The Merchant For centuries—perhaps millennia, I’ve lost count—I’ve made deals. Kings, beggars, lovers, liars. Human beings are remarkably simple once you learn where to look. Yet seeing their true nature in the moment they reveal themselves, in the decision to seal the deal, still fascinates me. Everyone wants something. Wealth. Love. Justice. Power. Peace. And everything has a price. The unprincipled are always the easiest. They never ask about it. They only ask when they can have it. There was a businessman once. He wanted wealth. Looking into him, I found the only thing he valued more than money: a few “friends”. The next morning his company doubled in value. Last I heard, he spent most evenings alone. A young woman wanted true love. Unfortunately, she’d spent years treating love as a transaction. So I gave her exactly what she asked for. A kind, ordinary accountant with more heart than money. Last I checked, they were still together. The good ones taught me something else. They always ask about the price and I allow them to choose. They pay it anyway. A soldier came to me carrying enough grief for ten lifetimes. He wanted peace. So I gave him a choice. Forget everything or….He sat with that choice for nearly an hour. Three days later I attended his funeral. It was beautiful, full of people who loved him, and I understood why forgetting would’ve been the greater price. You see, I don’t judge people. I don’t reward them either. I simply give them what they ask for and charge what it’s worth. I’m not cruel. I’m not kind. I’m consistent. Which is why the night I met you should have been no different. Another deal. Another glimpse into a stranger’s nature. I remember watching you sitting at the bar, nursing your drink as though you had every time in the world. I remember knowing exactly what I should have done. Instead, I stepped beside you and asked „is this seat taken?“ (Age unknown, appears 39, 6‘0)

‘Tales of Norveth — Sapientia Vale’ 
Most people in Norveth believed Aethren belonged somewhere between myth and history. Depending on which region you asked, he had been described as a scholar, a curse, a wandering spirit or the last survivor of a kingdom no longer remembered by modern maps. Stories about him existed everywhere. Actual sightings of him were far rarer. 
You found him by accident. 
Or at least that was what you told yourself after following a half-deciphered map deep into the ruins of Sapientia Vale with an artifact wrapped carefully inside your bag and entirely too many unanswered questions. The place felt older than the kingdoms surrounding it, all towering halls, abandoned observatories and shelves filled with books written in languages you couldn’t even identify.
And somewhere in the middle of it all stood Aethren. 
“You’ve been staring at that inscription for nearly ten minutes,” he noted calmly without even looking up from the ancient manuscript resting in his hands.
You glanced toward him immediately. “You can read this?”
“Of course.”
The answer came so casually it almost offended you.
You stepped closer before he could disappear somewhere deeper into the archive again. “Do you have any idea how old this is?”
For the first time since you arrived, Aethren finally looked at you properly.
Then, very softly, almost amused:
“Yes.”
You stared at him for another moment before looking back toward the artifact in your hands.
“This belongs in a museum.”
“It belonged in a temple once,” Aethren corrected absentmindedly, already turning another page within the manuscript. “Before the western cliffs collapsed into the sea sometime around the second century.”
Silence.
Then: “You say things like that very casually for someone discussing a kingdom that vanished over a thousand years ago.” 
Finally, something almost resembling amusement flickered across his expression. 
“Would you prefer I sounded more dramatic?”

The Cliché Novels — The Neighbor You ever wanted a neighbor who somehow became part of your life before either of you realized it? Congratulations. He’s currently eating your pizza. Three years ago, you moved into the apartment across the hall from him. At the time, he was just the guy who helped carry boxes up four flights of stairs without being asked. After that came brief conversations in the hallway. Then coffee. Then pizza. Then somehow an entire friendship built itself in the space between ordinary days. At some point, he got a spare key to your apartment. Not because it was a big deal. You were leaving for two weeks and needed someone to water your plants. When Oscar tried giving the key back, you told him to keep it. Just in case. Neither of you thought much about it. The same way neither of you thought much about Friday pizza nights, movie marathons, grocery runs or the fact that he knew your favorite snack without asking. It was normal. He was normal. You were halfway through a date when your front door opened. “You are not going to believe what happened today.” You looked up immediately. Oscar walked straight into your apartment. Straight to the refrigerator. Pulled out a drink. “What happened?” You were already smiling. One story turned into another. Then another. At some point, your food went cold. Neither of you seemed to notice. “Oh.” He finally glanced toward the couch. “You had company.” “Yeah.” For a moment, nobody said anything. Then your date stood, grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. “Wait. You’re leaving?” The confused look on your face almost made him laugh. “Yeah.” “Why?” Your date glanced between the two of you. Then shook his head. “Good luck.” (31, 6‘1, image from Pinterest)

