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edenfallingBatch the sixth, and I think that's all for this year. I have not been feeling very writey for the past few months. :/
All prompts drawn from the 2022 iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon (post one and post two), hosted by the wonderfulrthstewart!
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31. Forundeadrobins, in response to the prompt: Any, Any, I am ready for the fight, written 2/9/22
Queen to Pawn (155 words)
Fandom = Chronicles of Narnia
-----
In England, Susan is no queen: she cannot make or dissolve laws, dispense justice or grant mercy, collect or remit taxes, declare war or make peace, sign treaties or raise tariffs; no trappings of power are hers, and instead this world consigns her to play a silly schoolgirl who will grow to be a decorative nonentity, of note only for the children she may have or the background support she may give an enterprise organized and directed by and for the benefit of men.
She refuses to dwell on the loss.
Susan will take the rules England sets down and play by them to win, play so well that no one will outflank her or stand in her path; and once she triumphs she will be a queen once more in truth (though perhaps not in law), and can at last overturn this stifling, tilted board to build something better, truer, deeper in its place.
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32. Forsyrena_of_the_lake, in response to the prompt: Any fandom, any character, funny meeting you here, written 2/9/22
A Long-Expected Meeting (135 words)
Fandom = Greenwing & Dart
-----
"How unexpected to meet you here," a terribly familiar voice said from the doorway of Elderflower Books, and I looked up from stacking the latest edition of the New Salon to see Lark silhouetted by the midday sun, idly twirling her ivory pipe between her fingers.
I still felt that conditioned pull toward her, but this time it was countered by the bright clarity of immediate danger and I heard myself say, dryly, "Given that I have been employed here since autumn, and further that I am quite sure you have been aware of that fact for nearly the total period of that employment, I find your choice of words somewhat astonishing -- indeed, one might almost call them unexpected."
"Ah Jemis, I have missed you," Lark said, and smiled like a razor caressing a throat.
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33. Forruthchinn, in response to the prompt Daredevil, Matt's mom (Maggie), any, written 2/10/22.
Cut Clean (145 words)
-----
When Jack dies, Maggie thinks long and hard about whether to renounce her vows a second time and step back into the secular world as Matthew's mother, but while that sounds virtuous in theory (aren't children owed a mother's love and care?), on a practical level there are nearly insurmountable obstacles. She has no guarantee of finding a well-paying job or suitable housing, no guarantee that she and Matthew would have compatible personalities, no guarantee that such a drastic change in her life wouldn't trigger a new mental health crisis, no guarantee she could navigate the maze of special needs education without the support of the Church behind her, and on and on and on.
Perhaps she could have introduced herself as Matthew's mother while still holding to her vows, but she's never been good with in-betweens; in the end, she keeps the break clean.
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34. For anonymous, in response to the prompt Any, any, honey, green tea, lavender, written 2/10/22.
From Tiny Seeds (185 words)
Fandom = Greenwing & Dart
-----
Violet and Ruiridh tiptoe away as the formal audience to welcome the new ambassador from Ysthar dissolves into a muddle of gossip and food. It's important for him to learn names and faces and the patterns of power, but what grown-ups think is interesting small talk is, almost universally, boring beyond words.
So they steal a pot of green tea (a gift from the new ambassador, each leaf worth more than its weight in gold), a plate of miniature honey cakes dusted with sugar and rose petals (equally extravagant), and a lavender tablecloth from a cupboard in the back of the great hall, and set up their own banquet under the lilacs in the their mother's private garden.
"When you're Lord of Alinor, you should hold all banquets in the garden," Violet tells her brother as she pours tea into a pair of hastily conjured cups.
"But what if it rains?" Ruiridh asks with a worried air.
"That's what the magic is for," she says, and shoves a honey cake into his mouth before he can echo their mother's lecture on the responsibility of power.
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35. Forsyrena_of_the_lake, in response to the prompt: Narnia, Uncle Andrew/Jadis, she stays in London, written 6/1/22
Family Planning (155 words)
-----
She will need an heir eventually, and given how sluggishly magic flows in this new world, the best she can do is tweak biology rather than bypass its demands entire -- and while the man is a deluded fool with a weak body and a displeasing face, he does have magic in his veins; he will do for seed (carefully winnowed and sieved) until she finds something better, or his nephew grows old enough to be useful.
Such a pity, Jadis reflects, that his sisters had not been born male; either of them, even the softer one fading on her deathbed, would have made a vastly preferable consort -- perhaps even one she might tolerate to stand by her side in battle rather than lock in a well-furnished chamber to await her reluctant attentions.
