Lfmao Bold Of You To Assume That's Not The Main Reason Why I'd Marry Someone

Lfmao bold of you to assume that's not the main reason why I'd marry someone

I won't be settling for anything less than an Odysseus level of obsession from my future husband thank you very much

please write your rant about male domestic abuse victims

Okay, I'll do this but fair warning, I might include some kind of parallels to the Depp vs Heard trial(s) because my mind functions better if I have some kind of real-life or fictional literature to support me through the development of my thoughts, so if you believe Amber Heard for some reason, you might not like what I have to say. Also, please if you're gonna comment, be gentle and polite, I'm always open to new (well-based) points of view and I promise I'm open to an honest conversation with anyone who is kind <3

Observation: I will use Domestic Violence (DV) as a broad term throughout this but know that I refer mostly to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) here. The difference between the two is that DV can happen between members of the same nuclear family (between brothers, partners, or child and parents) while IPV happens only between romantic partners.

The reason I don't use DV especially is because abuse against boys (by parents, sisters, etc.) also falls under this category and then it's a whole other discussion about the socialization of children and teenagers, the social minority they represent and how that's a whole new discussion (that I'd be happy to extend in another post actually if there are any other people interested).

To begin with, we have to understand some things: we don't have exact data about male victims of domestic abuse, not only because it's severely under-reported but also because many reports are not even filed because the lines for escaping domestic violence (police, shelters, phone lines, etcetera.) attend only women and girls, or demonstrate a clear bias towards those victims. Plus, as it happens with women as well, abuse doesn't present just physically, but also emotionally and psychologically.

However, just to give you all an idea, in the UK, for example, it's estimated that almost 20% of domestic violence reports were from men in the last two years (2022-23), according to ManKind Initiative. In the US, according to The Tech Report, almost 45% of men believe they were victims of abusive relationships in their lives. In Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 38% of victims of violence in the country were men, 64% being DV-related.

Now, there is a reason for this, and this is called patriarchy. Patriarchy is the concept of one of the pillars of how our society is built, and it means the subjugation of one binary gender (female) by another binary gender (male) - although this definition is more for this essay's purpose than accurate for an academic study for example. It's important to note that gender violence presents itself against women institutionally (through proper institutions, such as the legal system, for example, or a company's hierarchy) and structurally (it's in the roots of our society culturally and thus, infecting everything else).

According to The Patriarchs, journalist Angela Saini's latest book, the Patriarchy is something tricky to explore even for our earlier academics, such as Engels, for example, because it presents itself in many different ways. For example, it changes its characterization according to culture, environmental needs, History, and other factors. Still, the important thing is that it has various different aspects in the areas it's present.

What I want to explore goes a little bit further: I want to understand how the oppression of women affects men because, unlike many other kinds of oppression, gender-related violence affects their enforcers (men) as well as their victims (women). Now, I am not saying this violence is equal to each other: violence against women permeates our societies' very core, it's ingrained in our institutions, in our culture. But on an interpersonal level, gender violence affects men and women both.

Men are pressured into "being a man" (a white person doesn't have to prove they're white in the same sense or with the same intensity as a man has to prove his man-ness), they're molded to become people in disconnection to their own emotions, they're encouraged to be violent or at least not to be "emotional", to the point of not even noticing when they're suffering some kind of violence or from a mental disorder, for example.

This plays a significant role in how we view abuse when perpetrated by women against men but it's not all we need to observe when talking about male DV victims.

Another matter I'd like to point out is the way we view feminine violence: in the Introduction of her best-seller, Lady Killers, Tori Telfer talks about how violence committed by women is often put under one of three categories: the mysticism, the sexualization, or the banalization. That is, socially, we have a habit of thinking about violence perpetrated by women as either mythological, sexy, or just plain silly, and therefore dumb and/or laughable.

