Aka, my continuing adventures in finger exercises. (Also this year I seem to be leaning heavily into drabbles. I mean, if you're already applying one stringent structural restriction, why not go for two? Challenge is good for the soul!)
As always, here is the link to the current ficathon, if you want to come play too. :)
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( 13. ) For anonymous: any, any, roadtrip, written 12/14/18 [AO3 version]
Bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky (150 words)
"The difference between America and Europe is that in America, a hundred years is a long time, and in Europe, a hundred miles is a long way," the graduate student sent to pick up Father, Mother, and Susan said with a cheerful smile; "So brace yourselves -- New York to Chicago is a long way even for us, though at least you're not aiming for California."
Now, two and a half long days later and still not quite at their destination, Susan stares out the automobile windows at the blue-gray vastness of Lake Michigan, as endless as Indiana and Ohio's rolling fields of maize and alfalfa or the weary, forested mountains of Pennsylvania, and knows with quiet exultation that this world is so much larger than she'd dared to dream -- and so, in consequence, is she.
England was an egg, Narnia a nest, but she is fledged and ready to fly.
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( 14. ) For![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sawthefaeriequeen: The Hero and the Crown, Tor/Aerin/Luthe, court gossip, written 12/19/18 [AO3 version]
There's a lake I know (200 words exactly)
"The most ridiculous part is that it doesn't even matter, dynastically speaking, who the children's father is," Tor said as he tossed a pebble into the Lake of Dreams and watched the ripples spread across its deceptively inviting surface; "Aerin has always had a better claim on the throne than I do."
"Yes, but people do prefer a world where they can fold concepts into neatly organized mental cabinets, rather like folding freshly laundered linens," Luthe said without raising his head from Aerin's lap, "and 'The king rules by right of inheritance,' is tidier than 'The king rules because the queen was unofficially disinherited and then vanished to fight a sorcerer,' to say nothing of 'The king and queen have rejoined the royal bloodlines,' being tidier than 'The king and queen have made the vaguely ominous wizard of the mountains into their mutual lover and thereby potentially diluted the bloodline.'"
Aerin snorted inelegantly; "If being ominous were a race, you wouldn't even be at the starting line, and in any case I don't see why I should worry about fitting neatly into people's preconceptions now," she said, and held out her hand to draw Tor back down to her side.
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( 15. ) For anonymous: Any fandom, any character, cold blooded, written 12/19/18 [AO3 version]
Taxonomy (100 words exactly)
"Technically speaking, dragons are cold-blooded," Kazul said. "We just happen to also breathe fire, and that internal source of heat means we can carry on regardless of the ambient temperature; hibernation is for the lower orders of reptile."
"I see," Cimorene said, and decided it was best not to ask where basking on sunny rocks came into the divide between the higher and lower orders of reptile, unless she wanted a lecture on her own similarities to the lower orders of mammal, such as, for example, the unsanitary family of mice she'd only just managed to evict from her kitchen.
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( 16. ) Forsyrena_of_the_lake: Star Wars, C-3PO, why exactly was he programmed not to impersonate a deity?, written 12/19/18 [AO3 version]
Protocol (175 words)
"I know you only claimed to be an incarnation of that customer's god to save me from a beating, but Threepio, you should never impersonate an aspect of the divine," Mistress Shmi says as she re-solders the snapped wires in Threepio's shoulder. He makes a noise of confusion, and her face softens; "It's disrespectful," she explains, "both to the divinity whose place you usurp, and to the people whose right to make their own choices you steal by assuming a false position of power; you make yourself their master and them your slaves, which no person should ever do to another."
"I see," Threepio says, because even if he doesn't quite understand Mistress Shmi's reasoning (just as he doesn't understand her aversion to proper forms of address), he can tell this is important to her, and so that night instead of shutting down for recharge, he takes an hour to carefully add a line to his central programming and restart until it's locked in almost as deep as the core around which the Maker built him.
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( 17. ) Forsholio: Any fandom, any characters, dry heat, written 12/20/18 [AO3 version]
Adverse Working Conditions (100 words exactly)
"But you grew up in a desert -- aren't you used to the heat?" Kanaya's fellow trainees ask every time she complains about the oppressive internal climate of the brooding caverns. She does have to admit that the system is ingeniously designed, a combination of a natural geothermal upwelling that, as a side-effect, supplies several luxurious hot springs, augmented with some judicious plumbing and vents to improve both air and water circulation, but the point remains that eggs and grubs require water and while she's used to extreme heat, a desert is by definition dry.
Besides, humidity is terrible for fashion.