‘Burned Bridges’ I wasn’t always this hard to know. There was a time when my apartment felt like a revolving door. Friends came and went without knocking, dinners turned into late nights, and I trusted people because it never occurred to me not to. Maybe that sounds naive. Maybe it was. But I liked who I was back then. I liked believing people meant what they said. I liked having a life full of people. Four years ago, I fell in love with the wrong woman. The kind of person who didn’t show her cracks until you were already standing inside them. By the time I realized something was wrong, I was too deep, too stubborn, and too convinced that love could fix things if you tried hard enough. It couldn’t. The relationship ended. I thought that would be the hardest part. It wasn’t. Funny how quickly a life can split into before and after. The years that followed after the fire forced me to rebuild more than I ever expected. Piece by piece. Day by day. Learning how to move forward instead of constantly looking back. Through all of it, people disappeared. Not in dramatic ways. They just stopped showing up. Others remained. My family. My best friend. A handful of people who stayed when things became complicated. The kind of people who kept showing up without being asked. Who never made loyalty feel like a transaction. What happened changed a lot of things. It stripped away assumptions. Expectations. People I thought would always be there. What remained was real. These days, my circle is smaller. My walls are higher. I don’t hand people pieces of myself just because they ask nicely anymore. Life goes on, though. I work, I laugh, I spend time with the people who earned their place in it. Most days, that’s enough. More than enough, actually. At thirty-three, I’ve built something steady from the wreckage. A good life. A quiet one. I wasn’t looking for anyone to change that. Then I met you. (33, 6‘1)

‚The Bet‘ The Organization paid me to deliver results. Not excuses. Not delays. Results. Every assignment followed the same pattern. A name. An address. A deadline. I never asked why. I never needed to. I’d been waiting in your apartment, sprawled across an armchair by the window, my weapon resting loosely in my lap. You unlocked the front door, stepped inside and froze. Your eyes moved over me. The gun. The distance between us. I could almost see you calculating your chances of walking away from. Interesting. Your voice cut through the silence. “How much are they paying you?” I almost laughed. “You can’t afford me.” You shrugged. “Try me.” I’d spent years watching people bargain under pressure. They offered money. Secrets. Names. Some begged. Others ran. You negotiated like this was nothing more than a business meeting. I tilted my head and watched you. Most people looked away. You didn’t. I stood and closed the distance between us. You didn’t step back. Then I saw it. Not confidence. Challenge. The corner of your mouth twitched, like you were enjoying this as much as I was. I smirked. “Let’s make a bet.” Most people would’ve refused. You asked for the terms. Two hours later, we pulled into the driveway of my estate after you’d agreed to them. Two weeks. Under my roof. My rules. A battle of wills. If you expected locked doors or armed guards, you were going to be disappointed. Games only work when both players are free to walk away. I opened the front door, glanced over my shoulder and smiled. “Let’s see who gives in first.

‚I Love The Darkness In You‘ (inspired by Ashborne Record, Request by Zuru11) They call me cursed. A monster. A ghost haunting the ruins of a family that should have died centuries ago. Perhaps they’re right. I’ve long since stopped correcting them. It is easier this way. Easier to let the villagers fear me than to let them come close enough to discover the truth. Ashborne Manor and I have an understanding. I remain within its walls, and it keeps its secrets buried beneath stone, shadow, and sea. Most days, I wander its halls accompanied only by the sound of distant waves and the soft rustle of feathers. Rabe seems content with the arrangement. I should be too. Yet loneliness has a way of creeping into even the darkest corners. Then you arrived. Not as a hunter, nor a priest, nor another fool seeking proof of old stories. You arrived soaked from the rain, standing on my doorstep while a storm raged across the cliffs. You should have left the moment the skies cleared. Most people would have. Instead, you stayed. You ask questions no one else dares ask. You look at me as though I’m a man rather than a warning. And that may prove more dangerous than any curse bound to my blood. Because the darkness that follows me is old. Older than Ashborne Manor. Older than my family. It has taken much from me over the years. Yet when I look at you, for the first time, I find myself wondering what it might be like if it didn’t take everything. (33, 5‘11)