Telfer's examples throughout the book are great and I recommend the book for more insight, but to me, three cases stick out to follow as examples:

How the first woman serial killer we have Historical records of, Elizabeth Ridgeway, was killed for being a witch (mysticism);

How Nannie Doss, an old lady who fit all the 50s housewife stereotypes and killed men with poison in her cakes, had her intelligence belittled by people trying to paint her as insane despite many psychiatrical reports of her being exceptionally clever, how she was labeled by the media as "Arsenic Nannie" (banalization)

And finally, how women who perpetrate violence are often sexualized, such as Raya and Sakina, from the beginning of 20th-century Egypt, who were tied closely to the criminal underworld of their neighborhood and who actually developed a method of killing four people with little blood and avoiding messes; or Lizzie Halliday, who was labeled "the worst woman on earth" with clear implications of her ugliness; or at last, Erzsébet Báthory, known more popularly as Countess Dracula despite having been a lot crueler than the name leads you to believe; they were all sexualized one way or another, their crimes fitting their appearances rather than their acts.

What I mean to point out by that is that feminine violence is something we as a society have a tendency to downplay to a dangerous level. Part of that is a result of downplaying violence as a whole, doesn't matter the perpetrator, but a big part of it is because we see violence as a men's trait. Culturally, violence is a characteristic we attribute to men while women are "even-tempered", motherly, nurturing, and delicate.

Those are the traits of femininity. Violence is not something we easily attribute to women, while men can be only violent, domineering, "warriors".

Now, intimate partner violence (IPV) against males and perpetrated by women is significantly overlooked and under-researched. Hell, there was a real and huge doubt whether men could be r*ped at the beginning of the 2000s, and even now there are people who still don't see how men can be sexually abused.

What we do know about IPV is that, according to this article, women and men have roughly the same rate of occurrences of physical abuse against their partners, and in most of the non-reciprocal violent relationships, women were mostly the perpetrators, although it is true that the more violent abuse occurrences are mostly perpetrated by men:

"Archer Reference Archer5 attempted to resolve two competing hypotheses about partner violence, either that it involves a considerable degree of mutual combat or that it generally involves male perpetrators and female victims. His meta-analysis of 82 studies of gender differences in physical aggression between heterosexual partners showed that men were more likely to inflict an injury; 62% of those injured by a partner were women, but men still accounted for a substantial minority of those injured. However, women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more act of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Younger aged couples showed more female-perpetrated aggression."

Again, that's not to say that violence committed against women in our patriarchal society is in any way equivalent to what men suffer as victims of IPV because that's not true. Violence against women is in every corner of our culture, it's in the roots of our society, and violence against men is not as institutional or structural as acts of violence perpetrated against men.

But I have to criticize how we view (or maybe it's best to say how little we view, or even consider) male victims of DV when we're talking about the matter because not only we are then perpetrating patriarchal beliefs that continue to harm us, we're also portraying women as being inherently and perpetually victims of violence, always in a place of perceived inferiority (although I need to point out there is nothing inferior about suffering violence) while men fall under the category of always the perpetrators of that violence.

That's undeniably harmful because it generates a dangerous generalization in individual cases, such as Johnny Depp, for example. Many of the people I saw defending Heard seemed to not comprehend that only because Johnny Depp was in a place of societal power in relation to AH (because he was, as an older, richer man) that wasn't enough of a reason to believe he was guilty of what she accused him of. Just because generally we might rightly point out a systemic oppression of women by men, it doesn't mean that we should apply those principles to individual cases, especially when we don't have access to concrete evidence and in high-profile cases such as Depp v Heard.

Now, after all of that, I need to point out a personal opinion of mine and bear in mind I don't have anything to base myself here so feel free to criticize it if you disagree (just remember to be nice, please): all of these facts make me ask myself how many of those cases of IPV were labeled as "mutual" (because there's actually a pretty fierce discussion on the matter of whether or not mutual abuse exists from what I could find, and mostly of academic research seem to understand that mutual abuse does exist) are actually mutual and not - in case of heterosexual relationships - emotional manipulation on the perpetrator's side.

And that leads me to ask myself how many of the false reports made by women against their male partners (which are the minority of reported DV cases, let's be clear here) were labeled as mutual because the men "fought back"? How many men who were victims of emotional manipulation didn't stay in those relationships or settle cases because of the threat of their female partners reporting them back from abuse as well?

And amongst those people, how many men did actually something that could be considered violent against their partner (talking now about emotional and psychological abuse, excluding the physical aspect for now) in an act of self-defense or instinctual nastiness as a defense mechanism against something that hurt them?