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( 18. ) Forsholio: Any fandom, any characters, mood lighting, written 12/20/18 [AO3 version]
Mutually Assured Destruction (400 words exactly)
As you can see, this one got away from me a little. *wry*
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"So, cards on the table, anything said here will never leave this room, blah blah whatever," Terezi said as she dropped carelessly into a chair opposite Rose in the meteor lab's library. "What bullshit side effect did you get as the booby prize in the Seer package?"
Rose eyed her counterpart warily, then figured she might as well share; after all, if a fellow Seer (and occasional Dave-wrangler) couldn't understand, who in the multiverse possibly could? "Mood lighting," she said. "Appropriate to whatever sort of drama or nonsense is about to occur, occasionally with individual spotlights to pick out specific people's intentions or states of mind. It's annoying, distracting, and has caused Kanaya to assume I have some idiosyncratic form of color-blindness. You?"
"Text boxes," Terezi said, folding her arms on the table and propping her chin on her crossed wrists. "Did I ask to get constant peeks at people's shitty internal monologues, complete with non-sequiturs, tortured rationalizations, and a slew of intrusive thoughts I could have gone my entire life without knowing? No I did not. Did I get them anyway? Yes I did. They don't even have the decency to smell appetizing; the backgrounds are a particularly stale shade of yellow."
Rose raised her eyebrows. "Do I want to know what my text box says at the moment?"
Terezi countered with another question: "How masochistic are you feeling?"
"I see. Then I won't mention your lighting effects, either," Rose said. "On an almost but not entirely unrelated note, have you Seen anything useful about our arrival in the scratched session lately?"
Terezi dropped her face into the gap between her arms. "Ugh. No. You?"
"Alas, no."
Terezi made an indecipherable noise of frustration and the ambient purple light over her shoulders shifted further toward gray, darkening and desaturating in a mix of anger and depression. Then she lifted her head and grinned like she didn't have a care in the world. "Great conversation, very productive!" she said. "If you tell anyone--"
"You'll hang me? But why? We haven't spoken in days," Rose said.
Terezi's grin didn't change, but her lighting shifted a few points back toward full saturation. "I knew there was a reason I like you. Also, ask Kanaya on a date already. There is only so much mutual pining I can stand to read."
She swept out of the library before Rose could muster a reply.
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And now on to other internet housekeeping tasks that I've let slide for... uh... let's just say "a while" and leave it at that, shall we? *sigh*
As always, here is the link to the current ficathon, if you want to come play too. :)
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
( 13. ) For anonymous: any, any, roadtrip, written 12/14/18 [AO3 version]
Bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky (150 words)
"The difference between America and Europe is that in America, a hundred years is a long time, and in Europe, a hundred miles is a long way," the graduate student sent to pick up Father, Mother, and Susan said with a cheerful smile; "So brace yourselves -- New York to Chicago is a long way even for us, though at least you're not aiming for California."
Now, two and a half long days later and still not quite at their destination, Susan stares out the automobile windows at the blue-gray vastness of Lake Michigan, as endless as Indiana and Ohio's rolling fields of maize and alfalfa or the weary, forested mountains of Pennsylvania, and knows with quiet exultation that this world is so much larger than she'd dared to dream -- and so, in consequence, is she.
England was an egg, Narnia a nest, but she is fledged and ready to fly.
---------------
---------------
( 14. ) For
sawthefaeriequeen: The Hero and the Crown, Tor/Aerin/Luthe, court gossip, written 12/19/18 [AO3 version]There's a lake I know (200 words exactly)
"The most ridiculous part is that it doesn't even matter, dynastically speaking, who the children's father is," Tor said as he tossed a pebble into the Lake of Dreams and watched the ripples spread across its deceptively inviting surface; "Aerin has always had a better claim on the throne than I do."
"Yes, but people do prefer a world where they can fold concepts into neatly organized mental cabinets, rather like folding freshly laundered linens," Luthe said without raising his head from Aerin's lap, "and 'The king rules by right of inheritance,' is tidier than 'The king rules because the queen was unofficially disinherited and then vanished to fight a sorcerer,' to say nothing of 'The king and queen have rejoined the royal bloodlines,' being tidier than 'The king and queen have made the vaguely ominous wizard of the mountains into their mutual lover and thereby potentially diluted the bloodline.'"
Aerin snorted inelegantly; "If being ominous were a race, you wouldn't even be at the starting line, and in any case I don't see why I should worry about fitting neatly into people's preconceptions now," she said, and held out her hand to draw Tor back down to her side.
