Tag: nil

Fic Writer’s Week, Day 4: The Devil’s In The Details

For today’s post, I wanted to point out a detail I put into Shadow of the Stormbird. If you haven’t read it yet and don’t want spoilers, stop reading here! Hehe. This is the fic where Aloy and Avad are together in the beginning, but Aloy eventually breaks up with Avad when Nil appears in her life again. 

In the first chapter, Aloy is sitting at the balcony in her suite in Meridian contemplating the jungle before Avad wakes up. She’s whispering out loud to Rost about the things she’s been doing, similar to what she would do when visiting his grave in the game. Then Avad wakes up and says:

“Aloy? Who are you talking to?”

Aloy turned at the sound of his sleepy voice, then returned to the bed and sat on it cross-legged. “Just thinking out loud,” she explained. “Planning my day.”

For Aloy, talking to Rost is a private and very emotional ritual, and she doesn’t share the reality of it with Avad. 

Later, when Aloy and Nil are reunited, Aloy is again sitting at the balcony and contemplating the jungle, but when Nil wakes up and asks her what she’s doing, their exchange is very different: 

“What are you doing over here?” Nil finally asked. 

“I was talking to Rost,” she replied with a rueful little smile.

Nil leaned back against the balcony and folded his arms. “Asking ghosts for advice?” he said with a half-smile. This was how she’d described her ritual to him once before. Nil had long accepted it as one of her lovable idiosyncrasies, but now, having done something similar himself after she’d sent him away, he had a new understanding of the practice.

Suntress smiled back at him, but her eyes were earnest. “Sometimes ghosts give the best advice,” she said softly.

Nil knows the reality of Aloy’s private ritual of talking to Rost. She trusted him with this very private part of her life before they broke up, and in this little snippet as they’re reunited, we see that Nil not only accepts it as just being one of her quirks, but really understands her. 

I wanted this mirroring to show the clear differences in the depth of Aloy’s relationships with Avad and Nil. Through no fault of Avad’s or Aloy’s, Avad really was just a stopgap for her, a placeholder where the person she really loved was missing. Whether intentional or not, Aloy kept a distance between herself and Avad by not sharing the more intimate parts of herself with him. As Nil says in another chapter of Shadow, “[Avad] might share your bed, but his reach is shallow. He doesn’t know what it is to love a Stormbird.” 

Let me know if you guys noticed this too! And as always, thanks for reading along!! xoxox

Shameless Niloy smut

Just a smutty oneshot. Didn’t bother with plot. Dom!Nil comes out to play.

A thin shaft of bright sunlight slants in through the chink in the tent flap and dances across Aloy’s eyelids.

The buttery ray of light wakes her as surely as the sudden slide of Nil’s morning wood against her bottom.

He’s still mostly asleep, she knows; his breath against her neck is slow and deep with slumber. But a semi-conscious state has never stopped Nil from taking full advantage of Aloy’s nearness, and it doesn’t stop him now from sliding his hand slowly inside her soft Nora shirt. He splays his hot palm on her belly and strokes his hardness against her butt in a smooth, firm stroke.

Instantly Aloy’s groin is tingling with heat and anticipation. She languorously presses back against Nil’s hips, and he responds by clenching his fingers slightly against her belly and grumbling with sleepy approval.

Twice more he rubs himself against her. But when he thrusts forward a third time, Aloy suddenly shifts away from him.

It’s an intentional tease. She smiles to herself as Nil’s happy grumble becomes a petulant growl. He slides close to her again, gathering her back against his chest with his arm around her waist, then pumps his silk-trousered pelvis against her ass more insistently as he slips his hand up to palm her breast.

Her nipple pearls instantly at his touch, and Aloy presses back against him firmly, her lips parting with lust as Nil’s grunt of satisfaction rumbles against her back. But after a few more slow, firm thrusts, she abruptly pulls away again, leaving his pumping hips bereft.

Nil’s patience shatters like a faulty Watcher’s lens. Suddenly Aloy is pressed face-down against the bedroll and Nil is on top of her, his arms banded tightly around her waist so she can barely move. She gasps with excitement; Nil is still only half awake, and early-morning moments like this tend to bring the possessive, unapologetic beast inside of him surging to the fore.

Read the rest on AO3. 

Carja headdresses

So you know how the Carja have really ornate headdresses of metal and feathers, and the Oseram are all like “oh we’ll pull all their little feathers out”

Consider this:

That’s all. I’ll see myself out.

Utter and complete credit to @vythika96 for this incredible masterpiece.

Aloy: and then I was like ‘oh no you didn’t, you did NOT just go there’

Nil: uh huh

Aloy: and he was like ‘you’re just a motherless chuff’

Nil: yeah go on

Aloy: and then I was like ‘dude you’re only fit to guard the latrines’ and I slammed the door in his face

Nil: that’s awesome babe I’m proud

Aloy: thanks boo it was pretty awesome

(Note: yes, I got these photos by fighting Nil in one playthrough. @vythika96 made me do it!! But then I reloaded a previous save!! 😅)