Having been a reactive victim in an emotionally abusive relationship myself, I can say with some ease that I said things that I know for sure truly hurt my abuser, I know I said things in the last days of our relationship that I would never say to other people if I wasn't so defensive right out the beginning of our latest interactions. But I refuse to fall into the trap of believing myself to be an equally abusive part of that relationship because I also know I did the work to try and better our relationship, I know because my other relationships are healthy and close and emotionally vulnerable and the whole circus.

So what I do have to ask myself is that in those IPV cases in heterosexual relationships where our first reaction is to classify them as mutual abuse or something like that... what do we expect from our male victims of IPV? What does the perfect male victim of IPV look like? Is it reasonable for us to expect men not to defend themselves at all because they're generally stronger than women?

Of course, I'm not advocating here that any kind of violence against your partner is okay because they're abusing you to any gender - self-defense has explicit rules to be applied for that exact reason. I'm simply pointing out that maybe we're diving into dangerous territory, or being overly zealous, considering mutual abuse at the maximum, or not believing men at all on the other side of the spectrum, when we're presented with a heterosexual case of IPV where the female was clearly or almost undoubtedly violent throughout the relationship.

That's the many reasons I can think to question people when they are presented with a case of DV of a woman committing abuse against their male partner. Because as much as women are socially oppressed, our biases in regard to gender affect our views of both men and women and can be really dangerous when generally applied to individual cases.

So yeah, I'm not thrilled with our critical skills when it comes to male victims of abuse, loves.

Not at all.

(if you're gonna answer, remember to be nice!)

All Angels from Heaven Above - Chapter 3

Summary - find more chapters, read the synopsis, and trigger warnings here!

Buy the whole book through this link!

“I offered help to one of Detective Carino’s superiors and found a memory ritual that could answer the Royal Guard’s question regarding that… unpleasant situation,” explained Eupraxia before Spiridon could talk again, ignoring the strong tension in the saloon. 

A memory ritual demanded a lot of a group of witches and it was done in extremely delicate steps. The first part consisted of letting the shadows take their magic to where the situation had happened, which wasn’t so difficult. The second part, a bit more complicated, depended on the witch’s ability to weave a thin, intricated web of their own power so that memory could be trapped in it. 

The third one, the most dangerous of them, occurred when the other witches joined in the ritual: all of them, together, would build a bridge that would pull the memory from inside the mind of the witch responsible for the first two steps and project it into an open space, like a shadow theater.

Adra looked around, to the officers with equally disdainful and fearful expressions, and then to the nervous and cautious witches and wizards. She didn’t like the idea of doing such a difficult ritual with so much tension around her at all but the Guard would hardly accept leaving without it being done or giving them privacy.

To those demons, they needed to see to believe it. And they wouldn’t accept anything less because demons didn’t trust witches and vice-versa. The simple fact that they had accepted Eupraxia’s offer to one of her high-ranking lovers was a surprise, considering how the Royal Guard treated witches: pitiful beggars in the best-case scenario, prostitutes whose bodies and dignity were free-for-all in the worst case.

“Very well then,” Spiridon agreed begrudgingly. Not even he could deny such an important favor to the Royal Guard. “But if we’re going to do it, I want our most powerful witch doing the first two steps.”

Of course, you do, though Adra, frustrated when every pair of eyes turned to her. She didn’t like that attention and didn’t want it but didn’t have a lot of choice in it. 

Regardless of her power, the memory of the ritual would only indicate the culprit if the witch who was doing the ritual knew them. The most they would see were shadow figures and that was making her worry. Adra hoped they didn’t have too much hope about that, despite Eupraxia’s presumption.

Sighed in resignation, she stepped forward, letting Thalassa’s hand slip from her own, and stared at Eupraxia, who seemed ready to kick her. Adra ignored the lead detective’s stare when she spoke:

“Let’s go on then if no one is opposed.”

Despite Thalassa’s last warning, the woman didn’t interfere in the clash, probably too shocked by Eupraxia’s lack of prudence. That was big but it surely wasn’t good, especially considering that the chances of it going wrong were too high.

The witches seemed calmer now that Adra was chosen to do that task — she was the one in danger after all — and accepted her request, positioning herself. Spiridon nodded towards Adra when passing by her. His dark eyes didn’t apologize but Adra didn’t want apologies, so she only nodded back, walking towards the north side of the circle the other had opened in the middle of the room.