Ah well. Lilith started with less when she came to Charn, and Jadis will outdo her ancestor in this as in all else.
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36. Forruanchunxian, in response to the prompt: any, any, family traditions, written 6/1/22
A Metonymy for Love (880 words)
Fandom = Greenwing & Dart
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"Mother had to leave her bees at the dower house when she married Mr. Buchance," Jemis said as he and Jack ambled through the coppice wood of Arguty Manor, his words puncturing one of the slightly awkward silences that still fell between them more often than Jack wished. They were on the far side of the grounds from the house in question, so the statement fell groundward even more abruptly than it might have done in another location.
"That's a pity," Jack said, casting his mind back to the simpler days of his youth. "She brought a hive from the Woods Noirell when we married. The bees were irritable that first year, no doubt missing the limes and the magic of the Woods, but your mother spent hours in the garden singing to them and to a wild hive that had nested in a lightning-struck oak nearby. She told me she had brought a hive without a queen, both because her mother would permit no breeding queen to leave the Noirell hives, and because it was easier to broker peace with the local bees if she could promise new blood for their lines without the presence of a potential usurper to agitate them."
He paused, attention briefly focused on avoiding a swathe of icy mud that had swallowed several lengths of the path. Green buds might haze the tips of the maple and poplar branches, but winter still fought a fierce rearguard action against the coming of spring, and he had no wish to lose a boot or spend the rest of the walk with a sodden, filthy sock.
"I had never considered that bees might have politics as complicated as ours," Jack continued, "but your mother treated them with as much dignity as the Good Neighbors, and they respected her in return. They might sting me, if I startled them, but never her. And never you, either -- did that change, after the Fall? So much else failed, or went awry, and I was hardly home long enough to ask much of anything."
He glanced sideways, still unsure how Jemis would react to the memory of that wrenching month when he returned home to find Olive married to another man, his reputation in tatters, and Jemis a tight-wound ball of misery.
Jemis ducked a stray branch, one hand on his hat brim to steady it, then shook his head as he rose. "Not anywhere in South Fiellan. I don't recall much about the bees of Morrowlea. The university had dozens of hives, of course, but after my first year, I was rarely assigned to tasks that required patience and careful hands, or that would keep me away from-- that would keep me occupied for more than an hour at a time." He grimaced, and Jack ventured to set a comforting hand on his son's shoulder. Jemis shot him a grateful smile.
"Do you want to purchase a hive or two for our new tenants?" Jack asked, returning to Jemis's original statement. "Or see if you can sweet-talk your mother's swarm into returning?"
Jemis shrugged. "Perhaps. I wouldn't know where to start coaxing a feral swarm back into a human-built hive. Mostly I wanted to--" He paused and looked more intently at his footing than the lightly graveled path required.
Jack walked beside his son and hoped his silence conveyed support and acceptance rather than the judgment Jemis often seemed to expect.
"It's difficult to keep bees in town," Jemis said eventually. "The neighbors complain, especially if they have small children. I hated that we had to leave the bees, but Mother was happy with Mr. Buchance. I've been happy living in Ragnor Bella, and I feel out of place here and in the Woods Noirell. But Arguty Manor will be mine someday, which means I'll have to reaccustom myself to the grounds and accustom myself to the main house."
Jack silently cursed Vorel once again for the wrongs he had done to Olive and Jemis. Lady Flora bore much of the blame there, but Vorel was nonetheless the one who had married her and eagerly taken her words to heart, racking up mountains of debt and dabbling in black magic while his nephew and sister-in-law scrimped and starved, barred from the very house that should have been Jemis's birthright.
"I wondered if a hive might make Arguty Manor feel less unfamiliar," Jemis finished. "It was an idle thought, not a proper plan or request."
"But a thought from the heart, and those are never foolish," Jack said, once again resting his hand on his son's shoulder. "We can make it a proper plan together."
Jemis's answering smile was shy and slightly embarrassed, but held an echo of the unbearable joy that still shone in his eyes now and then when he spoke of the Woods on the border of the Lady's country, where the pain of death transmuted into peace -- the same joy that had spilled from Jemis as he passed on messages from Olive and Rinald and Benneret Buchance, promising that Jack had not failed as a man or a father, that they cherished and respected him, and Jemis felt the same.
Jack pulled his son into a hug, and swore that he would live up to that faith.
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It did feel nice to write something again yesterday. Perhaps I'll poke at some of my WIPs while I'm on vacation next week and see if anything speaks to me...
