It's a bit of a bummer, I don't really have a knack for gardening and I was doing so well keeping this plant alive and now I haven't watered it in a few days and it's wilted. I just couldn't live with myself if I destroyed the eggs and nest. Can I save both?

This post is part of a series looking at the massive amount of 'rhyming' (and occasionally rhyming) recursivity I believe exists between (a) the homecoming of Petyr Baelish to the Fingers and (b) the homecoming of Theon Greyjoy to Pyke.
While this series/post can be read simply as a study 'for its own sake' of the curious recursion between these storylines, it is my belief that the 'rhyming' explored here between the stories of Petyr and Theon exists (at least in part) to foreshadow that, like Theon, Petyr Littlefinger, is (among other things) a scion of ironborn kings, because Petyr is Hoare-ish: I.e. because Petyr's blood is (in some part) the blood of the ironborn kings of House Hoare of Orkmont and, later, Harrenhal.
You can find an index of every post I've made on the topic of a Hoare-ish Littlefinger (including every post in this sub-series) [HERE].
Even if I'm wrong about Littlefinger's lineage, the 'rhyming' recursivity between the homecomings of Theon and Petyr detailed in this series remains, and certainly merits attention.
NOTE: In what follows, all uncited quotes are from ASOS Sansa VI, which describes Petyr's homecoming to his "Drearfort" tower of the 'Smallest Finger', or ACOK Theon I, which describes Theon's homecoming to "drear" Pyke.
As in past posts, I sometimes use "→" as shorthand for "'prefigures' and/or 'informs' and/or 'is reworked by' and/or 'finds a recursive rhyme in'.
As in: ACOK Theon I → ASOS Sansa VI.
This post picks up straight-away from where Part 8 left off. You can read Part 8 [HERE].
If you want to begin at the beginning, Part 1 is [HERE].

The Myraham's Prophetic Cargo

After Theon makes port, the captain of the Myraham announces his cargo to the people on the docks of Lordport and we read about the offloading of the Myraham:

"We're out of Oldtown," the captain called down, "bearing apples and oranges, wines from the Arbor, feathers from the Summer Isles. I have pepper, woven leathers, a bolt of Myrish lace, mirrors for milady, a pair of Oldtown woodharps sweet as any you ever heard." The gangplank descended with a creak and a thud. "And I've brought your heir back to you."

Most of what we read there seems to be reworked in and around Littlefinger's homecoming in ASOS Sansa VI, when the Merling King brings the Dreadfort its heir, Littlefinger, as well as the seeming heir to Winterfell, Sansa. This begins with the Arbor wine and fruit we see off-loaded from the Merling King:

Oswell made two more trips out to the Merling King to offload provisions. Among the loads he brought ashore were several casks of wine. Petyr poured Sansa a cup, as promised. …
… The wine was very fine; an Arbor vintage, she thought. It tasted of oak and fruit and hot summer nights, the flavors blossoming in her mouth like flowers opening to the sun. She only prayed that she could keep it down. Lord Petyr was being so kind, she did not want to spoil it all by retching on him.
… "Grisel," he called to the old woman, "bring some food up. … Oswell's brought some oranges and pomegranates from the King." …
Grisel reappeared…, balancing a large platter. … There were apples and pears and pomegranates, some sad-looking grapes, a huge blood orange.

Besides the straight repetition of Arbor wine, oranges, apples, and heirs, the repeated Oldtown motif is baldly reworked by Sansa's description of the wine, which is patently Oldtown-summer-esque, per the only substantive pre-AFFC description of Oldtown, which associates it with hot, fruity summer nights:

"King Maekar's summer was hotter than this one, and near as long. … [T]he heat was fierce while it lasted. Oldtown… came alive only by night. … I remember the smells of those nights, my lord—perfume and sweat, melons ripe to bursting, peaches and pomegranates, nightshade and moonbloom." (AGOT Eddard V)

The Myraham's "mirrors for milady" prefigure Sansa being figuratively groomed by Petyr and literally grooming herself in Petyr's Eyrie after he takes over:

When Gretchel fetched her Lysa's silvered looking glass, the color seemed just perfect with Alayne's mass of dark brown hair. (AFFC Alayne I)

The Myraham's "woodharps sweet as any you ever heard" presage Sansa being attacked by Marillion, whose "voice was strong and sweet", (AFFC Sansa I) after he sings a song (about blowjobs?) called "Milady's Supper" (supper a la the Myraham-ish fruit Sansa eats for supper when she lands) during Petyr's wedding bedding:

Lady Lysa's singer launched into a bawdy version of "Milady's Supper"….

The Myraham's "woven leathers" and "Myrish lace" are reworked into the "laces unlaced" i.e. unwoven during said wedding:

By the time they had gotten him into the tower and out of his clothes, the other women were flushed, with laces unlaced, kirtles crooked, and skirts in disarray.

That it's a "bolt of Myrish lace" is interesting: After Sansa boards the Merling King, she sees a singular "bolt" from a crossbow strike Dontos, and then two more:

Lothor Brune dipped his torch. Three men stepped to the gunwale, raised crossbows, fired. One bolt took Dontos in the chest as he looked up…. The others ripped into throat and belly. (ASOS Sansa V)

Three crossbow bolts? What does that remind us if not… a Myrish crossbow:

"The king is playing with his new crossbow," Tyrion said. Ridding himself of Joffrey had required only an ungainly Myrish crossbow that threw three quarrels at a time…. (ACOK Tyrion VI)

What about the Myraham's "pepper"? I suspect this gets box-checked first by Sansa trying not to "retch" as she is off-loaded along with the wine with which Littlefinger tries to settle her tummy, as just two chapters later peppers are tightly linked to "retching" of the sort Sansa feels like doing:

[Tyrion] found himself on his knees retching… that double helping of fried eggs cooked up with onions and fiery Dornish peppers. (ASOS Tyrion X)

GRRM seems to play off the "pepper" motif in other ways, as well. Consider that the gathering to meet the Myraham and the shouted questions that prompt her captain to announce her cargo—

A handful of Lordsport merchants had gathered to meet the ship. They shouted questions as the Myraham was tying up.

—get reworked by Petyr's household all gathering "to meet" the Merling King and by their peppering one another with questions:

Servants emerged from the tower to meet them; a thin old woman and a fat middle-aged one, two ancient white-haired men, and a girl of two or three with a sty on one eye. When they recognized Lord Petyr they knelt on the rocks. "My household," he said. "I don't know the child. Another of Kella's bastards, I suppose. She pops one out every few years."

She's a "popper", then, in case we didn't catch that retching → peppers. (This also reworks Theon "popping one off" with the captain's daughter, who is in many ways reworked by Kella, as will be discussed below.)

… [Petyr]… gave the old woman a kiss on the cheek and grinned at the younger one. "Who fathered this one, Kella?"
The fat woman laughed. "I can't rightly say, m'lord. I'm not one for telling them no."
"And all the local lads are grateful, I am quite sure."
"It is good to have you home, my lord," said one old man. … "How long will you be in residence?"
"As short a time as possible, Bryen, have no fear. Is the place habitable just now, would you say?"
"If we knew you was coming we would have laid down fresh rushes, m'lord," said the crone. "There's a dung fire burning."
"Nothing says home like the smell of burning dung." Petyr turned to Sansa. "Grisel was my wet nurse, but she keeps my castle now. Umfred's my steward, and Bryen—didn't I name you captain of the guard the last time I was here?"
"You did, my lord.…"
… Petyr gestured toward the fat woman. "Kella minds my vast herds. How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?"

A gathering, and questions, questions, questions, as when Theon docks.
Recall that Bryen and Umfred come from shore to offload Sansa (who's just been promised a cup of wine to help with her upset "tummy") from the Merling King's rowboat:

The two old men waded out up to their thighs to lift Sansa from the boat so she would not get her skirts wet.

This reworks the "shorehands… off-loading… casks of wine" from a Tyroshi trader docked with the Myraham—

[Theon] spied a Tyroshi trading galley off-loading…
Shorehands rolled casks of wine off the Tyroshi trader, fisherfolk cried the day's catch, children ran and played. A priest in the seawater robes of the Drowned God was leading a pair of horses along the pebbled shore, while above him a slattern leaned out a window in the inn, calling out to some passing Ibbenese sailors.

—which itself prefigures the above-quoted off-loading of the Merling King (when "Oswell made two more trips out to the Merling King to offload provisions" including "several casks of wine", from which Petyr immediately "poured Sansa a cup, as promised").

Kella & The Slattern

What about that "slattern lean[ing] out a window" to greet "some passing… sailors" while "children ran and played"? I submit that she is one of several motifs from Theon's homecoming prefiguring Petyr's servant Kella. I'll explain.
Consider that Petyr's servant Kella has many bastards i.e. children, popping one out every few years:

"I don't know the child. Another of Kella's bastards, I suppose. She pops one out every few years."

We only see one; presumably the others are off somewhere, running and playing, perhaps.
Kella happily greets Petyr as he comes ashore, much as Lordsport's slattern "call[s] out to some passing Ibbenese sailors". Note that the sailors on the Merling King are likewise 'passing' — passing through:

"From here the King turns east for Braavos. Without us."

Consider most of all that Kella's something of a slattern herself: She's "not one for telling them no".

"I can't rightly say, m'lord. I'm not one for telling them no."
"And all the local lads are grateful, I am quite sure."

Indeed, something Lysa says pretty clearly codes Kella as a verbatim "slattern", underlining the recursion:

"How would you like to spend your life on that bleak shore, surrounded by slatterns and sheep pellets?" (ASOS Sansa VII)

So I think the vignette with the slattern and the children in Lordsport pretty plainly prefigures Kella. But I think she's prefigured by two more pieces of Theon's homecoming.

Kella & The Captain's Daughter

Keeping in mind that Kella has a bunch of bastards ("she pops one out every few years) and that she's "not one for telling them no", consider also that she is (a) literally 'with child' — or rather, with a child—

a girl of two or three with a sty on one eye

—that she's (b) "fat"—

"Who fathered this one, Kella?"
The fat woman laughed.

—and that she's (c) coded as a bit stupid:

"Kella minds my vast herds. How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?"
She had to think a moment. "Three and twenty, m'lord. There was nine and twenty, but Bryen's dogs killed one and we butchered some others and salted down the meat."

All like Theon's "captain's daughter".
The captain's daughter is "plump", as Kella is "fat":

The girl was a shade plump for his taste…

She is likely pregnant with Theon's bastard, a la Kella the bastard-popper.
She tells Theon…

"You can put it in me again, if it please you…"

…and accedes to his request for a blowjob, so she's "not one for telling them no."
She thereby helps Theon 'pop one off', a la Kella "pop[ping] one out".
Like Kella, she seems a bit stupid:

She looked rather stupid when she smiled, but he had never required a woman to be clever.
The stupid girl did not seem to be listening.
She… learned quickly for such a stupid girl….
She looked at him stupidly, so he left her there.

And finally, she offers to work in Theon's castle—

I'd work in your castle, milord.

—just as Kella works for Petyr.

Kella: The Spreading Patch of the Smallest Finger?

Besides the "slattern" and the captain's daughter, I suspect Kella may also riff on — of all things — the "spreading patches" of "lichen" on "wet" Pyke as Theon sails by:

[Pyke was] wet by the same salt waves, festooned with the same spreading patches of dark green lichen, speckled by the droppings of the same seabirds.

Get it? A spreading 'patch'? In combination with "lichen" a la "licking" and Pyke being "wet"? And not just wet, but "wet by… salt waves", when as we know from the captain's daughter, semen tastes "salty", "like the sea". It's like Pyke is being described as a turned-on "slattern" with her legs spread.
A Hoare, we might say.
This connects to Kella, specifically because of her name: Kella is a near anagram for "kale", a dark green plant, like the "dark green lichen".
Actually, the name Kella may have anothere precursor in Theon's story: "Qalen", the maester Theon asks Helya about upon his arrival at Pyke:

"And what of Maester Qalen, where is he?"

Qalen would be pronounced Kalen. Qalen → Kalen → Kale → Kela → Kella. Anyway…

Grisel & The Captain's Daughter

Something similar is going on with Petyr's servant Grisel, the "thin old woman" who was his wet nurse but who "keeps [his] castle now":

"Grisel was my wet nurse, but she keeps my castle now.

Grisel is similarly prefigured by two people from Theon's homecoming, including first the captain's daughter who wants to work in Theon's castle as Grisel works in Petyr's "castle".
Consider first that Grisel, like the captain's daughter, seems slightly stupid (but eager to please), as she fails to grasp Petyr's sarcasm and takes his derisive joke about gulls' eggs and seaweed soup as an order:

"Ah, cold salt mutton. I must be home. When I break my fast on gulls' eggs and seaweed soup, I'll be certain of it."
"If you like, m'lord," said the old woman Grisel.
Lord Petyr made a face.

Then there is the captain daughter's resume:

"I'd work in your castle, milord. I can clean fish and bake bread and churn butter. Father says my peppercrab stew is the best he's ever tasted. You could find me a place in your kitchens and I could make you peppercrab stew."

This surely prefigures what we're told about Grisel making a sea-based soup of her own (i.e. the just mentioned "seaweed soup"), baking bread, and churning butter for Petyr:

Grisel reappeared before he could say more, balancing a large platter. She set it down between them. … The old woman had brought a round of bread as well, and a crock of butter.
Grisel climbed up to the bedchamber to serve the lord and lady a tray of morning bread, with butter, honey, fruit, and cream.

Where Grisel used to be Petyr's wet nurse, Theon suckles the captain daughter's nipple as if she's a wet nurse:

Theon's finger circled one heavy teat, spiraling in toward the fat brown nipple. … He took her nipple in his mouth….
"You can put it in me again, if it please you," she whispered in his ear as he sucked.

And finally, where Theon kisses the captain's daughter on the ear—

[Theon] drew the captain's daughter close and kissed her on her ear.

—Littlefinger kisses Grisel on the cheek:

Oswell and Lothor splashed their way ashore, as did Littlefinger himself. He gave the old woman a kiss on the cheek and grinned at the younger one.

Helya & Grisel (& Gretchel)

Grisel also rhymes with and reworks Helya, who keeps Balon's castle:

A bentback old crone in a shapeless grey dress approached him warily. "M'lord, I am sent to show you to chambers."
"And who are you?"
"Helya, who keeps this castle for your lord father."

Get it? "Helya and Grisel", a la "Hansel and Gretel".
(Gretel is a variant of "Greta". "Grisel" sounds like gristle, whereas in Hansel and Gretel the witch is trying to fatten Hansel up — she don't want no stringy meat! Note the thematic symmetry as well: By treating Hansel kindly and feeding him delicious treats, the witch is essentially "grooming" him for her own benefit/consumption, as Theon and Petyr groom the captain's daughter and Sansa, respectively, for their own benefit. Finally, note that "pebbles" are a key motif in Hansel and Gretel, prefiguring the proliferation of "pebbles" on Pyke, the 'rhyming' "pellets" on Petyr's Finger, and the isle of "Pebble" that leads to Petyr's Finger.)
The two "old" castle keepers neatly invert one another. Consider Grisel's comments about the old rushes and fire in Petyr's tower:

"If we knew you was coming we would have laid down fresh rushes, m'lord," said the crone. "There's a dung fire burning."
"Nothing says home like the smell of burning dung."

That's a recursive reversal of Helya's (lack of) preparation for Theon's visit: Where Grisel has a fire going even though she didn't know Petyr was coming, and where she proactively apologizes for not changing the rushes, telling him "we would have laid down fresh rushes… if we knew you were coming", Helya neither lit a fire nor changed the heavily foregrounded "old and brittle" rushes in the rooms Theon is given—

"I'll have a basin of hot water and a fire in this hearth," he told the crone. "See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill. And gods be good, get someone in here at once to change these rushes."

—despite having ample forewarning of his coming:

It was not as though they had no word of his arrival. Robb had sent ravens from Riverrun, and… Jason Mallister had sent his own birds to Pyke….

The joke is underlined by the introduction of "Gretchel" — Gretel with a borrowed H from Helya/Hansel — who fetches washbasins of water (which, see below), "la[ys] a fire in the hearth" and "tend[s] to the fire", brings food and discusses food storage in Petyr's Eyrie in AFFC Sansa I & Alayne I. (In other words, she 'keeps his castle.')

'Rhyming' Interiors

That's just the beginning of the reversals in the many recursions between Theon's lodgings at Pyke and Sansa's in the Drearfort.
Where Helya leads Theon to his rooms on his orders—

"Show me to my chambers, woman," he commanded. Bowing stiffly, [Helya] led him across the headland to the bridge. …
Whenever he'd imagined his homecoming, he had always pictured himself returning to the snug bedchamber in the Sea Tower, where he'd slept as a child. Instead the old woman led him to the Bloody Keep.

