Lights And Reflections! Small Corner Of Another New Painting

I learnt something today that I think is just beautiful. My grandmother was a very sick woman and pretty much housebound for the last of her life.  She derived great pleasure from watching her neighbour’s backyard chickens.  She adored these chickens.  Every time I called, she had new chicken drama to tell me—think Linda Belcher and the raccoons.   It turns out that at some point, their neighbour was no longer able to have chickens because due to a disability he could no longer afford to keep them.  My grandfather, upon learning this, immediately used his spending money to keep the neighbour in both chickens and chicken feed so that my grandmother would have chickens to watch since my grandfather didn’t have time to keep chickens at their home. He did this for ten years, guys.  TEN YEARS he secretly funded his neighbour’s backyard chickens so that my grandmother would have chickens to watch every day until the day she died.   That’s true love.

moodboard for a ravenclaw bi girl @seal-of-unknown

-Pastel

i am a simple girl i seek academic validation and get absolutely destroyed when i don’t receive it

“why are you sad?” i ask myself

“because i want to experience love. what is it like? why are we so scared?”

“i suppose we’re waiting for when it’s safe. when we’ve gotten to a place mentally that it’s ok to let someone in”

“sometimes i feel like this wait will be never ending, for maybe i won’t ever feel like we’re ready for love”

Help Rebuild Gaza’s Only 3D Printing Medical Equipment Facility

From the fundraising webpage:

This fundraiser is to help our dear friend Mohammed Abu Matar to rebuild Tashkeel3D; a key manufacturer of 3D-printed medical equipment in Gaza that was destroyed by Israeli Occupation Forces during this week’s attack on Gaza. Tashkeel3D is where Gaza’s first 3D printer was built, where medical devices have been manufactured for years and led the opensource culture was in Gaza. Tashkeel3D is the original Gaza affiliate of the Canada-based Glia Project, an organization founded by ER doctor Tarek Loubani which works with regional partners to develop and produce low-cost and open-source 3D-printed medical equipment. Among other tools, Tashkeel3D has developed 3D-printed tourniquets: compression devices used to limit bleeding. They were threatened with bombing previously by the Israeli Occupation Forces. While no specific reason was given, they were producing tourniquets to support Gaza’s medical system at the time, which was likely what brought them to attention.

The destruction severely hampers efforts to produce 3D printed tourniquets. Tashkeel3D’s offices effectively represent half of Gaza’s 3D printing capacity. All proceeds will go to Mohammed to help him rebuild Tashkeel3D. We ask that you please donate any amount that you possibly can and that you share this link with your network.

(campaign verified with Mohammed Abu Matar)

Harry isn’t quite out of his teens when it fully hits him—the war, the blood and the guts spread across the corridors of Hogwarts, the screams and sobs, the nightmares, the shadows that never seem to leave him.

It’s too much.

He gets a flat in London—Muggle London. Hermione and the Weasleys give him space. Kingsley ensures the wizarding world gives him privacy. Not that some aren’t reluctant. Rita Skeeter releases articles every day, wondering when their Boy Who Lived will return.

But Harry doesn’t see those articles.

He tries to forget who he is for awhile.

His flat is cozy. He stuffs it with plants and paintings and books. He has a cat (or three). He wears sweaters and blazers with corduroy pants. He goes to the market every morning to buy fruits and vegetables. That’s where he meets the kindly old woman who lives down the street.

She lived through World War II and so many other wars, wars that Harry has never experienced but can only imagine.

She goes to his house and she goes to hers. There’s always tea and small cakes and dinners and cocoa—apparently she believes that a teenager needs cocoa—and baking and reading and knitting.

Harry uses magic to brew the cocoa one day, not realizing that she’s standing in the doorway. She calms him by telling him that she knows all about magic. 

Their conversations shift after that. They talk about their favorite creatures and how hard it was to watch them perish before their eyes. They talk about the wall that seemingly gave way to let them enter the magical world. They talk about lions and friends and family and love and betrayals and life and death.

“When did you leave?” Harry asks one day.

She pauses, a hand resting on his cat’s head. After a moment, she looks up with a heaviness in her eyes, a heaviness that Harry sees when he looks in the mirror everyday. 

“I was young,” she says. “Younger than you are now. But I had already grown up. I didn’t want to leave, not really, but it became too much.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Some days I do, some days I don’t.” 

“Yeah…”

It’s a few months later, when he’s helping her shovel the first snow from her walkway, that he asks, “Did you ever try going back?”

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t,” she says, shoving a cup of cocoa into his hands. “I was shut out as soon as I hesitated.”

He pauses, nearly dropping the cocoa, before whispering, “That’s horrible.”

“What about you?” She escorts him inside, her cane tapping against the floor that he’s magically heated to warm her feet. “Would you be welcomed back?”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry says. “Til they turn on me because they don’t like the color of my shirt or because I sneezed the wrong way or because—you name it.”

She laughs and he smiles.

“Imagine that,” she softly says. “Rulers of our worlds and we’re not even allowed in them.”

“Imagine that.”

He does go back to the wizarding world, of course, but he never forgets his London flat. He visits the street from time to time, knowing that Susan Pevensie will be there, ready to push a cup of cocoa into his hands.

Hey all y'all Americans out there please keep this in mind, make sure your votes count and oust the cheeto from the White House

Vote Blue

Honestly Woman

Me, Fred, and George: *Waiting to board the Express*

Molly: Alright Fred your turn.

Me af: He's not Fred, I am!

Fred: Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother.

George: *Laughing his arse off*

Molly: I- Emily you aren't even one of my children, luckily.

Me, Fred, and George: *Dramatic gasp*

Fred: DISOWNING ONE OF YOUR CHILDREN?!

George: HOW DARE YOU

Me: *Fake crying* I JUST WANTED A HOME

George and Fred: *Holding me in a huddle* HOW COULD YOU, YOU BROKE HER

Molly: These kids-

shout out to the literal fan fiction happening a few blocks from my apartment. there has been this halal meat market on the corner for like 19 years that the owner’s son just inherited and directly across the street this woman opened a kosher grocery store and since day one they’ve had this very friendly fake rivalry, playing it up for the customers, it’s always been super goofy and light hearted. so turns out last night she proposed in the middle of the afternoon rush in the meat market and he said YES and she’s moving her store to the adjacent empty storefront on the left so they can have a JOINT GROCERY STORE it is so fucking cute I wish them the happiest marriage ever