Fluffy Promptables

[scribblemyname]

We're prompting fluffy, lighthearted stuff of any variety, no canon/pairing/character information required, though permitted.

Comments

[scribblemyname]

A shared ice cream cone because one something happened to one party's

Cones and Constancy 1/3

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: Wrote this in one of those vain attempts to get back into a story. Don't think it worked, and it didn't come out as planned (again.)

---

“Do you like ice cream?”

Dillon jumped, flinching as he realized what he'd done again, telling himself that he would stop that. He'd make all that fear go away—or he'd make it look like it had. If he ever met up with his father again, he'd be sure that the man didn't see it.

Of course, first he had to make it so that Larina didn't see it.

“Sorry I spooked you.”

“You didn't.”

“Liar,” she muttered, and he glared at her. She shifted her feet, arms behind her back as she kicked the dirt of the barn with the tip of her shoe. “So... answer me. Do you like ice cream? I know you don't like milk, and so if you don't like milk, you probably don't like ice cream in which case I—”

“I like ice cream,” he interrupted, not wanting to think about what his father had done to make him hate milk. He still had nightmares about that day. “Just not milk. It's different. Why are you asking me about ice cream anyway?”

“Here,” she said, bringing her arm forward and holding out an ice cream cone to him. He blinked, about to take the melting mess of what he figured was vanilla when it fell right off the top of it. She cursed, and he frowned at her. “Sorry. Burditt says I shouldn't talk like that and Sorina says it's not ladylike, but I'm not a lady. I'm just mad because I shouldn't have waited to give it to you. If I hadn't, then it wouldn't be on the ground now.”

He shrugged. “Maybe Moxie will eat it. She should be here somewhere.”

Larina nodded, stopping herself from kicking the ice cream into the dirt so the dog could have it. She moved her other arm around forward, holding out a second cone to him. “You can have this. Well, unless you assume girls have cooties because I did eat some of this one. It was mine until I dropped yours.”

He shrugged. “You can keep it.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don't have cooties.”

“It's yours.”

She sighed. “You are so stubborn sometimes. We can share, you know.”

He figured if he didn't agree to that, she'd stick the cone in his face, right up his nose, so he took the cone from her instead, taking a bite and waiting for her to give him that look she always did followed right by that wide, smug grin when she got her way.
She leaned forward, taking a bit of the ice cream and smiling up at him. Larina was terrible sometimes, but she was his best friend.

---

Larina wore a summer dress, but it wasn't enough to cool her off in the heat of the summer, leaning against the barn wall and fanning herself with a cowboy hat like she was part of some advertisement, and Dillon had to frown and wonder what she was playing at when she did that. She was more of a practical girl, always hardworking though not exactly levelheaded, and the whole look wasn't really her, not when they had more work than ever got done. She should be as dirty as he was, hair full of straw and everything else that got in it while cleaning out the stalls.

“You know, posing for a magazine wouldn't make me like you more.”

She laughed, the hat stilling in her hand. “Like you could like me less—you love me.”

He rolled his eyes. Sometimes he wished he didn't. Sometimes it would have been better if they could both have ignored the way the other was growing up because he didn't think he'd ever really overcome his father enough to be comfortable with how he felt about Larina. They were dating but they weren't—he'd said maybe he'd marry her someday, but he was still scared of that someday and all that came with it. His father hadn't married his mother, but that hadn't stopped him from blaming everything that went wrong on her and later her son, drinking too much and hurting everyone he could.

Dillon hated his father. He hated himself more for being so afraid of becoming him.

[scribblemyname]

I've always been the tower
But now I feel like I'm the flower trying to bloom in snow

— from "The Tower" by Vienna Tang

Flowers in the Winter 1/2

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: So I tried for fluff after that last painful piece, but it wasn't really going to happen. And in this case, probably shouldn't.

This would go some time after the awkward conversation over tea about accidental first kisses.

---

“I know flowers are stupid, but that one seems worse than most,” Zenith observed, and Marenka frowned, looking down at his feet. Huddled there, seeming to shiver as much in the cold as she was—as he should be if he wasn't using some kind of modification to keep that at bay—was a small, white flower, trying to defy winter and grow.

“I never thought of flowers as stupid. Though perhaps I was, seeing them as a sign of hope,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself and shaking her head. She didn't look at him. “You must think hope would be a stupid thing to have in a place like this, even before a culling.”

