I Knew It! A Hashira... So A Hashira Did Come, After All! That’s Great! That Will Certainly Please

— Sue Zhao

THE PUNCH

In the midst of the intense battle against Voldemort in the Ministry of Magic, the atmosphere was tense and charged with magic. Spells were being cast left and right, and the air was thick with tension. Amidst it all, a young wizard named Glenn found himself feeling completely drained.

Rubbing his tired eyes, Glenn scratched his head with his wand, trying to shake off the weariness that had settled over him. Voldemort's voice droned on as he continued his speech, his words a twisted mix of arrogance and malevolence. Glenn couldn't help but feel a sense of irritation mingling with his exhaustion.

As Voldemort's speech reached its climax, the battle erupted into chaos. Spells collided, and the clash of magic filled the air. Glenn's mind was foggy from lack of sleep and hunger, and he felt a surge of frustration building within him.

Just as Voldemort raised his wand to cast a particularly powerful curse, Glenn's patience reached its breaking point. In a moment of boldness driven by irritation, he clenched his fist and swung it with all his might, connecting with Voldemort's face in a resounding punch.

The impact was unexpected and powerful, and Voldemort was knocked off balance. His wand fell from his hand as he stumbled backward, his expression a mix of shock and disbelief. For a brief moment, the entire battlefield seemed to freeze as everyone stared in astonishment at what had just transpired.

Glenn stood there, his knuckles throbbing from the force of the punch, a mixture of disbelief and satisfaction on his face. He cracked his knuckles, wincing slightly at the pain. Then, without missing a beat, he looked up and noticed the wide-eyed stares and open mouths of those around him.

"Uh, yeah," Glenn muttered, shrugging his shoulders as if it was no big deal. "I mean, the guy was really getting on my nerves, and I just want to go home and take a nap."

His words were met with a mix of incredulous looks and amused chuckles from the other wizards and witches on the battlefield. Even Voldemort's loyal followers seemed taken aback by the unexpected turn of events.

Glenn's actions had managed to knock Voldemort unconscious, leaving the Dark Lord sprawled on the floor. The battlefield was still for a moment, and then, as if shaken from a trance, the battle resumed with renewed vigor.

With Voldemort temporarily incapacitated, the tide of the battle began to turn in favor of the defenders. Glenn's unexpected punch had provided a much-needed morale boost and a break in the tension. Spells were cast, and the battle raged on, but there was a renewed sense of determination in the air.

And in the midst of it all, Glenn stood, his hand still throbbing from the punch, a tired but satisfied smile on his face. Sometimes, a well-timed punch was all it took to change the course of history, even in the magical world.

DELICIOUS!

4 - 2 = 2 hands

4 × 2 = tate mcrae

software: capcut

disclaimer: i do not own the song but i did cut it.

loss of my life

daniel le domas × nell crain

‎"she didn't even draw the card, but she just— just couldn't handle the life of having to kill others to save our skin. and that haunts me... cause if only i knew, then i wouldn't have married her... then maybe she's still alive... the purest thing i ever had. my soul, my wife." — daniel le domas

song: night we met by lord huron

show/movie: hibm + ready or not

Holy shit I hit the 1k mark and didn’t even realise. You guys are all bonkers I started this to just keep track of my prompts! Thank you very much!!! To celebrate, have a short story about how writers are awesome and different ways of seeing the world that none of you will probably read, but I hope those who do will enjoy it :)

How Beautiful the World Is

Andy had always admired writers. They were the only people who could manage to make the world sound so beautiful, he thought. The way that even beautiful things could be made more beautiful; the way every sunset blossomed on the clouds the way that sweet, wild clover blossoms in a meadow, hues from burnt orange flame to heather told in soft rolling verse, the way every field was a luscious bounty of daisies and sun-strengthened grass, and every sky was rolling blue like the foam and ice of breaking waves on the winter coast. They had a habit of making each detail wonderfully beautiful, filled with unparalleled splendour.

However, in all actuality, the world was rather dull. Grass was a limp, pitiful green, sunsets were often mild, mostly unnoticed, not worth being looked upon, the sky was grey, clouds floated gloomily like lost, empty ghosts, the night sky was just a dull, navy sort of blue.

Perhaps it was the cold sadness that hung over him that dampened the world into a flattened grey emptiness, an expanse of tarmac and concrete, weather stained and foot-beaten, lacking in any and all beauty, but perhaps books were just optimistic ways of helping children get through the day.

He could still accept that there were certain beauties to the world, there was no denying that, but often the bad outweighed the good. He remembered someone telling him once that everything was made from a pile of good things, and a pile of bad things, and the good didn’t always make the bad better, but the bad didn’t necessarily sour the good, but he thought that even that was being optimistic.

And then he met Jet.

Johnathan Charles Morrow. When he first heard of him, a transfer student who was arriving in a few days, Andy laughed at the name. They speculated as to who the kid was, weaving tall tales about some rich man’s son who had been pulled from some posh private school after his father had lost all of his money to a gambling addiction, or something else that the particularly high-end community would frown upon, who would turn up with an attitude that turned the world around him foul, and who's accent would be so incredulously opulent that it would be an immense source of entertainment for the rest of the time he was in their lives. How unbelievably wrong they were.

When he first arrived, there was one main surprise to him; Jet had had cancerous growths on both of his optical nerves, not that Andy had known that specifically at the time, and had been forced to have both eyes removed at a very young age. He was completely and utterly blind.

