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.

Anyway, here's my third set of fills:

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( 13. ) For sincereously, in response to the prompt: Any, any, disguises, written 1/14/23

Incognito (95 words)

Fandom = The Enchanted Forest Chronicles

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"One of the vanishingly few upsides of spending seventeen years locked away in a pocket dimension," Mendanbar said as he led Cimorene down the second-left cellar stairs toward the dairy room and its delivery door, "is that I hardly need to bother with disguises anymore. Either people have completely forgotten what I look like, or they still expect to see a handsome young idiot rather than a tired, middle-aged man with graying hair and wrinkles."

He grinned at Cimorene and added, "Getting people to overlook you, on the other hand, takes a lot more work."

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( 14. ) For anonymous, in response to the prompt: Any, any, goddess of the emerald lake, written 1/14/23

Trohpic State (125 words)

Fandom = original

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Her lake was blue, once -- first the clear, cold, pure blue of a mountain sky reflected off granite bedrock, with no plants or animals to interrupt the light's path. Then it was the softer blue of living waters, as lichens and mosses leached nutrients from her shores; weeds and algae bloomed in the shallows; insects came to skim the surface; and fish, amphibians, and birds came to eat the insects, the weeds, and each other.

Now her lake is green, swampy with the explosive growth caused by nitrogen and phosphorous runoff and warming climes, and she fears the day that decaying algal mats will consume all the oxygen and leave her waters dark and dead: goddess of the onyx lake, where hopes come to drown.

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( 15. ) For kalira, in response to the prompt: any, any, snowstorms and cosy sweaters, written 1/14/23

Preserve me from a winter wonderland (200 words)

Fandom = Homestuck

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"I can see the appeal on an intellectual level," Jade said halfway through the afternoon, from her position wedged into a corner of Rose's couch; shrouded in an afghan; bundled in an oversized sweater, legwarmers, flannel-lined slippers, and a wool hat with a bobble; and clutching a mug of hot cocoa in her hands (themselves protected by fingerless gloves), "but after gathering experimental data, I've concluded that winter is NOT my thing."

"You went out gathering frogs in the ice on LOFAF in a sleeveless evening gown," Dave protested (somewhat hypocritically, Jade thought, given his own sweater and hat, though he'd forgone gloves and legwarmers); "What makes this different from that?"

"Physics isn't real in the Medium -- none of those planets should have had normal gravity, the light sources don't make any sense, and let's not even get into how my shrinking powers worked -- so obviously the temperatures were all fake too," Jade said as she idly kicked her well-padded foot into Dave's shin; "Real ice and snow are terrible, and the minute we're organized enough to start a second town, you and me are moving to the equator where we don't need any of these workarounds to be warm."

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( 16. ) For snacky, in response to the prompt: Narnia, Lucy, set my teeth in the silver of the moon, written 1/15/23

Set my teeth in the silver of the moon (180 words)

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"If Trees eat earth, what do they drink?" Lucy wondered as she sat beside Mr. Tumnus on the outskirts of the spring planting festival -- closer to the fires, the dancing had grown quite wild (Susan's hair whirled around her like a banner, and she caught a glimpse of Peter throwing an oread into the air), while under the boughs of the trees that had not chosen to edge toward human form and partake in the celebrations, assorted groups of revelers were laughing as they dashed away for more private merry-making.

"Water and light," Mr. Tumnus answered, "though sometimes during the revels they sample Lord Bacchus's wine -- I'm told he can conjure a special vintage for them, fermented from moonbeams alone with no need of vines or grapes to convert that light to substance."

Lucy tipped her head back to gaze at the moon, its waxing circle edging near to full, and imagined how the silver of its light would taste between her teeth, sweet and crisp and sharp, and how its juice might roll cool and brilliant down her throat.

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( 17. ) For anonymous, in response to the prompt: Any, any, nutmeg and cinnamon, written 1/15/23

Spice of Life (125 words)

Fandom = Chronicles of Narnia

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In England, Mother rationed spices because of the war, served breakfasts and dinners plain and tasteless but for the ever-present seasoning of fear and smoke, but nearly everything was rationed -- the best and bulk of all goods and food diverted toward the army, the navy, and the RAF -- so Susan hadn't realized that not all scarcities stemmed from the same causes.

