Simple Poetry. ⚠️ Sensitive Content Warning ⚠️ This contains references to bullying, self-harm, etc.

Caiden O'Malley is fine, thanks. Not insane. Not lonely. Not dead... yet. He's living it up in post-apocalyptic Minneapolis, if your idea of "living it up" is scraping by on canned beans and slightly expired liquorice, fighting through hordes with his machete Machete and modelling the latest "dumpster-diving-sleep-deprived-raccoon" style. Okay. Maybe he's not fine. But when the enigmatic sharpshooter Sage shows up to save his ass from zombies like some Hello Kitty fan moonlighting as a guardian angel, his world turns upside down. Suddenly, he's got someone to fight with, and he might make out alive. Inspired by Caiden's favourite streamer Lexi, the pair embark on a mission to find safe harbour. A zone clear from the infection: NEW EDEN. But with a dream in mind and a wary alliance with Sage starting to grow, Caiden begins to realise that maybe there's more to the apocalypse than survival. Maybe it's possible his life could get back to normal again. Or maybe he's crazy and it's going to turn into a different flavour of weird. One thing's for sure: it's going to be a wild ride.

I was four years old the first time I touched a dying man and he got up again. My mother made me promise never to let anyone see. She was right about that. She was right about most things, and then she died, and the last thing she ever told me was a name I'd never heard. There's a fire in me. It's been there since before I was born, and it isn't mine, and it's killing me---three hundred years late and nineteen days fast. Only the Barons can teach me to control it. Fallen gods. The kind that eat girls like me to make the hunger stop. So I walked into Hell's Gate on my own feet and offered them a trade. The cold one claimed me. Called me 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥. Never my name. The beautiful one wept gold and begged me not to let them love me. The silent one asked me what I wanted, and I didn't have an answer. And one of them was kind to me. Only one. From the first night. That's the one I should have been afraid of.

Tom was nineteen when a goddess promised to save his dying mother. He believed her. His mother died waiting. Five years later, Ysva is standing on his porch, and she needs something from him. He asks if she takes milk. She is six thousand years old, luminous, and accustomed to being worshipped. He is twenty-five, going grey at the temples, and fresh out of things to feel where she's concerned. She took other lovers while he was in the next room. She laughed at him in front of her entire pantheon. She cursed him in a moment of temper and forgot she'd done it---he's felt it in his spine every day since. Now her kind is dying. Mortals have stopped giving themselves up as consorts, and Ysva is the reason the whole system cracked. To save it, she needs the one thing a goddess cannot take by force: his forgiveness, said out loud, where the world can hear it. Divine law leaves her one road. Three acts of mortal penance. Live as a human in his house for one turn of the moon. Confess every cruelty in front of his town. Attempt the impossible thing he names---and fail at it where everyone can see. She came expecting a desperate man, grateful she'd come back for him. She got a chipped mug, a dog that won't look at her, and a name tag that says EVE. The trouble is that she doesn't understand what she took. And she's about to find out. It's not forgiveness. It's a reckoning. 𝘎𝘰𝘥𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘨. She's about to learn the word was always a lie.

When Angeline Floris comes across a poets' book, she finds herself falling not only for his way with words but him as well and what feeling he brings. Jake Taler a poet finds himself falling for a stranger but doesn't know how to approach this feeling, so the way he does is of course writing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't know what to put for here so this will change in the future but for now you're stuck with it, I will try and upload as fast as I can but this is for fun and a way to put my poems in to a story I will be using poems that I wrote but if you have some poems that you have wrote let me know I can check them out and see if they go with the story and I could add them this is just from the fun of writing and being creative please don't be mean or harsh with your words I'm still new to writing and I'm learning from my mistakes and what is better to do and not. Thank you if you do read this, it means a lot, I will try my best to make it worth your time!

2,000 years ago, a daughter of a goddess was born she possessed the powers of a witch, some say directly Gods given. However, this kin of a goddess was born to a very powerful Priestess of Nyx, a witch from the travellers coven, Qetsiyah. This Priestess fell in love with a fellow witch, Silas who asked her to create an immortality elixir so after their union they may be together forever. The ceremony was beautiful the couple in love as eyes met overthe altar of Nyx. However, Qetsiyahs work and magic was all for nothing, for Silas was having an affair with Amara the first doppleganger and Qetsiyah hand maiden. Instead of take the elixir with his betrothed, Silas shared the elixir with Amara. In her anger, Qetsiyah retaliated by kidnapping Amara and used her immortal and indestructible body to bind the spell to create The Other Side. Remember that child of Nyx? Yes that's me, I was given her name as the goddess gave Qetsiyah the gift of a child after the priestess asked for something to replace her love Silas after she imprisoned him in a cave with The Cure for immortality hoping he'd take it. However Silas desiccated and didn't join Qetsiyah in the other side Quetsiyah, my mother, passed after millennia of pain in her own Purgatory. As a child created by Nyx and born to a Witch I'm powerful and possess a rare combination of power. I'm part vampire, a gift of immortality from Nyx , and half siphoner witch. The original Heretic I'm aIso Klaus wife. I travelled with his family for millenia after his father forced me to become part vampire and tortured me in front of him. Until I met The Hybrid, Klaus mikaelson in 1920s New Orleans, I was regent of the Seven Covens of New Orleans. We met at a ball hosted by his family, I thought we were in love until Klaus and his family fled the French quarter. He thinks I'm dead, but I survived his father and I'd rather eat vervain than give up on my love now...

~Tales from the Lower Plane~ AUTHOR NOTE: This is just one tale in the Time Lapse series. Helilo's is mentioned in Chapter 17. The story takes place long before the main story. A tyrannical empire blocks the sky from the people of Versalium. Helilos is the only one who's seen the stars, the distinct hues, and their shimmers. He's seen the constellations and the stories they tell. Cowardly and fearful, Helilos embarks on a quest to "Return the Age of Stars."

Tamryn has grown up in an orphanage all her life. She knows nothing of her past, or heritage. She discovers children missing from the orphanage. As she investigates she finds herself thrown into a world of different species and different realms, including surprising things about herself. Will she be able to find the people behind the missing children? Will she be able to save the children from their fates?

That night he pressed a paper into her hands and told her to run, to burn the paper, to never stray from its words, had an impression on her life that she'd never really talked about. But it affected everything. "You're gonna run like hell when you get to out onto the street. Don't stop. Don't ever stop," Was it still worth it, curled up on the cement floor? Yes. Knowing that what you're doing is good doesn't ensure that it'll ever be easy. Bucky learned that many years ago in his childhood, and over again in World War Two. So why was the world still trying to teach him that, after everything he'd been through? Pain, pain, pain, for every choice you try to make yourself. Being yourself causes the pain... that was what Hydra taught him. What Hydra wanted him to believe. And he wished he didn't have to believe it, but it was true. Of course she didn't want to lie to him. He was like hope in the darkness, even when he was part of the darkness. Every time he went through shit, he inspired her. That night when he'd pressed a paper into her hands and told her to run, to burn the paper, to never stray from its words, had had an impression on her life that she'd never really talked about. But it affected everything. Cover by @planetaryfire (thanks so much!)