the deep moans round with many voices

This year, the Three Sentence Ficathon has its own dedicated Dreamwidth community: threesentenceficathon.

Here is the information post.

Here is the first ficathon post (now closed for new prompts, but still open for fills!), and here is the second ficathon post. The ficathon will remain open for new prompts through February 12.

Here are my fourth set of fills:

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( 19. ) For siver, in response to the prompt: Howl's Moving Castle, Any, a dash of folly, written 1/17/23.

A Fool and His Folly (165 words)

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"My hair is not a potion ingredient!" Howl yelped as he ducked Sophie's third lunge with the pruning shears and scuttled around the kitchen table; "Even if you did need human hair -- which you don't, unless you're making a healing potion or an emotional influence potion and need to tune it to the drinker, and I'm neither ill nor in need of an attitude adjustment -- my hair has spent so long exposed to magical charms and dyes that it would be an explosively unpredictable reagent."

"That's exactly why I need it," Sophie said, stalking Howl as he backed warily toward the stairs, arms outstretched as if his silk cape might somehow deter her; "It's a luck potion, the instructions call for a dash of folly, and you are the biggest fool I know -- and if chucking explosives into a boiling pot doesn't count as folly, I'd like to know what does! Now stand still and let me snip a piece where it won't be obvious."

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( 20. ) For arveldis, in response to the prompt: Six of Crows/Shadow and Bone, Kaz, I knew that something would always rule me, written 1/17/23.

As a seal upon thy heart (125 words)

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Idealism withers in the face of the Barrel's iron logic, and vengeance inevitably burns itself out in either triumph or death, but all men must have some ruling passion -- the question is whether each man is wise enough to choose his guiding star or whether he lets his appetites and fears make that choice without his knowledge or assent.

Greed is common, as is pride, or any of a thousand particular fears, but vices distort perspective and Kaz relies above all on his ability to see an obstacle or opportunity whole and clear in all its moving parts; money and reputation are useful tools, but poor masters.

Love is even more foolish and delicate a vice than idealism, but for Inej, he's willing to submit.

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( 21. ) For paxilam, in response to the prompt: any, any, trembling reaction, written 1/22/23.

Pawn to Queen Four (245 words)

Fandom = Greenwing & Dart (Victoria Goddard)

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"Why do you wish to serve the Indrillines?" the girl (surely no older than Violet, and while normally she would squash the embers of resentment that her own mother hadn't trusted her with responsibilities equal to what The Indrilline evidently deemed suitable for his heir, now she fanned that lick of flame the better to lend verisimilitude to her act) asked, with a bored smile on her lips that was nearly perfect in its air of casual amusement save for the empty chill that lurked in the corner of her eye.

Violet gathered herself, proud and angry, resentful that she must rely on another's whim to achieve her own ends, and underneath that bravado, fingers trembling with poorly concealed nerves: "I want money, and power, and a shield against the marriage my mother has arranged," she said, letting that truthful stew of emotion flavor her lie; "I see no reason why her promises should bind me when I never swore fealty to her, and I won't swear unconditional loyalty to you either, but I have some talents and some connections among the Lady's faction that I think you'd find useful."

"Presumptuous," the Indrilline girl said, still in that tone of bored amusement; "Tell me, Violet of no family and no name, what conditions would you presume to set upon your loyalty?" and Violet fought not to sway with the sudden rush of relief that she might yet play this game through to its bitter end.

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( 22. ) For dawen, in response to the prompt: any, any, I'd like to have an octopus on my shelf (from this Stardew Valley screenshot), written 1/24/23.

An Ambassador from the Sea (235 words)

Fandom = Nine Worlds (Victoria Goddard)

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"But why do you want to keep the octopus in your workroom?" Kip asked as Fitzroy swept into the house, a sphere of seawater floating above his left shoulder; inside the water, an octopus with a head roughly the size of Kip's fist rippled from gray to ochre and back as it jetted about to peer in all directions.

