[Meme] 21 First and Last Lines

[edenfalling]

As seen in various places around the net: List the first and last lines of the last 21 stories you wrote. (Yes, these are supposed to be two separate memes. I decided to combine them for maximum efficiency. *grin*)

Note: I'm discounting all the little fills from this year's Three Sentence Ficathon because A) they would take up more than half the allotted space, and B) the constraints of the format render the resulting sentences uncharacteristic of my usual writing style. I'm also discounting chapters of WIPs; only complete stories need apply. With those caveats in place...

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1. In Which the Librarian of the Unseen University Makes an Unexpected Acquaintance

The short ginger-haired woman in tidy black robes who marched up to the reference and circulation desk with the Dean's ear pinched firmly between finger and thumb cast a swift and appraising look over the Librarian but made no visible reaction to his species.

~

It was always a pleasure to meet a fellow book-lover.

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2. Sing a Song of Sixpence

"Do you see this coin?" Terezi asks, crouching down in the carpet of last season's leaves to display the caegar to her terrified opponents.

~

They crash through the trees together, laughing and shoving at each other, secure in the knowledge that they are the most dangerous things in the forest and they will always have each other's backs.

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3. Maid of Life and Death (Her Every Breath a Blade)

*Jane slips Cal's arms slowly from around her neck, fingers shaking.

~

As Jane approaches, he smiles.

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4. Friends and Neighbors

"Hey, hey, Yukiko-neechan, can I have friends over tomorrow?"

~

They headed into town together.

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5. Short Story Long

TG: yo jade sup

~

GG: its a date :D

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6. Mad Science Family Reunion

"Are you sure about the layout?" Jade asks for the fourth time.

~

Laughing despite yourself, you follow her out of darkness into light.

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7. A Guide to Guerilla Knitting

"You should've gone straight to breaking your leg, none of this wishy-washy sprained foot nonsense," Kirk said accusingly as he dropped into a chair beside Nyota's bed in sickbay.

~

(Two weeks later, Nyota held a knitted blue hat with wire-and-pompom antennae in her hands and dissolved into helpless laughter.)

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8. Dreams From My Mother

Wilhelmina clambered onto a chair and stood on tiptoes, peering at the food laid out on the counter.

~

Then she pulled them both through the wall to freedom.

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9. The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

Hollywood was an ironist's wet dream, Dave thought as he lounged against the stucco wall surrounding some interchangeable actor's extravagant backyard.

~

Dave stole the joy buzzer.

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10. Gifts Unlooked For

"We should check on Prospit," Jane says, one week into your fun but probably pointless run through the gas-and-zombies weirdness that Sburb turned out to be.

~

You remember the way she looked between you and Jane and smiled when she said that, and you think that maybe, just maybe, she means that for more than the game.

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11. Dedication

A century of ice and snow thaw into nothing and yet to Susan's astonishment Narnia does not flood.

~

Sunlight lies gold on her head and shoulders as she carries the apple to the kitchen and prepares to keep her home alive 'til spring.

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12. Food and Cheer and Song

So okay, three of you are now permanently your dreamselves and Jake's dreamself is dead, you're pretty sure Earth just kind of blew up along with the entire universe (at least in your time; Jane's time still has four centuries of batterwitch oppression to suffer through), you have no idea if Dirk's doofy rapbot managed to save any of your neighbors when it brought your house into the game, you have a nice vivid-fresh memory of getting stabbed through your guts to bring you screaming nightmares the next time you fall asleep, and you're still feeling guilty as hell that you couldn't make yourself kiss Jane back to life no matter how freaked you were by A) finally touching another human being, B) seeing your best friend all spatter-splat dead, and C) kissing a corpse, which, seriously, whose shitty design idea was that?

~

Being with your friends is already the best prize ever.

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13. Scourge of the Sea

"You're going to capsize."

~

This is the best night she's had all sweep.

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14. Romancing the Sky

Ironically, for all her love of buried shit under the ground, Sollux meets Aradia because she's stopped to look up instead.

~

This time they share a bubble.

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15. Every Child a Wanted Child

"Congratulations, you found a baby," Dave says the second he picks up the phone, before Jade can so much as say hello.

~

For the first time in over a year, Jade feels the stirring of hope.

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16. Waking Persephone

They don't hunt frogs nonstop, of course.

~

They listen to her world wake around them.

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17. Queen Lucy, the Firebird, and the Death of Koschei the Deathless

In a certain kingdom in a certain land there lived two brothers and two sisters, and they ruled as kings and queens together.

~

And so they did.

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18. Angst and Sparkle

"Rachel Berry got the solo again, I got engine grease in my hair when I had to fix my car on the way to school this morning, and Carol thinks I need a hair product intervention because the shower drain clogged this morning."

~

And then they had sex.

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19. Milk and Honey

You've met yourself hundreds of times during the game: both alternate future selves coming back to fix your teammates' failures and your own future self from the alpha timeline running through stable loops to prevent even more catastrophes.

~

You name the alien stars together.

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20. Iconography

Nothing is ever completely lost.

~

And in Aslan's country, the Tree itself still stands.

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21. Instant Corpse Party (Party Not Included)

Two days into their journey across the yellow yard, John froze in the middle of breakfast with an unpleasant thought.

~

None of them were alone.

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* Note: "Maid of Life and Death" is is a weird case because it's a remix and the first line of the story is not actually mine; I copied it from the story I was remixing. The first line I actually wrote is She needs an anchor.

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I can't find any pattern in my opening lines, but it's amazing how many of the closing ones have some kind of emphasis on two (or more) characters being together -- not necessarily in a romantic sense, but apparently I am really, really big on emotional connection. Or that may just be a side effect of my attempt to write Cotton Candy Bingo prompts. Nine of the above fics (~43%) are specifically intended as multi-character fluff, so the whole "Yay, we are not alone!" thing may make most sense in that light. Of course, I seem to go that route in unrelated stories as well, so maybe it's just me being me. *shrug*

I lean toward relatively short last lines, whereas my opening lines are all over the map. I also note that not a single one of these stories ends with dialogue, though several of them start that way. (Okay, technically "Short Story Long" ends with dialogue, but the whole story is nothing but dialogue -- it's written entirely in chatlog format -- so that's not really a fair comparison.)

Aside from that, I got nothing.