to him, twitching their noses, while the Rabbit stared hard to see which side the clockwork stuck out, for he knew that people who jump generally have something to wind them up.

They stared at him, and the Rabbit stared back. And all the time their noses twitched.

“Why don’t you get up and play with us?” one of them asked.

“I don’t feel like it,” said the Rabbit.

“Ho!” said the furry rabbit. “It’s as easy as anything,” And he gave a big hop sideways and stood on his hind legs.

“I don’t believe you can!” he said.

“I can!” said the little Rabbit. “I can jump higher than anything!” He meant it too.

“Can you hop on your hind legs?” asked the furry rabbit.

That was a dreadful question, for the Velveteen Rabbit had no hind legs at all. The back of him was made all in one piece, like a pincushion. He sat still in the bracken.

“I don’t want to,” he said again.

But the wild rabbits have very sharp eyes. And this one stretched out his neck and looked.

“He hasn’t got any hind legs!” he called out. “Fancy a rabbit without any hind legs!” And he began to laugh.

“I have!” cried the little Rabbit. “I have got hind legs! I am sitting on them!”

The strange rabbit stopped dancing, and came quite close. He came so close this time that his long whiskers brushed the Velveteen Rabbit’s ear, and then he wrinkled his nose suddenly and flattened his ears and jumped backwards.

“He doesn’t smell right!” he exclaimed. “He isn’t a rabbit at all! He isn’t real!”

And the little Rabbit imagined what he would look like with his heart and his throat and his eyes torn out and pooled at his feet.

Just then there was a sound of footsteps, and with a stamp of feet the two strange rabbits disappeared.

For a long time he lay very still, watching the bracken. Presently the sun sank lower and the little white moths fluttered out, and the Boy came limping over and carried him home.

Weeks passed, and the little Rabbit grew a bit worn and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. And the Rabbit thought, I will love you back then, and he loved the Boy until the Boy’s lining to his ears turned grey, and his freckles faded, and his fingers jerked and trembled when he tried to hold him, and sometimes he woke up with black eyes.

And then, one day, the Boy was caught a fever. The Rabbit dreamed it to him.

***

His face grew very flushed, and he wept in his sleep, and his little body was so hot that it burned the Rabbit when he held him close. Strange people came and went in the nursery, and a light burned all night and through it all the little Velveteen Rabbit lay there, hidden from sight under the bedclothes, and he never stirred, for he was afraid that if they found him some one might take him away, and he still needed the Boy.

The Rabbit found it a long and weary time. But the Rabbit knew how to be patient. He thought of the stupid Skin Horse, who had waited years to get Real, and he smiled to himself.

He thought very hard about when the Boy should be well again, and they would go out in the garden amongst the flowers and the butterflies and play splendid games in the raspberry thicket like they used to. All sorts of delightful things he planned, and while the Boy lay half asleep he crept up close to the pillow and whispered them in his ear. And the Boy’s skin grew white and thin as moth’s wings. And the Boy’s joints swelled up hot and blocky and he cried out when he had to move them. And the Boy’s teeth got loose and his brain held a fire in it. And the Boy hurt. And the Rabbit got Realer and Realer by the minute.

The Boy no longer whispered his old and stupid secrets to the Rabbit, because his tongue had swollen up into his whole aching mouth. The Boy barely moved. The Boy gazed at the Rabbit and loved him, and the Rabbit loved him back very hard. Then at last the Boy stopped moving.

It was a bright, sunny morning, and the windows stood wide open. They had carried the Boy out of the room, wrapped in a sheet, and the little Rabbit lay tangled up among the bedclothes, thinking.

Everything was arranged, and now it only remained to carry out the doctor’s orders. They talked about it all, while the little Rabbit lay under the bedclothes, with just his head peeping out, and listened. The room was to be disinfected, and all the books and toys that the Boy had ever touched must be burnt.

And the Rabbit was very happy, to think of them all burnt.

Just then Nana caught sight of him.

“How about his old Bunny?” she asked.

“That?” said the doctor. “Why, it’s a mass of scarlet fever germs!–Burn it at once.”

And so the little Rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. That was a fine place to make a bonfire, only the gardener was too busy just then to attend to it. Next morning he promised to come quite early and burn the whole lot. And the Rabbit was not too sorry then; he would rather burn with them than have nothing be burnt at all.

They wrapped the boy in white and put dirt over him. Dirt in his eyes, dirt in his mouth, dirt in his heart, the Rabbit thought to himself. Nothing real lived in the dirt; therefore the boy was no longer Real.

And while the Boy was in the dirt, dreaming over whatever not-Real things do, the little Rabbit lay among the old picture-books in the corner behind the fowl-house. The sack had been left untied, and so by wriggling a bit he was able to get his head through the opening and look out.

Everything around him was going to be burned, all the boats and the tin soldiers and the little wheeled dogs on drawstrings, and the Rabbit only wished he could stay to see it.

But he had a forest to visit, and two very particular Rabbits to see. He tested out his left leg, and that was Real. He tested out his right leg, and that was Real too. He felt his heart beating inside his chest, as strong and as fast as a Boy’s.