He grunted. “I always thought this was as bad as it could be, this war. Oh, they told horror stories of the past and Chular attacks, but who were the Chular to fear when humans were slaughtering each other in front of us. We used to be boys trying to play in the small places that were almost safe, yelling insults across the debris in the alley, and I hated this place. Couldn't wait to leave it. Then I was culled, spent over ten years being tortured with one modification after another, and all I wanted was to come back. That's stupid.”

She shook her head. “None of us asked for this. What the humans here did in signing that treaty was almost as bad as what the Chular had done in taking us.”

“No. It wasn't. They abandoned their misbegotten children, yes, but they didn't make them into the freaks that we now are.”

She reached up to touch his face. “You know, even with as much as they did to your genetics, they didn't take away the resemblance. You still look like your brother.”

“He hasn't changed. I have. I think when I was younger I thought I would be fine or fixed somehow by coming back. That I could be the person I was supposed to be, that stupid little boy playing in the alleyway.” Zenith laughed. “It is amazing how naïve one can remain after being culled and modified and abused by lizards. My brother is just as annoying as he used to be, but instead of insulting him, I think—I could kill him with a touch or a change of the air current. That's if I wanted to be subtle. I could light him on fire or freeze him to death without getting close to him.”

“You don't want to hurt him.”

“Don't I?” Zenith asked, frowning. “I don't know. I don't have much sanity left, and it's not a lie to call me a monster. I can do impossible things. I have so much hate in me—for the Chular, mostly, but also for every bureaucrat that hid behind the treaty after I'd been kidnapped and violated in ways they have no comprehension of... and for the brother who didn't get taken when I did. Why was it me and not him? I don't have any answer for that, but he's in there, his home, with his wife, and he might be fighting a war, but it's not one in his own body and his own mind.”

She winced. “Zenith...”

“You could do it, you know.”

She blinked, confused. “I am not going to hurt Tomik. That's not who I am. It never was. I was a nurse, and I didn't take sides in this war, and Tomik annoys me, too, but I wouldn't harm him.”

“I meant you could be the flower, blooming in the snow.”

[scribblemyname]

"How can you possibly have a first kiss on total accident?"

"Kiss by collision?"

"Lucky shot."

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: So this is... I don't know what it is. Psychosis, maybe? All I know is for some reason it wanted to merge into this, which is another bad idea, but I couldn't think of anyone else who might have had an accidental first kiss. Which is... sad, I think.

---

“How can you possibly have a first kiss on total accident?” Jirina asked, setting the tea pot down in front of her husband. Tomik grunted, so she took the cup she was filling and passed it to her sister, frowning as she looked at Marenka's hand.

Wincing, Marenka withdrew it under the table, wishing she had better control over her shifting. She still didn't understand how she did it, and that meant she hadn't been able to stop herself from doing it at the most inconvenient of moments.

“Kiss by collision?” Pellton offered, trying to be kind, though she doubted it had been anything like that with him and his mate. He and Aeldra were one of those perfect couples that belonged on television—not that Chular IV had anything like television.

“Lucky shot,” Tomik said, snorting in disbelief.

“Not necessarily,” Zenith disagreed from the far side of the room, and she struggled to decipher his tone of voice. It wasn't his usual bitterness, but she didn't know if that was a good or bad thing. “All you have to do is piss off a shifter who hasn't adjusted to their modification. Then it's easy enough to do, since they don't know whether to hit you or kiss you.”

Marenka forced herself not to wince, trying to control her unwanted modification and shift her features enough to conceal her blush, all the while cursing him and wishing she had somewhere to hide.

“They'd be a shifter, though,” Jirina said, and Marenka didn't know if her sister was intervening because she knew Marenka was uncomfortable or if she had missed the implication there or what. “Wouldn't they be able to do both?”

Zenith's lips curved into one of his unpleasant smiles. “You'd think so, wouldn't you?”

[scribblemyname]

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: So I was probably too desperate to find something to do even though my mind is not going with fluff and writing doesn't really want to happen, but part of this scene has been floating around my brain for a while. I figured it fit, in a non-fluffy way, the prompt, and since I'm unlikely to manage anything else, I'll at least have this, and it's something, I guess.

---

Crossing the room, she joined him at the edge of the group, frowning a bit as she noticed the position he'd taken again. He kept himself on the outside, never too close to anyone, too afraid of being bumped—too afraid of the illness no one understood. She supposed she could not say it was him alone that created this distance—none of the others were willing to let him be close to them, this stranger with the too pale skin and stories of a world they could not comprehend.

Migizi put her hand on his arm, careful not to press hard, only touching enough to cause him to look at her. His eyes flickered with a sheen he blinked away as though ashamed of it, and she had to force herself not to bite her lip. “What is it?”