All prompts drawn from the 2022 iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon (post one and post two), hosted by the wonderful
rthstewart!---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
31. For
undeadrobins, in response to the prompt: Any, Any, I am ready for the fight, written 2/9/22Queen to Pawn (155 words)
Fandom = Chronicles of Narnia
-----
In England, Susan is no queen: she cannot make or dissolve laws, dispense justice or grant mercy, collect or remit taxes, declare war or make peace, sign treaties or raise tariffs; no trappings of power are hers, and instead this world consigns her to play a silly schoolgirl who will grow to be a decorative nonentity, of note only for the children she may have or the background support she may give an enterprise organized and directed by and for the benefit of men.
She refuses to dwell on the loss.
Susan will take the rules England sets down and play by them to win, play so well that no one will outflank her or stand in her path; and once she triumphs she will be a queen once more in truth (though perhaps not in law), and can at last overturn this stifling, tilted board to build something better, truer, deeper in its place.
---------------
---------------
32. For
syrena_of_the_lake, in response to the prompt: Any fandom, any character, funny meeting you here, written 2/9/22A Long-Expected Meeting (135 words)
Fandom = Greenwing & Dart
-----
"How unexpected to meet you here," a terribly familiar voice said from the doorway of Elderflower Books, and I looked up from stacking the latest edition of the New Salon to see Lark silhouetted by the midday sun, idly twirling her ivory pipe between her fingers.
I still felt that conditioned pull toward her, but this time it was countered by the bright clarity of immediate danger and I heard myself say, dryly, "Given that I have been employed here since autumn, and further that I am quite sure you have been aware of that fact for nearly the total period of that employment, I find your choice of words somewhat astonishing -- indeed, one might almost call them unexpected."
"Ah Jemis, I have missed you," Lark said, and smiled like a razor caressing a throat.
---------------
---------------
33. For
ruthchinn, in response to the prompt Daredevil, Matt's mom (Maggie), any, written 2/10/22.Cut Clean (145 words)
-----
When Jack dies, Maggie thinks long and hard about whether to renounce her vows a second time and step back into the secular world as Matthew's mother, but while that sounds virtuous in theory (aren't children owed a mother's love and care?), on a practical level there are nearly insurmountable obstacles. She has no guarantee of finding a well-paying job or suitable housing, no guarantee that she and Matthew would have compatible personalities, no guarantee that such a drastic change in her life wouldn't trigger a new mental health crisis, no guarantee she could navigate the maze of special needs education without the support of the Church behind her, and on and on and on.
Perhaps she could have introduced herself as Matthew's mother while still holding to her vows, but she's never been good with in-betweens; in the end, she keeps the break clean.
---------------
---------------
34. For anonymous, in response to the prompt Any, any, honey, green tea, lavender, written 2/10/22.
From Tiny Seeds (185 words)
Fandom = Greenwing & Dart
-----
Violet and Ruiridh tiptoe away as the formal audience to welcome the new ambassador from Ysthar dissolves into a muddle of gossip and food. It's important for him to learn names and faces and the patterns of power, but what grown-ups think is interesting small talk is, almost universally, boring beyond words.
So they steal a pot of green tea (a gift from the new ambassador, each leaf worth more than its weight in gold), a plate of miniature honey cakes dusted with sugar and rose petals (equally extravagant), and a lavender tablecloth from a cupboard in the back of the great hall, and set up their own banquet under the lilacs in the their mother's private garden.
"When you're Lord of Alinor, you should hold all banquets in the garden," Violet tells her brother as she pours tea into a pair of hastily conjured cups.
"But what if it rains?" Ruiridh asks with a worried air.
"That's what the magic is for," she says, and shoves a honey cake into his mouth before he can echo their mother's lecture on the responsibility of power.
---------------
---------------
35. For
syrena_of_the_lake, in response to the prompt: Narnia, Uncle Andrew/Jadis, she stays in London, written 6/1/22Family Planning (155 words)
-----
She will need an heir eventually, and given how sluggishly magic flows in this new world, the best she can do is tweak biology rather than bypass its demands entire -- and while the man is a deluded fool with a weak body and a displeasing face, he does have magic in his veins; he will do for seed (carefully winnowed and sieved) until she finds something better, or his nephew grows old enough to be useful.
Such a pity, Jadis reflects, that his sisters had not been born male; either of them, even the softer one fading on her deathbed, would have made a vastly preferable consort -- perhaps even one she might tolerate to stand by her side in battle rather than lock in a well-furnished chamber to await her reluctant attentions.