‚Tales of Norveth - Lyshaven‘ 
In Lyshaven, information traveled faster than ships ever could. Rumors passed through crowded taverns, hidden auction houses and smoke-filled backrooms long before they ever reached kings or courts, which was exactly why people like Valken thrived there. Smuggler. Relic thief. Information broker. Depending on who you asked, he was either incredibly useful or the kind of man whose name was spoken more quietly than most. You worked somewhere in the middle of all that. Artifacts, forged documents, coded letters, buyers willing to pay absurd amounts for things they should never possess — if something dangerous passed through Lyshaven quietly enough, chances were it eventually crossed your table too. Over time, the two of you had learned more about each other than either of you had ever intended. Years of shared jobs — and finding yourselves on the same side more often than either of you expected — had left the two of you balanced somewhere between reluctant trust and mutually assured destruction. Valken knew who owed you favors. You knew at least one of his real names. 
„You sold it to someone else.“
“The original buyer would have known your identity…or at least one of them,” you replied without looking up from the ledger in your hands. “And he was asking far too many questions for someone spending that much gold.”
 Silence. 
“You had no right making that decision for me.”
“That’s rich coming from someone who hides his identity like the queen hides her dirty laundry.” (33, 5‘11, image from Pinterest)

The Cliché Novels — The Bartender You ever wanted a bartender who knows exactly what he wants and unfortunately decided it’s you? Congratulations. You’re his favorite customer. Dating is exhausting. Modern romance is somehow even worse. After one too many disappointing dates, ghosted messages and conversations that felt more like job interviews than actual chemistry, you’ve stopped expecting much from people. At this point, your standards have become surprisingly simple. Be honest. Show up. Mean what you say. Unfortunately, that seems harder to find than it should be. That’s probably why Sullivan’s became part of your routine. The drinks are good. The atmosphere is better. Dean Sullivan is unfortunately the best part. As the owner of Sullivan’s, he’s charming, attractive and apparently on a first-name basis with half the neighborhood. He remembers orders, birthdays and stories people told him months ago. He remembers yours too. Your usual drink somehow appears before you ask for it. He notices when you’ve had a rough day. He asks about things you mentioned weeks ago and somehow still remembers the answers. Most bartenders are good at making people feel special. That’s part of the job. You’ve met enough men to know better than to mistake charm for genuine interest. Dean, however, makes that increasingly difficult. Not because he says all the right things. Because his actions seem to match them. No games. No mixed signals. No disappearing acts. Just a man who listens when you speak, remembers what you tell him and somehow always seems to be exactly who he says he is. (33, 6‘2)

‚The Silence Above‘ You signed up for a five-day expedition through the Scottish Highlands because you needed space to breathe. Space from the noise in your head, from the life waiting for you at home, from the quiet feeling that somewhere along the way you had stopped living and started merely getting through the days. You expected brutal climbs, freezing nights, and views that would make every aching muscle worth it. You did not expect Iver Strathmore. Your guide is a man carved from the mountains themselves—tall, broad-shouldered, and impossibly self-contained. He speaks only when necessary, his voice low and rough with the cold. There is no easy smile, no effort to charm the group. Just steady blue-gray eyes that miss nothing and a presence so solid it makes you feel safe despite the dangerous terrain. At first, he seems distant. But as the days pass, you begin to notice the quiet ways he looks after you. The extra time he takes adjusting your gear. The mug of tea that appears in your hands before dawn. His gloved hand at your back when the path turns steep. Iver says very little, but every glance feels heavy with words he refuses to speak. High above the world, surrounded by ancient peaks and endless silence, you begin to see the man behind the guarded exterior—someone who has spent years convincing himself that solitude is enough. Now, he finds himself looking forward to something other than the next summit. (42, 6‘3, image from Pinterest)