He might say he should go again, might remind her of how he did not belong and should not be alive, but she did not want to hear it, not again. She would not argue with him, and she would not alter her opinion.

“It... It is difficult to watch.”

Migizi's gaze returned to the bed, smiling with sadness as Tasunke combed through Zitkala's hair, coaxing the girl into eating a bit more. The usually bright eyes drooped with the fatigue of her illness, but she still knew her father and trusted him to give her a little more of the soup—not enough to make her sick, but plenty to keep her from succumbing to starvation instead of the aakoziwin.

“She is recovering. It will take time, but with the aniibiish, she should survive. It is not hopeless,” Migizi said. This time, she gripped Anango's arm, wanting him to hear her. “Not everything is like what you have known. She is not dying.”

He shook his head. “It is not her illness that I find difficult. I am accustomed to illness. I have been dying all my life. It is... It is her father I cannot watch.”

“Tasunke?” She did not understand. “He is a good man. He loves his daughter very much. He might even love her more than his wife, but do not tell Wicapi that. No, see how he cares for her, how he is so gentle with her... It is beautiful.”

“Painful,” Anango corrected, shutting his eyes with a wince. “I have always known that to my father I was... I was a token, a warped privilege, and a symbol of his status, but if you could see my memories, to know the look on that man's face was never in my father's, to know that even when he swore to protect me and sat beside me when the pain was bad and I was bleeding inside it was not because he wanted to. It was to keep that status alive, to provide the next generation—it was not like this, Migizi.”

“It should not have to be like this. Zitkala should not be sick, and I do not know that you can compare this to what you have known. Your condition is not the same as hers.”

“It is not my condition. It is his. I know what a father should be like. I've seen that here, not just in Tasunke but in others you have introduced me to, and I wish I had never come here, never known them or this.”

She started to say something, but she could not speak when his next words, soft as they were, cut deep into her, as though his pain were somehow hers.

“All of those promises, all of the care, the things I thought he did because he was trying to help me, the things I told myself not to hate him for—I always let myself believe that he did them out of a misguided sense of love for me, but he never loved me at all.”

[scribblemyname]

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

This should be Wesley when he finds Lena's shop. :)

[scribblemyname]

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: A bit of silly?

---

“Look at him,” Moira grumbled, raising a hand toward the television like she might use the wind to throw it out the window. “He's still as sanctimonious as ever.”

“I can't believe they gave him an award for his book,” Terra agreed, shaking her head in disgust. Sherwin patted her shoulder and passed her a chocolate from the bag he'd bought earlier, momentarily losing the same look of disgust when he wasn't facing the man on the screen.

Flint glanced at the television and back at the group, deciding not to bother with the obvious question. Yes, they all knew him. Judging from his age and theirs, they probably had gone to school with him. None of them liked him, though, that also seemed clear. “That guy wrote a book?”

Enya nodded. “Several, actually. He's made a real name for himself as 'the weather poet.'”

Flint frowned. How could anyone make a living doing that? “Weather poet?”

“Everything he's ever written has been about something related to the weather,” Stone explained. “It's a gimmick.”

“People ask him whether he'd rather date the wind or the rain,” Oceana added. She smiled. “I think that's because he couldn't get a normal woman to date him. No one would put up with all that verse about the weather.”

“Why do poets always take the weather so personally anyway?” Sherwin asked, taking a bite of Terra's chocolate.

Cress laughed. “Given what we did to him when we were kids, what we'd still do to him now, I'd say it was personal.”

[scribblemyname]

Guess and Hope 1/2

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: I wasn't thinking that I'd use this prompt, but since I'm in the middle of working on the saga of Dillon and Larina for the "Where I stood" story and needed some more to fill in the time between their early years as friends and when they were older, so I took this and used it for a bit to fill in that gap.

It is kind of hard to say if it should be skipped out of context because I didn't really write it with a particular order framed in, but it might be better in it all the same.

---

"All right,” Larina said, finishing her calculation and looking over at Dillon, who had her book open to the page with the answers. “Is it... fifty-six?”

“No,” he said, frowning as he checked the answer and then looked over at her math. “How could you get fifty-six from that?”

“I hate math.” Larina set down the pencil and considered throwing her calculator across the room. This was supposed to make the work easier, but she had yet to understand how to use the dumb thing. She couldn't get it to work any more than she could understand whatever this stupid theorem was. Why did math need theorems, anyway?

“You only hate it because you don't understand it. Things you understand, you like,” Dillon reminded her, reaching across the table for his glass. She caught his hand before he could grab her milk on accident. That was an experience neither of them wanted to repeat.