Ah well. Lilith started with less when she came to Charn, and Jadis will outdo her ancestor in this as in all else.
---------------
---------------
36. For
ruanchunxian, in response to the prompt: any, any, family traditions, written 6/1/22A Metonymy for Love (880 words)
Fandom = Greenwing & Dart
-----
"Mother had to leave her bees at the dower house when she married Mr. Buchance," Jemis said as he and Jack ambled through the coppice wood of Arguty Manor, his words puncturing one of the slightly awkward silences that still fell between them more often than Jack wished. They were on the far side of the grounds from the house in question, so the statement fell groundward even more abruptly than it might have done in another location.
"That's a pity," Jack said, casting his mind back to the simpler days of his youth. "She brought a hive from the Woods Noirell when we married. The bees were irritable that first year, no doubt missing the limes and the magic of the Woods, but your mother spent hours in the garden singing to them and to a wild hive that had nested in a lightning-struck oak nearby. She told me she had brought a hive without a queen, both because her mother would permit no breeding queen to leave the Noirell hives, and because it was easier to broker peace with the local bees if she could promise new blood for their lines without the presence of a potential usurper to agitate them."
He paused, attention briefly focused on avoiding a swathe of icy mud that had swallowed several lengths of the path. Green buds might haze the tips of the maple and poplar branches, but winter still fought a fierce rearguard action against the coming of spring, and he had no wish to lose a boot or spend the rest of the walk with a sodden, filthy sock.
"I had never considered that bees might have politics as complicated as ours," Jack continued, "but your mother treated them with as much dignity as the Good Neighbors, and they respected her in return. They might sting me, if I startled them, but never her. And never you, either -- did that change, after the Fall? So much else failed, or went awry, and I was hardly home long enough to ask much of anything."
He glanced sideways, still unsure how Jemis would react to the memory of that wrenching month when he returned home to find Olive married to another man, his reputation in tatters, and Jemis a tight-wound ball of misery.
Jemis ducked a stray branch, one hand on his hat brim to steady it, then shook his head as he rose. "Not anywhere in South Fiellan. I don't recall much about the bees of Morrowlea. The university had dozens of hives, of course, but after my first year, I was rarely assigned to tasks that required patience and careful hands, or that would keep me away from-- that would keep me occupied for more than an hour at a time." He grimaced, and Jack ventured to set a comforting hand on his son's shoulder. Jemis shot him a grateful smile.
"Do you want to purchase a hive or two for our new tenants?" Jack asked, returning to Jemis's original statement. "Or see if you can sweet-talk your mother's swarm into returning?"
Jemis shrugged. "Perhaps. I wouldn't know where to start coaxing a feral swarm back into a human-built hive. Mostly I wanted to--" He paused and looked more intently at his footing than the lightly graveled path required.
Jack walked beside his son and hoped his silence conveyed support and acceptance rather than the judgment Jemis often seemed to expect.
"It's difficult to keep bees in town," Jemis said eventually. "The neighbors complain, especially if they have small children. I hated that we had to leave the bees, but Mother was happy with Mr. Buchance. I've been happy living in Ragnor Bella, and I feel out of place here and in the Woods Noirell. But Arguty Manor will be mine someday, which means I'll have to reaccustom myself to the grounds and accustom myself to the main house."
Jack silently cursed Vorel once again for the wrongs he had done to Olive and Jemis. Lady Flora bore much of the blame there, but Vorel was nonetheless the one who had married her and eagerly taken her words to heart, racking up mountains of debt and dabbling in black magic while his nephew and sister-in-law scrimped and starved, barred from the very house that should have been Jemis's birthright.
"I wondered if a hive might make Arguty Manor feel less unfamiliar," Jemis finished. "It was an idle thought, not a proper plan or request."
"But a thought from the heart, and those are never foolish," Jack said, once again resting his hand on his son's shoulder. "We can make it a proper plan together."
Jemis's answering smile was shy and slightly embarrassed, but held an echo of the unbearable joy that still shone in his eyes now and then when he spoke of the Woods on the border of the Lady's country, where the pain of death transmuted into peace -- the same joy that had spilled from Jemis as he passed on messages from Olive and Rinald and Benneret Buchance, promising that Jack had not failed as a man or a father, that they cherished and respected him, and Jemis felt the same.
Jack pulled his son into a hug, and swore that he would live up to that faith.
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It did feel nice to write something again yesterday. Perhaps I'll poke at some of my WIPs while I'm on vacation next week and see if anything speaks to me...