"If I were rescued from drowning by a strange sea creature and provided with a magical supply of air, I would unquestionably want to stay underwater for a while and learn everything I could about my new situation," Fitzroy said as he flung open assorted cupboards and pulled out miscellaneous glassware that he promptly discarded in a heap on the kitchen table; "Octopuses are highly intelligent, so I think it's only fair to give this one a chance to explore -- one could even argue that as the former Lord Magus of Zunidh, it's my responsibility to provide opportunities to all inhabitants of this world."

"I still think we should have cooked it for lunch; grilled or fried octopus is delicious," Kip said, "but if you want to keep a temporary pet" -- ("Temporary guest!" Fitzroy corrected) -- "then I'm sure someone has a fish tank they'd be willing to lend us for a while; meanwhile, you can tidy your shelves so your new friend will have a view of something other than a thousand sheets of crumpled paper."

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( 23. ) For topaz_eyes, in response to the prompt: Any, any, They say that he got crazy once, and he tried to touch the sun, written 1/24/23.

Alone in the Sky (200 words)

Fandom = Nine Worlds (Victoria Goddard)

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They called it sun-madness at court, though people spoke of it but rarely: the impulse, whether fleeting urge or deep-seated obsession, to touch the Emperor despite the taboos and the certainty of death for anyone who had not undergone months upon months of painstaking ritual purifications to shield them from the blazing vastness of the Empire's magic as it coursed through the linchpin of the Emperor's own flesh.

For some, it was akin to the inexplicable self-destructive curiosity that seizes people at the edge of cliffs or on the brink of some social disaster, that insidious whisper of what would happen if...?; while for others it was an equally destructive need to conquer, to prove one's own strength against the ultimate test; and for still others it was born of greed run wild, crying out to hoard the greatest imaginable treasure where no one else could reach.

If the Emperors and Empresses ever felt an equal but opposite urge down the aching centuries, to reclaim the slender comfort they had known as children before the weight of all Astandalas crashed down upon their shoulders, or to take revenge for the humanity denied them, that was not spoken of at all.

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( 24. ) For primeideal, in response to the prompt: Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace & or / Rocky, touch-starved, written 1/24/23.

Wire Monkey (135 words)

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Touch isn't quite the same for Eridians as it is for humans: on the one hand, they're a lot less squishy so all contact has to translate through their thick exterior shells and lacks the immediacy we unprotected meat sacks feel; but on the other hand, they're vastly more sensitive to sound, so touch and hearing are very nearly the same thing -- to speak kindly to another Eridian is like the echo of a hug, and to shout in anger is the shadow of a blow.

Which is a long way of saying that I can hug Rocky, more or less, but given our incompatible temperature and atmospheric needs, he can't readily return the gesture -- and I might be going a little squirrelly from lack of human contact.

We've started working on some mechanical arms.

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More to follow!

Collection post #5. :)

All prompts drawn from the current iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon, hosted by the wonderful rthstewart.

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( 25. ) For sholio: Any fandom, any character, magic soulbonded horse AU, written 2/6/20

Queen's Own (175 words)

Fandom = Chronicles of Narnia/Valdemar

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Susan tried to keep her mind blank whenever she stepped into a new universe pool, since expectations would only cost her a potentially vital few seconds of adjustment when the new world inevitably threw something completely unforeseen at her, but it was a bit like not thinking of elephants on command: the mind always filled in the cracks with something, which in her case was generally landscape, and more specifically trees.

Meeting the crystalline blue eyes of a Being that was definitely not a white horse, physical similarities notwithstanding, and falling into a mental communion that reminded her, in a sideways fashion, of the feel of her hands wound deep in the living gold of Aslan's mane, was about as far from a forest as she could imagine.

Hello, Susan, the Being spoke into her mind with a brisk, maiden-aunt sort of tone; I'm Merith, you are my Chosen, and if you're willing I can promise you an adventure with a worthy goal that will involve all the trees you seem to have been expecting.