—it's Petyr who leads the way into his tower, casually inviting Grisel (and everyone else) to follow him:

"If you like, m'lord," said the old woman Grisel.
Lord Petyr made a face. "Come, let's see if my hall is as dreary as I recall." He led them up the strand…

Petyr jokes about his hall being "dreary", and perhaps it is, but while it's "small" and "even smaller" within, his tower is also home to his servants, and hence very well lived-in.

Within, the tower seemed even smaller. An open stone stair wound round the inside wall, from undercroft to roof. Each floor was but a single room. The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs. Above that was a modest hall, and higher still the bedchamber.

(Note that the "mastiff", which we see as Petyr leads Grisel in, recalls Helya bowing "stiffly" before leading Theon to his rooms.)
This sharply reverses the situation Theon finds at Pyke, when he's deposited not in a single room shared by a bunch of people who've lived in it forever and warmed by a hearth with a burning fire, a la Sansa, nor in the "snug bedchamber" in the Sea Tower he'd anticipated (which sounds like Littlefinger's little "tower" by the sea), but in the Bloody Keep, in a whole-ass "suite" of large but "chilly", even "cold" rooms with incredibly high ceilings — rooms which haven't even been opened, much less lived-in, for "years", and which are the very definition of "dreary":

The halls here were larger and better furnished, if no less cold nor damp. Theon was given a suite of chilly rooms with ceilings so high that they were lost in gloom. [Omitted but see below.]
[Omitted but see below.] It was not fear of ghosts that made him glance about with distaste. The wall hangings were green with mildew, the mattress musty-smelling and sagging, the rushes old and brittle. Years had come and gone since these chambers had last been opened. The damp went bone deep. "I'll have a basin of hot water and a fire in this hearth," he told the crone. See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill. And gods be good, get someone in here at once to change these rushes."

A ton of the motifs here (including the omitted stuff, which I'll return to) get recycled and reworked in Petyr's tower.
Most obviously, Theon's request for hot water prefigures Sansa's request for a hot bath:

"Might I have a hot bath as well?" asked Sansa.
"I'll have Kella draw some water, m'lady."

Note that Kella fulfills the request, not Grisel. This 'fits', as it's not Helya who brings Theon's water, but "two thralls".
Note also that Sansa requests her bath after thinking…

She desperately needed a bath and a change of clothes.

…whereas Theon changes his clothes immediately after the quoted passages.
Slightly less obviously, the "wall hangings [that] were green with mildew" are reworked by Petyr's own green 'wall hanging': his grandfather's shield, which is painted with a "light green field" and which "hung… above the hearth". The "mildew" is reworked by the fact that the paint is "cracked and flaking" i.e. flawed. And maybe also by the "light green field", since a field grows crops which get milled and which get dewy.

Brittle Bryen's Brigantine, Brindled Mastiff, & Old Blind Dog

As mentioned, the motif of unchanged rushes from Theon's homecoming recurs when Petyr comes home. But Petyr's homecoming also lexically riffs on Theon's rushes being quote-unquote "old and brittle" by giving us Bryen in "brigantine" who is very "old" but not, seemingly, brittle, as he still walks watches, not with his "old blind dog", but with a "brindled mastiff":

"It is good to have you home, my lord," said one old man. He looked to be at least eighty, but he wore a studded brigantine and a longsword at his side. …
"Bryen—didn't I name you captain of the guard the last time I was here?"
"You did, my lord. You said you'd be getting some more men too, but you never did. Me and the dogs stand all the watches."
Sansa found Bryen's old blind dog in her little alcove beneath the steps…
The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs.

Is the brindled dog a "mastiff" 'only' a wink at Theon going mast-stiff for Asha? (See Part 4.) Maybe. But it's worth mentioning that when Theon is first being stirred by Pyke's banner and it's being battered about like the shield we see in the Drearfort three sentences after the mastiff, it's also (a) flying from a very stiff "mast" and (b) juxtaposed with a very large 'dog' of sorts:

The banner streamed from an iron mast, shivering and twisting as the wind gusted like a bird struggling to take flight. And here at least the direwolf of Stark did not fly above, casting its shadow down upon the Greyjoy kraken.

Musty Old Mattresses

The old, "musty-smelling and sagging" mattress (in the chamber that has just been re-opened after long periods of being closed and uninhabited) from Theon's homecoming is answered in Petyr's homecomiong by Lysa, who arrives a few pages later in the chapter, eager to finally have sex again with Petyr. "Mattress" is slang for a sexually available woman (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mattress) and Lysa sags—

Lady Lysa was two years younger than Mother, but this woman looked ten years older. Thick auburn tresses fell down past her waist, but beneath the costly velvet gown and jeweled bodice her body sagged and bulged.

—and smells stale. (Note that Lysa is on a mattress here.)

Her aunt was drenched in sweet scent, though under that was a sour milky smell. Her cheek tasted of paint and powder.

Lysa's "cheek tast[ing] of paint and powder" riffs on the line about Theon's "distaste" and "fear of ghosts":

It was not fear of ghosts that made him glance about with distaste.

The distaste wordplay is obvious: Lysa tastes bad. As for the "fear of ghosts", Lysa (whom Sansa fears) being covered in "powder" reminds us of Sansa being afraid of a "spirit" covered in powdery flour:

When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs…. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. (AGOT Arya IV)

This line—

The halls here were larger and better furnished, if no less cold nor damp.

—is reworked by Lysa as well, who is big and well-dressed ("better furnished", so to speak)—

[B]eneath the costly velvet gown and jeweled bodice her body sagged and bulged. Her face was pink and painted, her breasts heavy, her limbs thick. She was taller than Littlefinger, and heavier; nor did she show any grace in the clumsy way she climbed down off her horse.

—but cold to Sansa and horny/wet/"damp" for Petyr.
Given that Theon's rooms are in several ways like Lysa (newly 'open for business' after a long period of being closed and untouched by men, etc.), and pronouncing aunt like antler, we also might say that where the Lysa-like rooms are "cold" and "damp", Lysa herself is Sansa's "cold" aunt. Rhyming 'rhyming'.
That "years had come and gone since" the room with the Lysa-like mattress "had last been opened" is reworked not just by Lysa getting laid, but textually when Sansa is told Lysa is coming to the Drearfort (where she is 're-opened', so to speak):

It had been years since Sansa last saw her mother's sister…"

I wonder whether Lysa crying and speaking to Sansa of being "bound by blood" to her—

Tears welled suddenly in Lady Lysa's eyes. "We are women alone now, you and I. Are you afraid, child? Be brave. I would never turn away Cat's daughter. We are bound by blood."

—might not be in part a play on the fact that "the damp went bone deep" in the Bloody Keep. By saying that, Sansa's damp (i.e. crying) aunt "went bone deep", so to speak. (If you're "bound by blood" to someone, you have a "bone deep" bond with them. Also, bone → bound wordplay?)

Braziers → Bracing?

Did Theon's attempt to drive away "the chill" and damp of the salty sea air of Pyke using "braziers"—

See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill.

—inform (via wordplay: braziers → bracing) Petyr's line when the Merling King pulls up to the Drearfort?

Lord Petyr came up beside her, cheerful as ever. "Good morrow. The salt air is bracing, don't you think? It always sharpens my appetite."

And/or is that "sharpening" motif a recursion of Theon sharpening his dirk immediately after said braziers are lit?

After some time, they brought the hot water he had asked for. … While two thralls lit his braziers, Theon stripped off his travel-stained clothing and dressed to meet his father. … He hung a dirk at one hip and a longsword at the other…. Drawing the dirk, he … pulled a whetstone from his belt pouch, and gave it a few licks. He prided himself on keeping his weapons sharp.

Gods Be Good!

The motifs of Theon yelling "gods be good" at his servant and of "ceilings so high that they were lost in gloom" are recursively reworked when Lysa summons Sansa (like a servant) to speak with her the morning after she weds Petyr. Sansa responds to the summons by thinking, verbatim, "gods be good", and is then told they'll be heading to the Eyrie, which we know is "so high you can stand on the parapets and look down on the clouds", i.e. it has parapets 'so high that they were lost in the clouds':

Lady Lysa was still abed [like a good mattress!], but Lord Petyr was up and dressed. "Your aunt wishes to speak with you," he told Sansa, as he pulled on a boot. "I've told her who you are."
Gods be good. "I . . . I thank you, my lord."
Petyr yanked on the other boot. "I've had about as much home as I can stomach. We'll leave for the Eyrie this afternoon."
Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into the belly of the sky, so high you can stand on the parapets and look down on the clouds. (AGOT Catelyn VI)

The notion of a "ceiling" so high it is lost in gloom is perhaps also reworked by the story Lysa tells Sansa about Petyr's "rise" to power: She says she "always knew how high [Petyr would] rise", and it's my belief that said rise has likely seen him 'lost', spiritually, in 'darkness'. (Note that ceilings are a frequently invoked metaphor when talking about climbing the corporate ladder.)

"Half his teeth were gone, and his breath smelled like bad cheese. I cannot abide a man with foul breath. Petyr's breath is always fresh . . . he was the first man I ever kissed, you know. My father said he was too lowborn, but I knew how high he'd rise. Jon gave him the customs for Gulltown to please me, but when he increased the incomes tenfold my lord husband saw how clever he was and gave him other appointments, even brought him to King's Landing to be master of coin. That was hard, to see him every day and still be wed to that old cold man.

(Recall that the motif of bad/fresh breath there reworks the "winey stench of the old man's [Sylas Sourmouth's] breath", which Theon thinks about roughly ¼ page prior to being shown his suite in the Bloody Keep.)

Butchered Sons & Brothers

Lysa continues to rant:

"Jon did his duty in the bedchamber, but he could no more give me pleasure than he could give me children. His seed was old and weak. All my babies died but Robert, three girls and two boys. All my sweet little babies dead, and that old man just went on and on with his stinking breath. So you see, I have suffered too." Lady Lysa sniffed. "You do know that your poor mother is dead?"
"Tyrion told me," said Sansa. "He said the Freys murdered her at The Twins, with Robb."

Those references to (a) a bunch of dead "babies", including two brothers, one of which was "murdered" when Lysa's father, Hoster Tully, who ruled the Riverlands, betrayed Lysa's trust; and to (b) foul smelling breath, a la Sylas, and finally to (c) the Red Wedding — a bloody betrayal of Sansa's brother, who was King of the Riverlands — particularly (per Sansa saying "Tyrion told me") as it's described by Tyrion—

Sansa did not need to hear how her brother's body had been hacked and mutilated, he decided; nor how her mother's corpse had been dumped naked into the Green Fork in a savage mockery of House Tully's funeral customs. (ASOS Tyrion VII)

—are one of the ways ASOS Sansa VI rejiggers the part of Theon's description of his Bloody Keep suite I "[omitted]" earlier, which entails betrayals, murdered brothers, a River King, slaughter, and bodies "hacked to bits".

[Theon] might have been more impressed if he had not known that these were the very chambers that had given the Bloody Keep its name. A thousand years before, the sons of the River King had been slaughtered here, hacked to bits in their beds so that pieces of their bodies might be sent back to their father on the mainland.
But Greyjoys were not murdered in Pyke except once in a great while by their brothers, and his brothers were both dead.

Lysa's speech with its reference to her abortion and to the Red Wedding (and to stink-breath like Sylas's) isn't the only (or even the main) way Petyr's homecoming chapter refracts those images from Theon's homecoming, though.
Littlefinger is himself a kind of River King (as Lord Paramount of the Trident), right? And note that we read all about his "slaughtered" "sons" just before he enters the tower, wherein we then see the foul betrayers who murdered their 'brothers'. I'm talking, of course, about his sheep and his sheepdogs:

"How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?"
… "Three and twenty, m'lord. There was nine and twenty, but Bryen's dogs killed one and we butchered some others and salted down the meat."
"Ah, cold salt mutton. I must be home.…" … "Come, let's see if my hall is as dreary as I recall." … A handful of sheep were wandering about the base of the flint tower…. …
Within, the tower seemed even smaller. An open stone stair wound round the inside wall, from undercroft to roof. Each floor was but a single room. The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs.

Note the kitchen, recalling that the Bloody Keep is paired with the Kitchen Keep as Theon first gazes on Pyke:

Farther out were the Kitchen Keep and the Bloody Keep, each on its own island.

Note, too, that the sheep are coded as Petyr's "sons", in a way (a la the "slaughtered… sons of the River King" Theon remembers in his Bloody Tower rooms), and not just because he owns them. He says that Kella has lots of bastards and that she minds his sheep, right? And what else does he say of Kella, in jest? That she 'is' the "mother" of his "daughter," "Alayne Stone":

"Alayne . . . Stone, would it be?" When he nodded, she said, "But who is my mother?"
"Kella?"
"Please no," she said, mortified.
"I was teasing.

The joke foregrounds the notion of Petyr as the father of Kella's children. And while she supposedly has a bunch of bastards, we don't see them. We just see the one girl with the livestock-evoking eye with a sty. It's almost like the sheep she looks after are her children. And thus like Petyr is their father.
(Note the word "mortified". This points straight back to Theon in his Bloody Tower for two reasons: First, greyscale, which mortifies the flesh, killed Balon's brother Harlon, who died "in a windowless tower room" at Pyke. Second: Theon will, in his next chapter, be truly mortified by the realization that "Esgred" is his sister Asha, where that masquerade in turn prefigures Sansa masquerading as Alayne.)
So the "cold" Bloody Keep with its partner the Kitchen Keep and its story of a "slaughter", betrayal, brother killing brother, a River King's sons' bodies "hacked to bits in their beds" — all these motifs are reworked by Kella's account of one of Lord Paramount Petyr's sheep-'sons' being killed by its lexicial 'brothers', the very "sheep-dogs" who were supposed to guard it, and of other sheep-'sons' being verbatim "butchered", i.e. slaughtered on a killing bed and in the process surely hacked into pieces that were then preserved against spoilage for future consumption, such that the resulting "cold salt mutton" could be used as travel rations. Which jibes with Theon's language, creatively interpreted:

[T]he sons of the River King had been slaughtered here, hacked to bits in their beds so that pieces of their bodies might be sent back to their father on the mainland.

(They were slaughtered and hacked to bits only so as to properly preserve them against spoilage during their upcoming journey "back to their father on the mainland", you see!)

Theon's Honor Guard

The conditions in Theon's rooms are consistent with the cold welcome he receives, both from Aeron—

The priest's manner was chilly, most unlike the man Theon remembered.

—and Balon—

Theon pulled off his gloves. "… Why is my father not here to greet me?"
"He awaits you in the Sea Tower, m'lord. When you are rested from your trip."
And I thought Ned Stark cold.

—and they're thus part of a broad yin/yang 'rhyme' with Petyr's initial homecoming, which is warm and welcoming and full of familiar faces, whereas Theon knows no one, such that he thinks:

It is as if I were a stranger here….

The reversal is wryly underlined when Petyr is greeted at the shore by his "captain of the guards", Bryen:

"It is good to have you home, my lord," said one old man.

Thus Petyr ironically gets the "honor guard" welcome Theon hoped he'd get on his arrival 'home':

[Theon] saw… no honor guard waiting to escort him from Lordsport to Pyke, only smallfolk going about their small business.

Notice that where no one stops what they're doing for Theon, everyone stops when Petyr arrives. And of course, everyone in his household recognizes him, whereas no one recognizes Theon. Which is telling, because in a deep sense, that's all Theon really wants, deep down: a little recognition.
Littlefinger has it… but it's not enough.

(SUB)SERIES CONCLUDES IN PART 10: Oswell & Aeron; Lothar & Dagmer; The Closing Twist

This post is part of a series looking at the massive amount of 'rhyming' (and occasionally rhyming) recursivity I believe exists between (a) the homecoming of Petyr Baelish to the Fingers and (b) the homecoming of Theon Greyjoy to Pyke.
While this series/post can be read simply as a study 'for its own sake' of the curious recursion between these storylines, it is my belief that the 'rhyming' explored here between the stories of Petyr and Theon exists (at least in part) to foreshadow that, like Theon, Petyr Littlefinger, is (among other things) a scion of ironborn kings, because Petyr is Hoare-ish: I.e. because Petyr's blood is (in some part) the blood of the ironborn kings of House Hoare of Orkmont and, later, Harrenhal.
You can find an index of every post I've made on the topic of a Hoare-ish Littlefinger (including every post in this sub-series) [HERE].
Even if I'm wrong about Littlefinger's lineage, the 'rhyming' recursivity between the homecomings of Theon and Petyr detailed in this series remains, and certainly merits attention.
NOTE: In what follows, all uncited quotes are from ASOS Sansa VI, which describes Petyr's homecoming to his "Drearfort" tower of the 'Smallest Finger', or ACOK Theon I, which describes Theon's homecoming to "drear" Pyke.
As in past posts, I sometimes use "→" as shorthand for "'prefigures' and/or 'informs' and/or 'is reworked by' and/or 'finds a recursive rhyme in'.
As in: ACOK Theon I → ASOS Sansa VI.
This post picks up straight-away from where Part 8 left off. You can read Part 8 [HERE].
If you want to begin at the beginning, Part 1 is [HERE].