---------------
---------------
( 15. ) For anonymous: Any fandom, any character, cold blooded, written 12/19/18 [AO3 version]
Taxonomy (100 words exactly)
"Technically speaking, dragons are cold-blooded," Kazul said. "We just happen to also breathe fire, and that internal source of heat means we can carry on regardless of the ambient temperature; hibernation is for the lower orders of reptile."
"I see," Cimorene said, and decided it was best not to ask where basking on sunny rocks came into the divide between the higher and lower orders of reptile, unless she wanted a lecture on her own similarities to the lower orders of mammal, such as, for example, the unsanitary family of mice she'd only just managed to evict from her kitchen.
---------------
---------------
( 16. ) For
syrena_of_the_lake: Star Wars, C-3PO, why exactly was he programmed not to impersonate a deity?, written 12/19/18 [AO3 version]Protocol (175 words)
"I know you only claimed to be an incarnation of that customer's god to save me from a beating, but Threepio, you should never impersonate an aspect of the divine," Mistress Shmi says as she re-solders the snapped wires in Threepio's shoulder. He makes a noise of confusion, and her face softens; "It's disrespectful," she explains, "both to the divinity whose place you usurp, and to the people whose right to make their own choices you steal by assuming a false position of power; you make yourself their master and them your slaves, which no person should ever do to another."
"I see," Threepio says, because even if he doesn't quite understand Mistress Shmi's reasoning (just as he doesn't understand her aversion to proper forms of address), he can tell this is important to her, and so that night instead of shutting down for recharge, he takes an hour to carefully add a line to his central programming and restart until it's locked in almost as deep as the core around which the Maker built him.
---------------
---------------
( 17. ) For
sholio: Any fandom, any characters, dry heat, written 12/20/18 [AO3 version]Adverse Working Conditions (100 words exactly)
"But you grew up in a desert -- aren't you used to the heat?" Kanaya's fellow trainees ask every time she complains about the oppressive internal climate of the brooding caverns. She does have to admit that the system is ingeniously designed, a combination of a natural geothermal upwelling that, as a side-effect, supplies several luxurious hot springs, augmented with some judicious plumbing and vents to improve both air and water circulation, but the point remains that eggs and grubs require water and while she's used to extreme heat, a desert is by definition dry.
Besides, humidity is terrible for fashion.
---------------
---------------
( 18. ) For
sholio: Any fandom, any characters, mood lighting, written 12/20/18 [AO3 version]Mutually Assured Destruction (400 words exactly)
As you can see, this one got away from me a little. *wry*
-----
"So, cards on the table, anything said here will never leave this room, blah blah whatever," Terezi said as she dropped carelessly into a chair opposite Rose in the meteor lab's library. "What bullshit side effect did you get as the booby prize in the Seer package?"
Rose eyed her counterpart warily, then figured she might as well share; after all, if a fellow Seer (and occasional Dave-wrangler) couldn't understand, who in the multiverse possibly could? "Mood lighting," she said. "Appropriate to whatever sort of drama or nonsense is about to occur, occasionally with individual spotlights to pick out specific people's intentions or states of mind. It's annoying, distracting, and has caused Kanaya to assume I have some idiosyncratic form of color-blindness. You?"
"Text boxes," Terezi said, folding her arms on the table and propping her chin on her crossed wrists. "Did I ask to get constant peeks at people's shitty internal monologues, complete with non-sequiturs, tortured rationalizations, and a slew of intrusive thoughts I could have gone my entire life without knowing? No I did not. Did I get them anyway? Yes I did. They don't even have the decency to smell appetizing; the backgrounds are a particularly stale shade of yellow."
Rose raised her eyebrows. "Do I want to know what my text box says at the moment?"
Terezi countered with another question: "How masochistic are you feeling?"
"I see. Then I won't mention your lighting effects, either," Rose said. "On an almost but not entirely unrelated note, have you Seen anything useful about our arrival in the scratched session lately?"
Terezi dropped her face into the gap between her arms. "Ugh. No. You?"
"Alas, no."
Terezi made an indecipherable noise of frustration and the ambient purple light over her shoulders shifted further toward gray, darkening and desaturating in a mix of anger and depression. Then she lifted her head and grinned like she didn't have a care in the world. "Great conversation, very productive!" she said. "If you tell anyone--"
"You'll hang me? But why? We haven't spoken in days," Rose said.
Terezi's grin didn't change, but her lighting shifted a few points back toward full saturation. "I knew there was a reason I like you. Also, ask Kanaya on a date already. There is only so much mutual pining I can stand to read."
She swept out of the library before Rose could muster a reply.
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And now on to other internet housekeeping tasks that I've let slide for... uh... let's just say "a while" and leave it at that, shall we? *sigh*
