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scribblemynameA meme I did once a long time ago from the incomparable xenokattz:
Give me
a) a fandom/original world
b) a character/pairing
Then add any (or all) of the following
1) an image
2) a quote (but not in the same fandom)
3) Your battle cry
4) a recipe
First 10 prompts will get a strict drabble commentfic; that is, a 100 words very brief fic. No promises after 10 although I'll do my bestest.
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-03 06:55 pm (UTC)http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk78/pygmymuse/other%20stuff/1511994_zps7accff58.jpg
2. Llereya and Cayden and this picture:
http://www.pondly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/El_regreso_by_ELENADUDINA.jpg
3. Ashen and this one:
http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk78/pygmymuse/other%20stuff/115292_zps01b16da3.jpg
I think that's plenty, lol
Once Upon a Time
Date: 2013-05-03 07:28 pm (UTC)The little boy was Wesley Bryn. He had a brother in the same class, but Connor's reassurances to help him with homework did not and could not extend to tests—for obvious reasons.
On the other side of the tree trunk, a little girl walked over, freckled nose planted in her own book, not assigned reading, but one of those delightful tomes stuffed with fairytales. She did not see the little boy and probably would not have preferred another location if she had. She plunked down and leaned against the tree.
The little girl was Lena Johnson. She was a bit of a bookworm and being homeschooled, she didn't really know the kids at school. Nevertheless, on her breaks, she sometimes walked the few blocks over for their spectacular selection of trees to read under.
So the little boy and the little girl sat back to back reading, and finally, Wesley Bryn asked aloud, "What does 'ahoy' mean?" He was constantly running into things he didn't understand in this book about pirates and treasure and adventures set in a world quite unlike his own.
Lena turned around and said, "It means, 'Hello there.'" She went back to reading her book.
Wesley frowned and went on.
"Why would he do that?" Lena demanded of her book, frowning at the actions of the prince.
"Let me see." Wesley came over, read over her shoulder, and answered, "Oh, that's easy. He didn't like what the princess said about him, so he's trying to prove her wrong."
"Well, he could be a little smarter about it," Lena groused.
Wesley shrugged and went back to reading.
Finally, the school bell rang and both got up to go their separate ways. Lena smiled at him before she left. "Here. You can have it." She gave him her book and smiled cheerily.
"Thanks." Wesley felt he should reciprocate, so handed her his own book, and they went, each to their own.
Later that night, she read of pirates and treasure and adventure and wistfully wondered whether she might go on an adventure of her own. Later that night, he read of fairies and princes and dragons and thought that here was a book at last that made sense!
Re: Once Upon a Time
Date: 2013-05-03 11:31 pm (UTC)Re: Once Upon a Time
Date: 2013-05-04 01:43 am (UTC)Oh, if you wanted to, you could link this on Carry On Tuesday. (http://carryontuesdayprompt.blogspot.com/2013/04/carry-on-tuesday-203.html) The prompt this last week was Once Upon a Time, so it would fit.
Re: Once Upon a Time
Date: 2013-05-04 01:43 am (UTC)Re: Once Upon a Time
Date: 2013-05-05 02:44 am (UTC)Re: Once Upon a Time
From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-03 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-04 01:41 am (UTC)Have fun writing.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-05 02:44 am (UTC)Song Between the Waking and the Dreaming
Date: 2013-05-05 02:56 pm (UTC)It wasn't normal for his team to have to play a part. They came, they struck, they left. The work of a military strike team was rather straightforward. But this time was different. The target was in an exclusive club and their only way in without leaving a trace was a performer, which needed to be a woman who could get close enough to the problem—an illegal underground slave trader with diplomatic immunity. The Department should have assigned the work to a general purpose team, but Red Wolf's got the call due to Shift's being overseas and due to their speed with dispatching the death penalty to someone who hired their own armed guards.
Which brought them to the violin. Whisper tried her hand at it and had no patience for it. Minder's wrist couldn't bend far enough to do it any justice. Surge's tiny wrists protested long before she did. Ashen simply had no knack, which meant that Ashen would get the job.
Red Wolf shook his head and ordered her to try again. Obediently, she did, and he winced at the shrieking bars of sound. There was a melody somewhere in the back of his head. Sometimes since he had lost his memories, he would reach out for it and try to understand why it was there, but it always seemed to elude him. Until now.
He held out his hand for the violin. Ashen passed it to him wordlessly, grey eyes glimmering with interest. The rest of the team turned their attention his way as he fitted the instrument to his hand, tucked it into his body just so, remembered if hands could be called remembering, and played. He played the melody that haunted the space between waking and dreaming and let his wrists teach him the way to express it. Ashen studied his motion intently, deliberately consigning the methods to her memory. He hoped she could capture its heart.
