Members got early access to this Chimera @skyican.bsky.social traditional art piece and it's now public on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/150361029
NOTE: Join for free for notifications while I focus more there, than social media posts.
Ko-fi doesn't have a "go public after x days" feature that I can see but member post is at https://ko-fi.com/i/IM4M81TXZR0
Member post: Inks for @skyican.bsky.social 's Chimera artwork. Really enjoying the attitude of the piece~
https://www.patreon.com/posts/148981450
https://ko-fi.com/i/IF2F71SVHWR
Members get to see all the behind the scenes work that I don't post elsewhere.
#Promptober #Chimera #Art #FantasyArt #Inks #FurSale #MastoArt #CreativeToots
Member post: Sketch for Skyican who has been turned into a Chimera. Lion head is annoyed that Goat and Snake wont stop arguing.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/148959096
https://ko-fi.com/i/IJ3J31SV0XQ
#Fantasy #MythicalCreature #Chimera #Promptober #Sketch #Art
Catch up: A special Promptober / Inktober for @wynndeegogh.bsky.social with glowing eyes~ Super fun to work on in copics.
7+ day early access to members: https://www.patreon.com/posts/149373126 & https://ko-fi.com/i/IS6S41T6FHA
#Furry #Anthro #Dragon #Glow #Copic #TraditionalArt #SFWFurryArt #MastoArt #CreativeToots #FurSale #Promptober #Inktober
RE: https://www.prettyarbitrary.org/2025/10/14/promptober-2025-day-14-grave-dirt/
More of my fics from this year's #Promptober.
RE: https://www.prettyarbitrary.org/2025/10/24/promptober-2025-master-fic-post/
The masterpost of all my #Promptober fics for 2025.
RE: https://www.prettyarbitrary.org/2025/10/10/promptober-2025-day-10-cries-on-the-wind/
One of my faves from this year's #Promptober
Promptober 2025 Day 25: Footsteps in the Dark
Using thepromptfoundry‘s Ominous October list.
Ira Carpenter is mine. Warren Caldwell is @asininestars‘s Chicago Spirit OC. Pure fluff. I’m inflicting you with the unspeakable wholesomeness that is Warren/Ira.
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Ira tugs Warren by the hand down the shortcut he’s found, their footsteps echoing off the brick walls of the alley. Warren casts a look around them, because Ira seems blase about this but Warren’s learned from experience to be wary of dark streets like this. “Are you sure about this?”
Ira’s grin glints in the shadows. “It’s fine! It’s short. You’ll see in a second.”
Warren squeezes that hand in his, just to feel its cherished warmth and weight better. It’s impossible not to catch a bit of that contagious optimism. He smiles back.
And sure enough, this time Ira’s assurances come through. The alley opens up, and they’re across the street from Humboldt Park.
Warren stops for a second, struck by how the branches and brush are limned in silver from the moon’s light.
Warren’s pause knocks Ira off balance and he turns back to look, kicking out a leg to keep his balance. Warren can see the light dancing in his eyes as he takes in Warren’s face. “I know, right?” He grins again and it looks a little dopey with fondness. Warren’s heart hurts. But just before he reaches out to grab, to pull that beloved face close, Ira tugs again. “But wait, just wait. We aren’t there yet. It’s worth it!”
And so Warren follows him, helpless with love, across the street and into the moon-veiled walking paths, even though the shadows it casts are inky voids where anything could be hiding. Ira squeezes back when Warren tightens his grip on his hand. How can the man be so fearless when he’s been through just as much as Warren? Warren’s never sure whether it’s courage or fecklessness, but the thought of convincing him to change is like a knife in his chest.
But again, this time, it pays off. It’s not more than a hundred meters or so before the park’s lagoon opens before them, down a little slope of tall grasses, late flowers and cattails at the water’s edge.
Ira pulls Warren close to wrap an arm around his shoulders and lifts a finger to his lips.
Warren widens his eyes at him in silent question. Are they hiding? But the crinkle he can see at the corners of Ira’s eyes is entirely playful.
They stand there at the edge, between the trees and the meadow and the water. The moon shimmers silver on the tiny ripples of the nearly-still lake. The breeze is too faint to do more than rustle the tips of the leaves and the grass. It’s pretty, and Ira is warm. Warren slips an arm around his waist and tucks tight against him.
After a moment, something blinks.
And then, a second later, another.