He frowned, taking his own glass back. The orange and pink shouldn't be that easy to mix up, but he always seemed to do it when they were studying together. She dunked a cookie in her milk, watching again for his reaction. He swore this didn't bother him, and he didn't object to anyone else drinking milk, but he didn't do it himself.

“Are you sure you wouldn't like some cocoa? You could dip your own cookies then. Or maybe tea, though I don't think I like tea much. It tastes too much like water.”

“Depends on the tea and who's making it,” he said. “Sorina makes good tea.”

“Oh, that's why you don't mind math,” she said, tempted to kick him under the table though she never would, could not hurt him. “You have a good teacher. One who doesn't smell and explains the problems to you.”

“You're jealous.” He reached down to hold a cookie out for Moxie, and then he pulled his hand back up with a wince. She bit her lip. None of them had really adjusted to the fact that Moxie was gone, least of all him. He still expected her to be by his side as she used to always be. “You could have had Sorina for your teacher, too.”

“Don't do that,” she told him. “You know I know when you're lying, and everyone knows how much Moxie meant to you. You can't pretend it doesn't hurt that she's gone.”

He looked at the cookie and put it down on the table. “Morely thinks I should get another dog and it won't hurt as much.”

“Some people do,” Larina agreed. She didn't think Dillon's grandfather understood him at all, even after spending years with him. If this was how he'd been with Dillon's mother, then she wasn't that surprised that Nan ran off. “You wouldn't, though. You know one animal doesn't just replace another. No dog will ever be to you what Moxie was, and no horse what Hope was, either. I do think you should have another dog, but not right now.”

“You want me to have another dog because you worry about me if I'm alone,” he muttered. “I'm not helpless, you know. And the answer is eighty-three.”

She frowned. “How is that even possible?”

He leaned over and pointed to the work she'd done. “There. You missed carrying the two here, which changes the whole equation and—”

“Why do you smell like fresh rain?”

“I was out in the paddock when the storm started, and you know how Sunshine is when there's rain. She wouldn't go in, and I got soaked, but if you start lecturing me about catching a cold—”

[scribblemyname]

A cunning plan against a roommate/friend backfires spectacularly

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Hmm. This should be one where Connor and Angelina plot against Lena and Wesley and it ends up backfiring on them. Could be AU, but I kind of like them together, so I wouldn't be opposed to that kind of a plan gone wrong.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Here, have a prompt:

For one hour -- just one hour -- everything went right.

[scribblemyname]

Oooh! Going to run with this for a minute...

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Pick out a memory to keep me company
To hold beside me while I sleep

So goodnight, my favourite dream
To share your air, share your air ‘til dawn
So goodnight, my favourite dream
To share your air, share your air once more

~"Share Your Air," Kate Miller-Heidke

A Friendship Made of Stars 1/3

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: So I am answering my own prompt. It was another scene I'd had in mind for a bit, and it came together, mostly, even if it took longer to get them where they were having the actual conversation that kind of tied to the prompt. They do take a while to get to the point, these two, hence the stumbling block that means they haven't actually met yet in what I have written of the main story.

*sigh*

---

Dinner was over. The others had gone, leaving them alone in a bit of a tense silence. She pushed away from the table, rising. “I'm going up to the roof.”

He frowned, lifting his eyes from the empty plate in front of him, not understanding her words. He knew what their definition was—he'd read a few dictionaries, bored after spending as many hours in his bed as he had—but he did not know why she was saying them. “The roof?”

She nodded. “It's my favorite spot.”

“I thought your father told you to go to sleep because you worked in the morning.”

She laughed, a strange sort of sound that should not have seemed so foreign—everything about her was foreign, from the shade of her skin to the way she spoke—except that laughter was not unknown to him. He had heard it many times—all the people in his world did was amuse themselves—and yet hers was different somehow. She sounded... pleased. Amused but pleased.

“Hazim is not my father,” she said, confusing him. Why had she allowed him to give her orders and instruction if he was not a father? “No, Anango, Hazim is my supervisor, the lead apothecary, remember? I suppose you were too feverish at the time to have that stay in your memory.”

He started to explain that it was not so much the fever as the amount of pain he had been in when his joints swelled up. He could not concentrate to think when he hurt that much, and he swore he'd thought Hazim was his father at times even though his father's skin was pale and Hazim's even darker than Migizi's. “I wasn't feverish. The joints were inflamed. That's different.”

Her lips thinned into a line. “You think our medicine here is stupid because we grow it and no one hands you a perfect little pill, don't you?”

