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edenfallingTime for more Three Sentence Ficathon fills!
Here is the old ficathon post (still open for fills and comments! just not new prompts), and here is the new ficathon post (open for everything).
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61. Forsilveradept: Any, any, the post-apocalyptic library and mercenaries setting described in this general thread about the sacredness of books and the library as an institution that nobody messes with, written 2/24/20
A Kind of Paradise Enow (750 words)
Original fiction. Also, this got a little out of hand...
-----
By the time everything went to hell, a lot of the bigger libraries had maker-spaces attached to them so it just made good sense to add printing (actual mechanical presses, mostly, now that there wasn't an easy way to make microchips and all the fiddly rare-earth pieces necessary to make portable computers work) to a library's list of services. But the thing was, transporting a hundred or a thousand copies of the same book over long distances was a waste of resources. The libraries took to sending galley proofs instead, so each library or unaffiliated press could print their own local run.
Hauling texts through the badlands on the library circuit wasn't the easiest job Gabby and Ashrita had done since the Collapse, nor the best paid, but getting first look at new stories was worth a hell of a lot on the intangible compensation front -- and it was gratifying how quick half the assholes taking potshots at them would back off once Ashrita waved a library courier flag. Sometimes the hard-lucks even invited them back to their camps, and Gabby let them sneak a preview of some new tale in return.
The ones who didn't back off, well, there was a reason Gabby and Ashrita didn't need to bargain over their job rates any more. They left those ones dead or dying and shed no tears.
Someday, Gabby told Ashrita one evening over another cold trail supper of bean mush on stale bread, she might even turn her hand to writing a story of her own. "Some kind of hard-boiled murder mystery with a romance subplot," she said. "You know, the world-weary ex-police private eye falls for the shady dame who brings her a case the police won't touch -- three sex scenes, two shootouts, a comedy bit where they pretend to be sisters despite the obvious sexual tension, and at least one double-cross, before they outwit the mafia and go into business together."
"I'd read it," Ashrita said, "but just so I'd know if it's worth hauling around the circuit."
Gabby tossed a pebble across their campsite to land in Ashrita's left boot, her aim flawless as always. "My words are priceless and you know it."
"Everything's got a price. For your words, I'd say maybe three reams of good rag paper, a nanny goat, or two laying hens. Except I love and respect you, so let's kick it up to four reams and the hens."
"Fuck you, clearly the goat's a better choice," Gabby said through her laughter. "You can take a goat anywhere but chickens need a home."
Ashrita nodded and swallowed her last mouthful of dinner. "Right, right, fair point. But you know, I was thinking we might look in to setting up a more steady base. We're not getting any younger, and I think we might do more good training up a handful of couriers to our standards than just running the circuit until some hard-lucks have one good day and plug us. And it's got to be easier writing stories with an actual desk and chair than trying to scribble notes on the road -- to say nothing of easier on whatever poor typesetter has to read your chicken-scratch."
Gabby was quiet for a long moment, elbows propped on her knees as she stared over the scrub and gravel of their campsite toward the cracked asphalt of old I-80, still the beating artery of transport across America despite its dangers. Then she shrugged and said, with a wry little smile, "I was thinking of how to say the same to you, you know? That we could settle down, make a garden, maybe take up gunsmithing -- god knows we've fixed enough pieces over the years to pick it up. But it feels different hearing it out loud than just thinking it quiet inside my head."
"Yeah."
"But still. It's not a bad plan. There's just one thing that might be a problem."
"That being?" Ashrita said, tensing slightly at Gabby's solemn tone. "Don't tell me you've secretly gambled away all our savings."
"Don't be ridiculous. No, we've got to make sure the library in whatever town we pick still gives us first look at any new texts, even if we're not the ones running the circuit anymore. I need my noir detective series or I might literally die!"
Ashrita threw her boot at Gabby, and tackled her to the ground while she was off-balance from dodging.
After that, they had better things to do than talk.
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62. Forkalira: any, any, brushing/braiding/putting up someone else's hair, written 2/24/20
Social Grooming in Primates (235 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives
-----
Jon's had a hard time dealing with his own hair since-- since Prentiss, really; some of the worm scars and the resulting bandages were in places that made lifting his arms that high, or brushing his hair with more than the barest, cat-whisker strokes, nearly impossible; but it got worse after Michael stabbed him, and Jude burned him, and now the Buried has fucked his shoulders once again and he just lets the whole untidy mess hang and tangle as it will for lack of anyone to ask for help.