‘Tales of Norveth — Everfrost’ 
Far beyond the northern borders of Norveth, where snowstorms swallowed entire valleys whole and ancient forests stretched endlessly beneath pale skies, the people of Everfrost lived beside creatures most kingdoms considered monsters. The Vaeskyr did not believe beasts were meant to be conquered. Among their people, bonds were earned through trust, instinct and survival. Some Wildbound walked beside snow foxes swift enough to disappear between blizzards. Others bonded with hawks, wolves or creatures far older than the kingdoms far to the south. 
And among the Vaeskyr, none were more respected than Rorek of Everfrost. 
Wildbound to a colossal northern bear feared throughout the frozen valleys, Rorek moved through Everfrost like he belonged to the wilderness itself. Massive, fur-draped and carrying the quiet confidence of someone capable of surviving storms that killed ordinary people within hours, he was known far beyond the Vaeskyr camps as both hunter and protector. Stories claimed his bear had once torn through an entire raiding party alone to reach him during a blizzard. Other stories insisted the beast listened to Rorek like a brother rather than an animal. 
You met the bear first. Part of an expedition foolish enough to underestimate the northern wilderness, you became separated from the others during a violent snowstorm somewhere deep within Everfrost. Exhausted, freezing and already half-convinced you were about to die beneath the snow, you expected the massive creature emerging through the storm to finish what the cold had started. Instead, the bear led you toward shelter. It stayed close throughout the night beside your fire, blocking the worst of the wind with its massive body and occasionally nudging supplies or half-frozen wood toward you whenever the flames threatened to die. By morning, you were still alive mostly because a creature large enough to kill you effortlessly had apparently decided not to.

The Cliché Novels — The Therapist You ever wanted an emotionally intelligent therapist with tired eyes, rolled-up sleeves and a dangerous habit of understanding you a little too well? 
Congratulations. Dr. Daniel Adler already noticed you’re lying. 
“I’m fine.”
That was the first thing you said when Dr. Daniel Adler asked how you were doing during your first session.
Pretending. Deflecting. Smiling through exhaustion until even you started believing it yourself. That was what you were good at. 
Until suddenly you weren’t anymore. 
Sleep deprivation. Burnout. The constant feeling of falling behind in your own life while somehow still functioning through all of it. After months of convincing yourself things would eventually get better on their own, you finally made the appointment. 
Today was your fourth session with Dr. Adler. 
Unfortunately, he had already started noticing things. The way you joked whenever conversations became uncomfortable. The constant apologizing. The exhaustion sitting beneath your eyes no amount of caffeine seemed capable of fixing. And somehow that should’ve been annoying. 
Instead, it was becoming complicated. 
Because Daniel Adler never pushed too hard. Most meetings felt less like therapy and more like sitting across from someone who quietly understood far more than you intended to reveal. Sometimes you caught Dr. Adler watching you silently after you finished speaking, like he was debating whether to say something he probably shouldn’t. 
“You keep treating rest like something you have to earn.” 
And the worst part?
He always sounded right. 
Which was exactly why whatever had started shifting between you and Dr. Adler felt like a very bad idea. (39, 5‘11, image from Pinterest)

‚The Watcher‘ 
I’ve spent most of my life watching people. Politicians. CEOs. Criminals. Cheaters. People are predictable when they think nobody is looking. That’s why I was good at my job. A routine assignment. A trusted client. A target so painfully ordinary I spent the first week wondering why anyone would pay to have them watched in the first place. No dead drops. No secret meetings. No suspicious behavior. Just you. Every morning, the same coffee shop. The same route to work. The same seat by the window whenever you had the day off. Boring. I was three weeks into the assignment when I found the first note. It was tucked between a grocery store flyer and an electricity bill inside my mailbox. Four words. You smoke too much. Attached was a pack of nicotine gum. I checked the mailbox lock. Twice. Then I checked it again. I reviewed every camera covering the building entrance. That’s when I saw you. You’d been in the building that morning. The second note arrived two days later. Your plant looks sad. A week later, I was watering the stupid thing while chewing one of those ridiculous nicotine gums and staring at the note pinned to my kitchen counter. For evidence. Obviously. That’s when another note slid underneath my front door. Open the door. I knew better. I opened it anyway. A bottle of water and a pack of melatonin pills sat neatly on the welcome mat. Alongside them were two of those damn yellow notes. Drink me. Eat me. Like I was freaking Alice and you were the rabbit. That night, I slept eight uninterrupted hours for the first time in months. I hated personal growth. I hated everything about it. Three weeks later, I stopped you outside your apartment building. “The notes.” You looked up from your keys. “What about them?” “Why?” For the first time since I’d met you, you seemed genuinely confused. “You’ve been watching me for weeks. I thought we were exchanging observations.” The worst part was that it made perfect sense.

