A Short Story : Chapter 1

Hinton, an amiable tobacco planter in Virginia, inspected the mill infrequently and trusted him to make an honest trade. There was no way to forecast when loggers would arrive, depending on the weather and the wind and water currents so Matthew remained available year-round. He was tall, burley with bushy, red hair, and freckles that almost connected into a solidly tan face. People never forgot him because his freckles were such an assortment of colors, red, brown, tan, beige, pink, auburn, rust, black, and orange. He entertained visitors with stories of animals and men fighting themselves and each other along with spine-tingling stories about ghosts and Indians that intimidated the settlers. If they were true, it did not matter.

“Then, we had hot chocolate with swirling marshmallows and whipped cream like soft serve. Along with that, piece or two of Russell stover milk chocolate candy. The rooms were so scenic, with Christmas decor everywhere. Ornaments, ribbon and that odor, oh good lord, it was so Christmasy.”

Lifty huffed, snuffing his cough back into his throat as he chucked Petunia into his bedroom.

“This is it,” Theron said, leaning against the holotable. Everything had been powered down and packed up. All that was left was to pile onto their ships and go their separate ways. Theron had a shuttle standing by, a simple, one-manned vessel to deliver him to his mother’s command ship.

Three days passed before Jingyan took a trip to Su Zhe's residence, following a familiar path to a destination with a wholly different sort of anticipation. He made his visit at night, when there were less watchful eyes and more shadows to hide his trail. When he finally stepped into the courtyard of plum blossoms, he detoured to the pond before entering the still-lit room of the house.

As he'd killed these men of the North, Darius had come to understand a bit about them. They were larger than his countrymen on average, their skin paler, and he had a grim respect for their metalwork. The quality of their steel was much higher than what he was used to, this resulted in superior armor and weapons. They wore heavy plate mail, and ingenious mail formed from rings that'd been formed together. The swords that they wielded were longer, and heavier, as were their shields. Even their fighting techniques were different from what he was used to. Still, as large as the majority of them were, he was bigger still, and certainly stronger. He'd taken a number of the weapons off the corpses he'd made, and had studied the intricacies of

“Heh, I would have walked around shirtless a lot more often if I’d known you liked it,” Leorio said, his voice pitched low, but Kurapika didn’t bother acknowledging him, hell, he barely even heard him. He surged simply forward, needing to touch Leorio, needing to kiss him, desire fueling his arousal. Without a handy tie to grab onto so he could pull Leorio down to his lips, Kurapika ended up kissing Leorio’s pecs, but he was okay with that. Kurapika caressed Leorio’s back as he worked his way across the plane of his chest, loving the way Leorio gasped and shuddered in his arms, hissing Kurapika’s name.

As the clusters of ministers argued the proposal amongst themselves, Cretech watched their faces, hoping for telltale signs that might allow him an insight into their intentions. He felt suddenly moved by an unusual flood of emotion and stopped to examine it. Courage? No, it was confidence. He was sure the vote would be victorious, and with that knowledge, he wandered across the floor to join his blue-sashed compatriots, their votes were never in dispute, although they did not hold a majority alone.

Bren nodded to 6D7 after he and the droid agreed to save thr mysterious young woman. Bren shook his head, knowing fill well he would have to improvise and BS most of the way through this. Soon the droid broke their silence on the way with a few beeps. Bren looks over " What? You don't think I have a plan for this?" the droid gave a low sigh like noise in response. "Hey buddy", Bren would stop to comfort his droid "You know I've got one". The droid would give a scoff "Don't worry, we got this, 6D7." Bren would quickly reply with a sly smirk on his face, but if 6D7 had eyes, one would certainly have seen them roll at his master's comment.

"Wow, Cap, you took an awfully long time to get popcorn," said Clint as he heard him walking in.

Katerina stepped out of the shadow of the filing cabinet. She pushed her hood down and swung her sniper off of her back before leaning it against the wall.

“I never got your names, by the way,” (Y/N) brought up. “Well, I know you’re Prompto. Ig’s mentioned you’re a big fan of ‘King’s Knight.’”

“Who are you trying to debauch now?” Jinki questioned, walking out of his room and back into the main area of the flat, where Jonghyun and Taemin were sitting at the island separating the living room, that was apparently made for dwarfs, from the kitchen that even ants would struggle to cook in (not that they cooked often, though - ordinarily they would order takeout or Teukie would drop food round and eat with them if he wasn’t busy dealing with his own problems).

After Shadow had changed he decided it was a good idea to pop up behind Trey to say hi. Of course like all the other times of the past, he got blasted backwards from the impact of an explosion. He let out a strangled noise as the impact of him hitting the brick wall behind him shot pain through his back. Trey gasped and whipped around, "Oh god Shadow!"

The stone streets of Ryzdinth were well kept. Heavy blocks were pushed flush against one another and showed signs of wear from the many travellers visiting the city. Archibald had never been here before, but as the head of the four person entourage for Ciefa, he needed to act like he had.