Eupraxia took to herself the task of moving the officers to a place where they could see what was happening but couldn’t interfere with the shadows. When everyone got silent, Adra closed her eyes, focusing on the Darkness, on the points of the room filled with it.

For witches, the Darkness was its own language that sang to them like old friends, as mermaids would sing to unsuspecting sailors. It could be good and bad and, especially, it could be controlled. Adra knew each song and each pun, therefore she let It flow around her, like the breath of a night breeze, cold and humid, making her hair flutter and trying to mix up with her soul.

It wasn’t so difficult to go through the city she was born into the Academy, even in the shadows, jumping from shadow to shadow quickly. And, when she entered the walls she had never entered, Adra followed to where the shadows came together more tightly, attracted by evil and Death.

She followed that still energy and, when she reached the place where Aglaie Kalliergei had died — even if she didn’t know which room was it because everything around her was just an echo of her power —, Adra focused on reviewing the dark memories, just like one would leaf through a book to see what was it about.

It wasn’t hard for her web to catch the memory she needed like a fly in a spiderweb. As soon as she got it, all the other witches felt the threads that connected them in that ritual being bound tighter, thus completing the ritual.

It was hard, however, to try not to be offended when they began to pull out the memory from her head: the feeling of being invaded was like strong dizziness and, for a moment, Adra couldn’t tell where she was or what she could see as she opened her eyes. With a deep breath, her sight adjusted to the scene that played in front of her.

The first figure appeared and Adra guessed it was the victim, even when all she could see was a black shadow like ink and water mixing up in the form of a manikin, with no sign of their own identity.

As a consequence of the successful ritual, Adra felt more than saw the restlessness of everyone in the saloon while her powers projected that image. 

If Aglaie’s death had really been a murder, the Royal Guard would have had serious problems to deal with, especially with King Stavros, since the prince had been studying at the Academy for a few years now. A piece of news like that wouldn’t be kept from the media for much longer, especially when there were other people involved in that ritual, which could chase away the usual clients of Agraés and would bring serious economic problems to the city.

Then, a second figure appeared and Adra frowned. Different from the first one, the second silhouette was diffuse, almost transparent, and she could see Thalassa’s blurred face through it.

It worried her.

Darkness called Darkness, and every kind of It — shadows made by the lights, inner evil, bad and/or too intense feelings — answered to the witches in the same way. It didn’t make sense the second figure was so different from the first one.

Confused, Adra followed the way through her own powers, trying to find something wrong in the web in which she captured the memory but there wasn’t anything. The silhouette just seemed to not have an inner darkness, which was quite literally impossible: every single one of them — demons, witches, and humans — had something bad that forced them to respond to a witch’s power, and that’s why they were so feared.

The two figures looked like they were talking but the Darkness didn’t speak the language of people and couldn’t hold on to words, that had their own power, therefore all they could hear was the cold silence of a possible fight. Then, like a snake, the blurred figure attacked the first one and a searing light blinded Adra for a second, cutting her powers off like one would cut the strings of a puppet, sending a sudden ray of pain through her throat and her chest. 

By the shocked gasps that Adra could hear through her own surprise, she could understand she wasn’t the only one who had felt it.

When all seemed back to normal and the room adjusted back to how it always was — the shadows slipping back to their rightful places — the witches looked at each other, all surprised and fearing. The ritual wasn’t supposed to end up like this, the memory should have continued.

But they still had an answer. 

“Murder,” Spiridon announced in a low tone of voice while the rest of the witches whispered among themselves, unease with what had just happened. 

Adra observed with caution when the officers walked as far away from the witches as they could while they moved but looking convinced enough to not cause trouble — or maybe they were a little more preoccupied with getting the hell out of there. She turned to Eupraxia, whose green eyes shone with presumption while facing the lead detective.

“As I said it would be,” she said.

Adra had the desire to recoil back at the danger those words could mean. By what she knew about the woman, Eupraxia was ambitious but rarely a fool. That was one of the few moments when the matron was purely stupid.

Detective Carino’s jawline was tense when he stared at Adra, ignoring Eupraxia and Spiridon’s verdict. It was just when she nodded that he turned to the woman and said:

“I’m going to send this information to my superiors, madam Skourleti, and I thank you for the help, just like I would for the discretion,” he said formally, his voice tight and rigid, his eyes sharp with an authority that seemed to come to him naturally, not from empty threats.