It doesn't occur to him until two days later, when Daisy wanders past with her own hair a mess of tangles (though mostly clean of dirt; he knows, suddenly, exactly how long she sat, shaking, in the steadily cooling shower until the water no longer ran brown when she mashed the back of her head against the tiled walls), that he's not the only person having trouble, and that maybe he does have someone to ask after all.
It's just this once, he thinks that first time, but there's something so intensely solid and reassuring about hands running through another person's hair, about caring and being cared for, that it becomes a pattern: every day or two, Daisy wanders into his office with a comb, a brush, and a new handful of soft, bright-colored hair ties, and they take turns making each other feel human.
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63. Forkalira: any, any, bloody footprints, written 2/24/20
Do You Hear the People Sing? (215 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Contains violence.
-----
Working retail is a war, and Reva doesn't know why nobody else can see it -- really see it, not just smile and sigh and say things like, "Yeah, it sure feels like hell some days, doesn't it?" but feel the snarling tension that snaps between every clerk and stocker and helpless return desk staffer and all the customers who invade the Walmart and want nothing more than to trample the staff underfoot and crush them under the weight of too much work and never enough time or money or support.
But she keeps talking, and talking, and slowly her words fall into rhythm and the others nod and clap along, finally solid at her back, and when Mrs. Fucking Macready from down Deer Lick Road comes in Thursday morning demanding a refund like she doesn't charge Reva and her parents twice the market rate for rent even though she's sitting pretty on her husband's life insurance payout, Reva snaps and screams and lunges forward, and her troops fall in behind her for the charge.
When the battle is over, the store finally still and the loudspeakers singing only static, Reva marches through the shattered doors with only a trail of bloody footprints in her wake, but it's okay.
She'll raise a new army soon enough.
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64. Forredfiona99: Any, any, extra day's holiday, written 2/25/20
Domestic Bliss (260 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Six sentences.
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"So what pronouncement did the terrible eldritch forces behind the Magnus Institute have for you at this hour of the morning?" Georgie asked as Jon dropped back into his chair and set his cell phone on their wobbly kitchen table with an expression halfway between calculation and a scowl. The Admiral promptly reclaimed Jon's lap as his rightful territory and Jon, well-trained, began stroking the soft gray fur between his ears.
"The computer system is down so all the researchers have been given an optional day off," Jon said, "which is ridiculous -- yes, computers are useful but the books are still there, the phone lines are functional, and it's not like I've forgotten how to take notes with pen and paper -- but I think Rosie was strongly implying that they'd prefer me not to come in."
"Considering you'd nearly overworked yourself into pneumonia before I convinced you to use your sick leave, I'd say she has a point," Georgie said tartly, then smiled, and shrugged, and added, "Besides which, if you're that desperate to research probably made-up spooky stories, I have some episode backgrounds that could use a bit of fleshing out -- and don't pretend that you won't enjoy the chance to indulge the Admiral all day."
"I don't know why I ever thought we'd still work as roommates after we broke up," Jon grumbled, but it was for show and Georgie knew that he knew that she knew it.
"Drink your tea, grumpy-guts," she said, and ruffled his hair to watch him and the Admiral hiss in mutual affront.
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65. Foreagleoftheninth: Any, any, turning into a giant snake never helps, written 2/25/20
Serpens Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus (100 words)
Original fiction. Also, please forgive the Latin; I used Google Translate. *headdesk*
-----
"But everyone knows turning into a giant snake is why both Dread Sorcerer Ralyard and the Blue Witch of Aloesse lost their last battles -- why should I learn a spell that never helps?"
"Certainly it's no use in a fight, but I wouldn't say turning into a giant snake never helps," the sorceress told her apprentice. "If one has a decent grasp of warming charms and a large enough room, I've found that not only does one get the best sleep of one's life in reptile form, vanishingly few people are willing to wake a giant snake from a nap."
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66. Forkurosakiami01: any, any, "don't worry, you're with us now", written 2/25/20
When the Earth Shall Claim Your Limbs (610 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Contains body horror and someone buried alive.
-----
Junghyun lasted four days by staying resolutely indoors, eating crackers and protein bars, and drinking bottled water -- take that, everyone who always looked down on her unhealthy eating habits! -- before she had to venture into the screaming wrongness that had replaced the world (and yes, there was a difference; human fuckery wasn't remotely the same as sentient fungus creeping up from her drains, or computer screens that watched and watched and never turned off, or giant flesh-blobs slurping through the streets in a running battle with toothy monsters that might be werewolves, or worst of all, the clear blue sky swooping down to eat people) both to find supplies and to avoid the leaden fog and cobwebs that were starting to gather in the lower and upper corners of her flat.