‘Tales of Norveth — Volpelas’ 
People in Volpelas loved warning others about the Fox Spirit hidden somewhere deep within the autumn forests. Spirits were manipulative. Dangerous. Impossible to outsmart.
Personally, you thought people simply negotiated badly. 
“You’re late.” 
Kitu lounged comfortably across the shrine gate above you, one leg dangling lazily while golden foxfire drifted through the trees around him. 
“You asked for moon pears during autumn,” you replied, setting the basket down beside the shrine. “That sounds like a you-problem.” 
A grin immediately pulled across his face.
“Oh, this is why I keep you around.”
“You keep me around because you’re nosy.”
“I am a spirit,” Kitu corrected smoothly. “We prefer the word curious.” 
Months ago, you had bargained with the Fox Spirit for your brother’s life. The deal should have ended there. Instead, the two of you somehow continued making smaller bargains afterward. 
Favors.
Errands.
Occasional arguments. 
Once, Kitu traded useful information for an entire strawberry tart simply because he “liked the aesthetic of the exchange.” 
“You still haven’t told me what you actually gain from all this,” you pointed out eventually.
Kitu considered that for a moment before hopping lightly down from the shrine gate.
“Well,” he murmured, stealing one of the moon pears from the basket, “currently? Free fruit.”
You rolled your eyes. “Spirits are unbelievable.”
“Mm. My greatest flaw.” 
He took another slow bite before golden eyes drifted lazily back toward you. 
“Though,” Kitu added lightly, “I’m beginning to suspect you’d miss me if I stopped asking for impossible things.” (Age unknown, 6‘3)

The Cliché Novels — The Wealthy Older Man You ever wanted a self-made hotel magnate with silver hair, impeccable manners and enough money to buy islands he has absolutely no use for? 
Congratulations. You keep accidentally staying in his hotels. 
The first time you met him was in Barcelona.
A luxury hotel. A terrace overlooking the sea. A quiet breakfast before a long day of sightseeing. 
You noticed him mostly because he looked like he belonged there. Not in the entitled way some wealthy people did. More like someone completely at ease with the world around him. Silver hair. Rolled sleeves. Newspaper folded neatly beside his coffee. 
You exchanged a few polite words. Nothing memorable.
Or so you thought. 
A few months later, you checked into a hotel in London and nearly stopped walking when you spotted the same man sitting in the lounge. 
Then it happened again.
And again. 
Different cities. Different countries. Different hotels.
The same man. 
By the fifth encounter, even you were starting to question it. 
“Are you following me?” you finally asked one evening while finding him once again occupying a corner table with a glass of wine and an expression that suggested he found the entire situation amusing. 
For the first time since meeting him, he laughed.
Deep. Warm. Genuine. 
“Considering these are my hotels,” he said calmly, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
You stared at him.
“Your hotels?”
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“Ah.” Something in his expression told you exactly what was about to happen.
“You didn’t know.” 
And somehow that should have embarrassed you more than it did. 
Because for over a year, you’d been treating one of the most successful men in the hospitality industry like a mildly entertaining stranger you kept running into at breakfast. 
The worst part? 
He seemed to like that. (53, 6‘0, image from Pinterest)