England has cattle, salt, and coal, but nutmeg and cinnamon, sugar and oil? Those come from overseas, the luxuries of empire and trade, and here in Narnia whose climate feels like home, she once again finds spices dear as gold, and some days she might almost swear the heaping plates and brimful bowls upon her table retain the taste of London's ash and smog.

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( 18. ) For intrikate88, in response to the prompt: The Adventure Zone: Balance, Lup/Lucretia, laughing with my feet in your lap / like you were my closest friend, written 1/15/23.

Roads Not Taken (270 words)

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"We're basically best friends by this point, right, so why have we never made out?" Lup asks halfway through the twenty-second year as she and Lucretia chill side by side on the deck of a cruise ship -- she and Barry and Taako are about 98% certain the Light of Creation crashed somewhere in the incredibly scenic tropical archipelago and coral reef system that this particular cruise is designed to showcase (nearly as gorgeous as Lucretia, tbqh) and it turns out that buying tickets with legit cash and playing tourist is a lot easier than wrangling permission to bring a spaceship into a restricted environmental protection zone, who knew? -- and then hastily sits up from her artistic slouch to pound Lucretia between the shoulder blades when the human begins to choke on a mouthful of her piña colada equivalent.

"Hey, hey, Lucretia, breathe with me -- in two three; hold two three; out two three; hold two three..." and Lup keeps that count, rock steady, until Lucretia's face is less ashy and she's gathered enough composure to blot her streaming eyes with a tiny bar napkin; and she keeps her arm slung around Lucretia's waist until her crewmate shrugs her off and straightens to set the remains of her drink aside.

"Wow, I do not have good timing with jokes some days," Lup says when the silence has just started to tip over the line from comfortable to awkward (fuckdammit), "but c'mon, stick your feet in my lap and I'll give you a complementary massage to make up for almost winning you this year's most ridiculous death competition by accident."

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More to follow!

Batch the first, 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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( 1. ) For kalira: any, any, tea makes everything better, written 1/15/22

Relevant Applications (100 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives

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"Tea most certainly does not make everything better," Jon snapped, "which is trivially easy to demonstrate: consider a stack of papers or an electronic device; under what circumstances would they be improved by the application of tea?"

"Oh that is hard, let me think -- no, wait, a toddler could solve it!" Melanie sniped back; "The relevant circumstance is when the statements and tape recorders are evil, just like the ones we handle every day but you won't let me destroy."

In the break room doorway, Martin paused, sighed, and turned around to gather more supplies; some situations also required biscuits.

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( 2. ) For anonymous: Any, any, children's hospitals and colour theory, written 1/15/22

Civic Responsibility (220 words)

Fandom = Addams Family. Nine sentences, oops! (Contains references to Covid-19)

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"Red is an ideal color for a children's hospital," Morticia remarked approvingly as she scrolled through the selection of gory and horror-themed memes that Pugsley had thoughtfully emailed to her. "Vibrant, eye-catching, and the way this design resembles a trail of spilt blood is a wonderful reminder that life is a constant, glorious battle. What better way to rouse a passion for renewed health?"

"A passion for renewed health is a little abstract for most people, but children haven't yet had their natural morbidity squashed into saccharine conformism and love to see their parents wrong-footed by reminders that life is inherently bloody and precarious," Wednesday said, her voice slightly flattened by the Zoom interface.

"All the better, then!" Morticia said. "There's never enough healthy morbidity in the world -- even now, surrounded by plague on a worldwide scale, the majority remain obstinately oblivious rather than taking the opportunity to indulge in a cathartic, years-long gothic swoon."

She tapped one glossy, ebon nail against her lips, considering. "Perhaps I should talk to your father about endowing some renovations or new services at the local hospital, on condition that we get full control over the interior design elements. I hear the staff are dreadfully overworked these days, and I'm sure they could use some support, to say nothing of a rousing color scheme."