Wide-eyed, Warren watches as the fireflies come back out of hiding. In small groups and then waves, they blink into a sea of tiny golden sparkles as though the night sky has descended to earth around them.
It’s so beautiful he thinks he might cry.
For a little while—a long while?—all he can do is turn in place. In every direction, they’re standing in a bowl of the sky, ribbons of silver and spills of black shadow filled with tiny, flitting stars.
Eventually he manages to find his way back to himself through the wonder, and grabs Ira tight. “I love you so much,” he whispers, right in Ira’s ear so he won’t scare their little fairy companions.
He feels Ira’s laugh against him. “You deserve beautiful things,” he whispers back, and tucks a lock of Warren’s hair back behind his ear.
Warren shakes his head, because he can’t conceive of deserving something this beautiful but he’s too selfish to give it back, and resorts to kissing his gratitude into Ira.
#chicagoSpirit #fluff #gayRomance #iraCarpenter #lgbt #mlm #myFiction #myOriginalFiction #promptober #promptober2025 #romance #warrenCaldwell
Promptober 2025 Day 14: Grave Dirt
Using thepromptfoundry’s Ominous October list.
Agatha’s second story! I’m honestly really proud of this one. Agatha is my OC for krakaheimr‘s Chicago Spirit setting. But honestly this story has very little to do with that. This is historical fiction about an NB person dealing with their baggage.
CW for passing reference to past underage sex work. Agatha is from the early 1900s and she’s had it rough.
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The soil of Flanders Fields seems to seethe beneath Agatha’s feet as she walks through the poppies and graves of Ypres.
She had thought she would never come back here again. Never wanted to. The earth of the continent where she was born is a mass grave, and one of the things buried here is the person she should have been.
But then that’s why she had to come back, isn’t it? She couldn’t run forever; she’s not that kind of coward. No, cowardice has little to do with it. You spend years running from the pain and then one day, you look into the mirror and you understand it’s either time to turn and fight or to allow the past to take control of you.
And that is exactly why she left the first time. She is her own. She has paid far too much to achieve that. She will allow no one else to control her; not even her own memories.
She’s worn a funeral suit to this place, as befits a man visiting his own grave. Her trousered legs brush and hiss through the poppies and with each step those memories well up from the blood-soaked earth that bore witness: of how she slowly shed her humanity like the soldiers here shed their lives. Drip by drip. When she stopped being a girl, and became a woman. A man. A spy. A prostitute. A liar. A killer. A traitor. A disembodied knife in the dark. A monster.
And there, finally, she finds peace. She’s proud of her monstrosity. It feels like the truth. She wouldn’t choose to go back.
The men who ran the German war effort, who used her as a tool in her tender adolescence and turned her into a whore and spy and assassin for the Fatherland…they’ve walked on this soil. These very poppy fields contain, somewhere, the imprints of their squalid feet. Perhaps if she finds them, she can drive some iron nails through them. It’s a long shot, but she pocketed some before she came here, just on the off chance.
She has her knives too, on the chance she should meet any of them in person.
#agatha #chicagoSpirit #genderFluidCharacter #historicalFiction #lgbt #myFanfiction #myFiction #myOriginalFiction #nonbinaryCharacter #promptober #promptober2025 #transCharacter #worldWarI
Promptober 2025 Day 10: Cries on the Wind
Using thepromptfoundry’s Ominous October list.
First story for my mage, Griffin! No CWs for this one; just a lil old urban wizard having an adventure.
***
The hounds of the Wild Hunt are baying through the city streets. The unaware might think they’re the screams of racing motorcycles down the drag that cuts through the city. But Griffin and every other supernatural being in the area looks for shelter.
It’s not the High Hunt, thank every god Griffin can think of—the Rede, the great ritual marking the coming of the hungry dark, the one that blankets the sleeping earth in blood in sacred offering and calls forth the season of the restless dead.
But the sluagh sidhe run rampant at this time of year and they hunt where they like. And anything sane gets out of their way because the winter night belongs to them. Depending on where you are, their herald might be the lengthening hooked shadows of the forest sweeping down on you, the bay of hounds at midnight, the whirring wings of the migrating geese, or the howls of the late-night motorcycle races on the interstate.
Griffin unfortunately isn’t anywhere close to convenient light or a protective threshold. He’s ducking through a parking garage, hoping it’ll be enough, when he feels the plucking at him: the Wild Hunt has caught his scent.
Nothing for it now. He breaks into a run.