The Myraham's Prophetic Cargo

After Theon makes port, the captain of the Myraham announces his cargo to the people on the docks of Lordport and we read about the offloading of the Myraham:

"We're out of Oldtown," the captain called down, "bearing apples and oranges, wines from the Arbor, feathers from the Summer Isles. I have pepper, woven leathers, a bolt of Myrish lace, mirrors for milady, a pair of Oldtown woodharps sweet as any you ever heard." The gangplank descended with a creak and a thud. "And I've brought your heir back to you."

Most of what we read there seems to be reworked in and around Littlefinger's homecoming in ASOS Sansa VI, when the Merling King brings the Dreadfort its heir, Littlefinger, as well as the seeming heir to Winterfell, Sansa. This begins with the Arbor wine and fruit we see off-loaded from the Merling King:

Oswell made two more trips out to the Merling King to offload provisions. Among the loads he brought ashore were several casks of wine. Petyr poured Sansa a cup, as promised. …
… The wine was very fine; an Arbor vintage, she thought. It tasted of oak and fruit and hot summer nights, the flavors blossoming in her mouth like flowers opening to the sun. She only prayed that she could keep it down. Lord Petyr was being so kind, she did not want to spoil it all by retching on him.
… "Grisel," he called to the old woman, "bring some food up. … Oswell's brought some oranges and pomegranates from the King." …
Grisel reappeared…, balancing a large platter. … There were apples and pears and pomegranates, some sad-looking grapes, a huge blood orange.

Besides the straight repetition of Arbor wine, oranges, apples, and heirs, the repeated Oldtown motif is baldly reworked by Sansa's description of the wine, which is patently Oldtown-summer-esque, per the only substantive pre-AFFC description of Oldtown, which associates it with hot, fruity summer nights:

"King Maekar's summer was hotter than this one, and near as long. … [T]he heat was fierce while it lasted. Oldtown… came alive only by night. … I remember the smells of those nights, my lord—perfume and sweat, melons ripe to bursting, peaches and pomegranates, nightshade and moonbloom." (AGOT Eddard V)

The Myraham's "mirrors for milady" prefigure Sansa being figuratively groomed by Petyr and literally grooming herself in Petyr's Eyrie after he takes over:

When Gretchel fetched her Lysa's silvered looking glass, the color seemed just perfect with Alayne's mass of dark brown hair. (AFFC Alayne I)

The Myraham's "woodharps sweet as any you ever heard" presage Sansa being attacked by Marillion, whose "voice was strong and sweet", (AFFC Sansa I) after he sings a song (about blowjobs?) called "Milady's Supper" (supper a la the Myraham-ish fruit Sansa eats for supper when she lands) during Petyr's wedding bedding:

Lady Lysa's singer launched into a bawdy version of "Milady's Supper"….

The Myraham's "woven leathers" and "Myrish lace" are reworked into the "laces unlaced" i.e. unwoven during said wedding:

By the time they had gotten him into the tower and out of his clothes, the other women were flushed, with laces unlaced, kirtles crooked, and skirts in disarray.

That it's a "bolt of Myrish lace" is interesting: After Sansa boards the Merling King, she sees a singular "bolt" from a crossbow strike Dontos, and then two more:

Lothor Brune dipped his torch. Three men stepped to the gunwale, raised crossbows, fired. One bolt took Dontos in the chest as he looked up…. The others ripped into throat and belly. (ASOS Sansa V)

Three crossbow bolts? What does that remind us if not… a Myrish crossbow:

"The king is playing with his new crossbow," Tyrion said. Ridding himself of Joffrey had required only an ungainly Myrish crossbow that threw three quarrels at a time…. (ACOK Tyrion VI)

What about the Myraham's "pepper"? I suspect this gets box-checked first by Sansa trying not to "retch" as she is off-loaded along with the wine with which Littlefinger tries to settle her tummy, as just two chapters later peppers are tightly linked to "retching" of the sort Sansa feels like doing:

[Tyrion] found himself on his knees retching… that double helping of fried eggs cooked up with onions and fiery Dornish peppers. (ASOS Tyrion X)

GRRM seems to play off the "pepper" motif in other ways, as well. Consider that the gathering to meet the Myraham and the shouted questions that prompt her captain to announce her cargo—

A handful of Lordsport merchants had gathered to meet the ship. They shouted questions as the Myraham was tying up.

—get reworked by Petyr's household all gathering "to meet" the Merling King and by their peppering one another with questions:

Servants emerged from the tower to meet them; a thin old woman and a fat middle-aged one, two ancient white-haired men, and a girl of two or three with a sty on one eye. When they recognized Lord Petyr they knelt on the rocks. "My household," he said. "I don't know the child. Another of Kella's bastards, I suppose. She pops one out every few years."

She's a "popper", then, in case we didn't catch that retching → peppers. (This also reworks Theon "popping one off" with the captain's daughter, who is in many ways reworked by Kella, as will be discussed below.)

… [Petyr]… gave the old woman a kiss on the cheek and grinned at the younger one. "Who fathered this one, Kella?"
The fat woman laughed. "I can't rightly say, m'lord. I'm not one for telling them no."
"And all the local lads are grateful, I am quite sure."
"It is good to have you home, my lord," said one old man. … "How long will you be in residence?"
"As short a time as possible, Bryen, have no fear. Is the place habitable just now, would you say?"
"If we knew you was coming we would have laid down fresh rushes, m'lord," said the crone. "There's a dung fire burning."
"Nothing says home like the smell of burning dung." Petyr turned to Sansa. "Grisel was my wet nurse, but she keeps my castle now. Umfred's my steward, and Bryen—didn't I name you captain of the guard the last time I was here?"
"You did, my lord.…"
… Petyr gestured toward the fat woman. "Kella minds my vast herds. How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?"

A gathering, and questions, questions, questions, as when Theon docks.
Recall that Bryen and Umfred come from shore to offload Sansa (who's just been promised a cup of wine to help with her upset "tummy") from the Merling King's rowboat:

The two old men waded out up to their thighs to lift Sansa from the boat so she would not get her skirts wet.

This reworks the "shorehands… off-loading… casks of wine" from a Tyroshi trader docked with the Myraham—

[Theon] spied a Tyroshi trading galley off-loading…
Shorehands rolled casks of wine off the Tyroshi trader, fisherfolk cried the day's catch, children ran and played. A priest in the seawater robes of the Drowned God was leading a pair of horses along the pebbled shore, while above him a slattern leaned out a window in the inn, calling out to some passing Ibbenese sailors.

—which itself prefigures the above-quoted off-loading of the Merling King (when "Oswell made two more trips out to the Merling King to offload provisions" including "several casks of wine", from which Petyr immediately "poured Sansa a cup, as promised").

Kella & The Slattern

What about that "slattern lean[ing] out a window" to greet "some passing… sailors" while "children ran and played"? I submit that she is one of several motifs from Theon's homecoming prefiguring Petyr's servant Kella. I'll explain.
Consider that Petyr's servant Kella has many bastards i.e. children, popping one out every few years:

"I don't know the child. Another of Kella's bastards, I suppose. She pops one out every few years."

We only see one; presumably the others are off somewhere, running and playing, perhaps.
Kella happily greets Petyr as he comes ashore, much as Lordsport's slattern "call[s] out to some passing Ibbenese sailors". Note that the sailors on the Merling King are likewise 'passing' — passing through:

"From here the King turns east for Braavos. Without us."

Consider most of all that Kella's something of a slattern herself: She's "not one for telling them no".

"I can't rightly say, m'lord. I'm not one for telling them no."
"And all the local lads are grateful, I am quite sure."

Indeed, something Lysa says pretty clearly codes Kella as a verbatim "slattern", underlining the recursion:

"How would you like to spend your life on that bleak shore, surrounded by slatterns and sheep pellets?" (ASOS Sansa VII)

So I think the vignette with the slattern and the children in Lordsport pretty plainly prefigures Kella. But I think she's prefigured by two more pieces of Theon's homecoming.

Kella & The Captain's Daughter

Keeping in mind that Kella has a bunch of bastards ("she pops one out every few years) and that she's "not one for telling them no", consider also that she is (a) literally 'with child' — or rather, with a child—

a girl of two or three with a sty on one eye

—that she's (b) "fat"—

"Who fathered this one, Kella?"
The fat woman laughed.

—and that she's (c) coded as a bit stupid:

"Kella minds my vast herds. How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?"
She had to think a moment. "Three and twenty, m'lord. There was nine and twenty, but Bryen's dogs killed one and we butchered some others and salted down the meat."

All like Theon's "captain's daughter".
The captain's daughter is "plump", as Kella is "fat":

The girl was a shade plump for his taste…

She is likely pregnant with Theon's bastard, a la Kella the bastard-popper.
She tells Theon…

"You can put it in me again, if it please you…"

…and accedes to his request for a blowjob, so she's "not one for telling them no."
She thereby helps Theon 'pop one off', a la Kella "pop[ping] one out".
Like Kella, she seems a bit stupid:

She looked rather stupid when she smiled, but he had never required a woman to be clever.
The stupid girl did not seem to be listening.
She… learned quickly for such a stupid girl….
She looked at him stupidly, so he left her there.

And finally, she offers to work in Theon's castle—

I'd work in your castle, milord.

—just as Kella works for Petyr.

Kella: The Spreading Patch of the Smallest Finger?

Besides the "slattern" and the captain's daughter, I suspect Kella may also riff on — of all things — the "spreading patches" of "lichen" on "wet" Pyke as Theon sails by:

[Pyke was] wet by the same salt waves, festooned with the same spreading patches of dark green lichen, speckled by the droppings of the same seabirds.

Get it? A spreading 'patch'? In combination with "lichen" a la "licking" and Pyke being "wet"? And not just wet, but "wet by… salt waves", when as we know from the captain's daughter, semen tastes "salty", "like the sea". It's like Pyke is being described as a turned-on "slattern" with her legs spread.
A Hoare, we might say.
This connects to Kella, specifically because of her name: Kella is a near anagram for "kale", a dark green plant, like the "dark green lichen".
Actually, the name Kella may have anothere precursor in Theon's story: "Qalen", the maester Theon asks Helya about upon his arrival at Pyke:

"And what of Maester Qalen, where is he?"

Qalen would be pronounced Kalen. Qalen → Kalen → Kale → Kela → Kella. Anyway…

Grisel & The Captain's Daughter

Something similar is going on with Petyr's servant Grisel, the "thin old woman" who was his wet nurse but who "keeps [his] castle now":

"Grisel was my wet nurse, but she keeps my castle now.

Grisel is similarly prefigured by two people from Theon's homecoming, including first the captain's daughter who wants to work in Theon's castle as Grisel works in Petyr's "castle".
Consider first that Grisel, like the captain's daughter, seems slightly stupid (but eager to please), as she fails to grasp Petyr's sarcasm and takes his derisive joke about gulls' eggs and seaweed soup as an order:

"Ah, cold salt mutton. I must be home. When I break my fast on gulls' eggs and seaweed soup, I'll be certain of it."
"If you like, m'lord," said the old woman Grisel.
Lord Petyr made a face.

Then there is the captain daughter's resume:

"I'd work in your castle, milord. I can clean fish and bake bread and churn butter. Father says my peppercrab stew is the best he's ever tasted. You could find me a place in your kitchens and I could make you peppercrab stew."

This surely prefigures what we're told about Grisel making a sea-based soup of her own (i.e. the just mentioned "seaweed soup"), baking bread, and churning butter for Petyr:

Grisel reappeared before he could say more, balancing a large platter. She set it down between them. … The old woman had brought a round of bread as well, and a crock of butter.
Grisel climbed up to the bedchamber to serve the lord and lady a tray of morning bread, with butter, honey, fruit, and cream.

Where Grisel used to be Petyr's wet nurse, Theon suckles the captain daughter's nipple as if she's a wet nurse:

Theon's finger circled one heavy teat, spiraling in toward the fat brown nipple. … He took her nipple in his mouth….
"You can put it in me again, if it please you," she whispered in his ear as he sucked.

And finally, where Theon kisses the captain's daughter on the ear—

[Theon] drew the captain's daughter close and kissed her on her ear.

—Littlefinger kisses Grisel on the cheek:

Oswell and Lothor splashed their way ashore, as did Littlefinger himself. He gave the old woman a kiss on the cheek and grinned at the younger one.

Helya & Grisel (& Gretchel)

Grisel also rhymes with and reworks Helya, who keeps Balon's castle:

A bentback old crone in a shapeless grey dress approached him warily. "M'lord, I am sent to show you to chambers."
"And who are you?"
"Helya, who keeps this castle for your lord father."

Get it? "Helya and Grisel", a la "Hansel and Gretel".
(Gretel is a variant of "Greta". "Grisel" sounds like gristle, whereas in Hansel and Gretel the witch is trying to fatten Hansel up — she don't want no stringy meat! Note the thematic symmetry as well: By treating Hansel kindly and feeding him delicious treats, the witch is essentially "grooming" him for her own benefit/consumption, as Theon and Petyr groom the captain's daughter and Sansa, respectively, for their own benefit. Finally, note that "pebbles" are a key motif in Hansel and Gretel, prefiguring the proliferation of "pebbles" on Pyke, the 'rhyming' "pellets" on Petyr's Finger, and the isle of "Pebble" that leads to Petyr's Finger.)
The two "old" castle keepers neatly invert one another. Consider Grisel's comments about the old rushes and fire in Petyr's tower:

"If we knew you was coming we would have laid down fresh rushes, m'lord," said the crone. "There's a dung fire burning."
"Nothing says home like the smell of burning dung."

That's a recursive reversal of Helya's (lack of) preparation for Theon's visit: Where Grisel has a fire going even though she didn't know Petyr was coming, and where she proactively apologizes for not changing the rushes, telling him "we would have laid down fresh rushes… if we knew you were coming", Helya neither lit a fire nor changed the heavily foregrounded "old and brittle" rushes in the rooms Theon is given—

"I'll have a basin of hot water and a fire in this hearth," he told the crone. "See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill. And gods be good, get someone in here at once to change these rushes."

—despite having ample forewarning of his coming:

It was not as though they had no word of his arrival. Robb had sent ravens from Riverrun, and… Jason Mallister had sent his own birds to Pyke….

The joke is underlined by the introduction of "Gretchel" — Gretel with a borrowed H from Helya/Hansel — who fetches washbasins of water (which, see below), "la[ys] a fire in the hearth" and "tend[s] to the fire", brings food and discusses food storage in Petyr's Eyrie in AFFC Sansa I & Alayne I. (In other words, she 'keeps his castle.')

'Rhyming' Interiors

That's just the beginning of the reversals in the many recursions between Theon's lodgings at Pyke and Sansa's in the Drearfort.
Where Helya leads Theon to his rooms on his orders—

"Show me to my chambers, woman," he commanded. Bowing stiffly, [Helya] led him across the headland to the bridge. …
Whenever he'd imagined his homecoming, he had always pictured himself returning to the snug bedchamber in the Sea Tower, where he'd slept as a child. Instead the old woman led him to the Bloody Keep.

—it's Petyr who leads the way into his tower, casually inviting Grisel (and everyone else) to follow him:

"If you like, m'lord," said the old woman Grisel.
Lord Petyr made a face. "Come, let's see if my hall is as dreary as I recall." He led them up the strand…

Petyr jokes about his hall being "dreary", and perhaps it is, but while it's "small" and "even smaller" within, his tower is also home to his servants, and hence very well lived-in.

Within, the tower seemed even smaller. An open stone stair wound round the inside wall, from undercroft to roof. Each floor was but a single room. The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs. Above that was a modest hall, and higher still the bedchamber.