He grimaced. “I didn't say that.”

She shook her head. “I'm going up on the roof.”

“Because I made you angry?” he asked, rising to stop her as she started climbing onto the counter. He thought she would climb out the window and on the outside of the building, and he didn't want her doing that just to be alone. “I don't want you doing something risky because I upset you. I didn't intend to offend you with my words. I was trying to explain—even your Hazim admits that there hasn't been anyone who has been sick like me here in centuries, if ever.”

She stopped, looking back at him. “You're worried about me?”

He let out a breath, uncertain he liked the feelings that he had now. He shouldn't care what she did. She wasn't family, wasn't a servant, wasn't any part of the life he should have, and she had angered him when they first met when she refused to listen to him. “You worried about me even though I told you not to. You saved me even though I did not want you to.”

“And now you would do the same for me?” She asked, her lips curving a little. “You think I'm going up to the roof to jump off?”

“That's what my father always assumed I would do if I went on the roof, but he was wrong,” he said, not liking the comparison. He wasn't like his father, even if they shared the same name and shared the physical features that made them “perfection.” He knew he wasn't anything close to that. “I just liked to look up at the stars.”

“You did?”

He grunted. “So my pleasures were simple. I've been more or less bedridden all my life. Looking at the stars was something I could do.”

“And so was climbing on your roof,” she said, a strange tone to her voice. “Do you think you could manage to do it without hurting yourself now?”

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I was just a little girl
When your hand brushed by my hand
And I will be an old woman
Happy to have spent
My whole life with one man

~Lori McKenna - "One Man"

Ficlet: The Velocity of Rain [1/2]

[scribblemyname]

I met you when I was five years old, and you grabbed my hand with your sticky fingers, laughing as you pulled me toward the other children.

“She’s on our team.”

I asked you why after we were both lying on our backs on the grass after kickball, sides still heaving from running our hardest in the game.

You grinned as you tossed the ball up in the air and caught it again. “You’re fast.”

I wondered when in the world you would have noticed.

---

I was ten years old when I raced home from the library in a surprise rain shower, and suddenly realized I heard feet thumping the concrete sidewalk behind me. I didn’t stop, but I did turn, still running and caught the sight of you behind me, your body grown lanky over the last summer.

I stopped around the corner, palms grinding hard into the stone wall.

You drew up beside me, panting.

“How long?” I asked. I had to take in a gulp of damp air to go on. “How long have you walked this route?”

You cocked your head at me curiously as if not understanding the question, then your face split into a wide grin and you laughed some sort of rough chuckling sound. “You’re fast.”

You ran to the next sheltering doorway. I was fast. It took me only moments to catch up.

---

You lay on your back on my bed, studying the ceiling or the trajectory of the ball you were tossing up and down in your hand. I thought you would be crazy to play baseball for a living, but I understood the skill that made you think of it.

We were teenagers then, and the only things I was certain of in that stuffy little room with its excess of books and pencils was that I was studying anything I could learn, since I didn’t know where I would end up, but that I wanted to be sure I ended up with you.

“You’re crazy,” I finally said, breaking the silence that settled in the weight of your declarations. “You can’t blow off college for baseball.”

“They let you do both, you know.” You sat up on the bed, tossing the ball to one side.

I watched where it rolled off in the corner. You didn’t.

“What do you think I ought to do?” you asked quietly in a serious voice I didn’t recognize.

My gaze stayed steady in the direction of the ball, but I didn’t see it any more. I was too focused on the stillness in the air and the gravity in your tone. I wondered if you would take it in your head to do whatever I answered. You were that kind of crazy.

I sighed and sat down beside you. “I think you should go to school and try things and then decide.” It seemed safe enough to say.

You nodded after a long moment and leaned your head on my shoulder. “Okay.”

---

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Sing to me, sing to me
Wrap that voice around me
Beautiful beautiful voice
Come and carry me away
Sing to me, sing to me
It’s the only thing I want
It’s the only thing I think about
If you can’t sing me a love song
Sing me anything, anything you want

~"Sing to Me," Kate Miller-Heidke

Fic: All She Ever Wanted

[scribblemyname]

Whisper isn't sure at first what causes her to surface from the deep sleep she'd fallen in that afternoon. Dealing with Anya's temper tantrum and caring for a sniffly Sunshine at the same time had been trying enough that the moment Alpha walked in the door, she told him, "All yours," and went promptly to bed.

Now she wakens slowly, allowing herself to drift awake. Her husband is in the other room and there is safety in that knowledge. Nothing sharp and dangerous snapped her out of dreams.