Too long playing and it made his soul ache that this, whatever this was, was lost to him. He gave her the violin and roughly ordered, "Play."
Ashen copied his motion, fitting the violin to her body, turning her wrist, and fixing her gaze on his for feedback. She began to play, failing mostly, but learning when he reached out and guided her hands, tweaked her position, her understanding.
And when the learning was over at the end of long, endless hours, he felt Whisper slide her arms around him and lay her head against the back of his shoulder. He let her hold him, closed his eyes, and let the loss wash out of him to the music as Ashen played.
Re: Song Between the Waking and the Dreaming
Date: 2013-05-05 03:48 pm (UTC)Re: Song Between the Waking and the Dreaming
From:Re: Song Between the Waking and the Dreaming
From:A Handsbreadth Light
Date: 2013-05-05 03:55 pm (UTC)Llereya out of Calai was not bound in the manner of some or most. Her gift was in her bonds and the bonds arrived with trust, whether or not she wished them. Spring had brought Cayden to their hunting band, and as the mists faded away with the wintertides into the summerlight, she found he had found a way into her mind. When she returned to her own House, the feel of him went with her and she knew where he traveled and how far. The intrusion went deeper than her dreams.
Dreaming was traditional, the rothnen way of knowing one's other. She had dreamed of Cayden from the time she was fourteen and knew when she met him who he was. But this slid across the barrier to waking. Now, he walked with her in her house and the lands of her yaven, her family. She knew his moods as readily as that of her brother, her sister, her father.
"You are troubled." Bryn stood behind her in the morning light.
Llereya preferred views for her meditation. The faint golden hues following the dawn lit the water gardens behind her balcony, softening the still chill wind. It was the first morning without the mists. "I have a new bond," she answered.
Her father said nothing to that. What could he say? She had been collecting them from her childhood and had no recourse to do otherwise.
But Bryn understood perhaps better than most what it cost to her to be so intertwined with those she loved. In the way of many of the gifted, Llereya's gifts came one at birth and the other at manifestation. She had felt her mother's pain the day she died. She had tasted her sister's fear when Kenira was captured in war. She had tasted the darkness of Kenira's angry grief when her husband had been killed.
He came to stand beside his eldest daughter and look out on the morning with her. "You trust him." It was both question and answer.
Llereya's eyes drifted shut and in her mind, she was standing in the place of stones, her retreat enclosed on all sides but one from her land, Vardin. She preferred views for her meditation and out from the opening in that rocky sanctuary, her nation lay spread out before her. Like a songbird, she could fly along the shimmering golden threads of her mindscape to a sister, a brother, a father, an unclaimed lover who would be.
"I am but a handsbreadth to his span, my father," she answered softly. It had bothered her when the dreams first arrived. Cayden had been alive from time of the First Great Slaughter, from the time Rothnarak and Vardin split, for centuries. She had no such length of life among her gifts and no desire for it. "I am a child to his years." She barely touched the golden thread that led to Cayden. "He will live on after I am dust."
She opened her eyes and saw compassion in her father's gaze. He had been rothnen to a woman without gifts, her soulmate, though he too would ever be untouched by time.
"Ah, my strong wind," he called her name by its meaning instead of its sound and tugged on her hair affectionately. "It was worth it."
Worth it though Llereya's mother had not lived past her daughter's seventh birthday. Worth it though she had never been gifted and would never have lived to the end of her husband's span of days. Worth it for the trust that knew not length of time, only depths of love. It would be worth it.
Llereya leaned against her father and closed her eyes again. It would be easy to pretend she were only a little girl again, but she did not. It was not her way. Instead, she let her mind become the songbird and fly along the golden light of the morning.
Re: A Handsbreadth Light
Date: 2013-05-05 04:31 pm (UTC)That kind of love, a love that would make it worth the pain after the one was inevitably lost... Powerful and seemingly impossible, and yet it's the sort we all want, I think.
Re: A Handsbreadth Light
From:Owning Beauty
Date: 2013-05-05 04:14 pm (UTC)"Are you sure you know how to play this?" Pieter's voice drifted into her bedroom from out front where she had left him. "I thought you were a piano teacher."
Ashen studied her expression in the glass, then sighed and affixed her pearl earrings. In for a bar, in for the song. She stepped out into her apartment living room to see Pieter ever so carefully setting the violin back down on her glass table.
"Sometimes you surpri—" He looked up at that moment and faltered to silence. Pieter had never seen her beautiful.
"Is my playing surprising?" Ashen asked plainly. She had loved music from her childhood, from before she had any opportunity of making it a vocation. She had loved the violin when first Red Wolf showed her how to play it and loved the piano when he bought one for her music book and taught her to turn lines and bars into notes. Red Wolf was leader and brother to her in one and he had loved it when she played.