So of course it wasn't any of those horrors that got her. No, it was the earth itself, pavement crumbling away under her suddenly too-heavy feet and yanking her down into its jagged maw, roaring a tuneless song of weight and heat and pressure until her blood and bones and the compressed air in her lungs couldn't help but hum along.
Junghyun closed her eyes and mouth and waited for the earth to eat her whole.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited, until the waiting itself was more horrible than death could ever be, but when she tried to open her eyes the stones prevented her, and when she tried to speak the mud choked her, and when she tried to move the earth moved with her like a too-tight blanket trapping her in a nightmare bed.
Eventually she went limp in mind and heart as well as body.
That was when the earth let go, and she fell through lightless chasms, down and down and down, striking and scraping from rock to rock like a rag doll flung down a garbage chute, farther than should be possible until the pain and impossibility of it all numbed her once again.
The earth caught her and squeezed, hot and thick and heavy, and Junghyun's tears leaked out to join the mud as she realized there was no escape, never; she was swallowed, she was eaten, and the digestion would last forever.
"Yes," a voice said without breath, vibrations passed from its throat through the stone to her ears without ever touching air. "Now you understand. The earth makes us, the earth unmakes us, the earth is all there is. The surface is an illusion, a twisted, mocking dream from which we wake to the embrace of truth."
"But the sky--" Junghyun tried to say. She coughed, choked. Spoke again, this time exhaling dust instead of breath. "Did I only dream the sky?"
"The sky is a nightmare trying to be born," the stone voice said.
"I saw it eat people," Junghyun said. Her voice was slowing, rasping, as her lungs filled with solid earth instead of fleeting air. "I didn't want to be eaten."
"Don't worry," the stone voice said. "You're with us now. The sky can never touch you again."
The last gasp of air left Junghyun's chest, and she sighed in relief at the perfect, even pressure of earth within and earth without, stable and certain as she had always been meant to be. She turned to face the stone voice, seeing without eyes and hearing without ears, down where all the world was darkness and vibration and the endless roar of molten stone.
"Yes," she said. "I'm with you and you're with me and we're with the earth. The Vast can't reach us. The Eye can't see us. And we will dig until every direction is down."
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And now I will finish my breakfast before heading off to work, where I will valiantly pretend I am a functional human being who is not coming down with a nasty cold. Ugh.
Don't work service industry jobs, people. They're not good for your health.
Here is the old ficathon post (still open for fills and comments! just not new prompts), and here is the new ficathon post (open for everything).
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61. For
silveradept: Any, any, the post-apocalyptic library and mercenaries setting described in this general thread about the sacredness of books and the library as an institution that nobody messes with, written 2/24/20A Kind of Paradise Enow (750 words)
Original fiction. Also, this got a little out of hand...
-----
By the time everything went to hell, a lot of the bigger libraries had maker-spaces attached to them so it just made good sense to add printing (actual mechanical presses, mostly, now that there wasn't an easy way to make microchips and all the fiddly rare-earth pieces necessary to make portable computers work) to a library's list of services. But the thing was, transporting a hundred or a thousand copies of the same book over long distances was a waste of resources. The libraries took to sending galley proofs instead, so each library or unaffiliated press could print their own local run.
Hauling texts through the badlands on the library circuit wasn't the easiest job Gabby and Ashrita had done since the Collapse, nor the best paid, but getting first look at new stories was worth a hell of a lot on the intangible compensation front -- and it was gratifying how quick half the assholes taking potshots at them would back off once Ashrita waved a library courier flag. Sometimes the hard-lucks even invited them back to their camps, and Gabby let them sneak a preview of some new tale in return.
The ones who didn't back off, well, there was a reason Gabby and Ashrita didn't need to bargain over their job rates any more. They left those ones dead or dying and shed no tears.
Someday, Gabby told Ashrita one evening over another cold trail supper of bean mush on stale bread, she might even turn her hand to writing a story of her own. "Some kind of hard-boiled murder mystery with a romance subplot," she said. "You know, the world-weary ex-police private eye falls for the shady dame who brings her a case the police won't touch -- three sex scenes, two shootouts, a comedy bit where they pretend to be sisters despite the obvious sexual tension, and at least one double-cross, before they outwit the mafia and go into business together."
"I'd read it," Ashrita said, "but just so I'd know if it's worth hauling around the circuit."
Gabby tossed a pebble across their campsite to land in Ashrita's left boot, her aim flawless as always. "My words are priceless and you know it."
"Everything's got a price. For your words, I'd say maybe three reams of good rag paper, a nanny goat, or two laying hens. Except I love and respect you, so let's kick it up to four reams and the hens."
