Kaustubh Dudhane > Recent Status Updates

The replacement of beer with coffee was emblematic of the shift in their enterprise.

No matter how much jade Kaul Sen awarded to his granddaughter, no matter how many parties he threw for her or how much he bragged about his “best grandson” to his friends, he could not, even as the Pillar of the clan, give her true greenness, the simple respect accorded by and to men, friends and enemies alike, honestly earned.

Rage would have steered my actions more certainly than alcohol fuels the drunkard’s choices. And that fury would have overridden any finer feelings.

Now, strangely, it’s sorrow that overwrites my emotions.

"I never got to grow old. I may have died as a father and an emperor, but I was still a child, and I hadn’t the time to understand either station. Many say that none of us have the years required to truly understand what it is to be a father, but that I would have liked to find out for myself."

I am never delighted but it feels wickedly satisfying to listen to Prince Honorous Jorg Ancarth after so many years.

I don’t say, but perhaps I should, that the price for something you want desperately, but should not have, is always red.

Grimdark survives in the hands of the reader and the writer who sees the beauty in the struggle to keep hope alive. Hope is not a clean thing; it’s hard as nails and covered in blood and wrenched from iron-hard grip of despair. And if we have to get ugly to keep hope in our grasp? So be it.
Long live the desperate hope of those of us deemed obscene.
Long live grimdark

Those who listened felt a new kind of relief. Not the temporary relief of weekends, vacations and sabbaticals. That was a relief from manufactured busyness, that relief was elevator music that played between the floors of stress. This new relief was ethereal yet muscular, a warm sunlit torrent of peace that presented freedom from human structures, freedom from concerns, freedom unto joy.

Manjunath and Heng had formed many theories which they were running laps of. It was proving to be exhausting.
'What would Sherlock Holmes do?' asked Heng.
'Cocaine?' 😂😂😂

If you eat a banana, and only eat a banana, without watching, walking, talking, thinking or soldering, then the banana opens its heart to you.

The shrike is also known as the butcher bird because of its nasty habit of impaling live insects on thorns to keep them fresh for consumption.

Although bauhinias grow all over the country, it is largely in the north that people know that the buds of the kachnar make a tasty addition to curry as well as a delectable mix with yogurt.

"Hope," his mother said, standing near the window, "is the thing with feathers." She faced away from him, her straw-colored hair cascading down her back. She wore a lavender dress, the one he remembered vaguely from his youth because it had pockets. According to her, a good dress always had pockets. ❤️

When Linus smiled, Arthur was reminded of the sun, of a blinding light coming to chase the darkness away.

Calliope, the so-called thing of evil. A cat, but unlike any other cat Arthur had seen before. It wasn't just her size - her gorgeous fluffy hair made her appear far larger than she actually was - or her coloring, mostly black with a small patch of fluffy white on her chest. No, it was her bright green eyes that made her different. Watching, always watching...

He had no illusions; when it came to maths, he'd never been the sharpest pencil in the box.

That is one of the nice things about being a cat. I always managed to land on my feet.

The only kindness karma affords me is the company of my oldest and dearest friend, John Watson. That’s him there. The rather fluffy dark cat sprawled out in the sunlight, exposing himself to the scrutiny of the working class. This vision in itself causes me pain. The very idea that a man of medicine now spends his life as a dust mop and children’s hand towel is repugnant, to say the least. 😂

He wanted to punch her right in that big-eyed, manipulative face... but also hug her and tell her he was glad to see her. This was probably similar to how Zach had felt upon seeing him at Cyoria's train station, so long ago.

Silverlake thinks everyone should be a tireless golem except her...😂

It was interesting, Zorian mused, that even after all these years spent in the time loop, some simple experiences had eluded him until now.

Getting thrown out of a coffee shop for disturbing the other customers, for instance, was an entirely novel experience. 😂

The way Zorian was feeling this evening... perhaps this was how Zach had felt all the time during earlier years. Making friends and experiencing life-changing moments with them over and over again, only for the other party to forget all about it in the next restart...

Marred perfection for nearly six years, Zorian had been living in this endlessly repeating month. It felt longer, to be honest. So many things had happened, and his worldview had undergone such radical changes, that he felt it would be right if the whole thing had taken place over a decade or more.

There was a reason why most of these people used their abilities for crime instead of opening a legitimate business. They just weren't good enough.

"What is it with you and annoying teachers?" Zach whispered to him...

Hangovers after the village parties were legendary.

Fregi still remembered how he had made a deal to teach Frank Rye to build a distillery and how Frank had promptly drank himself to death some years later. 😂

Slate raised his mug high into the air. “Three cheers for Fregi, Granite, Basalt, and especially Mick, who was the first to run away from all the bandits!”

“It was uphill too!” Mick shouted.

It was hard not to feel like a villain.

Fortunately, he was a mage. He had a way of having his cake and eating it too.

Without constant reinforcement in every restart, he would forget again, and the amount of information he had to memorize was only going to increase with each restart, making the task harder.