wherein Liz considers various options

My birthday is on a Thursday this year, and I am actually scheduled to work both at the rental office and at Not the IRS. I am actually totally fine with this -- I feel like maybe I'm supposed to be annoyed? But really it's just a day, and so long as I get some kind of family thing within a week on either side, it's cool.

I have requested the Saturday after my birthday off, and am pondering options:

1. Either Mom or Dad comes up to see me. They could arrive on Friday evening, we do dinner that night, breakfast on Saturday, and they go home Saturday afternoon. Or they could arrive Saturday around noon, we do something that afternoon, dinner Saturday night, breakfast on Sunday, and then I head in to my Sunday afternoon Not the IRS shift.

2. Same but both Mom and Dad come up.

3. Same, but Mom, Dad, and Nick come up. (Nick is currently staying at their house in NJ because of ongoing medical issues.)

4. Reverse it: I drive down to NJ! This requires me to take at least half a day off on Friday in addition to all of Saturday. I would drive down on Friday, we do some kind of fancy dinner either Friday or Saturday, and then I drive back either Saturday evening or early Sunday morning.

...

Option 4 is more personally inconvenient for me, but allows me to see all three family members and avoids aggravating Nick's health problems as much as possible. I am strongly leaning toward it, but I need to make sure that's not going to cause staffing issues at the rental office first.

Also I need to see if I can figure out why the washer fluid I poured into my car a few days ago doesn't seem to be spraying correctly when I trigger that action. Maybe I just need more fluid, but it's equally possible a hose got cracked or gashed when I had the ice encounter that munged up the bottom right front of my car a few weeks ago.

...

Anyway, back to my very busy evening of writing Three-Sentence Ficathon fills while not doing anyone's taxes because I have no scheduled clients. *wry*

[Fic] Three Sentence Ficathon 2022 fills, part four

Batch the fourth, more to come. :)

All prompts drawn from the 2022 iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon (post one and post two), hosted by the wonderful rthstewart. Come play with us!

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( 19. )

For scytale, in response to the prompt: any, any, I am coming home to you / with my own blood in my mouth, written 1/30/22

Toward the Aftermath (235 words)

Fandom = Greenwing & Dart

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( cut for spoilers about Violet )

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( 20. )

For raisedbymoogles, in response to the prompt: any, any, faerie AU, written 1/30/22

Pawn to Queen (160 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives

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Everyone knew the king and queen of the Seelie Court had been at odds for years upon years, but even so, nobody thought (or dared not think openly, which was nearly the same thing) that the king was involved in her death, not when she was so clearly stabbed and poisoned by cold iron.

The Court limped through a season without the queen's stern hand guiding the steps of their dance and their endless skirmishes with the Unseelie Court and the wild fae, before the king called together a quartet of lesser fae and proclaimed that he had cast the bones and read the stars, and fate decreed one of them would step into the queen's role as joint lynchpin of the Court, after some unspecified trials.

Jon, Sasha, Tim, and Martin exchanged a wary network of glances, all carefully not looking at the rust-marks that still marred the queen's empty throne, but what else could they do but accept?

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( 21. )

For lasthaven, in response to the prompt: Any, any, bank robber au, written 1/30/22

Chance and Change (175 words)

Fandom = Greenwing & Dart

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At Morrowlea, all students are equals and are therefore forbidden to reveal details of their background; nonetheless, one can often determine certain broad outlines of a friend's life (for instance, Hal's uncertainty at dressing himself made his noble origins obvious, though I naturally refrained from pursuing the details). Sometimes circumstances conspire to reveal slightly more personal information, as when I reminisced about various trails in the vicinity of Ragnor Bella and Red Myrta put that geography together with my uncommon name and drew me aside to ask, point blank, if I were Mad Jack Greenwing's son.

"I ask because my mother has been trying to learn who blackened his name and exact vengeance for years," she said while I stood speechless in surprise; "If you don't mind the wild lay, we'd be more than happy to have you lend your name and your sword to our efforts."

Thus it was that I returned home some years later as a bandit rather than a young gentleman of declining fortune.

Worlds turn on such small, unforeseen events.

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( 22. )

For ruanchunxian, in response to the prompt: Narnia, Hilda the hen and her duck children, found family, written 1/31/22

How Fast They Grow (160 words)

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Hilda would never be wholly comfortable on boats, too conscious of the weight of waterlogged feathers, but it was worth a small battle with her nerves to see how happy her children were when she joined them in the middle of the lake, balanced in a coracle she'd purchased secondhand from a local Weasel family and equipped with a tablecloth sail since a paddle was dreadfully awkward to handle with either her feet or her beak.

"Mama, Mama, look, Tawny says she's going to fly, really and truly this time!" her daughter Glimmer shouted, beating her own wings (remnants of baby down still fuzzy around her new-grown flight feathers) against the water in excitement; "Come watch, come watch!"

As Tawny flapped and kicked her way across the lake, straining until an inch-thin gap opened between her belly and the water, then widened and widened until she was truly airborne, Hilda clucked to herself in satisfaction for a job well done.

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( 23. )

For anonymous, in response to the prompt: any, any, peacock blue and peacock green, written 1/31/22

To Thyself Be True (240 words)

Fandom = The Hands of the Emperor

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One of the more impressive regional fashions that Cliopher occasionally saw in the Palace of Stars were the peacock-feather robes worn by the theocrats of Selrhav, a minor southern archipelago in Colhélhé: not only were the great tailfeathers layered into cloaks of shimmering green, blue, and gold, but the smaller, scale-like feathers at the top of the train were worked into tunics that mimicked the appearance of mail, and the brilliant blue body feathers embroidered onto soft slippers and braided into the priests' and priestesses' hair.

Upon discreet inquiry, Cliopher learned from the assistant secretary to one lesser priestess's personal secretary that the people of Selrhav held peacocks to be messengers of the gods (most particularly of the Sun and of a local goddess of the underworld), and so clothed the gods' intermediaries in the feathers of the sacred birds, which were raised in temple gardens specifically for that purpose.

"And then we eat the carcasses, of course, for the gods abhor waste and to feed the body is as important as to tend the soul," the assistant secretary said. She touched her fingertips to her lips, then pressed them to the bright, unmistakable tuft of peacock blue threaded into a single one of her many braids, and Cliopher, his efela tucked hidden beneath his Astandalan secretariat robes like a shameful secret, his name and his home mispronounced and disregarded, ached with envy like the ocean ached for the Moon.

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( 24. )

For anonymous, in response to the prompt: any, any, fanfiction, written 2/1/22

Amateur Interpolation (130 words)

Fandom = Greenwing & Dart

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"Of course I can't say for certain, as Aurora is banned and reading it therefore thoroughly illegal," Jemis said, looking up from the sheaf of manuscript pages he'd found on a chair, "but I don't believe I've ever heard of a sequence where the prince seduces his manservant in a cloakroom during the wedding banquet. Additionally, I feel as though the meter is shakier and some of the allusions and consonances less complex -- do you suppose this might be a lost scene that Fitzroy Angursell cut from the final poem, and which now survives only in scattered and hand-lettered copies?"

Across the library table, Violet choked on a swallow of water while Anna began frantically digging through her satchel, cursing under her breath at the muddle of papers and pens.

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Observe my continuing efforts to spark a Greenwing & Dart fandom on my own. *wry*