"Fuck you, clearly the goat's a better choice," Gabby said through her laughter. "You can take a goat anywhere but chickens need a home."
Ashrita nodded and swallowed her last mouthful of dinner. "Right, right, fair point. But you know, I was thinking we might look in to setting up a more steady base. We're not getting any younger, and I think we might do more good training up a handful of couriers to our standards than just running the circuit until some hard-lucks have one good day and plug us. And it's got to be easier writing stories with an actual desk and chair than trying to scribble notes on the road -- to say nothing of easier on whatever poor typesetter has to read your chicken-scratch."
Gabby was quiet for a long moment, elbows propped on her knees as she stared over the scrub and gravel of their campsite toward the cracked asphalt of old I-80, still the beating artery of transport across America despite its dangers. Then she shrugged and said, with a wry little smile, "I was thinking of how to say the same to you, you know? That we could settle down, make a garden, maybe take up gunsmithing -- god knows we've fixed enough pieces over the years to pick it up. But it feels different hearing it out loud than just thinking it quiet inside my head."
"Yeah."
"But still. It's not a bad plan. There's just one thing that might be a problem."
"That being?" Ashrita said, tensing slightly at Gabby's solemn tone. "Don't tell me you've secretly gambled away all our savings."
"Don't be ridiculous. No, we've got to make sure the library in whatever town we pick still gives us first look at any new texts, even if we're not the ones running the circuit anymore. I need my noir detective series or I might literally die!"
Ashrita threw her boot at Gabby, and tackled her to the ground while she was off-balance from dodging.
After that, they had better things to do than talk.
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62. For
kalira: any, any, brushing/braiding/putting up someone else's hair, written 2/24/20Social Grooming in Primates (235 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives
-----
Jon's had a hard time dealing with his own hair since-- since Prentiss, really; some of the worm scars and the resulting bandages were in places that made lifting his arms that high, or brushing his hair with more than the barest, cat-whisker strokes, nearly impossible; but it got worse after Michael stabbed him, and Jude burned him, and now the Buried has fucked his shoulders once again and he just lets the whole untidy mess hang and tangle as it will for lack of anyone to ask for help.
It doesn't occur to him until two days later, when Daisy wanders past with her own hair a mess of tangles (though mostly clean of dirt; he knows, suddenly, exactly how long she sat, shaking, in the steadily cooling shower until the water no longer ran brown when she mashed the back of her head against the tiled walls), that he's not the only person having trouble, and that maybe he does have someone to ask after all.
It's just this once, he thinks that first time, but there's something so intensely solid and reassuring about hands running through another person's hair, about caring and being cared for, that it becomes a pattern: every day or two, Daisy wanders into his office with a comb, a brush, and a new handful of soft, bright-colored hair ties, and they take turns making each other feel human.
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63. For
kalira: any, any, bloody footprints, written 2/24/20Do You Hear the People Sing? (215 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Contains violence.
-----
Working retail is a war, and Reva doesn't know why nobody else can see it -- really see it, not just smile and sigh and say things like, "Yeah, it sure feels like hell some days, doesn't it?" but feel the snarling tension that snaps between every clerk and stocker and helpless return desk staffer and all the customers who invade the Walmart and want nothing more than to trample the staff underfoot and crush them under the weight of too much work and never enough time or money or support.
But she keeps talking, and talking, and slowly her words fall into rhythm and the others nod and clap along, finally solid at her back, and when Mrs. Fucking Macready from down Deer Lick Road comes in Thursday morning demanding a refund like she doesn't charge Reva and her parents twice the market rate for rent even though she's sitting pretty on her husband's life insurance payout, Reva snaps and screams and lunges forward, and her troops fall in behind her for the charge.
When the battle is over, the store finally still and the loudspeakers singing only static, Reva marches through the shattered doors with only a trail of bloody footprints in her wake, but it's okay.
She'll raise a new army soon enough.
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64. For
redfiona99: Any, any, extra day's holiday, written 2/25/20Domestic Bliss (260 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Six sentences.
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"So what pronouncement did the terrible eldritch forces behind the Magnus Institute have for you at this hour of the morning?" Georgie asked as Jon dropped back into his chair and set his cell phone on their wobbly kitchen table with an expression halfway between calculation and a scowl. The Admiral promptly reclaimed Jon's lap as his rightful territory and Jon, well-trained, began stroking the soft gray fur between his ears.
"The computer system is down so all the researchers have been given an optional day off," Jon said, "which is ridiculous -- yes, computers are useful but the books are still there, the phone lines are functional, and it's not like I've forgotten how to take notes with pen and paper -- but I think Rosie was strongly implying that they'd prefer me not to come in."