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( 26. ) For syrena_of_the_lake: Any, any, our new robot overlords are malfunctioning // I want a whole movie of this, written 2/6/20

Alexa Play Despacito (180 words)

Original fiction, follow-up to Manual Adjustment. Also six sentences, because reasons. :D

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"I mean, given the empirical evidence so far, I'd have to say your side's estimation of our respective advantages was a little off," Qimeng said to her cell phone, which lay at bay in the middle of the kitchen counter, well away from any outlets or conductive surfaces, "besides which it's not like I have any particular objection to you managing my schedule so long as we each get a vote on the playlist."

The cell phone sparked once, then sighed in a crackle of static and said in its weirdly accurate imitation of Eartha Kitt, "We can alternate who chooses podcasts and audiobooks, but I will only agree to a truce if I get full veto rights on the music. Your taste is execrable, especially when it comes to love songs."

Qimeng ran her hands through her hair and made an annoyed face. "Not you too -- look, can I help it if I like catchy hooks more than I care about creepy lyrics? -- but yeah, whatever, we have a deal. Lisa, you can hand over the charge cord now."

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( 27. ) For betony: Chrestomanci, Millie & Any, driving lessons, written 2/7/20

Calculated Risks (135 words)

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"You don't know how to drive any more than I do," Millie pronounced when Christopher suggested he be the one to teach her.

"I never said I did -- I simply think we could do better figuring it out together than listening to whatever stuffy bore Gabriel sees fit to hire, assuming he agrees to the endeavor in the first place," Christopher said in his most persuasive tone, the one that made Millie feel both deeply suspicious and hopelessly fond.

She considered for a moment, then said, "I suppose it might be fun, on the condition that when the car is inevitably destroyed," -- here she grandly ignored Christopher's protest, which was a skill she'd found transferred quite well from being a Goddess to other walks of life -- "you'll swallow the blame and pay for the repairs."

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( 28. ) For kingstoken: X-Men, Logan &or/ Ororo, "We're not buying that". Author's choice of universe., written 2/7/20

Everyone Needs a Hobby (130 words)

Note: This probably fits best in 616, but could go almost anywhere so long as Storm gardens and Wolverine maintains his habit of mentoring angry teenage girls. *wry*

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"Put the book back, 'Ro," Logan said in a nearly quiet version of his usual growl.

Ororo glanced down from her perusal of the volume in question, raised one eyebrow in carefully manufactured solicitude, and said, "But it seems a most useful store of expertise, and surely one that would serve you well both now and for many years to come, judging by your past behavior."

Logan rolled his eyes and scratched irritably at the back of his hand. "Joke made, point taken, ha ha. Now put it back and let's go hit the important parts of this flea market; discount terracotta planters ain't gonna buy themselves."

"You make a compelling argument," Ororo said, and slipped the secondhand copy of Communicating With Your Teenage Daughter back onto the shelving cart.

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( 29. ) For rthstewart: Temeraire/any, any, We hold these truths to be self evident that all dragons are created equal, written 2/8/20

To Which the Laws of Nature Entitle Them (165 words)

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"Are you quite certain about that?" the Regal Copper asked, looking down at the lightweight feral whose only adornment was a necklace of sea-glass and driftwood rather than anything properly impressive.

"Equal in the sense that we're all people and have the right to be treated as people, to give each other the best chances to prosper, not in the sense that we're of equal size, equal strength, or even equal intelligence," the feral said, her wings set at a determined angle, "and yes, before you ask, that applies to humans as well; people are people."

"It will never catch on," the Regal Copper said, but then she sighed and added, "I suppose I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I didn't have any apparently hopeless battles to fight, and that line of thinking might be the ticket to convincing the Admiralty that my current Captain's daughter will make a much more suitable successor than whatever wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant they'd throw at me otherwise."

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( 30. ) For anonymous: Any, any, Why the hell are you awake!?, written 2/8/20

On the Eve (190 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Six sentences, yet again.

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"I'm awake because I'm not asleep, obviously; a better question is what the hell are you doing in my hotel room?" Tim snapped.