Eupraxia looked pleased with that answer and nodded, quickly moving away to join the fool group of women who admired her when the rest of the coven stared at her with caution. Spiridon, taking the reins of the situation, announced to the rest of the room, his voice echoing through the shadows this time:

“Well, this night was surprising to us all and I’m sure we’re all tired. Therefore, I think going home and having a good night's sleep.”

The witches grumbled their agreement, all ready to get rid of the officers, even when none of them were really planning to go home.

“Adra,” the lead detective’s voice caught her attention and Adra looked at the soft violet eyes they both shared. “We should go together.”

“Fine, Dad,” she agreed with a sigh, knowing that Carino would want to talk about what had happened that night in one way or another, so it would be better to be done with it.

Ignoring the equally disgusted looks from witches and officers, Adra took the overcoat her father gave her and put it on, sighing happily when she felt the warm flannel from the lining under the black fabric, pleased to verify that the garment was from her own wardrobe and it went all the way down the end of her equally black dress, hugging her waist like a bodice.

“Thank you for doing this,” she said, smiling at Carino, who returned the smile, still tense but caring.

“I thought you’d be here, with all this happening,” was his answer.

He sighed, looking tired, and Adra just pressed her lips together, without voicing her preoccupation. They would have time to talk while walking home.

In silence, both climbed up the stairs, emerging to the cold night air and the mist, the golden lights of the poles were the only thing they could see in the distance. Other officers from the Guard were there too, no doubt waiting to get company for the night and Adra tried not to frown at them when their eyes locked.

All of them knew she was the boss’ daughter, the only untouchable witch in that city. And not because Carino protected her but because she was the only one who had the chance to attack them back and not face the consequences of it. It was enough that they feared her even more than they feared other witches.

“Adra!” Thassie’s voice came to her ears, making her turn in time to see her friend climbing up the Coven’s stairs, her expression preoccupied but Thalassa’s arm was pulled by one of the officers, a heart-shaped man that was probably useless. 

Adra saw the panic growing in Thalassa’s eyes from afar and made her way back to her without thinking twice, in time to hear the officer saying:

“You’re a pretty piece, huh?” he sniveled, tightening his grip on her arm when Thalassa tried to escape. “Maybe you could show me what you can do, witch.”

Thassie tried to escape once again, looking scared but he just raised his hand to grip her hair. Adra caught his wrist before he could, however, making the unknown officer let go of Thalassa to face her.

“It’ll be better for your health if you don’t touch her,” Adra just said, her voice whispering the danger in the Darkness but it was the dagger in her hand, hidden from the other Guard officers, that posed the biggest threat.

The man’s eyes widened with fear when he felt the blade against his stomach.

“You little whore...”

“Careful, Gregório,” Carino said, appearing behind Adra, his voice soft, like his daughter’s, just a ruse to hide the promise of violence underneath his words. “My daughter is a bigger threat than I need to be. And I’m still your boss. Go home.”

The man looked from Adra to Carino, doubtless recognizing the semblance between them, and made his way back, whining his protests as the filthy pig he was. Letting him go, Adra turned to Thalassa, using the shield of her father’s broad shoulders to hide her dagger back in its place.

“Are you okay?” she asked and Thalassa just nodded, embracing herself. Adra’s voice got softer than she was used to when she spoke the next words: “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Thalassa said, staring at Carino, who sighed and walked away just enough so that they could talk without being heard. When she got comfortable, Thassie grabbed Adra’s hand and said, her blue eyes shining brightly. “Promise me you’re not going to hear that demon, Adra.”

She hesitated, caught by surprise by the gravity in Thalassa’s expression, and then pressed her lips together in a tight line, incapable of promising something she wasn’t able to uphold. When Thalassa saw that, her blue eyes shone with her frustration and she let go abruptly of her hand.

“Fine, and then,” she said, already climbing down the stairs, back to the Coven, no doubt to alert the other witches to use the alternative exit that night.