"Considering you'd nearly overworked yourself into pneumonia before I convinced you to use your sick leave, I'd say she has a point," Georgie said tartly, then smiled, and shrugged, and added, "Besides which, if you're that desperate to research probably made-up spooky stories, I have some episode backgrounds that could use a bit of fleshing out -- and don't pretend that you won't enjoy the chance to indulge the Admiral all day."
"I don't know why I ever thought we'd still work as roommates after we broke up," Jon grumbled, but it was for show and Georgie knew that he knew that she knew it.
"Drink your tea, grumpy-guts," she said, and ruffled his hair to watch him and the Admiral hiss in mutual affront.
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65. For
eagleoftheninth: Any, any, turning into a giant snake never helps, written 2/25/20Serpens Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus (100 words)
Original fiction. Also, please forgive the Latin; I used Google Translate. *headdesk*
-----
"But everyone knows turning into a giant snake is why both Dread Sorcerer Ralyard and the Blue Witch of Aloesse lost their last battles -- why should I learn a spell that never helps?"
"Certainly it's no use in a fight, but I wouldn't say turning into a giant snake never helps," the sorceress told her apprentice. "If one has a decent grasp of warming charms and a large enough room, I've found that not only does one get the best sleep of one's life in reptile form, vanishingly few people are willing to wake a giant snake from a nap."
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66. For
kurosakiami01: any, any, "don't worry, you're with us now", written 2/25/20When the Earth Shall Claim Your Limbs (610 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Contains body horror and someone buried alive.
-----
Junghyun lasted four days by staying resolutely indoors, eating crackers and protein bars, and drinking bottled water -- take that, everyone who always looked down on her unhealthy eating habits! -- before she had to venture into the screaming wrongness that had replaced the world (and yes, there was a difference; human fuckery wasn't remotely the same as sentient fungus creeping up from her drains, or computer screens that watched and watched and never turned off, or giant flesh-blobs slurping through the streets in a running battle with toothy monsters that might be werewolves, or worst of all, the clear blue sky swooping down to eat people) both to find supplies and to avoid the leaden fog and cobwebs that were starting to gather in the lower and upper corners of her flat.
So of course it wasn't any of those horrors that got her. No, it was the earth itself, pavement crumbling away under her suddenly too-heavy feet and yanking her down into its jagged maw, roaring a tuneless song of weight and heat and pressure until her blood and bones and the compressed air in her lungs couldn't help but hum along.
Junghyun closed her eyes and mouth and waited for the earth to eat her whole.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited, until the waiting itself was more horrible than death could ever be, but when she tried to open her eyes the stones prevented her, and when she tried to speak the mud choked her, and when she tried to move the earth moved with her like a too-tight blanket trapping her in a nightmare bed.
Eventually she went limp in mind and heart as well as body.
That was when the earth let go, and she fell through lightless chasms, down and down and down, striking and scraping from rock to rock like a rag doll flung down a garbage chute, farther than should be possible until the pain and impossibility of it all numbed her once again.
The earth caught her and squeezed, hot and thick and heavy, and Junghyun's tears leaked out to join the mud as she realized there was no escape, never; she was swallowed, she was eaten, and the digestion would last forever.
"Yes," a voice said without breath, vibrations passed from its throat through the stone to her ears without ever touching air. "Now you understand. The earth makes us, the earth unmakes us, the earth is all there is. The surface is an illusion, a twisted, mocking dream from which we wake to the embrace of truth."
"But the sky--" Junghyun tried to say. She coughed, choked. Spoke again, this time exhaling dust instead of breath. "Did I only dream the sky?"
"The sky is a nightmare trying to be born," the stone voice said.
"I saw it eat people," Junghyun said. Her voice was slowing, rasping, as her lungs filled with solid earth instead of fleeting air. "I didn't want to be eaten."
"Don't worry," the stone voice said. "You're with us now. The sky can never touch you again."
The last gasp of air left Junghyun's chest, and she sighed in relief at the perfect, even pressure of earth within and earth without, stable and certain as she had always been meant to be. She turned to face the stone voice, seeing without eyes and hearing without ears, down where all the world was darkness and vibration and the endless roar of molten stone.
"Yes," she said. "I'm with you and you're with me and we're with the earth. The Vast can't reach us. The Eye can't see us. And we will dig until every direction is down."
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And now I will finish my breakfast before heading off to work, where I will valiantly pretend I am a functional human being who is not coming down with a nasty cold. Ugh.
Don't work service industry jobs, people. They're not good for your health.