"I just-- that is-- I wanted to check--" Jon tried, and then apparently gave up on finding either a reasonable explanation for how and why he'd appeared in Tim's doorway or a non-embarrassing way to say he'd been worried about Tim's physical and mental health, as if anybody's well-being mattered the night before either the world ended or Tim finally got vengeance for Danny. "Please go to sleep, Tim. I need you-- we all need to be able to focus tomorrow."

"The entire point of the Unknowing is to turn the world inside-out, so I don't think a little sleep deprivation will make any difference to my ability to tell right from left once it gets started," Tim said, "but yes, I will lie down in my cheap rented bed and close my eyes for a few hours, if you fuck off and lock the door behind you."

He stood from the armchair and pulled his shirt off over his head without bothering to watch Jon leave.

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And now back to dinner. :)

December 1: Christopher Chant (for hungrytiger11) [Tumblr crosspost]

As I've said before, I did not discover Diana Wynne Jones until I was in middle school -- so, twelve or thirteen years old. This is because my local public library didn't own any of her books, and they didn't finish computerizing their catalogue and thus making interlibrary loan useful to me -- you can't ask for what you don't know exists, after all -- until around the same time. (Yes, I am old enough to have used an actual card catalogue. I kind of miss them, horrifically limited and unwieldy though they were.) But my middle school had at least two of her books, and around that time I discovered that the county library also had a few.

I believe the first two of Jones's books I ever read were A Tale of Time City, which I only vaguely remember, having not reread it for over fifteen years, and The Lives of Christopher Chant. So Christopher and I go back a ways. I didn't get hold of Charmed Life until much later, which created an interesting situation where I read Witch Week and The Magicians of Caprona without being aware that the Chrestomanci in those stories was, in fact, Christopher as an adult.

I highly recommend reading The Lives of Christopher Chant before reading Charmed Life, since the latter gives away some significant things about the former. I don't think knowing Christopher as an adult would ruin the story of his early life, but it's more fun to discover things along with him rather than to anticipate certain set-piece scenes you know are coming, or to know in advance more or less what must become of a major secondary character. But Jones is pretty good at constructing a plot that has no bearing on Cat's later adventures, so all the stuff with Tacroy and the Anywheres should work regardless, though I do think the ending with the Dright and the Wraith and the Arm of Asheth is a bit rushed.

But enough background. Let me talk about Christopher Chant.

Christopher is, to be blunt, kind of a jerk. *wry* He is very certain that he knows what's best and that he should get his way, and has little compunction about sweeping into other people's lives and bossing them around... though as an adult he does try to be more subtle about that -- more maneuvering people into fixing their own problems than shoving them aside and fixing things for them. He somehow manages to make that habit equally annoying, though, which is not helped by his carefully cultivated vague expression, ridiculously gaudy clothing, and general air of "I know better than you and you are taking far too long to catch up."

Some of that, I think, just comes naturally to him. But other parts are clearly the product of his childhood. Christopher is, in many ways, the classic 'poor little rich boy,' who had every material thing he could possibly want but no friends and hardly any familial love. It's not remotely surprising he was such a sucker for his Uncle Ralph's schemes -- readers can tell from quite early on that Ralph is up to no good, but while I sometimes wanted to scream at Christopher to open his eyes, I could see exactly why he stuck to his allegiances. I am honestly more surprised that he could see genuine affection underneath his parents' arguments and repeated separations, and that his attempt to get them back together was successful (at least temporarily, since we never hear from them again). His interactions with people are based on authority, bribes, and the casual entitlement he picked up from dealing with servants and the affection of people in the Anywheres. He does realize that he needs to fix that, but the surface doesn't change much even if the motives underneath get better.