(Note that the "mastiff", which we see as Petyr leads Grisel in, recalls Helya bowing "stiffly" before leading Theon to his rooms.)
This sharply reverses the situation Theon finds at Pyke, when he's deposited not in a single room shared by a bunch of people who've lived in it forever and warmed by a hearth with a burning fire, a la Sansa, nor in the "snug bedchamber" in the Sea Tower he'd anticipated (which sounds like Littlefinger's little "tower" by the sea), but in the Bloody Keep, in a whole-ass "suite" of large but "chilly", even "cold" rooms with incredibly high ceilings — rooms which haven't even been opened, much less lived-in, for "years", and which are the very definition of "dreary":

The halls here were larger and better furnished, if no less cold nor damp. Theon was given a suite of chilly rooms with ceilings so high that they were lost in gloom. [Omitted but see below.]
[Omitted but see below.] It was not fear of ghosts that made him glance about with distaste. The wall hangings were green with mildew, the mattress musty-smelling and sagging, the rushes old and brittle. Years had come and gone since these chambers had last been opened. The damp went bone deep. "I'll have a basin of hot water and a fire in this hearth," he told the crone. See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill. And gods be good, get someone in here at once to change these rushes."

A ton of the motifs here (including the omitted stuff, which I'll return to) get recycled and reworked in Petyr's tower.
Most obviously, Theon's request for hot water prefigures Sansa's request for a hot bath:

"Might I have a hot bath as well?" asked Sansa.
"I'll have Kella draw some water, m'lady."

Note that Kella fulfills the request, not Grisel. This 'fits', as it's not Helya who brings Theon's water, but "two thralls".
Note also that Sansa requests her bath after thinking…

She desperately needed a bath and a change of clothes.

…whereas Theon changes his clothes immediately after the quoted passages.
Slightly less obviously, the "wall hangings [that] were green with mildew" are reworked by Petyr's own green 'wall hanging': his grandfather's shield, which is painted with a "light green field" and which "hung… above the hearth". The "mildew" is reworked by the fact that the paint is "cracked and flaking" i.e. flawed. And maybe also by the "light green field", since a field grows crops which get milled and which get dewy.

Brittle Bryen's Brigantine, Brindled Mastiff, & Old Blind Dog

As mentioned, the motif of unchanged rushes from Theon's homecoming recurs when Petyr comes home. But Petyr's homecoming also lexically riffs on Theon's rushes being quote-unquote "old and brittle" by giving us Bryen in "brigantine" who is very "old" but not, seemingly, brittle, as he still walks watches, not with his "old blind dog", but with a "brindled mastiff":

"It is good to have you home, my lord," said one old man. He looked to be at least eighty, but he wore a studded brigantine and a longsword at his side. …
"Bryen—didn't I name you captain of the guard the last time I was here?"
"You did, my lord. You said you'd be getting some more men too, but you never did. Me and the dogs stand all the watches."
Sansa found Bryen's old blind dog in her little alcove beneath the steps…
The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs.

Is the brindled dog a "mastiff" 'only' a wink at Theon going mast-stiff for Asha? (See Part 4.) Maybe. But it's worth mentioning that when Theon is first being stirred by Pyke's banner and it's being battered about like the shield we see in the Drearfort three sentences after the mastiff, it's also (a) flying from a very stiff "mast" and (b) juxtaposed with a very large 'dog' of sorts:

The banner streamed from an iron mast, shivering and twisting as the wind gusted like a bird struggling to take flight. And here at least the direwolf of Stark did not fly above, casting its shadow down upon the Greyjoy kraken.

Musty Old Mattresses

The old, "musty-smelling and sagging" mattress (in the chamber that has just been re-opened after long periods of being closed and uninhabited) from Theon's homecoming is answered in Petyr's homecomiong by Lysa, who arrives a few pages later in the chapter, eager to finally have sex again with Petyr. "Mattress" is slang for a sexually available woman (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mattress) and Lysa sags—

Lady Lysa was two years younger than Mother, but this woman looked ten years older. Thick auburn tresses fell down past her waist, but beneath the costly velvet gown and jeweled bodice her body sagged and bulged.

—and smells stale. (Note that Lysa is on a mattress here.)

Her aunt was drenched in sweet scent, though under that was a sour milky smell. Her cheek tasted of paint and powder.

Lysa's "cheek tast[ing] of paint and powder" riffs on the line about Theon's "distaste" and "fear of ghosts":

It was not fear of ghosts that made him glance about with distaste.

The distaste wordplay is obvious: Lysa tastes bad. As for the "fear of ghosts", Lysa (whom Sansa fears) being covered in "powder" reminds us of Sansa being afraid of a "spirit" covered in powdery flour:

When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs…. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. (AGOT Arya IV)

This line—

The halls here were larger and better furnished, if no less cold nor damp.

—is reworked by Lysa as well, who is big and well-dressed ("better furnished", so to speak)—

[B]eneath the costly velvet gown and jeweled bodice her body sagged and bulged. Her face was pink and painted, her breasts heavy, her limbs thick. She was taller than Littlefinger, and heavier; nor did she show any grace in the clumsy way she climbed down off her horse.

—but cold to Sansa and horny/wet/"damp" for Petyr.
Given that Theon's rooms are in several ways like Lysa (newly 'open for business' after a long period of being closed and untouched by men, etc.), and pronouncing aunt like antler, we also might say that where the Lysa-like rooms are "cold" and "damp", Lysa herself is Sansa's "cold" aunt. Rhyming 'rhyming'.
That "years had come and gone since" the room with the Lysa-like mattress "had last been opened" is reworked not just by Lysa getting laid, but textually when Sansa is told Lysa is coming to the Drearfort (where she is 're-opened', so to speak):

It had been years since Sansa last saw her mother's sister…"

I wonder whether Lysa crying and speaking to Sansa of being "bound by blood" to her—

Tears welled suddenly in Lady Lysa's eyes. "We are women alone now, you and I. Are you afraid, child? Be brave. I would never turn away Cat's daughter. We are bound by blood."

—might not be in part a play on the fact that "the damp went bone deep" in the Bloody Keep. By saying that, Sansa's damp (i.e. crying) aunt "went bone deep", so to speak. (If you're "bound by blood" to someone, you have a "bone deep" bond with them. Also, bone → bound wordplay?)

Braziers → Bracing?

Did Theon's attempt to drive away "the chill" and damp of the salty sea air of Pyke using "braziers"—

See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill.

—inform (via wordplay: braziers → bracing) Petyr's line when the Merling King pulls up to the Drearfort?

Lord Petyr came up beside her, cheerful as ever. "Good morrow. The salt air is bracing, don't you think? It always sharpens my appetite."

And/or is that "sharpening" motif a recursion of Theon sharpening his dirk immediately after said braziers are lit?

After some time, they brought the hot water he had asked for. … While two thralls lit his braziers, Theon stripped off his travel-stained clothing and dressed to meet his father. … He hung a dirk at one hip and a longsword at the other…. Drawing the dirk, he … pulled a whetstone from his belt pouch, and gave it a few licks. He prided himself on keeping his weapons sharp.

Gods Be Good!

The motifs of Theon yelling "gods be good" at his servant and of "ceilings so high that they were lost in gloom" are recursively reworked when Lysa summons Sansa (like a servant) to speak with her the morning after she weds Petyr. Sansa responds to the summons by thinking, verbatim, "gods be good", and is then told they'll be heading to the Eyrie, which we know is "so high you can stand on the parapets and look down on the clouds", i.e. it has parapets 'so high that they were lost in the clouds':

Lady Lysa was still abed [like a good mattress!], but Lord Petyr was up and dressed. "Your aunt wishes to speak with you," he told Sansa, as he pulled on a boot. "I've told her who you are."
Gods be good. "I . . . I thank you, my lord."
Petyr yanked on the other boot. "I've had about as much home as I can stomach. We'll leave for the Eyrie this afternoon."
Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into the belly of the sky, so high you can stand on the parapets and look down on the clouds. (AGOT Catelyn VI)

The notion of a "ceiling" so high it is lost in gloom is perhaps also reworked by the story Lysa tells Sansa about Petyr's "rise" to power: She says she "always knew how high [Petyr would] rise", and it's my belief that said rise has likely seen him 'lost', spiritually, in 'darkness'. (Note that ceilings are a frequently invoked metaphor when talking about climbing the corporate ladder.)

"Half his teeth were gone, and his breath smelled like bad cheese. I cannot abide a man with foul breath. Petyr's breath is always fresh . . . he was the first man I ever kissed, you know. My father said he was too lowborn, but I knew how high he'd rise. Jon gave him the customs for Gulltown to please me, but when he increased the incomes tenfold my lord husband saw how clever he was and gave him other appointments, even brought him to King's Landing to be master of coin. That was hard, to see him every day and still be wed to that old cold man.

(Recall that the motif of bad/fresh breath there reworks the "winey stench of the old man's [Sylas Sourmouth's] breath", which Theon thinks about roughly ¼ page prior to being shown his suite in the Bloody Keep.)

Butchered Sons & Brothers

Lysa continues to rant:

"Jon did his duty in the bedchamber, but he could no more give me pleasure than he could give me children. His seed was old and weak. All my babies died but Robert, three girls and two boys. All my sweet little babies dead, and that old man just went on and on with his stinking breath. So you see, I have suffered too." Lady Lysa sniffed. "You do know that your poor mother is dead?"
"Tyrion told me," said Sansa. "He said the Freys murdered her at The Twins, with Robb."

Those references to (a) a bunch of dead "babies", including two brothers, one of which was "murdered" when Lysa's father, Hoster Tully, who ruled the Riverlands, betrayed Lysa's trust; and to (b) foul smelling breath, a la Sylas, and finally to (c) the Red Wedding — a bloody betrayal of Sansa's brother, who was King of the Riverlands — particularly (per Sansa saying "Tyrion told me") as it's described by Tyrion—

Sansa did not need to hear how her brother's body had been hacked and mutilated, he decided; nor how her mother's corpse had been dumped naked into the Green Fork in a savage mockery of House Tully's funeral customs. (ASOS Tyrion VII)

—are one of the ways ASOS Sansa VI rejiggers the part of Theon's description of his Bloody Keep suite I "[omitted]" earlier, which entails betrayals, murdered brothers, a River King, slaughter, and bodies "hacked to bits".

[Theon] might have been more impressed if he had not known that these were the very chambers that had given the Bloody Keep its name. A thousand years before, the sons of the River King had been slaughtered here, hacked to bits in their beds so that pieces of their bodies might be sent back to their father on the mainland.
But Greyjoys were not murdered in Pyke except once in a great while by their brothers, and his brothers were both dead.

Lysa's speech with its reference to her abortion and to the Red Wedding (and to stink-breath like Sylas's) isn't the only (or even the main) way Petyr's homecoming chapter refracts those images from Theon's homecoming, though.
Littlefinger is himself a kind of River King (as Lord Paramount of the Trident), right? And note that we read all about his "slaughtered" "sons" just before he enters the tower, wherein we then see the foul betrayers who murdered their 'brothers'. I'm talking, of course, about his sheep and his sheepdogs:

"How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?"
… "Three and twenty, m'lord. There was nine and twenty, but Bryen's dogs killed one and we butchered some others and salted down the meat."
"Ah, cold salt mutton. I must be home.…" … "Come, let's see if my hall is as dreary as I recall." … A handful of sheep were wandering about the base of the flint tower…. …
Within, the tower seemed even smaller. An open stone stair wound round the inside wall, from undercroft to roof. Each floor was but a single room. The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs.

Note the kitchen, recalling that the Bloody Keep is paired with the Kitchen Keep as Theon first gazes on Pyke:

Farther out were the Kitchen Keep and the Bloody Keep, each on its own island.

Note, too, that the sheep are coded as Petyr's "sons", in a way (a la the "slaughtered… sons of the River King" Theon remembers in his Bloody Tower rooms), and not just because he owns them. He says that Kella has lots of bastards and that she minds his sheep, right? And what else does he say of Kella, in jest? That she 'is' the "mother" of his "daughter," "Alayne Stone":

"Alayne . . . Stone, would it be?" When he nodded, she said, "But who is my mother?"
"Kella?"
"Please no," she said, mortified.
"I was teasing.

The joke foregrounds the notion of Petyr as the father of Kella's children. And while she supposedly has a bunch of bastards, we don't see them. We just see the one girl with the livestock-evoking eye with a sty. It's almost like the sheep she looks after are her children. And thus like Petyr is their father.
(Note the word "mortified". This points straight back to Theon in his Bloody Tower for two reasons: First, greyscale, which mortifies the flesh, killed Balon's brother Harlon, who died "in a windowless tower room" at Pyke. Second: Theon will, in his next chapter, be truly mortified by the realization that "Esgred" is his sister Asha, where that masquerade in turn prefigures Sansa masquerading as Alayne.)
So the "cold" Bloody Keep with its partner the Kitchen Keep and its story of a "slaughter", betrayal, brother killing brother, a River King's sons' bodies "hacked to bits in their beds" — all these motifs are reworked by Kella's account of one of Lord Paramount Petyr's sheep-'sons' being killed by its lexicial 'brothers', the very "sheep-dogs" who were supposed to guard it, and of other sheep-'sons' being verbatim "butchered", i.e. slaughtered on a killing bed and in the process surely hacked into pieces that were then preserved against spoilage for future consumption, such that the resulting "cold salt mutton" could be used as travel rations. Which jibes with Theon's language, creatively interpreted:

[T]he sons of the River King had been slaughtered here, hacked to bits in their beds so that pieces of their bodies might be sent back to their father on the mainland.

(They were slaughtered and hacked to bits only so as to properly preserve them against spoilage during their upcoming journey "back to their father on the mainland", you see!)

Theon's Honor Guard

The conditions in Theon's rooms are consistent with the cold welcome he receives, both from Aeron—

The priest's manner was chilly, most unlike the man Theon remembered.

—and Balon—

Theon pulled off his gloves. "… Why is my father not here to greet me?"
"He awaits you in the Sea Tower, m'lord. When you are rested from your trip."
And I thought Ned Stark cold.

—and they're thus part of a broad yin/yang 'rhyme' with Petyr's initial homecoming, which is warm and welcoming and full of familiar faces, whereas Theon knows no one, such that he thinks:

It is as if I were a stranger here….

The reversal is wryly underlined when Petyr is greeted at the shore by his "captain of the guards", Bryen:

"It is good to have you home, my lord," said one old man.

Thus Petyr ironically gets the "honor guard" welcome Theon hoped he'd get on his arrival 'home':

[Theon] saw… no honor guard waiting to escort him from Lordsport to Pyke, only smallfolk going about their small business.

Notice that where no one stops what they're doing for Theon, everyone stops when Petyr arrives. And of course, everyone in his household recognizes him, whereas no one recognizes Theon. Which is telling, because in a deep sense, that's all Theon really wants, deep down: a little recognition.
Littlefinger has it… but it's not enough.

(SUB)SERIES CONCLUDES IN PART 10: Oswell & Aeron; Lothar & Dagmer; The Closing Twist

Guardians @ Orioles - Wed, May 31

Game Status: Pre-Game - First Pitch is scheduled for 03:05 PM EDT

Links & Info

• Current conditions at Oriole Park at Camden Yards: 77°F - Partly Cloudy - Wind 8 mph, In From RF
• TV: Guardians: Bally Sports Great Lakes, Orioles: MASN
• Radio: Guardians: Guardians Radio Network, WTAM 1100, Orioles: 98 Rock FM/HD2 97.9, WBAL NewsRadio AM/FM
• MLB Gameday
• Statcast Game Preview

ALE Rank	Team	W	L	GB (E#)	WC Rank	WC GB (E#)
1	Tampa Bay Rays	39	18	- (-)	-	- (-)
2	Baltimore Orioles	35	20	3.0 (104)	1	+2.5 (-)
3	New York Yankees	34	23	5.0 (101)	2	+0.5 (-)
4	Toronto Blue Jays	29	26	9.0 (98)	4	3.5 (105)
5	Boston Red Sox	28	26	9.5 (98)	5	4.0 (105)

	Probable Pitcher (Season Stats)	Report
Guardians	Shane Bieber (4-3, 3.04 ERA, 71.0 IP)	No report posted.
Orioles	Keegan Akin (1-1, 4.85 ERA, 13.0 IP)	No report posted.