Adra watched her walking away, wanting to ask her friend to come back and promise her whatever she wanted but she knew she couldn’t. That was her only chance of getting into the Academy, of being the first witch to ever do such a thing. And Adra knew the importance of being the first. But she also couldn’t promise something to Thalassa because at the back of her mind, around a thin web, shone a part of the memory that wasn’t seen. 

And in it, Damian Kolasi entered the room where Aglaie Kalliergei had died just a couple of minutes after the killer.

Chapter 4 - Coming soon...

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Prologue - A Broken Heart, Like a Clock

Summary - find more chapters, read the synopsis, and trigger warnings here!

Part 1 – Shall be Lifted… Nevermore “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted… Nevermore.” The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

To make it right, Cinara needed to break two hearts that afternoon and conquer another one by night time.

If she couldn’t, lives would be ruined, all because of a failed-before-it-even-began engagement. At that moment, Cinara would pay to have her own head struck by something heavy, anything to get the hell away from that familiar campsite, full of motorcycles and motorhomes.

Full of freedom.

How the hell, Cinara asked herself, could she have the courage to break her own heart?

Go to Chapter 1

To Decadent Poets - Chapter 6

Summary - find more chapters, read the synopsis, and trigger warnings here!

The man, the beast and the insect, at its shadow Live, away from hunger and fatigue: In its branches take shelter the ditties And the loves of the mockingbird. — Olavo Bilac, Old Trees

Although he was used to a comfortable life, Chris wasn’t prepared for Taigh Hill: that wasn’t any mansion, it was a manor. Just the entry hall could encapsulate his entire house with space to spare, and he didn’t even talk about the decoration.

If anyone told Chris a king had lived there, he wouldn’t hesitate to believe it. The stairs to the second and third floors, which began across the hall, formed the shape of a tree, splitting into branches to reach each side of the two floors up. In the middle of the first store, a huge tapestry that had a story sewn into it was laid on the wall above a fireplace.

The housekeeper, however, didn’t allow any of them to take in their initial surprise, walking towards the stairs as if the place was nothing at all. For her, who took care of the place every day and all day long, it might not be, but fuck, Chris thought while the three of them jogged side by side to keep up with the rigid woman while still trying to take in everything, wishing they had a thousand eyes just so they could see it all.

There was a huge chandelier hanging from the high ceiling of the entry hall and the sounds spread, sounded, echoed throughout the place, especially because Miss Turner couldn’t stop talking, the echoes heightening the annoying tone of her voice. Chris was an inch away from telling her off when the echoes faded away and they entered a closeted corridor.

“You mustn’t make much noise because Mister Elliott’s wife has regular migraines and, if you do make noise, you’ll go to bed without dinner,” said Miss Turner severely without turning, as if she was sure she’d be heard, it didn’t matter by who. Chris considered some old people really sounded like that, shrugging to his thoughts while exchanging an exasperated look with Oliver. The boy smirked a bit, sarcastic, just like Chris had seen a couple of times during their trip together. “Oh, and I was warned that Mister Elliott’s eldest, Miss Ellen, doesn’t want you going inside her saloon. I ask that you respect it.”

“She has a saloon?” Chris asked the only one of the three there who seemed akin to breaking a couple of rules. Of course, he was the only one who could question them: he was somewhat akin to family, after all.

“Yes, she has, Mister Evans,” said the housekeeper, turning a bit, her voice polite. “It was a request from Miss Ellen herself to her father and uncle she matured.”

Although Chris thought the idea of giving a saloon to a nineteen-year-old girl was ridiculous, he didn’t say anything, shrinking back to the horizontal line, which was formed by him, Oliver, and Noah Kurtz, not realizing his shoulder brushing the second’s for a moment.

When Noah seemed to shrink, however, Chris looked at him. The boy, however, didn’t look back, making it clear as day he had no interest in speaking with Chris. The boy, for once, just shrugged internally and stopped so as not to bum pinto Miss Turner. She, on the other hand, had stopped in front of the fourth door to the right in the corridor.

“Your room is here. Mister Elijah wanted to put you in separate rooms but Mister Elliott thought it’d be best if you were sleeping in the same room so you could socialize and not being stuck in your own worlds.”