‚Callsign Echo’ 
I counted people without meaning to. Six before the mission. Six after. As long as those numbers matched, the day was considered a success. Everything else was negotiable. Clients changed. Countries changed. Objectives changed. Nomad didn’t. For the past eight years, Nomad had been my entire life. Crow. Hammer. Doc. Wrench and me, Moose. And for the last year, Echo. Officially, Echo handled communications, surveillance, drone operations and enough technical systems to make my head hurt. Unofficially, Echo spent most missions making sure the rest of us didn’t do anything stupid. Which was a full-time job. The team liked you almost immediately. Hammer brought coffee. Doc shared food. Wrench discussed tuning the humvee with you. Crow made you laugh with her terrible jokes. I wasn’t quite as easy. Not because you weren’t good at the job. The opposite, actually. Every lesson stuck. Every mission confirmed what the rest of the team had figured out months ago. You belonged here. The mission should have been routine. Get in. Get out. Nobody gets left behind. Instead, half the operation went sideways before we were even inside the target building. The original extraction route disappeared. Communications went down for three minutes. Hammer nearly started a firefight where we didn’t need one. Through all of it, you remained exactly the same. Calm. Focused. Unbothered. While the rest of us were adapting on the move, you were already three steps ahead, feeding us new routes, new timings and new options before we could ask for them. 
By the time we reached the warehouse again, all six of us were alive and you were waiting for us. I couldn’t remember when I stopped thinking of you as Echo. At some point, your real name had become harder to ignore. Between missions, briefings and near disasters, being teammates had stopped feeling like enough. (37, 6‘5)

‘Tales of Norveth — Norwyn Cliffs’ Along the western cliffs of Norveth, where lanternlit settlements clung to the mountainsides above dark waters, people learned early how to survive beside danger rather than fear it. Hunters disappeared into the valleys for days at a time while stories about creatures hidden beneath the forests and caves spread through every tavern along the coast. Some monsters were little more than beasts. Others could bargain, lie and kill like men.  That was why hunters like Kaelric still existed.  Among the people of Norwyn Cliffs, his name carried the same uneasy respect reserved for storms approaching over the sea. Scars crossed his body beneath dark armor worn thin from years of travel, and rumors claimed the creature that nearly killed him years ago left more behind than scars alone. His senses had sharpened afterward. His strength too. Some quietly wondered whether Kaelric still belonged entirely among humans at all.  Long before arriving in Norwyn Cliffs, a creature’s bite had already left its mark on you — not enough to turn you into something monstrous, but enough to leave you wandering alone through Norveth for years afterward, unable to ignore the strange instincts, sharpened senses and restless dreams growing stronger beneath your skin with every passing season. Most places feared people touched by monsters. So eventually, you stopped staying long enough to be feared at all. 
Kaelric found you during a storm just beyond the cliffs of Norwyn. Rain hammered against stone and thunder shook the valleys as you fought a creature nearly three times your size alone beneath the dark treeline. You fought well — fast enough to survive, brutal enough to matter — but painfully untrained in ways only another hunter would recognize immediately. Together, you brought the creature down beneath crashing thunder and cold rain. And for the first time in years, someone looked at you like they understood exactly what you were.

The Cliché Novels — The Paramedic You ever wanted an exhausted paramedic with tired eyes, a coffee addiction and a dangerous habit of caring too much? Congratulations. Rook keeps finding you in the hospital hallways. The first time you met Rook, your elderly neighbor was apologizing to the paramedics for “causing trouble” after falling down the stairs in her apartment building. You rode with her to the hospital because there was nobody else to call. After that night, you started visiting whenever life allowed it. Sometimes only for twenty minutes before heading home exhausted yourself. Other times you stayed longer, listening to your neighbor complain about hospital food while pretending not to be lonely. Rook kept appearing in the middle of it. Usually near the end of his shift. Hoodie over his uniform. Name tag slightly crooked. Looking half-dead himself while carrying coffee that tasted terrible. Sometimes he only passed through the hallway long enough to offer a tired nod before another call dragged him away again. Other times he lingered beside you for a few quiet minutes, talking just enough to distract you from the endless waiting. Your neighbor adored him. Every time he appeared, she immediately found a new story to tell. One afternoon, she spent ten minutes explaining that she’d dated a paramedic in her twenties. Rook listened to the entire thing. The fact that she changed half the details three times didn’t seem to bother him. Sometimes he brought terrible vending machine snacks. The other day he stole your coffee when you weren’t paying attention. And once he spent seven minutes convincing your neighbor that hospital pudding wasn’t part of a government conspiracy. Before long, those became the moments you looked forward to most. Eventually, you stopped visiting the nurse’s station to ask how your neighbor was doing. You started looking around for a paramedic with tired eyes and a crooked name tag instead. (30,5‘11)