Guardians Lineup vs. Akin	AVG	OPS	AB	HR	RBI	K
1 Kwan - LF	.000	.333	2	0	1	0
2 Rosario, A - SS	.143	.286	7	0	1	1
3 Ramírez, Jo - 3B	.429	1.286	7	1	3	1
4 Naylor, J - 1B	.000	.000	4	0	0	0
5 Bell - DH	.000	.000	1	0	0	1
6 Arias, G - RF	-	-	-	-	-	-
7 Gimenez - 2B	1.000	2.000	2	0	0	0
8 Straw - CF	.000	.000	3	0	1	0
9 Gallagher - C	1.000	2.000	1	0	0	0
10 Bieber - P	-	-	-	-	-	-

Orioles Lineup vs. Bieber	AVG	OPS	AB	HR	RBI	K
1 Frazier - 2B	.000	.000	2	0	1	1
2 Rutschman - C	.000	.000	6	0	0	3
3 Santander - DH	.125	.722	8	1	1	4
4 Mountcastle - 1B	.200	1.133	5	1	1	1
5 Henderson - 3B	.000	.000	3	0	0	1
6 Hicks, A - CF	.167	1.042	6	1	1	5
7 O'Hearn - RF	.313	.916	16	1	1	6
8 Mateo - SS	.000	.000	2	0	0	1
9 McKenna - LF	-	-	-	-	-	-
10 Akin - P	-	-	-	-	-	-

Division Scoreboard

TB @ CHC 02:20 PM EDT
MIL @ TOR 07:07 PM EDT
CIN @ BOS 07:10 PM EDT
NYY @ SEA 09:40 PM EDT
^{Posted: 05/31/2023 01:05:00 PM EDT}

"Shit!" Chris shouted, causing Gary to spin. Boss held a spotting scope up to his eye.
"No way they didn't see us," he said. Gary marked the two running figures in the distance. He didn't think about it. He didn't register that they seemed small. He only knew that if the Taliban got wind of them moving through this pass they'd start mortaring the area and send out spotters. It would just be a matter of time before they were all dead.
He put his eye against the magnified optics. He placed the crosshairs at the top of one figure's neck and fired. It stumbled and fell. The other one angled off, getting some lateral motion, which would have been a smart move if Gary weren't such a good shot. He got the left arm of the crosshairs lined up on the same spot, the vertical bars just in front of the figure and fired again. The second one dropped.
"Checking," he said as he rose from the crouch he'd shot from and ran towards the closest. It took a minute or two to reach him, and when Gary flipped him over, his breath caught in his throat.
Blood soaked the front of his tunic and the lower half of his face. He was gasping for breath, his windpipe and probably one of his lungs destroyed by the intense cavitation of the 5.56mm round.
"I was..." the boy gasped. Because that's what he was, just a boy. A boy with thin, delicate features. A bow-tie, soaked in blood and clinging to his neck was below the tunic and Gary could just make out the top of a familiar Star Wars patterned vest below it.
"I was going to save the world," the boy gasped.
"You were," Gary agreed. "You were gon' marry a goddess and have the sweetest kids. And you were going to save the world, more'n once."
"Found the second!" Rog called. Gary turned away from the boy who would now never grow into the man he'd meet in a safehouse in Kabul after getting discharged and taking up work for the Company.
He walked over, ignoring the uneasy feeling in his stomach.
This one was a girl. Earth-brown skin and tightly braided cornrows greeted him. Gary collapsed when he saw her.
"Why'd you shoot me, daddy?" she asked.
"I had to, baby," Gary sobbed. "You was gonna call the Taliban."
"No I... No I wasn't... I was gonna tell... Dad," She reached up as Chris jogged up. Rog looked at them, scowling.
"Dad and Daddy? What are you, a couple of fags?"
Gary ignored him. He cradled his daughter in his arms as she bled out into the dust and dirt of a fallow field.
----
He awoke with a start, the old familiar panic already fading. Chris sat up smoothly, awoken by his movements and wrapped his arms around Gary. His smooth skin pressed against Gary's back and helped ground him in the moment.
He was in bed, naked, with his husband. Natalia was asleep in her room, peaceful and calm and happy and loved. Gary reminded himself that he didn't need to check on her. That she was a light sleeper, and she'd wake up and then all three of them would be up until four in the morning, and they'd all be bleary-eyed and exhausted all day tomorrow.
"Same dream?" Chris asked. He nuzzled Gary's neck, then kissed his shoulder. Gary reached up to stroke his arm.
"Yeah," he said, his voice raw. "A little different, this time."
"In what way?"
"The first one was Jerry. But as a kid, you know? Like, ten, twelve years old. He was wearing one of his little bow-ties and his Star Wars vest under the tunic. The second one..." Gary took a deep breath to steady himself. "It was Nat."
"Ouch," Chris said with a wince. Gary nodded.
"I won't lecture you about how we had no choice again. I think you know. I think your brain has made your peace with it, and this is just your conscience, refusing to let go."
"Ayup," Gary said.
"Hey," Chris grabbed his chin and turned his head to kiss him tenderly on the lips. "That conscience is a part of what makes you so beautiful."
Gary smiled into the kiss.
"Come on now," he said when they pulled apart. "We both know you only want me for my body."
Chris slipped a hand down Gary's stomach and let it drift lower and lower.
"Well, how about that," he said when he found something interesting. "I think we both know that it's my body that somebody wants right now." Gary reached back.
"I'd say the feeling's mutual," he said. Chris moved around as Gary stretched his legs out to let the beautiful man straddle his lap. Their lips met as they intertwined the fingers of their hands. All thoughts of the nightmare fled Gary's mind as the blood rushed out to do other things.
----
As was usually the case when they woke up in the middle of the night for some hanky panky, Gary awoke with a sore neck and back. He stretched out, toes seeking the sheets and finding nothing but Chris' body, pressed to his side.
He opened his eyes to see that Chris was already looking at him. "You slept in," Chris said. "You're getting lazy in your dotage, old man." Gary turned to glance at the clock. 0527 hours.
"Seventeen minutes," he grumbled, sitting up and pushing his feet off the bed. There were the sheets, crumbled on the floor. Gary rolled his neck to work the stiffness out, then stretched his back.
He felt the bed jerk as Chris hopped out.
"Who's on KP this morning?" Chis asked, opening the underwear drawer and digging through. Both men were about the same size and shape, close enough to wear the same size clothes, so they'd long since combined their wardrobes into one. Chris found two pairs and tossed one to Gary, who caught it and stood to pull them on.
"It's your turn." Gary said, "But I think I'd like to get breakfast if you're okay with that."
"Grandma's?" Chris asked, referring to Gary's favorite greasy spoon.
"We can do something else if ya don't want that," Gary said. He opened the closet and found jeans for both of them, spinning suddenly and whipping one pair at Chris' head. Chris got a hand up, but not quite in time, and the legs wrapped around his head. Gary grinned at him as he got untangled.
"Well," Chris said primly as he extricated himself. "If that's how you're going to thank me for last night, I guess I can go back to pretending I still have a gag reflex."
"Let's not be too hasty now..." Gary said, but before he could go on, Chris whipped the jeans at him like a wet towel. The hem of one leg smacked into his back, just above his ass with a stinging crack, making Gary yelp and Chris grin.
"Truce!" Gary declared before his husband could fire again. Chris lowered the jeans and began to pull them on. Gary did the same with his pair, and then went digging into the closet again.
"Wanna coordinate today?"
"Get the long-sleeves. The two identical gray ones," Chris said. "Our pants already match, might as well match the tops, too."
"I take it you wanna wear the black boots, then?" Gary asked as he took the two gray shirts off the hangers and handed one to Chris.
"They're the only pairs we have that match."
Gary chuckled as he pulled his shirt on and tucked it into his pants. Chris tossed him socks and they sat down and pulled on their boots. When they were done, they admired each other for a moment.
"Twinsies," Chris said in an artificially cheerful, artificially high-pitched voice. Gary chuckled.
"Let's take Nat to IHOP," he said as he opened the door to get their daughter. "We ain't been in a bit."
"Works for me," Chris replied.
----
They hadn't quite finished their pancakes when Gary's phone rang. He looked at the number, then sighed and showed it to Chris.
"That's probably your first case," Chris said. Gary nodded. "Ayup. So I should take it." He pressed the accept button and held the phone up to his ear.
"Johnson," he said.
"Hey Gary," Inanna's voice said. "Hey, Anna," he responded.
"How's Chris and Nat doing?"
"They're good. We're just eating breakfast now, at IHOP."
"I'm jealous. Jerry's with the little ones today and I'm stuck in the office, running on coffee and a blueberry muffin from the break room."
"Figured you'd take the day off," Gary said. "What with it being the first day of summer break."
The waitress approached their table then. "Anyone need a refill? Anything to go? Or just the check?"
Gary held up a hand. "Am I gonna need to come into the office soon?"
"Uh... Probably. I've got a case for you, and you'll need to be briefed. And I think I might come with you. Mind magic might be useful here, and I know that's not really your thing."
"Want me to bring you breakfast?"
"Fuck yes," Inanna said with gusto. Gary chuckled and pressed the phone to his chest. "Can I get a menu? I'm gonna get a meal to go."
The waitress smiled and promised to be right back.
"What you want? Pancakes? French toast? Crepes? A big, hearty plate of eggs and potatoes and bacon?"
"Yes," Inanna said with a chuckle. "I'm famished."
"I'll do you one of the samplers and add some french toast, then," Gary said.
"Thank you, Gary."
"No problem. So give me the bird's-eye view."
Inanna sighed. "It's kids, Gary. I wouldn't have put something this heavy on you, except we don't have anyone else. Jack and Glenda are working another case up in the Rockies, John's up in New Jersey helping out with a kidnapping and both Clarence and Regina are on those killings up in Oregon."
She sighed again. "We've got three dead in a group foster home in the Baltimore suburbs, Franklin Green, to be specific. All three died in the middle of the night, one each night for the past three nights. The police reports said that each one woke up in a sweat, screamed the air out of their lungs and collapsed, dead. Preliminary autopsy results on the first showed tearing in the heart tissue, significant internal bleeding. The cops said the beds were soaked in blood."
Gary sighed. The waitress returned with the menu, and Gary used it to order Inanna's food. When he was done, she took off, promising to have it out shortly.
"Ayup. That sounds mighty weird."
"Cops called us when they got the third this morning. They're freaked out. The rest of the kids in that home and the caretakers are beside themselves."
"I'll tell ya what. I can be in Franklin Green in twenty minutes if I leave here. Why don't ya send me the address and we'll meet there. You can pass on the details to me as ya eat, I think I got enough to start with."
"Okay," Inanna said. "I'll leave the office in, say, fifteen minutes. How much for the food?"
"Don't worry about it," Gary said. Chris put a hand on Gary's arm. "I got it," he mouthed. Gary smiled at him.
"Okay, I'll see you there."
"Twenty minutes," Gary said and hung up.
"We'll take an Uber up to Gunpowder and have a nice hike," Chris said. "Maybe we'll stop by the safeway and pick up some supplies for a picnic." He looked at Nat. "Would you like that?"
"Hell yeah!" Nat said, kicking her legs happily and wiggling her butt back and forth as she shoved the last piece of pancake in her mouth." She grinned as she chewed.
Gary chuckled. The waitress returned with a pair of boxes and the check. Chris took it and muttered. "Military discount?"
"My dad was in the Army," the waitress explained. "You two wear it like a neon sign, no need to check IDs."
"Thank you, darlin'," Chris said, handing her the check back, along with his card. She took it to ring them up and Chris told Nat, "Say goodbye to Daddy. He's gotta go work."
"Bye Daddy!" Nat said, hopping up to come wrap her skinny arms around Gary's neck. He kissed her on the cheek and squeezed her back gently.
"Now, you heed your Dad, y'hear?"
"Yes, sir," Nat said. Gary smiled at her and booped her nose, eliciting a giggle. "That's my girl," he said.
----
"That ain't a lot to go on," Gary said as he and Inanna sat in Old Bess outside the group home. Inanna stuffed the last of her french toast into her mouth, dripping syrup on her lap.
"Shit," she muttered, grabbing a napkin and soaking up the condensation on the bottle of iced coffee she'd brought with her. She dabbed at the stain.
"I know," she said as soon as she swallowed. "But it's all we got."
Gary sighed. "Well, if you're done, let's go check the site. I'll interview, you scan for magic."
Inanna nodded and opened the door. "Mind if I leave this here for now?" she asked, gesturing at the empty food containers. "S'fine," Gary said. He climbed out and they both walked to the front door. He noticed that Inanna had a small handgun on her belt. He approved. It matched his G2C, which reminded him...
He produced his troll doll and clicked it to a belt loop using the small metal carabiner he'd had to replace the original plastic clip with. It was his good luck charm, his favorite of the collection that occupied a display cabinet in his living room. It had been with him through thick and thin, and it would make a good conversation starter with the kids, he thought.
Inanna knocked on the door, which was answered by a stressed-looking black man with a neat, short beard and a bald head. Gary felt the man magically. Patronly love, grief and stress came off of him.
Inanna and the man exchanged a few words and then she gestured to him.
"This is my partner, Gary Johnson. He's an Army vet as well." Gary stepped forward and offered the man a hand.
"Percy Washington," the man said in a deep, resonant voice. "Wrench monkey, oh-three to twenty-three."
"Pleasure to meet ya, Percy. I was a shooter, ninety-two to oh-twelve."
Percy chuffed a short laugh. "Couple of pensioners, then. Infantry?"
"Something like that," Gary said. Percy nodded, understanding what he was getting at.
"So Percy, can ya take me to one of the kids what saw what happened?"
"Yeah. Suzanne's still here. I had the others sent away, you know, for their protection, but Suzanne wouldn't stand for it. She flat refused to leave me and Beth."
Gary nodded. "Family's family, even if you had to find it."
Percy led him inside the large house, down a hall and to a small den with a TV on one wall and a thickly-upholstered couch on the other. A girl, about the same age as Nat sat there. She had bright red curls and a smattering of freckles across her face. The TV was playing a re-run of The Legend of Jimmy, from the first season. Suzanne was staring at it with haunted eyes. Gary blinked as he recognized the scene.
"Mighty strange coincidence," he said as he sat down next to the girl. She slowly turned her head to regard him.
"That's me," he said, as his counterpart on the screen tossed a grenade through a dilapidated factory door, waited for it to go off, then rushed in.
"Glenn Jackson?" the girl whispered.
"Gary Johnson, actually. They changed all our names for the show. The creator, my friend, Sookie, she wanted to give us the option of avoiding a lot of media attention."
She turned back to the television and watched as Glenn gunned down six men with ruthless efficiency.
"Is that how it really happened?" Suzanne asked.
"Sort of," Gary said. "Gunfire in a small space makes more smoke than you're seeing there. It's louder than the TV makes it sound, too. And I don't think there were any fellers in that particular room."
"But you rescued the girl?"
"Ayup. Found her hiding behind a couch, just like in the show. She was hurt, real scared, too. I got her out of there and back to our group."
"This is my favorite part," she said. Gary glanced over at Percy who nodded, then shook his head. Gary understood. Someone had hurt Suzanne before she came here. He sneered unconsciously and hoped his beard hid the expression. People who hurt kids... He called them and a few other types 'orcs'. Because they filled a role in his life that orcs did in fantasy books. People that the hero could kill in spades without ever having to feel guilty about it.
Gary and Suzanne sat in silence for a bit and watched the dramatic moment that Glenn found the naked Karen behind the couch. He watched as his counterpart put a large gun in her hands and she turned it on the greaser, bleeding out on the floor. He'd been dead in real life, but in the show, his eyes widened as he realized the girl he'd hurt would have her revenge.
The camera cut to a close-up on Karen's face as the flash of the shot lit it up. Three more flashes came in rapid succession, and then she gave the gun back and vomited on the floor.
Glenn held her hair back and rubbed her back as she convulsed, then pulled a large t-shirt from his pack and handed it to her. He stripped the shoes off the dead greaser and got Karen dressed.
The scene faded to black, and then expanded upon the meeting with Ishtar.
"You know, Inanna's here with me," he said.
"Ishtar?" Suzanne asked, not taking her eyes off the television. "Ayup. She's walking around, feeling out the magic in the house, right now. We can say hi, if you want. Maybe get some autographs before we go."
The people on screen chatted for a moment, then Ishtar ripped the head off the greaser she'd been holding hostage. Gary winced. Now that he thought about it, this was a little bit too violent for a child her age. He hadn't let Nat watch the show, yet. But Percy seemed like a good guy, and he clearly cared about his kids. Gary wouldn't second-guess his parenting.
Gary watched the characters vanish in the smokey heat-illusion visual effect that Sookie had picked to represent teleportation in the series, and then the credits rolled.
"Did you guys come here just to meet me?" Suzanne asked.
"Sort of," Gary said. "I need to talk to you, ask you some questions about what happened."
Suzanne nodded.
"Can you tell me? Just tell me the whole story of what happened to the others."
"I only saw Jerry die," Suzanne said in a small voice. A flash of the dream that had woken Gary up last night went through his head, but he dismissed the mental image. Jerry was a common enough name.
"I had a nightmare that night. A dark man came. He chased me through the house, but I hid in the attic and he couldn't find me for a while. I woke up when he opened the attic door.
"I was sitting in bed when Jerry woke up. He looked at me and said 'the dark man', then he started screaming. It woke everybody up. He screamed so loud his voice broke, and then he started bleeding out of his mouth and he fell over in bed."
Her voice had cracked worse with each word, and she sobbed the last few. Gary tried to gauge the girl, feeling her emotional state. She was afraid and sad of course. But she felt alone, too. She'd been an only child for a while, living with parents, real or foster, who didn't care about her. Until she'd come here, Gary guessed. He could feel where the wounds had started to heal, here in the group home with Percy and Beth and the other children. But then this happened, tearing the old wounds open.
Gary went for it. He wrapped the girl in his arms and pulled her into his torso, letting his shirt soak up her tears.
"I know, darlin'," he said gently. His own voice cracked with remembered pain. "I seen my friends die, too. I know what you're feeling."
She clung to him and cried for a long moment. Percy still stood in the doorway, his face a mask of sympathetic pain, blended with his own pain.
After a good while, Suzanne began to calm down.
"I wanna go lay down," she said.
"That's fine, honey," Percy told her. "You can go lay in me and Missus Beth's bed, if you want."
She stood and turned to walk through the door, but stopped.
"Are you here to kill the dark man?" she asked Gary.
"I think I might be, darlin'," he told her.
"When you do... Will you give me the gun? Like in the show?" Gary winced. This girl was too young for that, he was sure.
"We'll see," he told her. She nodded, accepting that, then turned and left.
"Jesus," Gary breathed.
"She's been through a lot," Percy said. "Her mother was one of those cultists from the show. So was her father, most likely, but nobody knows who that is. CFA found her when she was four, living in a roach-infested trailer with her mom, who was strung out on meth at the time. She had scars from cigarette burns on her arms."
Percy sighed. "The first foster family that took her turned out to be... A bad fit. They couldn't deal with a child who had trauma like that. They ended up locking her in her room and going out together a few times before the case worker found out and brought her to us instead."
"I hope them two ain't fostering any more kids," Gary said.
"They won't tell us what happened, but I heard through the grapevine they've been blacklisted," Percy confirmed. Gary nodded in satisfaction.
"She tell you what happened?" he asked. Percy shrugged.
"Same thing she told you."
"You notice the two parts about the 'dark man'?" Gary asked. Percy nodded. "I did, but I don't know anything about this stuff. I told the detective about it. I think it was her that called you guys."
"That sounds about right," Gary said. "Which was was Jerry? I mean, what order did the three pass in?"
Percy sighed again. "First, it was Candy. Then Jerry, then Martin."
"Did Candy say anything about a dark man? Or was there something else that could have inspired Suzanne's nightmare?"
"You think it was a coincidence?" Percy asked with a frown. Gary shrugged. "Maybe. I'm trying to rule that out."
Percy raised his hands in a helpless gesture. "Okay," he said. "Candy, right before she died..." He sniffed and angrily rubbed his eyes. "I made it into her room, because she was sleeping with Lacy, and woke her up when she sat up in bed. Lacy called us, probably tattling on Candy, she's like that, you know? Anyways, I went to see what was the matter, and I caught what Candy said. She said 'he's coming', right before she started screaming."
"Hmm. What about the last one, Martin?"
"I don't know. Martin had his own room. He might have said something, we didn't hear him until he started screaming."
Gary nodded.
"Thank you," he said. He walked up and put a hand on Percy's shoulder and spoke in a quiet voice. "I got a little girl of my own. I can't imagine what you're going through, right now."
Percy nodded and scowled at the floor. When he turned his face up to meet Gary's eyes, his were steely and angry.
"I just want this to stop," he said. "And if there's someone or something behind it, I want that person or thing or whatever... I want it dead."
Gary nodded. He patted Percy's shoulder. "Let me go check on my partner," he said. Percy turned with him. "Beth should be showing her the rooms where it happened. Come on. This place is a maze."
Percy led him through three halls to a stairwell, then up it and through two more halls until Gary could hear Inanna's voice.
"...not sure. I'm just gathering information right now. But it does look like that."
Gary stepped into the room the voices were coming from to find Inanna and a middle-aged, redheaded woman with long, straight hair, wearing a heavy metal T-shirt. The redhead turned to him as soon as she spotted him and held out a hand.
"Beth Washington," she said, her voice choked and raw.
"Gary Johnson," he said, shaking her hand. Beth nodded and let his hand go to stare at a bloodstained bed that had been stripped of sheets. Two more beds filled the room.
Gary turned to Inanna. "What'cha got?" he asked.
"There's something here," Inanna said. "A spirit or a deva, maybe. Not an asura, I don't think. It doesn't feel powerful enough for that. This is a tricky creature."
Gary nodded. "What can ya tell about it?"
Inanna shrugged. "Not much. I caught a glimpse of it, though. It looked like a tall man, perpetually cloaked in shadows."
"The dark man," Gary muttered. He felt the air as best he could. Even though he was nowhere near as proficient as Inanna, he could feel it. A dark, sinister presence, waiting to strike again.

