As always,
here is the link to the current ficathon. It's mostly wound down, but there are still a lot of prompts and fills to look through. :)
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( 19. ) For anonymous:
Any, any, the sun and solitude, written 12/30/17 (prompt choice courtesy of
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longroadstonowhere) [
AO3 version]
though it be silent as light (250 words)
During daylight, it's easy to imagine herself the only living person on the planet; the sun bakes down mercilessly over desert and oasis alike, with only the wind and passing zombies to stir the sand, and when Kanaya ventures into the more populated foothills, the little lawnrings behind their defensive walls feel as dusty and abandoned as the ruins Aradia loves to explore.
She's fairly sure her neighbors consider her something of a cryptid, a wandering spirit who filches food, gasoline, and textiles from the drone supply depot and pays by weeding gardens, repairing torn awnings and windmill sails, and mowing down occasional zombie migrations before they damage the leaky, higgledy-piggledy fortifications that are the inevitable result of centuries of wigglers building on each others' amateur schemes.
Some days the loneliness feels as vast as the desert itself, tall as the Scarshred Mountains on the horizon, and Kanaya thinks of forcing herself to learn how to ignore the sunrise, to wake at dusk and greet her neighbors troll to troll... but then she takes her husktop into her garden to watch sunlight illumine all the brilliant colors of her flags, her flowers, her friends' greetings in the Trollian message window, and she decides again that she has the best of both worlds: sun and solitude, without the social obligations that would come if anyone knew her blood color and her lusus, and true friends, half the globe away, whom she would not lose for all the neighbors in the world.
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( 20. ) For anonymous:
Any, any, net of moonbeams, written 12/30/17 (prompt choice courtesy of
lucime)
The Wizard's Fate (375 words)
Note: This is set in the world of the witches of Immish, which I use for original fairy-tales now and then. I may expand it into a longer story someday. :)-----
In the days when the dragons rebuilt the Glass Mountain, a wizard of Almeric studied the tales of past magicians who had challenged the witches of Immish to magical duels and came to believe the witches had no true magic of their own; and so he sailed to Tolk and challenged the witch of that time not to a duel, but to do one thing that required power rather than common sense, even something as small as lighting a fire with a glance or a word rather than a borrowed coal.
The witch, a young mother named Rive, met him on the dock as his retinue made fast the ropes and told him three times to return to his home, for what did it matter to him how she got results so long as her people were sensible and satisfied and the wizards who came to them in anger and pride were turned away in peace; but he refused and said she brought shame to all magicians by making the world think that all their hard-earned skills were worth less than trickery and misdirection: "Light a fire," he repeated, "or I will brand you a liar to all the world."
The witch sighed; "If you want light, so be it," she said, and reaching up she plucked a beam of moonlight from the evening air, wove it between her fingers like a net, and scooped the evening star's reflection from the suddenly glasslike water beside the dock; then she dropped the tangle of light into the wizard's hands, and said, "Most people make do with a lantern to mark their boats in the night and help them thread the shallows and shoals around the harbor; but I see your ship has none, so you may keep this bauble to guide your way home."
And so it did, burning clear and white as the dazzle of sun on the waves until the wizard returned to his tower intending to unravel the spell and see how it was made, but the moment he opened his door and stepped across the threshold, the light unraveled into ash and air, taking with it all his power and his jealously guarded knowledge, and leaving instead the faint and lingering smell of the sea.
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( 21. ) For
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lizzie_marie_23:
any, any, I took her to a supermarket, I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere, so it started there, written 1/4/18 (prompt choice courtesy of
ceescedasticity)
Risk Analysis (150 words)
Note: This is part of Utilitarian Virtue, an original novella idea I poke at occasionally.-----
Laura took the assassin to the supermarket.
It wasn't her best decision ever, but she figured she was allowed a few bad decisions since she'd just almost been killed by a world-hopping magical cyborg assassin whose AI boss thought Laura was somehow a danger to the multiverse; she needed terrible salty corn chips to cope with that kind of stress, and besides, making Aujae follow Laura on everyday errands and deal with people in a social context for which she likely had no exact reference was a good way to gauge how stable she was after renouncing her life's purpose and making an enemy of her implausibly powerful AI boss for reasons Laura still wasn't clear on -- not that Laura would abandon Aujae if the assassin proved unstable, but she'd definitely rent a motel room instead of inviting her into her home.