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( 3. ) For syrena_of_the_lake: Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Cimorene, adventures in organizing a dragon's hoard, written 1/15/22

Delegation (210 words)

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The trouble with the King's Hoard (the Capital Letters were not only implied but pronounced) was, firstly, that it had been gathered over centuries and consequently had more time than any individual hoard for items to accumulate and to spoil (or have their spells start to fray, whichever was more applicable), and secondly, that it had been gathered and partially reorganized by multiple dragons during those centuries, which meant there was neither rhyme nor reason to be found.

Kazul's hoarding tended toward fancy weapons and rare magical items, but apparently other dragons were more interested in intricately woven carpets, or jewelry (Cimorene was unsure if the big gaudy items and the small delicate items came from two dragons or one with wide-ranging tastes), or silk paintings from Cathay, or fragmenting papyrus scrolls, or inconveniently large sculptures, or any number of mismatched themes -- many of which required special conservation skills that Cimorene did not have.

"We're hiring a director and turning the Hoard into a museum," she announced to Kazul at breakfast; "We'll pay the salary out of ticket sales, and trust me, once we publicize a list of what's in here, every scholar in the world will pay an arm and a leg for a chance to respectfully poke around."

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( 4. ) For rthstewart: Any, any, "no plan survives contact with the enemy", written 1/15/22

Cost-Benefit Analysis (50 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives

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"Of course we didn't plan everything," Annabelle said with a friendly smile. "Even the Mother can't control every variable, particularly when the other Dread Powers are in play; the effort would be far too costly and almost certainly doomed to failure."

"We prefer to focus on finding the right enemies."

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( 5. ) For elementalraven: Narnia/Journey to the center of the earth, any, Bism runs deeper and deeper still, written 1/15/22

Ouroboros (110 words)

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In another life, Rilian travels down: down from the Sunless Lands that were his prison for unknown changeless years, down through the fiery dance and pulsing joy of Bism, down through the deepest crevices where heat and light gush up through stone like blood, down past where anyone has ever traveled and returned.

In the deepest bend of the deepest tunnel, chasing the faintest glint of light, he swings his borrowed axe until he breaks through a shell of diamond to a sky of velvet black, bestrewn with its own living jewels who welcome him in echoes of his mother's voice.

The roots of the earth are nourished by stars.

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( 6. ) For scytale: any, any, no such thing as too many kittens, written 1/15/22

Roxy Lalonde's No-Frills, No-Fee Cat Café (165 words)

Fandom = Homestuck

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Listen, you have had a Very Difficult Year, and if defeating (or helping defeat) A) the alien fishqueen who destroyed your planet, B) an unbeatable universe-killing monster, and C) your own alcohol addiction, not to mention creating a whole new universe and recycling your poor battered homeworld doesn't entitle a lady to some choice rewards, you don't know what would.

And by rewards, you mean kittens.

Possibly slightly unwise numbers of kittens, but you are going to be a responsible cat owner this time around and get them all (well, mostly all) spayed and neutered at the appropriate ages, and make sure they have lots of space and enrichment and microchips to find them if they sneak out and get lost, and look -- you just want to make your home a comfy, welcoming place where all your friends can drop by whenever they want (or need) and there will always be fresh food, soft pillows, cool video games, and a purring cat for their laps.

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In more current writing news, am still hung up on the evil teacup story, but I have set it aside for the moment to percolate (I'm having trouble managing the tone shift from "this is a bad relationship" to "this is a supernatural horror story" and suspect I may need to add some more stuff to the lead-in) and am once again working on tiny fills. So, expect some more posts of this nature in days to come. :)

Summary: Abyss holds many secrets. Some keep them out of fear. Some keep them out of love. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. (750 words)

Note: Written for mme_hardy, in response to the prompt: Underage: Narutostuck. Jade and Aradia and Feferi all had excellent reasons to despair. Fortunately, each of them hid their doubts from the other two... until they didn't. It is also a fill for the ladiesbingo square underage.

This is part of the Narutostuck AU, which is a fusion in which I jammed the Homestuck characters into the Naruto world. This story won't make much sense unless you've read the other stories in the AU and the worldbuilding notes attached to them, but I will attempt a quick summary. Basically Feferi, Aradia, and Jade are a team in Abyss, which is Kouin's version of Root. Their situation is exactly as fucked up as you think it is. Fortunately, the Signless Sufferer is leading a rebellion against the Lady of Space and the Uchuukage.