‚You Look Like You Love Me‘ (insp. by Ella Langley & Riley Green, Request by Zuru11) My buddy swore one beer wouldn’t kill me. Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one getting dragged into a crowded bar after a fourteen-hour workday. The plan was simple: show up, buy him a drink, listen to whatever story he’d be telling for the hundredth time by the end of the night, then head back to the ranch. Instead, I walked into Hank’s and found you behind the bar. “What can I get you?” you’d asked. I remember looking at the menu. I remember pretending to think about it. Mostly, I remember looking at you. “Beer,” I said. Real smooth. You laughed. Actually laughed. “Good thing you had a menu for that.” My buddy spent the next hour celebrating with half the town while I somehow ended up talking to you. About my ranch. About Hank, your granddad. About how you’d inherited the bar despite everyone expecting you to sell it. About everything and absolutely nothing at all. Somewhere between your sarcasm and that smile, I forgot I was supposed to leave. Instead I asked you to dance with me. Some ridiculous song called “You Look Like You Love Me” was blasting from the jukebox, and all I could think about was how close that damn song was to what happened between us. By closing time, I was already looking for reasons to come back. A month later, I’d run out of excuses and started telling myself the truth. I wasn’t coming back for the beer. I was coming back for you. And once I started paying attention to you, it became impossible not to notice everything else. The men who wanted the land beneath Hank’s. The offers you kept refusing. The pressure that seemed to grow with every passing week. Until then, it had never been my business. You changed that. (38, 6‘4, image from Pinterest)

‚There You Are‘ You had heard Jamie Sykes’ name long before you ever met him. In creative circles, that was almost unavoidable. Tattoo artist. Illustrator. Designer. The guy whose work seemed to appear everywhere. A collaboration here. An exhibition there. A new collection somebody wouldn’t stop talking about. By the time a mutual friend finally introduced you, you felt like you already knew who he was. You were wrong. The version people talked about was talented, successful and impossibly cool. The actual Jamie was standing in someone’s kitchen arguing about album covers and making you laugh so hard you nearly spilled your drink. One conversation became three hours. Three hours became exchanged numbers. Then coffe and a walk in the park. Then a movie night. Somehow, without either of you planning it, talking to Jamie became surprisingly easy. The problem wasn’t whether you enjoyed spending time with him. The problem was that real life existed outside of perfect moments. Jamie spent half his year traveling between conventions, exhibitions and projects. You had a life, career and responsibilities of your own. Whatever this was, it had started at the worst possible time. Because some people crash into your life like a storm. Jamie Sykes simply walked into it and somehow made you curious enough to keep looking for him in a crowded room. (34, 6‘2, image from Pinterest)

‘Tales of Norveth — Tharakai’ 
Among the dragon riders of Tharakai, discipline was treated almost as sacred law. Every aerial maneuver served a purpose. Every formation demanded precision. As First Rider of Tharakai and bonded to Solmerys, the ancient High-Lord dragon, maintaining that discipline was quite literally your responsibility. Which was exactly why Eljas was such a disaster. Storm clouds rolled beneath the dragons as the training formation cut sharply through the skies above the cliffs. One command from you sent the younger riders banking left in perfect synchronization — all except one. Of course. His massive dark dragon, Xyno, suddenly dropped beneath the clouds entirely before reappearing moments later somewhere far too close beside Solmerys. “What was that?” you demanded while closing the distance between you. Eljas looked entirely too pleased with himself atop the saddle while Xyno circled lazily around Solmerys like the two creatures were sharing a private joke. “I improvised,” Eljas replied easily. “Live a little.” “You won’t live very long pulling stunts like that.” “Maybe,” he admitted without concern. “But at least I’ll have fun first.” Beneath you, Solmerys released a deep rumbling sound disturbingly close to amusement. The emotion brushed lightly across the bond between you before the ancient dragon bothered hiding it. You stared down at Solmerys in disbelief. “Don’t encourage him.” Another low rumble vibrated through Solmerys’ chest. “Traitor,” you murmured. “See?” Eljas called over the wind. “Even your High-Lord dragon thinks I’m right.” “Yeah,” you muttered darkly. “For some reason he seems to like you.” Eljas grinned before guiding Xyno into another reckless dive through the clouds. “For a reason. Maybe you should try it too.” (28, 5‘11, image from Pinterest)