Ficlet O'Clock: Bring ye commentfic requests!

[scribblemyname]

A 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.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Okay, so... 1. Wesley and Lena and this picture (can't find where I originally found it, :( )

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

[(Anonymous)]

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, a little boy was sitting with his back against a tree and frowning quite intently at a book in his hands. It was assigned reading for his class, but it was a long book and he couldn't seem to get through the whole thing without forgetting something that might be important on the test.

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

[scribblemyname]

That was me being anonymous at work. :)

[scribblemyname]

All so gorgeous! More coming this weekend.

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Pictures can be so pretty. I like doing image searches to see what I can find.

Have fun writing.

Re: Once Upon a Time

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

I thought so, and I was waiting for you to unscreen it so I could respond to it. :)

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

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

The book sharing. So them. I love it. :)

Re: Once Upon a Time

[scribblemyname]

So glad you liked it! :hugs:

[scribblemyname]

Thank you! I will.

Re: Once Upon a Time

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

*hugs back*

It was very them, and I'm glad my prompt led you to that. The readers in the picture kind of reminded me of them, and you came up with a nice story to go with it. :)

Song Between the Waking and the Dreaming

[scribblemyname]

None of the women showed any natural talent for the instrument—a lovely violin that had Red Wolf's hands longing to do something with it.

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

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Poor Red. Sometimes it seems like the worst they did with the genetic manipulation happened to him, just because it seems like he had plenty of talent before it happened and not only was he robbed of his memories, they took that from him, too. He could have been a virtuoso, and instead, they made him a fighter and a killer.

A Handsbreadth Light

[scribblemyname]

She wondered when she had begun to trust him.

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: Song Between the Waking and the Dreaming

[scribblemyname]

Yes. I always feel for him the most because he was so different before and yet still his gentle, practical self. And the music. He loved music and could have gone very far. Instead, he became something else, and that is something Justus both hates on his behalf and envies him. Red Wolf would never have been able to become what he is if he had retained his memories.

Owning Beauty

[scribblemyname]

Ashen had never dressed up for a man before, never put on this cream-colored gown with silken texture and pearlescent hues. She had never secured her plain black hair in an upward swirl with a golden comb or seen beauty in the face of a mirror. She looked upon her own face without smiling and wondered at herself for doing all this now.

"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: Song Between the Waking and the Dreaming

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah. At least he gets to hold onto the music in some ways. He still has that.

Re: A Handsbreadth Light

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

That would be a hard choice to make, to be with someone who would outlive you or you would outlive.

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

[scribblemyname]

Powerful and seemingly impossible, and yet it's the sort we all want, I think.

This.

Re: Owning Beauty

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

So... Is there more where he does meet her family?

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

[scribblemyname]

I know. I read that line about meeting family and went, "Oh boy, I gotta write that."

I do love the whole differentness this was for her. It's fun watching her learn how normalcy works, especially something like that. It was the oddest realization as I was writing, to realize she'd never had the feeling even once of being beautiful.

Re: Owning Beauty

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Yes, you do.

Yeah, it's strange how that can come about, but I can see it for her. There was no one to tell her that she was, and the life she led didn't lend itself to that, either, plus she wouldn't really think of herself that way because of what she did. Now she has the opportunity to experience those things she could not have before.

It gives her story a bit of... optimism that is nice to see knowing the darkness they all went through.

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Well... Since no one else has claimed any of the ten...



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

[scribblemyname]

The octopus, I will have to skip. But I'll see what I can do with the rest. :grins:

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Lol. You sure you don't want to try the octopus?

I am looking forward to seeing what you do with the others.

Dream the Dance 1/2

[scribblemyname]

She dreamed of a chill wind. Her hair was long—longer than it had ever been—and she wore a red dress with streams of red silk spinning out from it. The wind danced around her, cold and damp beneath a grey blue sky misted with sea and salt. Her hair and dress danced around her in that cold, damp wind, warmth against her skin, and everywhere she danced life fled out like rivers from the earth beneath her feet, the small green plants beneath her touch and fled into her, leaving only ash remains. She dreamed the dance of death, and though she had never dressed in finery, never worn her black hair long and beautiful and flying, she had danced that dance before.

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.