Content Note: Implied brainwashing, cult-like indoctrination, child soldiers, etc. Basically all the darker implications of both Naruto and Homestuck mixed together. The underage relationship is not graphic, and it's up for reader interpretation how physical it is.

( Narutostuck: The Deepest Secret Nobody Knows )

*dusts hands* A little out of order, but you write what's willing to be written.

Summary: Plastic plates go in the plastic plate stack and china plates go in the china plate stack. This is very important! Jade/Rose. (625 words)

Note: This fic was written in response to the prompt: it's been TEN YEARS and you STILL don't know how to properly tidy up the dishes!!!! these plates go here, but these almost identical ones go there, is it that hard??!? what, no, they look nothing alike! from snogfairy's wholesome domestic prompts list. Part of the Leaf and Letter AU.

[ETA: the AO3 crosspost is now up!]

( Never the Twain Shall Meet )

Sometimes I just want to write something short and cute, you know? :)

Collection post #6. :)

All prompts drawn from the current iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon, hosted by the wonderful rthstewart. Post One is now closed for prompts (though still open for fills and comments); Post Two is open for new prompts.

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( 31. ) For rthstewart: Temeraire, any, dragons discovering suffrage is not universal, based on this response, written 2/10/20

Nine Tenths of the Law (185 words)

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"And I tell you, when I learned that not only do humans bar all women from voting, they also bar a shameful percentage of men, I entertained half a thought of defecting to France!" said Gloriana, the Regal Copper currently recuperating at Loch Laggan from a badly sprained left wing.

"What, really?" asked Sharl, who had heard earful upon earful about duty, sacrifice, and other apparently vital concepts ever since she'd ventured down from the Highlands into the Loch Laggan covert (at the promise of regular meals and the chance to stockpile shinies in return for the easy work of flying messages back and forth to London), and was thoroughly annoyed at being looked down upon for her lack of true patriotic spirit.

"No, of course not," said Gloriana; "England has its share of problems, but it's my country and one doesn't toss aside possessions the moment they get scratched; one has them repaired or refurbished until they look better than before, and I'll be damned if I let those bloody French dragons have any excuse to claim they have a better country than ours."

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( 32. ) For syrena_of_the_lake: Narnia, any, tiger with a gold fang, written 2/10/20

Greatly Exaggerated (160 words)

Link to the relevant news article

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There were dozens of stories in circulation about how Sergeant Cara of the Narnian Coastal Guard had lost her upper right fang and acquired a gold replacement: the least alarming was that she'd cracked the tooth on an unlucky smuggler's thighbone during a daring raid in the dead of night, and they only grew more bloodthirsty and implausible from there, until drunken sailors and longshoremen had her ripping down entire mainmasts with her teeth alone.

Cara, who had a keen sense for the worth of a theatrical first impression, and who quite enjoyed the cries of "Oh shit, it's the Gold Fang, now we're in for it!" that tended to greet her when she rose dripping from the coastal surf or the Shribble delta shallows, laughed at each new tale and refused to confirm or deny any of them.

After all, there was no intimidation value in admitting she'd cracked the fang while putting away her eldest cub's chew toys.

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( 33. ) For chomiji: Murderbot, Murderbot(+any), friendship is magic, written 2/10/20

Look At It, It's Got Anxiety (180 words)

Obviously more than three sentences. *headdesk*

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"I understand it as a narrative trope, and I've seen it operate on my own decisions, but I still think the entire concept of 'friendship is magic' is annoyingly illogical," I said to Gurathin as we waited for Dr. Mensah to get out of her latest meeting and let us know whether her latest archaeological project had been approved.

"If you're looking for an argument, I'm the wrong person," Gurathin said. "Obviously it's illogical; that's an inherent outcome of humanity's general lack of logic. There's an old saying to that effect -- 'Humans aren't rational animals; humans are rationalizing animals,' -- and I've rarely seen anything to disprove that."

"I wonder if emotions are an inherent outcome of any sufficiently complex system?" I said. "I blame them for my most irrational choices, and I've met robots who understood friendship better than most humans."