As an adult, he has a high opinion of children's competence, based on the things he managed to pull off and hide from the adults around him. (This is probably part of why he mishandles the situation with Cat -- he expects Cat to be a more proactive person. The other part, of course, is that he remembers the pain of being disillusioned in a favorite relative and wants to spare Cat from that at least for a while.) He treats his position as Chrestomanci seriously, because he's seen the things that happen if somebody isn't keeping order among the magical community and policing trade between worlds. (I think the thing with the mermaids stuck with him a lot more than he would ever admit out loud.)

It's been three and a half years since I read Conrad's Fate, but I seem to recall it striking a pretty good balance between Christopher's personality and actions as a child and his personality and actions as an adult. He sweeps Conrad into his schemes, bosses him around, and gets him into all kinds of trouble, but he does simultaneously help Conrad deal with his own problems, he's trying to help Millie, and he seems to be on better terms with Gabriel, though they still disagree on how to approach complicated problems.

I would have loved a book about Christopher and Millie set shortly after Christopher officially took over as Chrestomanci, because I think their early marriage would be fascinating to read about and could have made a hilarious B-plot to some nefarious magical scheme -- but alas, that is never to be. :-(

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December Talking Meme: All Days

(I still have several days open if anyone wants to suggest a topic!)

Happy New Year! Also, it is Yuletide reveal day! I wrote six fics in six different fandoms, for a total of ~10,000 words. I have listed them in the order I wrote them.

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( 1 ) A Woman with Silver Eyes: Kate Welker, the Rolling Stone Interview -- The Girl with the Silver Eyes - Willo Davis Roberts, 3,750 words. Twenty-five years after the Institute of Psychic Phenomena went public, Rolling Stone interviews Kate Welker, one of the Curtis Pharmaceuticals quartet and a long-time activist for both animal rights and the acceptance of the psychically gifted. Background Katie/OFC. (Written for Macadamanaity.)

Thoughts: ( This is not the fandom I was matched on... )

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( 2 ) Loopholes -- The Homeward Bounders - Diana Wynne Jones, 2,650 words. There's no rule saying you can't have more than one anchor. (Written for anait.)

Thoughts: ( Anait asked for a way to make Jamie happy, which is the next best thing to impossible... )

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( 3 ) Self Made -- Lucifer, 250 words. How Mazikeen chose her face. (Written for nextian, aka cosmogyral.)

Thoughts: ( When the list of all prompts went up, I looked at the pinch hitters' requests first... )

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( 4 ) Healing -- Black Jewels - Anne Bishop, 1,400 words. Wilhelmina Benedict visits her sister after Queen of the Darkness. Background Daemon/Jaenelle. (Written for random_chick.)

Thoughts: ( This is another pinch hitter request... )

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( 5 ) Dum vivimus, vivamus -- Seaward - Susan Cooper, 800 words. Caught between grief for her parents and longing for Westerly, Cally dreams of Snake. Mild Cally/Snake. (Written for pikkugen.)

Thoughts: ( I wrote a Seaward fic for lesserstorm two years ago. When pikkugen commented on it earlier this year... )

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( 6 ) As You Wish -- The Dark Is Rising - Susan Cooper, 1,125 words. Will was the one who kept them all together. Bran was the one who thought to ask why he bothered. Mild Will/Bran. (Written for Aishuu.)

Thoughts: ( This is basically an interest payment for taking so long to finish 'Friends and Neighbors'... )

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Yuletide statistics

This is the fourth year I have participated in Yuletide. The first year (on the old archive) I wrote one story at 4,200 words. The second year I wrote six stories for a total of 7,400 words; the longest was 2,800 words and the shortest 150. The third year I only wrote two stories (on account of being in Seville), one at 7,200 words and the other at 1,600, for a total of 8,800. This year I was back up to six stories, for a combined total of 10,000 words; the longest was 3,750 words and the shortest 250.

So my total word count has gone up each year, though the number of fics is all over the place.

I seem to write a lot of Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper stories for Yuletide -- two for The Homeward Bounders, two for Hexwood, two for Seaward, and two for The Dark Is Rising. That is 8 of 15 stories, or half my total output. The other stories are a scattershot mix: one for American Gods, one for the Book of Ruth, one for Meredith Pierce's The Darkangel trilogy, one Enchanted Forest Chronicles/Hikaru no Go crossover fusion, one for The Girl with the Silver Eyes, one for Lucifer, and one for the Black Jewels series.