Pieter shook his head, still seeming dazed. "No. Just... your versatility, I suppose."
He did not sound very convincing, but Ashen let it go. She had never had a man lose his silver tongue around her either and the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. In fact, the edges of a smile began to glimmer about her mouth as she picked up her wrap and let him help her into it. His hands lingered as he did before he finally handed her the violin to put in its case for carrying.
"I look forward to meeting your family," he said cautiously, rightly presuming he was on trial this evening.
She turned to him and realized suddenly she was still smiling and that her smile was not practice. It was not because a smile was called for but because it had simply happened while she wasn't paying attention. "I'll play a song for you tonight," she said, and then she turned away and walked outside, waiting a moment for him to compose himself enough to follow.
Re: Owning Beauty
Date: 2013-05-05 04:38 pm (UTC)That would be interesting.
It's always amusing to see the guy falter with words when he catches sight of the girl, and Ashen makes it just that bit more special because she's not really expecting it like some might, and she's flattered but not in the same was as others might be.
Plus she smiled without having to think about it.
Re: Owning Beauty
From:Re: Owning Beauty
From:no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 03:36 am (UTC)Something Vardin with this one:
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=90198151&src=id
For some reason this reminds me of Ashen:
http://www.pondly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Triste_danza_by_ELENADUDINA.jpg
I'd be curious if anyone could do something with this:
http://tartx.com/item/Mizuko-In-Her-Octopus-Garden/1081/c7
Of course, this would be easier:
http://tartx.com/item/Cinderella/260/c7
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 01:50 am (UTC)I am looking forward to seeing what you do with the others.
Dream the Dance 1/2
Date: 2013-05-07 05:32 pm (UTC)And then she woke.
Ashen’s eyes opened on a plain small city apartment bedroom in the city of Bellyn, so far inland that were it not for overseas assignments, she would never have tasted sea mists before. Her sheets were warm, tucked under her arms, which in turn were tucked under her head. Everything around her was plain and simple as she was—simple furniture, simple cotton nightshirt, simple glazed wooden plaques with a couple of quotations she liked hanging on the walls. Even the window was small with plain white casements. She kept no plants and she drank no life from the bed.
Shivering, Ashen sat up and slid out from under the covers, uncertain of why she had dreamed this now. She rarely dreamed, rarely remembered what she did dream. It bothered her more than she could say. She glanced down at her finger, at the only piece of jewelry she had ever worn besides a pair of earrings. Oh, she had had other proposals, but she had never accepted one before last night, and—
Something cold washed over her as she thought of something she had never had cause to consider. Ashen’s ability was deadly and everyone who really knew her knew it. They knew that she could steal their breath and life with a single touch. They also knew she only transferred life when she wanted to, but she had never had that tested while she slept.
A self-healer. They were rare, and she only knew one well enough to beg such a favor. To ask his life— She stopped herself cold again and yanked down clothes from her wardrobe, simple ones favorable to a night passage on the tram. Storm did not live in Bellyn. Perhaps she should take the train.
Re: Dream the Dance 2/2
Date: 2013-05-07 05:33 pm (UTC)Edyll was the next city over and not far distant enough to make the journey not worthwhile, but it was far enough for Ashen to find that fear did not keep her alert. She found herself dozing and dancing death in a red dress. Disconcerted, she stepped off the train into a chill breeze, not unlike the one she dreamed of. She paid tram fare and let it drop her off at the edge of Storm’s neighborhood. He had chosen an area of small houses rather than the ubiquitous apartment complexes so many of the team members had chosen.
It took three knocks to rouse him, longer to wait for him to let her in. Storm had been her leader once. He had raised her and helped her where he could, but as a child, she had never known anything other than war; he had remembered everything—his name, his family, and what it meant to not be master of the storm. He let her in now without hesitation because he had been her leader once and because she was his in a way still. He had named her Ashen.
Once inside, she paused, unable to speak her terrible, formidable request, and Storm waited for her. He had a birth name, but even in her thoughts, she could not call him by it. Finally, she simply said, “Storm.”
“You’re afraid,” he said quietly, a statement. He was not like Red Wolf, the man he had passed his leadership to. He did not ask questions, did not soften blows.
Ashen nodded helplessly in the face of the truth of his statement. “I need to know if I dance death in my sleep.”
That took him aback for a moment before understanding dawned. They had called her Dancer once, Wings of Death, Breathless, Ashen. They knew why.
He made her up a bed on the couch, and she did not ask why he would do such a thing, did not ask when she knew he would die for any of them if it were required. This could demand much of him, possibly kill him for a time, but his ability included self-healing—of a kind. He would live.