The kid had a wolfish grin that he wore on his face almost every second of the day, and accompanying it was a face that smiled with it, all the way from his chin to his hairline. The smile lines of his face stretched from the corners of his sightless eyes like the magnetic poles of the world he couldn’t see, casting shadows across the smooth golden skin of his cheeks. It was infectious. The joy that cascaded across his face leaked onto everyone and everything around him. It was impossible not to be drawn to him.

Andy first spoke to him on the second day he attended school. It was raining, the grey clouds hung like melancholy sorrows, and it was cold enough that his breath danced across the morning air, spinning like a dancer caught in a moment of time, but the air seemed to warm around Jet, around his resplendent smile.

They began to chat, talking about anything and everything, contrasting opinions giving way to arguments that usually would've angered Andy to the point of storming off, but instead it instilled an almost healthy sense of competition in him, and before he realised, Jet had become one of the best friends that Andy had. And then Jet was the best friend that Andy had.

Then one day, one boring, mundane, Thursday evening, as they were making their way down yet another generic suburban road, on their way back to Jet’s house, and Jet told him he thought the world was beautiful.

Andy was so taken aback that he stopped still where he stood, dead on his feet, and it took a few steps for Jet to realise he’d stopped walking. A crumpled look crossed his features like broken waves crashing over rocks. “How? How on earth can you say that? You can’t even see!”

There was the smile again, intoxicating as ever. “Sight is not what makes the world beautiful.”

“I beg to differ. What else is there beyond sight? Corruption? Pollution? People?”

Jet paused, a quizzical look polluting and distorting his smile, Andy felt a twinge of regret coil its way up his throat, which he swallowed back down again, but feeling a little bad for what he’d said.

“When the sun is shining, I feel the heat on my skin, the soft warmth that makes my skin tingle like I am being enveloped in kindness and love. That is beautiful. When I dip my fingers into crisp water, and I feel the brisk, omnipresent coolness, the relaxation of bracing water on your forehead that balances the sometimes stickiness of excessive heat, that is beautiful. I hear the birds chirping in the morning, whistling their own personal symphonies, singing at the top of their lungs, I am safe, I am awake, I am alive. I think that too, is beautiful. When I walk home from school with you and I hear mothers picking up their children from primary school, their children babbling about whatever it is that children find important at that age. That is beautiful.” He paused, putting a hand on Andy’s shoulder, shuffling his stick awkwardly under his other arm and smiling softly. “When I hear the cheerful voices of my friends in the morning, or their laughs, it reminds me that I am not, nor will I ever be, alone with any sadness that I have, and that, above all else is beautiful.”

“But you're never sad, you smile like every day is a celebration!”

Another conflict of emotion flickered across his face. “Just because you can't see something doesn’t mean it's not there. When you go to the seaside, you can't tell what lies in the depths by standing in the shallows.”

“But you're my best friend! You – I,” A strangled sound ripped itself from his lips and he stepped out of Jet’s grasp, letting his arms fall limply in the space between them. “I should know if you're unhappy, Jet.”

“Andy - I didn’t mean anything of it.”

“So, that smile, it's not really a smile?” He folded his arms across himself and rubbed a hand under his chin. “It's a mask? You – you're hiding behind it?”

“Not in the way you’re implying.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jet didn’t add anything to his previous comment, only turned his head away, sucking his teeth. He mumbled something under his breath that Andy didn’t catch and sighed. There was something bubbling beneath his usually calm composure, not quite irritation, but leaning in that direction, it was quite strange, Andy thought, to see such different mannerisms in his friend, and it made him almost uncomfortable.

Jet began to walk away. Andy had always admired that even though the boy lacked vision, he always went in the right direction, never into traffic, or off a pavement, he was surprisingly like a Canada goose in that respect, had an internal compass that was completely reliable, even more so that sight itself sometimes.

Andy rubbed his thumbs against his fists, but before he had a chance to retaliate in any way, Jet turned back around.

“You are stupid sometimes, you know that?”

“Hey-”

“Happiness only comes when you accept that there are some things that you can't change, I learned that a long time ago,” he gestured to his blackened glasses, “and one example of this is that you can never live in a state of complete happiness. There is no such thing as utopia, as heaven on earth, because there is always going to be something with the potential to ruin your mood, your day, or if you're really unlucky, your life.” Andy watched as he carefully removed his glasses, folded the arms and tucked them into his breast pocket. For the first time, he could see Jets prosthetic eyes, they were a rich hazel, like sun shining through a glass of whiskey, staring emptily at the ground in front of them.

“It all depends on whether you let the things ruin you. I have spent my life trying, desperately, to make sure that the things don’t ruin me, so I smile, and I look specifically for the good things about the world. Whereas you, you look for the sadness, and the grief, and the misery, that covers the world like a depressant, forcing everyone into a constant state of frustration that does nothing but make their life a misery, and then you wonder why you can't see the good in the world.”

“So yes, I think the world is beyond beautiful, and I understand that it is also an awful, awful place, but I choose not to dwell on that, because accepting your fate never gets anyone anywhere. You can't change the problems in the world if you’ve already given up. Life can be beautiful if you let it.”

Andy thought about this for a moment, dumbstruck by the fact that a sightless boy saw more beauty than him.

“And even then, not all beautiful things must be seen. Some beautiful things are the small nothingness that you hold close to your heart and make life worth living.”

Andy nodded, awe filtering through him like adrenaline, filling him up. “You’re right.”

Jet sniggered, that signature Cheshire grin splitting his face ear to ear, “I know.”

And maybe, just maybe, the sunset was just a little brighter that evening

food > everything (｡♥‿♥｡)

STALKER CODED!