It's singing. A light smooth tenor. Her husband.

She slides out of bed and slips quietly down the hall to see him sitting in the chair in the girls' room holding a sleepy Sunshine. The baby isn't fussing for the first time since she came down with her cold. Anya is sleeping, one cheek on her fist, in the bed under the window.

Whisper smiles softly to herself and leans into the doorframe. She listens to the gentle lullaby and watches him gently kiss their daughter's head.

This life is sweeter than she had once imagined. Though she has the skills to take down governments, to fight wars open or covert, this right here is all she ever wanted.

[scribblemyname]

prank war

[scribblemyname]

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_humor.html#SkrJUh9FzLCt0vRh.99

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: Apparently, Malina had a whole sequence in her about this whole "Alik works too much" topic.

---

Sometimes Alik truly was a robot, Malina thought, forcing herself to hang up the phone instead of throwing it. She didn't know what he had said to their landlord to get that reaction from him, but if they weren't careful, they would find themselves homeless. She knew they would find somewhere else, they would manage. They always did. Alik saw to it that they did. He would work extra hours—though where they were in the actual day, she did not know because he already worked most of the day. He shouldn't have had time to insult their landlord.

She sighed. Alik had never had much use fools, and for him, most people were fools. He did not bother with social niceties, didn't care to understand people because most never bothered to try and understand him. He had been labeled unnatural when he was a child, and she knew that even those who knew nothing of his ability still used it. She loved him, had never thought there was anything wrong with him, but she knew that calling him Robot was not far from the truth at times. He worked like a machine. He rarely showed emotions, and he did not like people.

Why wasn't he a robot?

She walked out to the front room, stopping in the doorway before she confronted Alik about what he'd said to the landlord. All her own angry words fled, her frustration evaporating when she saw her brothers and heard Alik's voice.

“...And when he found what he had been searching for, he picked it up and realized that the great, beautiful mystic stone he had been promised would solve every problem in his life, the one that would bring him wealth and prosperity, was no more than a polished rock.”

“So he wasted his entire life chasing after a rock?” Enadar asked. He snorted. “What an idiot.”

Alik smiled slightly. “He did ask for treasure from a geologist.”

Enadar laughed, though she could hear the fatigue in it. He snuggled closer to Alik. “Thanks for story, Robot.”

The cat lifted her head and hissed at him, but Enadar did not notice, already asleep. Malina smiled as she crossed the room, slipping in on Alik's other side. She led her head rest against him, closing her eyes. She had missed this. “You tell the best stories.”

He grunted. “Little brother was too tired to know the difference. He just needed to be distracted long enough to let him sleep.”

“And you knew that and you gave it to him,” she agreed. “That is part of why we need you here at home. Why we miss you. Why we love you.”

He nodded, but he said nothing, never one to repeat those words even if he felt them.

“You have to tell me why someone would ask a geologist for treasure, though.”

Alik laughed.

[scribblemyname]

pillow fight

alternate: pillow tug o' war with a pet

Cats Don't Share, but Dogs Might

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Okay, so none of these quite fit pillow fight with pet. They mention fighting with pets over pillows, but somehow the pets in question managed to keep their appearances... small. Mostly.

Apparently when I say I won't write is when I lose all willpower and do it anyway and warp things good in the process.

Not all fluffy, though some have more fluffier moments than others. I think Katya's has the most, and I would have ended with the fluffiest, but the dog one had to go last.

---

Because this is too big for comments:

http://thecatisacritic.livejournal.com/71533.html

[scribblemyname]

You said you had a cat.

A leopard is a cat.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: For the chicken that kept me up last night and the creepy mail truck driver. Not my best, but it is something again.

---

“You have chickens?”

The farmer nodded, giving Randolph a look that suggested that he was an idiot as he pulled on his jeans, leaving Randolph little doubt that if he'd been standing behind the man he would have seen sights better left unseen. “Lived in a city all your life, did you, your lordship? ”

Randolph forced a thin smile, trying to be polite to his potential neighbor. “The accent is Oxford, and far from what it once was when I was there for school—I should say on scholarship, though that is not entirely accurate. I know by implication you think I must be so privileged to have never seen a chicken before, but I have. Most of the nobility has, in fact, seen such animals, even if they have not interacted with them. I heard your chickens and commented upon them while my mind was still forming other thoughts.”

The farmer frowned, one of his eyes going cross-eyed as he squinted. “This is a working farm. We have plenty of animals. Chickens, pigs, cows...”