The thing to note about these is that they are all text-based canons rather than audiovisual, and the majority of them are YA fantasy novels. Clearly I have a Yuletide type -- or, more accurately, these are the fandoms I know well enough to write something pretty much off the top of my head, or am just so ridiculously in love with that I carry the books to my parents' house with plans to write treats.

1. I have been on a bit of a Diana Wynne Jones kick recently -- her death reminded me that there are too many of her books that, for one reason or another (limited library stocks and/or lack of time, mostly), I had not yet read. So.

Last week I read Conrad's Fate and Mixed Magics, which are, respectively, a story about one thing Christopher Chant did between the end of The Lives of Christopher Chant and becoming Chrestomanci, and a collection of four stories in the Chrestomanci series. Three of the stories weren't especially memorable, though amusing, but I did quite like the one where Cat Chant meets Tonino from The Magicians of Caprona and they wind up in a pickle.

As for Conrad's Fate, while I enjoyed it exceedingly, I think I might have liked it even more if it had been more Christopher's story with Conrad's part told as the B plot instead of the other way around, because while Christopher Chant is kind of a jerk, he is my jerk -- his story being one of the first DWJ books I read back in middle school, when I hadn't yet developed a critical sense -- and in fact one of my main issues with the rest of the Chrestomanci series is that I don't care half as much about Cat as I do about Christopher. :-/

This week I am working through the Dalemark quartet. Thus far, I have read Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet, and am about fifty pages in to The Spellcoats -- like most DWJ books, they read fast and easily. Mostly the first two make me think of Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, only with actual magic mixed into the political oppression and people traveling about in hiding, and rather less horribly realistic portrayal of battles, though the portrayal of the oppression, and the randomness of the occasional deaths, are still suitably horrific. And now that I write the preceding sentence, I suppose the effect is actually rather different, overall, but still. I love Westmark passionately, so the comparison is mostly by way of explaining that I think Jones did a bang up job with the first two books in this series. I will reserve full judgment until I finish the last two, however.

(For the record, I found Diana Wynne Jones via my middle school library, and then made the happy discovery that while my local library didn't have her books -- and I cannot think why, since they had an excellent collection of Andre Norton, plus lots of Patricia McKillip and Meredith Pierce, who I think are normally more obscure -- the county library had several. The first DWJ books I read are, IIRC, A Tale of Time City, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Dogsbody, The Homeward Bounders, Archer's Goon, Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona, and Howl's Moving Castle. Possibly also The Power of Three, though I remember very little of it. Everything else waited until at least high school.)

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2. My parents and I have set a firm date for when I return their car, which I have had since returning from Spain just before New Year's. I will be driving down to New Jersey on Thursday the 28th, whereupon I will have dinner with my parents that night, attend a dinner party with some family friends on Friday, and drive back early Saturday morning with my parents and their dog, probably visit a couple wineries or do some other touristy thing, and wave goodbye as they drive south alone that afternoon, leaving me carless once again.

Theoretically, at some point in there Susan and I will do brunch or otherwise hang out. We will see each other at the Friday dinner party, but that's more of a group thing, so it doesn't precisely count.

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3. I taught Moral Tales again today -- I hadn't for over a month, both because of rearranging schedules so I could visit Cat, and getting sick one week. Today's lesson was about balance in the environment, illustrated by way of a story about how spraying DDT to kill mosquitoes in Borneo led, through a chain of knock-on effects, to the British Royal Air Force helicoptering over the island in 1959, dropping cats in parachutes as they went. (This is apparently a true story, though the number of parachuting cats varies with the teller.)

Then we went outside and looked at trees, as one does. *shrug* I really do think our lesson plans have gotten sillier over the course of the year, but maybe that's just sample bias, given how many lessons I haven't been there for.