Hi guys! I am selling Diretide cache I & II as well as some Aghanim Cache. I am selling those sets because i have many extras and i don't play those heroes that much. Some of the sets are unbundled but still can be gifted, you can check my inventory to be sure. Buyer goes first no exceptions. If you don't trust me, i am okay with using a middleman. I have sold to many people before and i have many proof screenshots and recordings i can show. I can do discounts for bulk sales.
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• In order to gift/trade the items we need to be friends at least 30 days.
• I will trade dota2/csgo/tf2 items and tf2 keys worth the listed item's price.
• Because i don't want to waste anyone's time i require %25 (Min.1$) of the price for reservation.
• Reservation fee will be subtracted from the items total price.
• If you want to reserve/buy an item comment on my steam profile and add me on steam.
• If you have any questions feel free to add/message me.
• Reservation fee will not be refunded if you cancel the order.

Here is my steam profile: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198113120433
My steamrep: https://steamrep.com/search?q=76561198113120433
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DIRETIDE COLLECTOR'S CACHE I

Set name	Hero	Quantity	Price USD
Dark Behemoth (VERY RARE)	Primal Beast	0 LEFT (1 SOLD)	25$ ITEMS
Angel of Vex (RARE) (Comes with persona)	Invoker + Persona	2 LEFT (1 SOLD)	12$ ITEMS
Blue Horizons (RARE)	Marci	2 LEFT (1 SOLD,1 RESERVED)	10$ ITEMS
Dirge Amplifier	Undying	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Forgotten Station	Terrorblade	2 LEFT (1 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS
Crimson Dawn	Phoenix	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Trophies of the Hallowed Hunt	Ursa	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Chines of the Inquisitor	Faceless Void	0 LEFT (1 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS
Spoils of the Shadowveil	Spectre	1 LEFT (1 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS
Starlorn Adjudicator	Dawnbreaker	0 LEFT (1 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS
Seadog's Stash	Clockwerk	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Hounds of Obsession	Chen	2 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Whippersnapper	Snapfire	0 LEFT (1 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS
Scarlet Subversion	Riki	0 LEFT (2 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS
Shadowleaf Insurgent	Hoodwink	0 LEFT (2 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS

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DIRETIDE COLLECTOR'S CACHE II

Set name	Hero	Quantity	Price USD
Brands of the Reaper (RARE)	Anti Mage	0 LEFT (SOLD)	20$ (SOLD)
Grudges of the Gallows (RARE)	Treant Protector	1 LEFT	8$ ITEMS
Bird of Prey	Legion Commander	0 LEFT (1 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS
Darkbrew's Transgression	Alchemist	2 LEFT (1 RESERVED)	3$ ITEMS
Transcendent Path	Oracle	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
The Wilding Tiger	Brewmaster	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Dawn of a Darkness Foretold	Doom	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Grand Suppressor	Silencer	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Withering Pain	Clinkz	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
Sacred Chamber Guardian	Huskar	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS
War Rig Eradicators	Techies	1 LEFT	3$ ITEMS

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AGHANIMS COLLECTOR'S CACHE

Set name	Hero	Quantity	Price USD
Pyrexae Polymorph Perfected	Ogre Magi	(SOLD)	9$ (SOLD)
Days of the Demon	Axe	(SOLD)	10$ (SOLD)
March of the Crackerjack Mage	Rubick	1 LEFT	4$ ITEMS
Scales of the Shadow Walker	Phantom Lancer	1 LEFT	4$ ITEMS
Secrets of the Frost Singularity	Ancient Apparation	0 LEFT (1 SOLD)	3$ ITEMS
The Chained Scribe	Grimstroke	0 LEFT (1 RESERVED)	3$ ITEMS
Forgotten Fate	Mars	1 LEFT	4$ ITEMS

52.66% , Rank 3 

41.34% , Rank 12 

47.22% , Rank 8 

48.32% , Rank 6 

49.87% , Rank 5 

52.93% , Rank 2 

41.50% , Rank 11 

48.12% , Rank 7 

54.10% , Rank 1 

40.05% , Rank 14 

43.27% , Rank 10 

43.68% , Rank 9 

50.40% , Rank 4 

40.32% , Rank 13 

If you're just going to tell me to get a job, don't bother, I WOULD NOT BE MAKING THIS POST IF I COULD SAFELY LEAVE THE HOUSE AND GET A JOB.
I'm 18, but I can't move out. My mom will find me. She won't let me grow up. She has made me dependant on her. She insists on doing everything for me. I'm living in this lavish mental prison, I can have any material thing or fast food I want at any time, but I can't leave without telling her where I'm going. I can go for a walk outside, but I have a mental boundary to where I start getting guilty and paranoid if I cross it. If I were to try to go straight to being homeless, she would find me. She would track me down. She would yell and cry at me, probably try to hug me to. I'm 18, I want to be an adult, I want friends, I want to be a part of my community, I want to live on my own, I want to take care of myself, and most importantly, I want to do all of that without her knowing where I am. I can't sneak out at night cus she'll find out and freak. She'll call incessantly trying to find me and she won't give up until she does and she will call the cops on me. I'm a prisoner in my own home. She is emotionally codependent on me, and she is delusional and fake.
Another issue is I'm trans, so she's lost her mind over me transitioning, and wants her child back but she isn't talking about me, or even what I was when I was born, she has this completely different mental image of the child she wants, and openly tells me she's mourning the loss of a child as if I'm some complete different person, BUT also keeps begging me to love her and worships the ground I walk on and I can't take it anymore, I need to get out but she'll try to find me and I can't have people over cus she'll question them and try to be buddies with them and try to tell them how much she "cares" about her trans son, I hate her for that, she's fake. She sees me as an object, a doll, a child and she's going crazy off of some empty nest crap, I don't know. I can't talk to her about moving out cus she would yell and cry if I said I didn't want her to help me. I don't want her in my life, she lost that privilege and I'm not sorry. I only fear her. There is nothing left between us.
I need a place to go, but I don't know who to contact, and I can't go to the streets, because she'll easily find me and drag me back home and I won't hear the end of it, and she'll call the family, and they'll come over to shame me. I don't want to live like this anymore. She won't let me be an adult without her being there to "help". She's got my savings account, and while I have my own copies, she has copies of my SS card and birth certificates and she's using them to fetishize this non-existent child she has and I feel sick and I want to take those from her because they're mine, that's my life on those papers and she's got this thought in her mind that she's entitled to keep copies cus she's my mom, but she's already basically disowned me and is living in a delusional world, I want those papers, no one in this whole world but the government should have copies of those documents, please understand me on that part, I don't want her having those copies because she is insane.
I'm in Montana, more specifically the south eastern part, but I'm willing to go anywhere in the state that will accept me. If there's anywhere a queer young adult can go and be safe, I want to know. If someone reading this has room in their house, I would be greatful if you offered it. I've only got a $50 bill, rest of my money is in that account and I don't even know if I'll ever be able to get that money back without my mom flipping out. I can't make it to the bank because I don't know how to drive and if I walked to the bank, which is far away, it wouldn't take long before I get frantic calls and I get tracked down. Help me, I'm 18, and I can't get away. If it wasn't for the many items I treasure and don't want to leave behind, it's I can't leave unless I specifically have somewhere to go, if a place to stay falls through, there's no coming back from it, my life will become more of a hell than it already is. If there's a program that could help, if there's a church that would take me, if there was anything, anything that could help within the next few weeks, it would give me hope. I'm trying to get help with disability and assistance from the state, but they're taking forever and I'm probably stuck on some waiting list, but I can't keep taking this every day.