“Yes, of course,” Randolph said, wondering if Katya's refusal to hunt would still be in place if she were moved to the countryside with her chosen human instead of without him—or, rather, them. He had thought that the giant oil rig on the edge of the man's property would have driven at least some of the livestock from it, but he found himself mistaken. “I am not certain that it would work living here with Katya.”

“Katya? That your girlfriend?”

“No, my wife's name is Persephone.”

“Oh. Right. Katya. Your cat.”

Randolph nodded, looking back toward the road. Where had the leopard taken Persephone? They should have been back by now, though he supposed that Katya would have wanted to explore all of the land. Why she had forced Persephone to do it instead of him he did not know, but he was not sure which of them got the shorter end of this particular stick.

The farmer spit some tobacco next to Randolph's shoe, and he decided that he did, even if Persephone would be more exhausted physically than he was. “You afraid the little cat will wander off into the fields? Maybe get trampled by a cow? Cats are good barn animals. She'll probably stick around.”

“Oh, I know I will never get rid of her. She is a very stubborn creature,” Randolph said, knowing it would only be moments before he felt the leopard's head bump his leg. She always came when she was being spoken about. “And I am not worried about her getting lost. Nor do I think that if it came to a confrontation between cow and cat that the cat in question would win.”

“You think so?”

“I believe he knows it,” Persephone said, and he turned back to her with a smile. She did not seem pleased under that hat of hers, and he grimaced at the thought of the sun burning her delicate skin.

“Katya, no biting,” Randolph said as he saw her approaching the farmer, giving the man a good sniff and a good scare at the same time.

“I thought you said you had a cat.”

“A leopard is a cat,” Randolph answered serenely as the leopard turned away from the farmer in disgust. Good girl. He would never have let the cat near him again if she'd actually bitten that man. She padded back to Randolph's side, nudging him back toward the car. “You need not worry. I do not believe Katya was as fond of this place as we thought she would be. We won't be neighbors after all.”

[scribblemyname]

I’m having that dream where we are walking
Together along with the sand in our feet
Then I am awake and I realize
It wasn’t a dream, it was reality

"Waltz for Jennifer" by FFH

A Real Walk Around the Lake 1/2

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: After a while, it seemed like there was only one couple this fit.

Though, depending on Wesley's memories... It could be him and Lena, maybe.

---

“This place is beautiful,” Cress said, moving his feet through the sand on the edge of the lake, watching the waves slowly ripple away from the shore. He had seen plenty of lakes in his time, plenty of water, and all of them should have lost their appeal by now. He could argue that nature was different, but there were times when he still hated what he was and his connection to water, so the pull of someplace like this, a large body of water, was annoying at times, and yet... He would spend all of his time in a place like this if he could.

He leaned down to pick up a rock, turning it over in his hand before skipping it across the lake, restraining himself from using his abilities to make it defy nature and cross to the other side. He knew where it fell in the water and could go retrieve it later.

“It helps, I think, that I can control rain. That way the weather is almost always perfect—unless someone makes Moira mad,” Cress went on, smiling slightly. Gardens weren't the kind of thing that one put next to a lake, not usually, but Terra had added to the natural beauty of the place by replacing the tall weeds and grass near the shore with wildflowers, and he liked the way their scent combined with the water on the gentle breeze.

“You make it sound like something out of a painting or a postcard,” Enya said, and he nodded, because at times it was. They could improve on any of their surroundings and usually did if they stayed for any length of time. “You always do, though, every time you tell me about where you've been. I always figured that was your way of avoiding telling me what you were doing, but I appreciated it all the same. It let me feel like I was a part of it for a while, even if that didn't last long.”

She was right. He had used the scenery to avoid talking about what they were doing when they hunted rogues, had kept her from knowing the harsher parts of their days—the fights and the injuries, the constant running—but he'd also done it because he could share that with her, and if he told her how it looked where he was standing, he could almost allow himself to believe that she was there with him instead of on the other end of a phone line.

They'd shared plenty of walks around a lake that way in the past, in the early days when he called more often thinking it would help her through the adjustment to her new life, when he was more desperate to turn his back on his decision and ask her to rejoin them. Every fight with a rogue would remind him of why he'd asked her to go, but he still hated himself for it. If he'd pushed her the other way, tried to get her to train to use her ability—but no, she'd hated it, and he'd thought she wanted to go, that he was doing the right thing for her and the idea of bringing her back... Well, that was just him being selfish.

“Have you been here before? Is this one you told me about on one of those calls?”