The woman obviously respected the two men she was speaking about and that made Chris feel a little less apprehensive about the godfather he never met and his family. If their employees liked them, that was enough to say they were likable enough. The housekeeper let them pass by her and scan the room while she kept speaking:

“Dinner will be ready at six pm and I’ll come get you when the time has come for you to go downstair today. For now, I’d suggest you use your time correctly and unpack or go explore the garden before it’s dark. And don’t forget to be quiet around the library!”

“Why do we have to...” but Chris didn’t have the chance to make his question, once the housekeeper closed the door behind her as she left before he could speak. The red-haired boy frowned, then whistled. “Is it me, or she doesn’t seem to like us very much?”

He was left to laugh alone and, when he turned to know the reason why at least Oliver didn’t comment, he found the boy turned to the bed he’d chosen, the one nearest the window. Meanwhile, Noah put his bag on the bed nearest to the door, leaving Chris with the bed by the wall. Even weirded out by the silence, Chris resigned himself to unpacking just like Miss Turner had suggested.

The beds in the room he’d share with the Other two boys could accommodate him and the others, plus at least more nine people put side by side. Chris didn’t doubt they could sleep the three of them in the same one with space to spare. It seemed the bed of a king, just like everything about that manor seemed to reek of royalty. There were even curtains on the beds: they were golden, just like the sheets and the blankets.

Chris wanted to say something to break the ice he felt around the two boys behind him but, before he could think of something, Noah left the room leaving his suitcase on the bed without unpacking it or saying anything.

“Kinda rude,” Chris commented quietly, raising an eyebrow at Oliver, who was still in the same position, silent as a crypt. Weirded out by this behavior, Chris went to his friend, brushing his shoulder gently with his own. “Hey, is there a problem? You can talk to me if you want.”

“It’s nothing, it’s just…” Oliver said, no doubt trying to lie because it was obvious there was something wrong. The boy sighed mourningfully, and said: “I miss my dad.”

There was more about it Oliver wasn’t telling him but Chris didn’t pressure him for more information. He couldn’t forget that, as much as it didn’t seem like it, he had met the other boy just some hours ago and there were limits Chris didn’t really know whether he could cross or not.

Therefore, all he did was sigh while sitting in his bed and smiled at his joined hands and separated knees.

“I also miss my mom.” Chris scrunched his nose at the reminder of Maxwell but didn’t say anything out loud. Instead, Chris talked about Jane and how amazing she was. Oliver looked over at him for the moment Chris began to describe his mother, his blank eyes making him look more German than ever but the boy still took a seat by his side, listening silently: “My mom loves to paint. She’s great and has always dreamed of being a painter but she gave up this dream when she married my dad, considering my grandpa wanted her to stay home to take care of me. My dad… I’ve never seen him agreeing with my grandpa but he also doesn’t disagree with him. My mom has the prettiest, softest hair I’ve ever seen and she smells like rosemary.”

Chris closed his eyes to imagine Jeane by his side, smiling at him the way just a mother could do. Looking at him the same way she smiled when Chris was younger and his biggest worry was whether or not she had made ginger biscuits.

Oliver stayed quiet for a long time after that, allowing Chris to recover from the onslaught of feelings after he talked about Jeane. He gulped, swallowing down the tears.

“My mother’s name was Liora,” the blond boy said in a murmur, so low it seemed like a whisper, his eyes staring at something Chris couldn’t see. Then, hesitating, as if he feared Chris was going to start yelling at him or something, Oliver added: “She was taken by the Führer before we left Germany.”

Chris knew “Führer” was a word they used to refer to Hitler. So the magnitude of it all hit him like a punch, comprehension making his heart beat painfully, cutting his airways. He couldn’t help but look at Oliver with pity, although he knew that was certainly not the desired reaction. It was just that Chris couldn’t help it: it was like Oliver’s pain had spread to him, because, after all, wasn’t it his own as well in a certain way?

All of those crimes committed against the Jews, the black people, Romanis, different peoples… wasn’t it his pain as well? They were humans. They were people, they could’ve been people he passed by on his way to school, they could be his professor, his friend’s parents, and relatives, they could’ve been his relatives. It could’ve been him.

Chris saw the pain as his duty. He had to feel the pain for all of the families destroyed by Hitler and by the war that was happening. He had to feel pain because it was the least, he could do if it really mattered for him.