The bond of it solidifies as he runs. It hooks into his magic and his self. It’s not magic, it’s deeper than that: the pure, primal connection between hunter and hunted. There’s nothing so terrifying, or so alive, or so intimate.
With every thunk of his feet against the pavement, it pounds up through him, the drums of the dance of survival that’s been danced since long before humans existed. The sacred ancient relationship of predator and prey.
The claws of his hunters catch at his clothes and hair, rake across his skin and his magic. They aren’t in sight yet but the tie to them is inside him. They slow him down, make him stumble, tugging him back toward the savage promise of their arms and their teeth. His breath drags in his throat.
He leaps down the five steps that lead from the street to the promenade of Riverside Park and grabs at the air, pulling out the moisture drifting off the river to whip it into a dense fog. In the sheltering clouds of mist, the light poles stand out. He weaves the pools of hazy light into his cupped hands and blows them out again, sending them rolling off into different directions to try to confuse the path.
Then he bolts again, for the pedestrian bridge. A ways behind, he can hear the wheels of the hounds—shivers at the feel of their skidding tires bouncing down the stairs.
His misdirections work on one; water and the snarl of a revving, sodden motor splash across his mind where it mistook the river bank and went into the water. Its clutching grip releases from him, at least one pursuer accepting its prey has outsmarted it this time.
But there’s still the rest of the pack. The others lick at him, savoring their defeat of his trap and knowing they’re that much closer to taking their prize. He gasps at the phantom burn of hot saliva dripping down the back of his neck.
Focus, Griffin. Focus.
The entry to one of the subway stations is coming up. He pulls out his pen knife and slows a little, long enough to slash a few drips of blood from a finger and flick it down the street, slivering off an echo of himself that goes running for its life on past the entrance.
Then he reaches up to the clouds passing over the moon, the ones that hide its light in the same hollow blue-black as the dark sky, and pulls their veil around him, vanishing into the night to creep down the steps into the station. There aren’t enough people there at this time of night to ward off the fae, but the mess of trails might be confusing enough to lose them.
There’s no train, and waiting for one would be insane. He slides through the shadows of the station as best he can, trying to keep the lights from burning away his veil of shadows, and ducks down into the tunnels.
Here the rats whisper secrets and directions to each other. Listening to them tells him where to go. A train is coming soon—they can feel the ground beginning to vibrate with its mammoth momentum—but up here there’s a side passage. It’s a service access, when Griffin reaches it: a towering cavern to a rat but small enough that Griffin has to duck a little to keep his hair from snagging on the grilles along the top.
From behind him, there’s a whine that could be an over-revved racing bike in low gear. And then it’s answered by another one up ahead in the tunnel. The Wild Hunt’s grip squeezes crushingly around him at the realization that he’s fucked, and he staggers.
Their laughter chitters and scrapes along the walls, raking him as they close in from either side till they come into view. Blurry, morphing figures, their shapes resolving differently every time he blinks Four-legged, glowing-eyed hounds with slashing, dripping teeth. Crouching, long-limbed beings in the general shape of human, with claws and long flowing black hair. Gleaming, fierce-looking motorcyles with swept-back handlebars and headlights that glint red.
They’re inching closer, and he can feel them all around him. Inside him. Their claws and hands and hooves and tires and tongues dragging over his skin, his mouth, his mind, their grip sinking into him till he’s gasping for breath.
Griffin pulls all his magic tight, till it fills him to the brim, his body and shape a perfect vessel for it. Then he jams his hands upwards, into the thick power cables protected by the ceiling grilles, and calls the lightning.
The world goes blank in blinding white, agonizing sound. The concussion bounces off the walls and back to him, pummeling him from all sides. The last thing he hears is the hounds beginning to screech as they’re knocked away, the condensed shadow of their bodies evaporating in the totality of the lightning he’s summoned. The last thing he feels besides the purity of being swallowed by electricity is the grip of their claws slipping reluctantly from his mind.
When the world returns to his senses, he drags himself, groaning, back up onto his knees and huddles there. His clothes are shredded, and what’s left of them is smoking. Lichtenberg figures curve their delicate fractal lines over his exposed skin. The Wild Hunt is nowhere to be seen.
He’s gonna have to walk home like this.
#fantasy #griffinTheMage #myFiction #myOriginalFiction #promptober #promptober2025 #urbanFantasy #wildHunt
Temrin 😷 💛🤍💜🖤
prettyarbitrary
prettyarbitrary