He nodded. “I forget how long ago it was we stumbled across the lake and the abandoned cabin motel across from it, but I haven't forgotten how many times we argued over coming back. We thought about buying it—Moira and I went back and forth over the practicality of having a home base versus our need for funds and flexibility. This place has been our ideal for a long time—I don't think any of us really wanted to go our separate ways, but this lets us stay close without being crowded. We all have our own cabins, we can all get what we need from our sibling bond, and we're... happy.”

“Is there some question about that?”

He hesitated. That was difficult to answer. “Happiness is relative.”

[scribblemyname]

Alternatively, 23 awesome words with no English counterpart. Most of these are quite ficable: http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/23-charming-illustrations-of-untranslatable-words-from-other.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

"A friend is someone who you choose to be yourself with."

[scribblemyname]

I do like. Will scribble this one tonight or tomorrow.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

These are not fluffy but I meant to pass them to you because they had things that reminded me of K & T:

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/vanessacarlton/twilight.html

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/vanessacarlton/paradise.html

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/vanessacarlton/rinse.html

[scribblemyname]

Thanks! I like the lyrics. Since you typically do, do you happen to have the songs themselves too? (You totally spoil me and it's perfectly fine if you don't.)

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Couple more little bits, same song, but both could go for prompts in different ways:

I've got money in my pocket
I like the color of my hair
I've got a friend who loves me
Got a house, I've got a car
I've got a good mother
and her voice is what keeps me here

Feet on ground
Heart in hand
Facing forward
~Jann Arden, "Good Mother."


And this part:

You could say I'm hard to hold
But if you knew me you'd know
I've got a good father
And his strength is what makes me cry

[scribblemyname]

Oh my goodness! I so remember that first song from the radio when I was a kid. Thanks for all the prompts! Will see what I can do.

[scribblemyname]

Puzzling on a rainy afternoon

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

A/N: This is just a bit of silly. I don't know that it really makes sense, but... well... it's something.

---

“You know, when you threw up the no trespassing sign outside, I figured you'd be doing something a lot more... private,” Flint commented, stopping behind Moira, who gave him a look, shaking her head as she crossed to the table.

“I assume that is what you would do with a fire,” Cress commented idly, leaning around Enya to put a piece it in its place. She smiled up at him, kissing his cheek and stealing the other piece from his hand, placing it next to the other. “Enya here only likes doing puzzles in the rain.”

“So you made it rain for her,” Moira said. “That's so cute it's almost nauseating.”

“And if I pointed out that you might be nauseated for another reason?”

“Someone would be a dead man.”

Cress laughed as Flint swallowed hard. “You know, I'm innocent in all this. I was just doing a harmless little puzzle with my wife. It is only raining around our cabin, and I don't see why anyone's mad about that.”

“So you're going to blame the flooding outside the other cabins on Occie? She can't control rain.”

Enya winced. “You don't suppose that's Hope, do you?”

“I'm not fooled for a minute, Cress. I know that's not your niece.”

He leaned back, looking at her. “You know, there are other much better things you could be doing with your time if you're stuck inside because of the rain.”

“I'm not doing a puzzle with you.”

Flint laughed. “I don't think that's what he had in mind, Windy, and it's definitely not what I do.”

“Is someone talking? Because I could have sworn he was a dead man.”

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Couple other prompts:

"Sometimes, the person who's been there for everyone else needs someone to be there for them."


And:

"The greatest beauty is found in the hearts of those who love."

[scribblemyname]

I'm trying to figure out the best people to use these prompts on. The ones springing to mind aren't ones you'd want to read about. Anyone you had in mind? Feel free to say no. If you don't, I'll just have to run a random.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Am at work and Internet is not cooperating, but I heard this again, and while it's not fluffy, it wants... Something. Don't know what, though.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mazzystar/sparrow.html

[scribblemyname]

I can't quite get myself a handle on what it means. It intrigues, but it's slippery.

[scribblemyname]

Been in love with this song, so thought, hey, you might like:

I can see your eyes,
staring into mine,
but it's a battlefield and I'm on the other side.
You can throw your words,
sharper than a knife,
and leave me cold, in another house on fire.

I, lay low, lay low and watch the bridges burn
I, lay low, lay low, what more could I have done?

[Chorus]
Now you only bring me black roses,
and they crumble into dust when they're held

— "Black Roses," sung by Clare Bowen

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

The Internet and work hasn't let me respond to anything since I got here, so I will have to get to fic when I'm home.

These are intriguing lyrics.

On the subject of roses, I've been meaning to share these lyrics with you for a while now: http://www.songlyrics.com/anita-bryant/paper-roses-lyrics/