Hope you enjoy this first is NEW BLOOD
By a river, a female Archosaur stalks a herd of dicynodonts called Placerias, looking for weak members to prey upon. Downstream, a male feathered dinosaur resides in a tree with his family. A female Postosuchus, a rauisuchian and one of the largest carnivores alive in the Triassic, attacks the Placerias herd, and wounds one individual; the herd scatters, leaving the wounded Placerias to the Postosuchus. Early bats are depicted feeding on dragonflies and cooling themselves in the little water remaining during the drought before being eaten by a larger dragonfly. Searching for food, a female badger like mammal, alongside another badger, discovers the dinosaur nest; the female wards them off. Later that evening, after he goes off hunting, an inquisitive chick follows but falls onto land trying to follow its father and is caught by the female badger. At night, the dinosaurs pick up their remaining pups and then move away. On the next day, the badgers work to collapse the tree. The female Postosuchus meanwhile is shown to have been wounded by the Placerias, a prior attack on them leaving her with a tusk wound on her thigh. After being unable to successfully hunt another Placerias, she is expelled from her territory by a predatory phytosaur. Wounded, sick, and without a territory, the female Postosuchus dies and is eaten by a pack of archosaurs. As the dry season continues, food becomes scarce. The Placerias herd embarks on a journey in search of water, while the archosaurs begin to cannibalise their young, and the male dinosaurs also resorts to hunting baby badgers at night. Finally, the wet season arrives; the majority of the archosaurs have survived (including the lead female), and the dinosaur pair have a new clutch of eggs. The episode ends with the arrival of a herd of giant Procoptodon like mammal which are followed by a large fox like mammal which fights and kills a Postosuchus.
TIME OF THE TITANS
This episode follows the life of a female prosauropod, beginning at the moment when her mother lays a clutch of eggs in the heart conifer forest. Three months later, some of the eggs hatch; the young prosauropods are preyed upon by fox like mammal and other dinosaurs. After hatching, the hatchlings retreat to the safety of the denser trees. They face many dangers as they grow, including predation by the foxes and existing Smilodon like mammals which are replacing the foxes increasingly . Even a giant Deinotherium like mammal accidentally also kills one of the hatchlings by swinging its tusks while fending off a pair of Smilodon like mammals and a weird crocodile like cetan. Elsewhere, adult herds of prosauropods are shown using their massive weight to topple trees in order to reach cycad leaves and giant ferns. Each one hosts a small mobile habitat of damselflies, bats, and beetles. After some time, the creche of cute creatures have grown into subadults. Nearly all are killed by a huge forest fire; only three survivors emerge onto the open plains, including the young female. They encounter several Paracetherium before only two reach safety of a herd of adult prosauropods. Several years later, the female mates, and a few days after, is attacked by a bull smilodon like mammals. She is saved when another prosauropod strikes the Allosaurus with its tail. She rejoins the herd, albeit with deep wounds on her side, but she will recover. The closing narration notes that their successors the sauropods will in the Cenozoic become the largest animals ever to walk the Earth but currently its the paracetherium.
CRUEL SEA
episode begins with a small elephant like mammal being snatched from the shore by a male Liopleurodon. It then cuts to show how dinosaurs have dominated the European islands with fauna similar to the ones in Jurassic Impact. Meanwhile, hundreds of cetans arrive from the open ocean to give birth but they are attacked by a Basilosaur look a like. Hybodus and a Liopleurodon are on the hunt; when a mother cetan has trouble giving birth, a pair of Hybodus pursue her. They are frightened off by the male Liopleurodon, which eats the front half of the cetan. Meanwhile, a Andrewsarchus like mammal the last of its kind if you forget the fox like mammals swims to an island and discovers a turtle carcass; it fights over the carcass with another. Later, during the night, a group of horseshoe crabs gather at the shore to lay their eggs, which attracts a flock of bats in the morning to eat the eggs. However, a few of the bats are caught and eaten by a giant dragonfly . While the cetan juveniles are growing up, they are hunted by Hybodus, which in turn, are prey for the Liopleurodon. While the male Liopleurodon is hunting, he encounters a female Basilosaurus like mammal; after the male bites one of her flippers, she retreats from his territory, and a group of Hybodus follows the trail of her blood. A cyclone strikes the islands, killing many animals, including several bats and the basilosaurus, who is washed ashore and eventually suffocates under his own weight. A group of small dinosaurs feed on her carcass. At the end of the episode, the juvenile cetans that survived the storm are now large enough to swim off and live in the open sea but are hunted by some other cetans.
GIANT OF THE SKIES
The episode begins with the last giant Dragonfly dead on a beach. Six months earlier, the last Dragonfly, resting among a colony of breeding giant bats in Brazil, flies off for Cantabria where he too must mate. He flies past a migrating group of chalicothere mimics and the nodosaur Polacanthus. He reaches the southern tip of North America, where he is forced to seek shelter from a storm. He grooms himself, expelling his body of fleas; the wings begin to change colour in preparation for the mating season. He then sets off across the Atlantic, which was then only 300 kilometres wide, and after a whole day on the wing, reaches the westernmost of the European islands. He does not rest there however, as a pack of dromaeosaurs are hunting horses; a young one is bullied off an Horse carcass by the adults. The Dragonfly flies to the outskirts of a forest to rest after stealing a fish from a bat, but is driven away by a flock of new fliers called Anurognathids. Flying on, he reaches Cantabria, but finds no other dragonflies and consequently he does not mate. After several days under the sun trying to attract a mate, the protagonist dragonflies dies from a combination of heat, stress and starvation. . The new replacements bats feeds on its corpse.
SPIRITS OF THE ICE FOREST
A few hundred kilometres from the South Pole, a clan of Leaellynasaura emerge during spring after several months of total darkness. They feed on the fresh plant growth (which has adapted to the changing seasons), and build nests to lay their eggs; a Koolasuchus also wakes and heads to a river, where he will stay during the summer. Out on the banks of the river, migrating herds of Macraucheia have also arrived to feed and lay their eggs. When summer arrives, many of the Leaellynasaura clan's eggs have been eaten; however, those of the matriarch hatch successfully. Meanwhile, a male Polar Smilodon like mammal and its pride hunts both the Leaellynasaura and the Macraucheia, the latter species also having to deal with blood-sucking birds the Smilodon male deals with being attacked and exiled by a larger male. When autumn arrives, the herd begins to migrate, and the Koolasuchus leaves the river to find a pool for hibernation and all the cubs of the old male Smilodon are killed. During the migration, some Muttaburrasaurus become lost in the forest; they vocalize loudly while trying to return to their herd, preventing the Leaellynasaura clan's sentries from hearing the male Smilodon approaching. It manages to kill the matriarch of the clan. Winter descends and the forest is shrouded in darkness, but the now matriarch-less Leaellynasaura clan is able to stay active, using their large eyes to help them forage for food. The clan and other creatures are also shown to use various methods of coping with the cold.. Finally, spring returns, and two Leaellynasaura males challenge each other for the right to mate, and the clan establishes a new dominant pair and the old male Smilodon kills the new male Smilodon and takes the pride back. The closing narration acknowledges that soon this landmass will be pulled closer to the South Pole and when that happens, this unique ecosystem and its inhabitants will disappear.
DEATH OF THE DYNASTY
Several months before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the last mammals are living under intense environmental stress due to excessive volcanism. A female giant Entelodont like monotremes abandons her nest, the eggs rendered infertile due to acidic pollution. Her calls for a mate are answered by a smaller male, who kills a young rhino like mammal to appease her. Three days later, after repeated copulation, she drives him off. The mother fasts as she tends to her nest, contending with raids by dromaeosaurs and Squirrel like mammals. Meanwhile, herds of deer like mammals wander between islands of vegetation among the volcanic ash, and rhinoceros rut for the right to mate, while losing their young to attacking dromaeosaurs. Only three of the Entelodont hatches ; the mother hunts one of the last elephants to feed herself and her brood. One of the last giant bats flies into the area and is killed by the last cetans. Several days later, while defending her two surviving offspring, the mother is fatally injured by the tail of an Ankylosaurus. The juveniles remain expectantly next to the carcass of their mother the next morning; several hours later, they are killed along with the other mammals in the region by the impact of a comet in the Gulf of Mexico. The impact, said to be as powerful as ten billion Hiroshima bombs, resulted in 65% of life -the mammals included- dying out in the ensuing cataclysmic changes to the climate. In an epilogue, the present-day African plains are shown; while they are now dominated dinosaurs after millions of years of recovery from the impact, they are still populated by a small group of mammals that did survive the extinction: the rodents, the squirrels and many other small vermin like mammals.
THE GIANT CLAW- TO EDIT
searches the late Jurassic islands for Therizinosaurus, who has massive and very long claws.
The episode starts off with Nigel in his ship where he shows a giant claw that scientists originally thought to be the rib of a giant turtle but was actually the claw of Therizinosaurus. He is interrupted when a giant turtle passes through and he films them. The turtle sneezes on him and Nigel sets off on his journey
Nigel comes across a nesting ground of heterodontosaurs that he crosses by using a red flag to draw their attention while one snaps at his cameraman. They travel into a forest where they watch a pack of cassowary like dinosaurs and their friends hunt heterodontosaurs. In a different forest, Nigel sets camp and finds a scorpion that he keeps. At night, a group of Mononykus like creatures approach the camp site and Nigel tries to catch one. After he caught one, he discovers that they have feathers but he puts his thumb in its mouth causing it to bleed. The next morning, Nigel finds that the Mononykus have eaten his scorpion and he packs up his camp. In the scrublands, Nigel hides in the vegetation urging his cameraman to turn off the camera when he spots a feathered predator that spooks some Mononykus.
Then Nigel waits out at a beach with some Heterodontosaurs and Mononykus as a perfect place for theropods to hunt prey. There he finds a hatched nest with the skeleton of a baby Therizinosaurus in a partially hatched egg as well as herbivore dung. Not far away, he finds a full skeleton of a Therizinosaurus. A large crocodile notices him and chases him and his cameraman into the forest. They climb onto tall tree stumps out of their reach and use a bicycle horn to scare of the raptors. After hearing commotion from the heterodontosaurs, Nigel returns to the watering hole where a feathered apex comes to scavenge and drink but is interrupted by the roar of a Therizinosaurus leading to a clash of the titans. The Therizinosaurus fends off the Tarbosaurus with its formidable claws forcing it to back down. Nigel then finds whole herd of Therizinosaurus emerging from the forest and it is a herbivore that uses its sickle-claws to hook tree and bush branches towards its mouth. Nigel ultimately concludes that it was gentle herbivore by touching one that licks him and knocks him over.
Land OF GIANTS
Nigel travels back in time with his film crew. He travels to a nearby lake, where large mammals named Brutodontids nest every year. There Nigel sees a juvenile Brutodon, where he is attacked by a giant mosasaur. Nigel then coaxes it out of the lake by splashing a stick in the water. It lays on the shore. Nigel attaches a video camera to his head and walks towards it, and demonstrates it's biting power by pushing a stick into it's mouth and having it bite down on it.
Later Nigel climbs up the volcanic slopes to get a panoramic view of the area to see Brutodon herd. Instead he finds a herd of small horses. His search leads him all the way to the coast, where he views a colony of medium sized bats on the cliffs hunting fish. Nigel doesn't return to the campsite until night, where he finds that a large predator has attacked his tent, and left all the provisions littered across the surrounding ground. He finds a single theropod dinosaur tooth jammed in a can of meat.
The next morning Nigel has set up an alarm system outside the camp so that if something breaks the laser tripwire, a loud alarm will sound, alerting Nigel. Later he tracks down the predator, where, around midday, Nigel hears a commotion further ahead. He finds a wounded horse in a rocky gully. He walks further upstream to find a smaller dead individual with a strange feathered apex predator eating it.
Later Nigel is shown flying over the ash-fields in an ultralight. Soon he finds another Sea Bat flock. After breaking away he sees a giant bat, one of the largest animal ever to fly. Soon Nigel discovers the Brutodon herd far below, so he lands the ultra light nearby his jeep. He then drives off towards the herd and locates it without any trouble.
After appreciating their gargantuan size, Nigel drives into a natural 'funnel', caused by a break in some trees. He then sets up some weighing scales designed for lorries. After several fruitless attempts, an Brutodon steps on the scales, showing that it weighs 92.3 tonnes, and Nigel explains that that's the same as 30 African elephants.
The next morning Nigel in chasing an horse 20 miles away from the camp in the jeep, when he realizes that it is actually running because a Giganotosaurus is chasing them both. Nigel narrowly escapes the predator only to meet up with the herd later in the morning to find an entire pack of Giganotosaurus mobbing the herd but most are killed.
By the afternoon the pack has singled out a juvenile, and are inflicting wounds, waiting for her to bleed to death. The hunt continues for the rest of the day and into the night, when filming is no longer possible and Nigel must leave.
The next morning, Nigel finds the herd at the nesting site beside the lake. While the females lay their eggs Nigel comments on what a magical ending this is for his dinosaur safari. Suddenly a Mosasaur lunges at him out of the water
NEW DAWN- WWB REALITY
The episode starts by showing how the mammals were dominating the land and that dinosaurs were small. Then it shows how "an asteroid the size of Mount Everest" struck the Earth and demolished the mammals, and how dinosaurs evolved into new forms thereafter. The first episode depicts the warm tropical world of the early Eocene, sixteen million years after the extinction of the giant mammals. Bats, the one of the surviving lineage of the mammals, including the giant carnivorous Mega Bat, rule this world, while dinosaurs are still very small. The setting is near the Messel pit in Germany. Due to volcanic activity, sudden bulk escapes of carbon dioxide trapped underneath lakes pose a significant hazard to the local wildlife. The episode centers around a Parkosaur family, a leaping, shrew-like dinosaur, which has emerged in the dawn hours to forage for food. As the mother forages, first in solidarity, and then with her pups, she wanders near a large predatory mammal, identified as an Ambulocetus the last cetan. A female Mega Bat, who has been taking care of the single undeveloped baby in her nest, makes two attempts to hunt a small herd of Protoceratops like dinosaurs, early ceratopsians. The first attempt fails when sounds among the vegetation betray her presence and they mob her. The second attack proves successful when the Protoceratops consume fermenting grapes and are unable to evade her attack also defends her territory from another. Unfortunately, while the mother hunts, a horde of Titanomyrma, giant carnivorous ants, encounter the baby when it dropped out of the nest, and successfully kill and eat the chick. When the female discovers her dead offspring at dusk she leaves the forest to try and start another family.
With the arrival of night, a band of lemur-like Godinotia, socialize and copulate in the dark the narration reveals how they will be the most successful in this new world. Ambulocetus finally manages to catch a Flamingo like bird near the lake edge. As the night wears on, an earth tremor unleashes trapped carbon dioxide out from underneath the lake and the gas suffocates most of the surrounding life. The Parkosaurs survive because the nest was upwind of the gas while the Bat was killed because she stayed in that area in the forest.
It is mentioned that although they survived the gas, they would ultimately leave many descendants, while the Ambulocetus, who was killed by the lethal gases, would leave none.
WHALE KILLER
This episode introduces the Mosasaur, an ancient type of mosasaur. Mosasaur became the new king of the ocean after the giant cetans of the Mesozoic died out alongside the mammals (see Cruel Sea). It was much bigger than the sharks it shared the ocean with, and it regularly ate the sharks. However, Mosasaur was still less advanced than the modern species; it still had rear flippers (that helped it during the mating) and lacked the blubber. At the same time, this program depicted the beginning of 'climate chaos' - a relatively minor extinction event between Eocene and Oligocene, also known as "The Great Cut". On land dinosaurs too have become big and huge. This episode featured Torosaurus like ceratopsians and the Andrewsarchus, a mammal that was considered to be a relative to the kings of the Cretaceous the Entelodont. Both were much bigger than the land dinosaurs featured in New Dawn episode, but their brains were still small and their behavior - primitive. They were the first true dinosaur rulers of the land and most of them would die out during "The Great Cut". As the El Nino continues and the extinction event is beginning, the female Mosasaur is forced to change her hunting ground from open seas to mangrove swamps (the future Sahara desert). There she encounters small sharks, Apidium, and Moeritherium. It is described as the last stronghold of the mammals A spinosaurid like dinosaur eats an Apidium but is too small to attack Moeritherium, The mosasaur hunts and eats one alive. She leaves.
The Torosaurus continue to strive but most of the juvenlies are killed young by the poisonous plants of their home Two Andrewsarchus steal such a calf, but begin to fight over it in order to determine which of them gets to eat it first. The calf's mother decides that the calf is alive and fights off the Andrewsarchus - for a time, but leaves when the rest of her young hatch.
The female Mosasaurus discovers a lagoon where dolphin like mammals that appeared after the mass extinction of cetans are beginning to calf. At first the smaller whales use their numbers' advantage to chase away the giant, but the female Mosasaurus eventually returns and begins to hunt and devour the calves - and this time the adults can't stop her.
Several months later Basilosaurus gives birth to her own calf, but the episode ends saying that both the mother and child are doomed to perish - but whales as a group will survive.
LAND OF GIANTS
The third episode takes place in late Oligocene Mongolia, where seasonal rains are followed by long periods of drought. It follows a mother giant hawk, an enormous herbivorous bird , and her young male calf. The mother struggles to raise her calf, fending off predators such as Dromaeosaurs and trying to teach the calf to survive on its own. The episode also follows other animals in the surroundings, including a Therizinosaurid, tyrannosaurids and iguanodontids, and the hardships they endure as the new animals from the south move in.
NEXT OF KIN
A family group of the descendants of the Apidium is down; yet another female was killed by the Troodontids that hunt them, leaving behind an orphan daughter. The males of the group, Grey and Hercules, are beginning to challenge each other for leadership, and the females are supporting Hercules rather than Grey, A bigger, more numerous group attacks, driving the focus group from their old home. Because of this, they start to migrate through the highlands of Ethiopia, searching for a new one. During their travels they meet a large stegosaurid in musth which chases them away from its territory as it tries to wow a much larger female. They settle in a area with a waterfall where many iguanodontids roam they try to scare them off but can't. However it is also home to a large allosaur type creature which kills many and drags the rest for its chicks to eat. Grey is killed in the process and using some planning they steal some of the allosaurs chicks and cause it to migrate for the safety of its chicks. That night one of the babies is stolen by a Troodontid which now rule the area without the constriction of the Allosaur. One day the female orphan is attacked by the Troodontids in full daylight when the rest rally together and try and kill the Troodontid. They settle down and some evolved descendants of the protagonist from the first episode comes and eats the lice in their fur.
SABRE TOOTH
The fifth episode shows the strange fauna of the isolated continent of South America and explores the effects of the Great American Interchange, which had happened 1.5 million years earlier. Since South America had drifted apart from Antarctica 30 million years ago, many unique dinosaurs had evolved, including a Ankylosaurus like creature , an armored armadillo-like ankylosaur with a cannon ball-sized spiked club on its tail; An edmontosaurus like dinosaur, a camel-like dinosaur with a long trunk and though not a dinosaur a large heron like pterosaur has evolved larger than the largest of the bats.
Before the continents of South America and North America collided, a 10-foot-tall predatory bear called with sabre teeth like Smilodon, had reigned as top predator. However, the great birds, migrating from the north, soon displaced them as top predators. The episode focuses on a male bear, a saber-toothed ursine, called Half Tooth, who lives a lone life in a territory of females all of their cubs are his one day two males chase him out and try to become the individuals the females mate with.
Next, the episode shows The new birds hunting down the edmontosaurs and the bears trying to protect the young from the two brothers (in vain) but they are eventually killed when they go hunting. In the background, the mammals still hunt, but give way to the birds. However, a therizinosaurid, who wanted to eat meat as diet supplement, charges the pack while the males attempted to mate, in order to eat some of the carrion. In the process, it kills the dominant rival male, enabling Half Tooth to return, kill the other male and reclaim his territory. Then he had another litter of cubs. Meanwhile the pterosaurs arrive for their winter migration.
Mammoth JOURNEY
narrator reveals that the world's climate is starting to deteriorate, bringing on an ice age. This means all animals, even the mighty titanosaurs and their symbiotic bird partners are struggling with the last of their kind living in the focus herd. One of the herd falls through a pond concealed by ice. Her sisters comfort her, and in the morning the scavengers Troodontids and humans gather gather. The herd then have no choice but to leave their fallen sister to prepare for the coming Ice Age winter. The narrator also reveals that so much water is frozen at the poles, causing sea levels to drop. A vast Ice Age forest, which today is the North Sea, supports an array of dinosaurs including a herd of titanosaurs. Also residing on the plains in summer is a new creature: Human.
Despite having no physical adaptations for the cold, they wear animal hides to keep warm. The episode's main focus is the mammoth's 400 kilometre migration to the Alps and back in the spring. Meanwhile, two stigymoloch like dinosaurs are fighting for a harem of females, but are then ambushed by the humans who kill one of the males. As the titans migrate, one of the herd and the juveniles under her care are separated and stalked by a woolly giganotosaurus, but survive.
Upon reaching the Alps, the mother and the juveniles are reunited with the herd. Here in the valleys, one of the herd lays her eggs to return next year to raise the survivors and the birds mate with each other and a new generation is born, some leave into the Alps but many stay with their parents. The episode also focuses on the Neanderthal, who, despite being built for the cold, is struggling as a result of the Ice Age. One of them is attacked by a Woolly Pachyrhinosaurus, but survives because of his shorter stature and thicker bones.
As the titanosaurs migrate back to the plains, they come into Neanderthal territory where the juveniles is annoyed by the mammals and one is killed by the largest of them all Cave Foxes which drag them down to their cliff home where several giant Parkosaurs watch. they arrive back in their forest where the Gigantosaurus the only thing an adult fears attacks and kills the matriarch. The humans scavenge on the carcass. The titanosaurs are revealed to be going extinct with their herd being the largest thanks to the Ice Age while their birds have a different story thanks to their big partners. The scene then changes to the Oxford Museum and the narrator reveals that "If all this has taught is anything, it's this: no species lasts forever.
BALLAD OF BIG AL
The special begins at the University of Wyoming's Geological Museum, showing the bones of a baby prosauropod followed by an Allosaurus (2.1 metres tall is the maximum height) named Big Al. After the ghost of Big Al wanders the museum passing by his own skeleton and a burrow with some fossilized eggs, the film then travels back in time to 150 Mya) showing a similar nest. Al and his siblings are hiding in the burrow when they are called by their mother. She brings them to a river bank and the hatchlings start to hunt for insects and lizards. When the mother leaves the hatchlings temporarily, a predatory Dilephodon like mammal comes out of hiding and kills one of them (luckily, the victim was not Al).
Al is then shown at the age of two years. He tries to hunt a flock of Dryosaurus. He has not yet learned how to ambush from his mother so he fails to kill one of the swifter, smaller dinosaurs. Later, he snatches a lizard from a branch to keep him satisfied. Al comes across a dead Deinotherium like mammal and an Allosaurus waiting for death in a pit of sticky mud, which forms a predator trap. Meanwhile, a two-year-old female Allosaurus, attracted to the carcass, also gets stuck. She struggles to free herself, but fails. Al luckily avoids the same fate, because he has learnt to avoid carrion and the large carnivores that it usually attracts. Unable to escape, the trapped Allosaurus pair die of exhaustion, their corpses left to the bats. Al returns to his mother and his three siblings and feasts on the carcass she has caught.
Three years pass, and a herd of juvenile Prosauropods are migrating across their forest home and into the grasslands, heading for a herd to the south. Al, now 1.2 meters long, is joined by several other Allosaurus (possibly, his siblings) and they manage to successfully panic the herd into leaving a weakened sick individual behind. But as the Allosaurus gather for the kill, Al is struck down by the neck of the prosauropod. The pack decides to wait for a few hours until the prosauropod is brought down by heat exhaustion and his illness. Though they feed, within the hour, a five-year-old female Allosaurus scavenges the kill. Al takes some remnants of the carcass for himself and leaves, trying to find a safer place to eat.
3 years pass by, and Al, now 1.8 metres long with the crests over his eyes reddening, is shown drinking at a pond. His presence however makes other mammals around the pond nervous and the smell of blood he brings with him puts off a pair of Deinotherium that were attempting to mate. Away from the pond, he discovers the scent of a nearby six-year-old female Allosaurus and issues a mating call. She is interested, but as Al attempts to mate, a Smilodon like mammal out on the prowl pack attacks and kills the female. Al is lucky enough to escape from the ensuing fight with his life, although he sustains injuries to his right arm as well as smashed ribs. Later the dry season comes, and Al is attempting to hunt a flock of rabbit like mammals as the Dryosaurus have moved away. Whilst ambushing them however, he steps on a hedgehog like mammal and kills it but then it is stuck in his foot so he ends up breaking something in his right foot in the resultant fall; he limps away the, his chances of survival as prey gets scarcer now very unlikely. As the dry season turns to a drought, Al's limp from the fall gets worse and his right middle toe -which he broke in the fall- has become badly infected. Soon, unable to hunt because of this handicap, he dies in a dried-up riverbed, where two hatchling Allosaurus are hunting for bugs and come across his emaciated carcass where they eat his eyes and tongue and leave. He is said not to have reached full size, dying as a mature adolescent and that the process of his fossilisation was so perfect it preserved even the injuries he sustained in his lifetime including -amongst others- lumps where his ribs healed after their break and the raging infection on his middle toe even the hedgehog he stepped on. The narrator concludes the special stating how Big Al, in death, represents a frozen moment in the fast and furious life of a carnivorous dinosaur.
Now I'm going to do the worst part of WWD, Walking With Dinosaurs 3D and I'm going to remove the voices and keep it as an actual documentary
In the early cretaceous a few million years before the fourth episode of WWD a thing that was actually good and next to the western interior seaway. Patchi is the youngest and smallest in a litter of tiny baby Torosaurus like dinosaurs that are being out competed by pronghorn like mammals. Their father Bulldust the leader is the leader of the herd. Patchi is also attacked by a bird, which attempts to eat him, but he is saved by his caring mother, resulting in Patchi having a hole in his frill as an injury.
Later, Bulldust moves his herd south as well, but when they try to pass through a forest, they are forced to flee when the local Dromaeosaurs make fire to flush out some pronghorns and a forest fire erupts. Taking advantage of the chaos, a pack of dromaeosaurs attacks the scattered herd. They kill most of Patchi and Scowler's family, while their leader and alpha, Gorgon, fights and kills Bulldust while he’s trying to run away as he cares nothing about his children thanks to his kind's ability to breed like rabbits. Afterwards, Patchi's herd, now led by Bulldust's mate, combine with a female named Juniper's herd as they continue their migration. Gorgon's pack attacks them again, and in the ensuing chaos, Patchi, Scowler, Juniper (and many others) fall into a river and are swept downstream to the ocean all juveniles but Juniper, Scowler and Patchi killed in the process, with a scavenger bat following them from above. At a beach, Scowler follows a herd of rhino like mammals to find food, leaving Patchi and Juniper behind as they are scarred up and Juniper's eye is destroyed. The two make their way through a forest and eventually are able to find their herd and Scowler.
After years of making the same migration from north to south and vice versa, the leader of the herd is killed in a river by two cetans Scowler confronts his brother and his gang of friends and challenges him for a battle in exchange for leadership of the herd. Scowler, as he is much stronger and larger than Patchi, quickly gains the upper hand and defeats his brother by trapping him under a young tree before disowning him and ordering Juniper, along with the rest of the herd, to leave Patchi behind. Despondent and heartbroken, Patchi, now trapped underneath the tree and unable to do anything, attempts to accept his fate by allowing scavengers to kill and eat him but thanks to a pterosaur literally pecking out his eye while looking at a butterfly he has the rage to go out fighting.
Reinvigorated by the bat, Patchi and his friends (actually just a bunch of dragonflies that live on his back but like him despite their intelligence) escapes and fights off the scavengers, before catching up to the herd, only to find them confronted by Gorgon and her pack once more (now its gets dark) they manage to scare most of the herd and a bunch of Pronghorn like mammals into a river which causes most to drown, during the battle between Gorgon and the ceratopsians. Scowler pushes Juniper accidentally into a hole with a spike and kills her. patchi in a fit of rage fights Scowler and has his last remaining eye gouged out but he manages to push him off a cliff that was there and while Patchi looks like he's contemplating his action when he is just standing there when Gorgon and her pack kill him, meanwhile a male approaches Gorgon and drops the head of Juniper in front of her she accepts this and leaves to mate.
It then cuts to the survivors who are building up their nest and thanks to their rerouted migration which saves them and their kind from extinction from the Pronghorns. Gorgon's pack have to move away and the lovely gory ecosystem collapses a few million years after this thanks to the arrival of Brutodon which out compete the definitely not sauropod replacement mammals that look like giraffes that will become the largest creatures on earth and it ends on one of Gorgon's young evolving WWM style into the giant theropods from Nigel Marvin's adventures with the largest creatures on earth. The credits this time are of a before and after showing the area in Patchi and friends era and in Nigel marvin's adventures era showing the river area where Patchi was killed into the river area where the Brutodon laid their eggs.
Species/ replacements
Nanotorosaurus replaces Pachyrhinosaurus
Nanogigantosaurus replaces Gorgosaurus
Pronghornodontids replaces Parkosaurus
Parkosaurs replace Chirostenotes
Loxodontamimus replaces Edmontonia
mega Dragonfly, Nanoanurognthathus and mega bats replace Quetzocoatlus
Brontomimus replaces the hadrosaurs
Atroxodontids replace troodontids
Tiny Compusnathids replace Alphadon
Avitelmessus replaces Avitelmessus (crab evolution wasn't that impacted)