After a moment's consideration, Laura grabbed two bags of Fritos; Aujae might need comfort-food too.
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( 22. ) For anonymous:
Any, any, cathedral grove, written 1/5/18 (prompt choice courtesy of
asukaskerian) [
AO3 version]
thus do we covenant (275 words)
"What shall we do about church, when we haven't got a preacher or a chapel?" Helen asked as she and Frank lay watching the stars on the evening of the second day, and then added, "And what day
is this, anyhow -- do we count from when we left England or do we start over fresh, and in any case should yesterday be Monday because it was the first day, or Sunday because it's when Aslan finished his work?"
Frank felt the soft grass pressing up against the palm of his right hand, listened to the rustle of wind through the tender new leaves of the sycamore tree behind them, breathed in the sweet, fresh scent of flowers and earth after a brief rain; this was the heart of Aslan's creation, the newborn, beating heart of the world, not old words read aloud in dusty rooms -- and yet there was good in the old, English ways, and his mum hadn't raised him to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
"We can sing," he said rubbing his left thumb slow and gentle over the pulse point in Helen's wrist, still marveling that she was here with him on this impossible adventure; "We can get together by the Tree, or perhaps in a grove of trees -- I heard once that cathedrals were built to look like trees reaching up to heaven, so actual trees must be even better in God's eyes, aye? -- and we sing hymns, we give thanks, and we remind ourselves that Aslan woke this world out of love and it's our task to shape it to that plan... and we'll call the first day Sunday."
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( 23. ) For anonymous:
Any, any, a circle of cards, written 1/6/18 (prompt choice courtesy of
writeshivaniwrite) [
AO3 version]
church and state (125 words)
"Rose, why are you building Stonehenge out of playing cards?"
"I should think that was obvious, brother dearest: I'm providing Can Town with a focus for the citizens' religious needs -- someone must think about their psychological well-being, after all, to say nothing of the practical insurance factor of having a ready-made method of communicating with the denizens of the Furthest Ring to discern their awful and incomprehensible will."
"...Okay, quick heads-up, just FYI I'm pretty fuckin' sure the Mayor's stance on horrorterrors isn't any friendlier than his stance on monarchy, but cool, whatever, you two can hash out the legality of Cardhenge on your own dime -- and on that note, he's walking over and he looks as pissed as an insect chess piece can get; better talk fast."
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( 24. ) For
ama_ranth_827:
Any, Any, I don't regret it. Not a single second, not a single breath, written 1/6/18 (prompt choice courtesy of
yggidee) [
AO3 version]
waiting for the dragon (150 words)
"So this is how we die: alone, unremembered, fighting a fish-alien over the foreordained destruction of our world," Rose says as she folds herself down beside Dave on the abandoned building's roof; enough dirt has collected in its crevices by now that small, scraggly plants are reaching slowly skyward despite the ever-growing mélange of pollutants in the rain and wind -- life desperately, foolishly scrabbling for more time in the face of entropy triumphant. "Do you ever regret the choices that led us here, or wish for a cosmic rewind button to wipe the slate clean and start anew?" she asks, and does not add,
"without me, so you might reach old age.""No," Dave says, and for once does not elaborate; instead, he weaves his fingers through her own in silence, and together they watch the sun light the poisoned clouds on fire, waiting for their final, futile stand.
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( 25. ) For anonymous:
Any, any, blue roses, written 1/6/18 (prompt choice courtesy of
shinyrock6498; also a fill for the
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genprompt_bingo square
second person narration) [
AO3 version]
feeling blue (150 words)
"I think you're overlooking that on Earth we assign Zodiac symbols by month; by the rules of that system Dave, Jade, and I are all Sagittarius while John is Aries, so I might just as well be a blueblood by birthdate as a seadweller by Pesterchum hexcode," you say with as straight a face as you can manage (or at least as expressionless a face, since clearly nothing about you is particularly straight these days), and watch with carefully hidden glee as Kanaya tries to connect you to Equius and fails with a grimace.
"I suppose the traditional sense of self-importance and social superiority might suit..." she begins, only to trail off doubtfully.
"Did I ever tell you that my mother gifted me with a hoofbeast shortly before we began playing the game?" you add in a solicitous tone, and as Kanaya goes cross-eyed at the cognitive dissonance, you throw back your head and laugh.
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I may or may not try to get my output up to an even thirty ficlets for this round. We'll see how I feel in a few hours. *wry*
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