"You may have a point," Gurathin said. "And to think humans used imagine robots as heartless beings of pure logic who'd crush us under their mechanical heels."

"Thankfully, that kind of idiocy does seem restricted to humans," I said.

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( 34. ) For wintersday: Homestuck, Sollux/Feferi/Aradia, I still believe in the futures unwritten, written 2/11/20

Stealing Life (250 words)

Structural restrictions, what structural restrictions?

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"What if we found a Life player who's still alive -- or even just enough Life-aspect ghosts; the infinite series adds up to one, so mathematically speaking, infinite ghosts should add up to one living person -- and revived you?" Sollux said idly as he and Feferi sat in the rigging of Vriska and Meenah's ridiculous pirate ship, and Aradia hung upside-down in the air in front of them.

"Then I'd be alive again, but we'd still have no idea what we shoald be doing," Feferi said, nestling a little closer against Sollux's side. "I seappose if I weren't a ghost we'd at least have the option of leaving the dreambubbles and finding an active game session. I don't think there are any acshoal rules against helping other players and tagging along into their new universe."

Aradia swooped close to press a kiss against Feferi's nose. "That sounds amazingly chaotic! Sneaking into somebody else's game session might also let you two slip out of Lord English's alpha timeline predestination hoofbeastshit -- and even if it all goes horribly wrong, why not die trying something interesting?"

"Because interesting deaths are painful?" Sollux said. "Which you should know from your own experience." Feferi nodded in agreement and squeezed his fingers between her own.

"True, but look at everything that can happen afterwards. Lighten up and live a little!" Aradia said, and pressed a kiss to his nose in turn.

"We're all doomed," Sollux said, but he was smiling as Feferi hauled him off the spar.

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( 35. ) For chomiji: Books of the Raksura, Moon+any babies, all the stars in the sky, written 2/11/20

Dream Big (250 words)

Six sentences.

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"How high are the stars?" asked Mist as she balanced awkwardly on Moon's shoulders and clung to the bark of the upper branches with the small, needle-sharp claws on her left hand; "Can you carry me there?"

"The stars are higher than any Aeriat can fly," Moon told his Arbora daughter with Bramble (who was twice as curious and prone to escaping the nursery as her two warrior sisters), "but groundlings can't fly at all and they build flying ships to make up for that, so maybe one day someone will build a ship that can reach the stars."

"I'm going to invent one!" Mist said, stretching up onto her tiptoes until Moon wrapped his hand around her ankle just in case; "I'm going to invent one, and then me and Dew and Drop will fly to every star in the whole sky, and the sun, and the moon, and-- and I'll see everything and learn everything and come back to tell Indigo Cloud all about it."

"You will," Moon agreed, "but not right now; tonight you're coming back inside the tree and going to sleep."

Mist sighed; "Fine," she said, and let herself drop into Moon's arms, "but tomorrow morning I'm going to start learning everything about ships."

"You can read anything you find to me," Moon murmured into his daughter's ears as she shifted into her groundling form and her soft, dark hair feathered across his scales like silk on stone; "We'll learn about ships and stars together."

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( 36. ) For anonymous: Any, Any, sometimes you want to go for a walk in nature and sometimes nature wants to go for a walk in you, written 2/12/20

Greening the City (175 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Contains body horror and loss of self.

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There's something wrong with her, of course there is; it's not right for mushrooms and lichens and moss to grow in healthy flesh, not natural for decomposition to set up shop without an obvious entry point like an infected cut or an oozing pimple or--

Honoria picks again at her slowly greening forearms and wonders idly how long until she's sprouting proper seedlings, how long until her new ecology turns her body into proper, nurturing soil.

She only wanted to take a walk in the woods last week, to clear her mind and ease her heart after her latest disastrous breakup, only touched the rotting log to move it off the path; she didn't ask for this, didn't ask to be infested, to be-- to be embraced, to be reminded that all life is part of the great cycle, to bask in the truth that all life is ultimately the same; but bringing the forest back to the city is a much more long-term solution, and maybe she can help others remember their place too.

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And now to bed. :)