Hi all, Apologies for no photograph, the bird was too far to get an image on the phone and I hadn’t a better camera.
I saw a bird that looked for all the world (size, dimensions, behaviour, black pattern on the head and neck) like a Blacksmith Lapwing, except for instead of white and grey it looked deep pink or reddish. Couldn’t find anything like it in Newman or Sinclair. Any ideas?
My first thought was that it was a Lapwing that had eaten carotenoid algae like a flamingo but I don’t know if that’s even possible. Looking forward to hearing your ideas.
Cheers.

took a 20mg pill split in half; so i took the first half and was nervous as id only had around 5 hours sleep and was slightly hungover but was definitely worth it.
The 2cb zoomies as i call them start to kick and me and a bunch friends were listening to good music and kicking around a ball for an hour and it was just blissful and chill, then we took the second half of the pill which is when things got BEAUTIFUL.
i’ve found, since i get overwhelmed in day to day life easily, i find it better to trip on my own when things feel a bit hectic, especially when my friends have a stronger tolerance and will sit in the ‘hype dancing loud music’ state through the whole trip and my tolerance is very low.
So i decided, since we were at our nearest park, to go on a walk and wow just listening to nature and looking at all the trees were so beautiful and crisp it was so serene. A couple of my mates joined me to sit and watch the pond and the ducks and that was so beautiful, just watching the ducks go about their swim.
When looking at the sky it was a bright beautiful blue (despite it actually being rather cloudy) and every tree would sway to music and the leaves flowed so gracefully to the beat. There was also a time earlier in the trip where the whole sky and clouds were geometric, everything fitting perfectly together.
Once we got back to the house, i was tripping a lot harded than anyone else so i decide to borrow a pair of headphones and sit in someone’s room on my own. This was the best decision i ever made. I just blasted some of my favourite tripping songs and looked at all the trippy art on his wall, it was annoying sometimes cause i could not make out some of the images; it was like the most intense staring contest between me and a piece of paper, mustve looked hilarious to anyone who mightve come in.
As i got into the depth of the trip, i just felt my heart so full with joy and bliss. I never get any closed eye visuals with psychs which we think is my suspected aphantasia but when i closed my eyes and told myself to just give in to the trip i saw myself from a birds eye view lying on the bed and i wasn’t anxious or anything negative just kind of appreciative of everything ? idk i can’t describe how many emotions were in me at once.
Coming in and out of my headtrip (?) i could see a tunnel and a white light and i could feel myself slowly going deeper; sadly never got to the end of that tunnel because i think my headspace was not fully in the trip as it was getting late and i was getting more tired.
Before i began to comedown i saw the ceiling of the room slowly change through colours of red and green and blue. The air around my became visible in a way, like the texture of electric clear fog is the only way i can describe it and that was mesmerising to see, like i was conscious of the world around me to the atom.
Overall im so happy for the trip, made me connect with my friends even more and felt that joy for life. With a history of bad trips as well, it was very healing to have the mindset of not fighting a trip and doing what i know is right for me, even if that means being on my own for while.
Also an important message ! Remember to drink water and go for a piss ! I always forget to do these things and that leaves me always with a small UTI and a massive headache, so this is for those who forget these too :)

The jackets are experiencing something called a Vision Quest.
North American Indian Tribes all did them.
It was a rite of passage into adulthood - usually experienced at about the age of a senior in high-school.
The purpose of a Vision Quest was to find oneself by a basic return to Nature.
Vision Quest involve fasting, communion with the spiritual, and embracing a spirit animal.
The Quest doesn’t end until each member has fully embraced his/her spirit animal - that signifies the completion of the turn away from all distractions and the full return to nature.
Natalie is the Caribou
Shauna is the rabbit
Misty is the Rat
Lottie is the Bear
Tai is the Wolf
Travis is the one still in decision or struggle - he is either the Fowl or the Stag.
Van is the human
Crystal was the mouse
Jackie was the Yellowjacket itself
Javi was the fish
Laura-Lee was the bird.
Emphasis in this Vision Quest is on the specific tradition of the Cree Indian Vision Quest. That was the tribe indigenous to the area that far North. Also search (on the internet) Cree Vision Quest and some of the images Bear an uncanny similarity to images associated with Pit Girl scene(s).
Shauna F’s like a rabbity
Misty isn’t well liked and poisons relationships
Lottie towers above the others in height and made a good first choice for leader - till they had been there long enough for a deeper look
Tai wanted to walk out - wolves are highly ambulatory and among the first to migrate when situations demand - also note the Canine’s relationship with the human.
Travis will solidify as the Stag as his relationship with Nat Solidifies.
Van has a special relationship with fire and the canine in the group and tends to tell stories around the campfire
Crystal and Misty had a special relationship - kinship - but you only get along with a rat so long till things go south.
Jackie died when winter came - insects do that.
Javi disappeared for a while - Fish do that - they go a little deeper and as you watch them from the surface - they just kind of fade away.
Laura—Lee flew away.
Each survivor will have killed at least one of their spirit animal by rescue - many of the ones we know will survive already have.
Nat the leader has killed the most Caribou. That rifle and being one of the hunters in the group gives her an advantage
Misty was drowning rats in her parents swimming pool before they even got on the plane.

What’s the difference between ‘snakes’ and ‘is snaking’? Aren’t they both present tense? The answer is C.

Hi guys, so I know little about this kind of stuff, so I'm going to attempt to regurgitate what some of the techs who have been out have told me. I have a very old house (built 1906, 2 story). My main floor HVAC is a typical system with a furnace in the basement and the outdoor unit on the roof. Works fine. My unit for upstairs is a 3-ton York package unit (does heating/cooling in one unit I guess?). It was manufactured in 2006, I believe. I bought the house last summer and it worked great. I upgraded a bunch of things in my house, including little things like getting what I thought were better filters.
The return, which is in the ceiling and directly below the unit, is 24"x24"x1" (that's the filter size, I assume I could add a thicker one in the swing grate that opens from the ceiling). The previous owners were using those standard cheap mesh filters that I can basically stick my fingers through. I bought some MERV10 filters and not long after, my unit had major performance issues. I had multiple companies out to look, which sucks ass because you need a 40ft ladder to access my roof, and they charge quite a bit just for that. The most recent techs that came out peeked into my attic crawlspace and confirmed 6" diameter flexible duct. All of my (11) supply vents are in the ceiling, and that level of the house is roughly 1425 square feet. At this point my AC had been set to 70 degrees for a week and it had not gotten below ambient outdoor temps in that level of my house, so around 77-78 degrees. Our bedrooms are all on that floor, so it was miserable.
The techs got on the roof and said there was such a massive block of ice on the condenser that you could keep a cooler full of beer chilled for a week. They came back 2 days later after it had thawed. I was not low on refrigerant, which had also been confirmed by a previous company. They could find no mechanical defects and the ductwork and return weren't leaky from what they could tell. He told me to ditch the MERV10 filters (they're really thick) because those are probably choking the system from pulling in enough return air.
The issue is, since they found nothing to fix other than changing filters, they told me to leave the system off during the day and turn it on at night, and that leaving it set (to ~72 degrees) 24/7 would cause it to freeze. That presents two problems. One, my wife works from home several days a week and her office is upstairs. Two, we live in St. Louis, MO, where it gets hotter and more humid than hell throughout the whole summer. turning it off and letting it become 80 F upstairs makes it so that it'll never get down to a comfortable temperature fast enough for us to sleep comfortably. I have a Nest so I can program a schedule if needed. Since I changed the filter, I have been turning it off during the day (well, setting it to 78) and then it is set to come down to 70 starting at 6:30 PM. Each day that I've done this (a week so far, it's been in the low 90s out) it is able to cool down to 70 by about midnight.
Do I really need to keep the system off half the day? Was a filter really causing this much havoc? I feel like someone HAS to be missing something. Hell, I'm at the point where I'll pay out of pocket for a whole new damn unit but the most recent tech told me that wouldn't fix the problem!
If more info is needed, I'll get what I can when I get home. I can't get on the roof but I do have some drone shots of the unit from the inspection.
​
EDIT: I think the old mesh filters are MERV 3 but not sure. Google images looks about right for that.