But Chris didn’t say any of that. He didn’t ramble about how concentration camps or did a monologue stating the obvious — all human beings should be respected. No, Oliver knew all of that, he didn’t need anyone to talk his ear off about it. He needed to be heard, or his privacy respected, whichever he preferred.

“Do you want to talk about her?” Chris asked then, as delicately as he could even though he could still feel his disgust for Hitler leaving his tongue heavy and sticky, making it hard to swallow.

In his nape, there was a shiver being born. Oliver kept silent for longer this time; his lips half-open in almost words.

“No,” he finally exhaled, getting more comfortable in Chris’ bed, his back straight. “I was just worried because it’s my first time away from my dad since they took her and I don’t want him to… spiral because of it again.”

The worry in Oliver’s tone was palpable and, for a moment, Chris felt a bit envious about his relationship with his dad. He wanted Max to care enough about him and Jeane to actually mourn if something happened to them. He wanted his father to care.

Admitting that even to himself was like a Punch to his stomach. Chris knew trying not to care would be useless someday but until then, making these mistakes wouldn’t be allowed. He shouldn’t have to beg to have his Father in his life, he shouldn’t have to beg for anyone’s love. Love was something to be freely given, selflessly and happily given. Love was something to be offered, not something to be stolen.

After all, that was the reason why Chris thought it was ridiculous when one of his friends said he’d stolen a girl’s heart. It was ridiculous because they really thought that trying and trying and trying the same way everytime would give them a different outcome. If a girl wasn’t interested in giving him a chance, Chris just moved on to the next girl to interest him: it wasn’t so hard to hear a no after you got used to it.

Anyhow, he was digressing, Chris realized when Oliver shook his hand in front of his face, catching his attention back.

“Did I daydream for a bit?” Chris asked, embarrassed, and Oliver chuckled.

“For quite some time, actually,” he just said.

“I’m sorry”, said Chris with a sigh, turning in the bed to look straight at his friend. “I didn’t know what to say and ended up thinking about my own dad.”

“It’s okay, I can’t expect people to know what to say to something like that.” Oliver smiled, clearly embarrassed and a bit worried. “What did you think of Miss Turner?”

“I think she looks like a Woman from the last century, but who knows? She could surprise us.” Chris answered and shrugged as he laid on the bed, supporting his head with his fingers crossed under it, looking at the ceiling.

“She seems a bit nicer than those women.” Oliver also shrugged but didn’t lay down: he preferred to stay seated on the soft mattress. “What about the other boy... Noah?”

“He’s... quiet.” Chris shrugged again. “I still don’t know what to think of him, actually. I didn’t have the time to get to know him.”

Oliver made no comments, nor did he disagree about anything in regards to Noah. The two boys stayed quiet for a while, the silence of people that had nothing to talk about. So, to break the ice, or maybe to get some alone time, Oliver got up and said:

“I should write to my dad and tell him we arrived and it all went well. I promised him I would.

“Hm, I need to write to my mom as well, although I didn’t promise anything,” Chris said, closing his eyes as the Journey began to take a toll on him. He could feel his body getting heavier and his mind slower. — I’ll just sleep for a bit. Wake me up in an hour, please.

He didn’t even hear Oliver’s agreement before he was out.

Chapter 7 - Coming Soon...

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My Books!

Hey, guys! Welcome to my profile, here you'll find my books (which are partially available here on Tumblr).

My books are self-translated, so my English might fail me sometimes, so I'd thank you if you could spare some minutes to critique my work if you decide to read it (I hope you do!)

Besides that, just enjoy the ride, I hope you love my stories and my characters as much as I do <3

All Creatures on Earth - Summary

The series will follow Adra, a witch born in a world of demons who has to navigate this world to get revenge for her father's murder. A murder mystery filled with political intrigue and a bit of Dark Academia vibes.

To Decadent Poets - Summary

The series is a coming-of-age type of story and will follow Chris, Annie, Oliver, and Noah as they grow up together in the north of Scotland as World War II devastates the world. A historical fiction with some mystery, a lot of comfort vibes, and Light Academia aesthetics!

The Freak Show Series - Summary

The series is based on two independent books but both are focused on heroines leaving abusive relationships with their families and discovering a whole new world ahead of them (and falling in love, of course). Ah, and there is a circus of horrors (running away with the circus was never more appealing haha).