It took a while for her breath and heart to calm, for her to feel sleepy again under his watchful gaze as he poured himself a cup of tea and settled down in the chair nearby. She had slept under his watch before, as a child, as a woman when they were assigned a mission in hostile territory. Eventually she slept.
She dreamed the dance of death in a red dress and her hair longer than it had ever been. She danced in a chill night wind that blew off the sea and felt rich, warm life drain from everything she touched and give her strength. She had never dressed in finery and never bothered to be fierce rather than matter-of-fact and sensible, but she had danced the dance of death so many times before.
Ashen woke to morning light, to Storm sitting in his chair nearby and looking at her. She sat up and looked into his face intently, trying to see if he was too white, if she had taken anything from him.
He shook his head.
She breathed. She nodded curtly in gratitude, gathered her things, and left. There was time to take the tram to catch the first morning train back to Bellyn. There was time to call her fiance, to hear his voice, and to put away her fears.
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Date: 2013-05-07 08:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2013-05-07 10:30 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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From:When the Clock Strikes Midnight
Date: 2013-05-07 05:35 pm (UTC)She was sixteen years old. Her mother—for what else could she call Watcher, the girl who had raised her?—had abandoned her permanently. She would likely never see her own child ever again. Sixteen years old and this was the first two weeks she had ever spent living as a normal youth.
Andre, her caretaker for the period, was washing dishes in the kitchen. Shift could hear him from the balcony as she stared up at the starry sky. The ticking clock was loud within her ears. They had surprised her when they offered her the “vacation” as a bonus for having been ranked best operative among the teams, but she had accepted it, and her time was almost over.
The water stopped running, and she listened to the normal sound of cabinets opening, closing, and then Andre’s light tread through the living room. He tried to make this normal for her, tried even though he was an operative too and knew how to walk soundlessly on carpet. She had surprised him when she arrived, playful and exuberant and successfully the perfect image of a careless, carefree teenager, but he went with it, acting the part of a stoic but lenient uncle.
“Jessica,” he called softly from the door out onto the balcony. “It’s cold out here.”
Jessica Haller was the alias they gave her whenever she interacted with military personnel who were not familiar with Department operatives and the handles they went by. It made Shift wonder if that had really been her name.
“It is cold,” she stated simply, uncaring, but it made Andre hesitate. She was quiet tonight instead of her bubbly, cheerful Jessica persona. She was Shift.
He came out and stood beside her to lean on the balcony railing. At first, he said nothing, just assessed her, and came to the correct conclusion. “I suppose you will go back tomorrow.”
She nodded.
“And where is back?” he asked in the tone of a normal question, as if she could answer.
She flicked a cool eyebrow upward. “And I thought you were the best of your class.”
That gave him pause. She knew him, knew his reputation, had access to records on him that he didn’t have on her. Then the tension eased out of his shoulders and he said softly, “We have that in common.”
That gave her pause. The paradox of the Department: the best were the worst. They were monsters without conscience, without souls, only grief.
Laughter bubbled up from within her and she threw her head back to release it. “Yes, we do,” she agreed. “And I suppose you have lost everything you ever cared about?” She took him in with scathing amusement. The Department took—it had stolen children to turn them into operatives like Shift; it had stolen convicts to turn them into operatives like Andre.
“Yes,” he admitted quietly. “And no.”
“I see.” The scathing remained; the amusement fled. She had lost everything. Every. Single. Thing. Her name, her memories, her family, her life. They had tortured her and broken her. They had taken Watcher away at last. “I got pregnant once,” she said, softly. There was no harm in his knowing. Watcher had seen to that. “I was fourteen years old and an idiot.” No one had told her what sex was and she’d figured it out to her own set of consequences. “Do you know the only time I held her was the last time I ever cried?”
She wanted to cry right then. It was why she was out on the balcony, begging fate and whatever God had given her a heart in the first place to let her make use of her last cinderella hours. “I don’t remember how to cry.”
She told him because he wasn’t like them or the people who had enslaved them both. Andre could have been a team member had he been younger and he was trapped as much as her. He had lost family. He had lost a son.
He did the one thing she hadn’t expected. He gave her the hug that an uncle or a father would have and held her, saying nothing, granting the mercy of pitiless compassion. She hugged him back and pretended for a moment that he was her father.
The clock on the mantel began to chime.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 08:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-05-08 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-09 12:21 am (UTC)The Way of the Hunt
From:Re: The Way of the Hunt
From:Re: The Way of the Hunt
From:Re: The Way of the Hunt
From:Re: The Way of the Hunt
From:Re: The Way of the Hunt
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From: