the deep moans round with many voices

Last set of fills, until the next ficathon rolls around. :)

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( 23. ) For silvr_dagger: Inception, Ariadne / or & any, minotaur, written 1/4/17 [AO3 version]

no morality by instinct (200 words exactly)

At the heart of every person's mind is a guardian, territorial and feral, that exacts repayment in blood and pain for all attempted intrusions; they can be evaded, confused, and with time and practice soothed to sleep, but they are never truly tamed; even the people a dreamer loves and trusts the most can still be ripped apart if they grow careless and startle the beast awake.

"Like a minotaur, a proper flesh-eater both maddened and cunning, sent to humble those who grow too proud of their power and cleverness and forget to observe the proper rituals," Eames says with a careless smile, "and you a combination of Daedalus and your own lovely namesake, both to build the maze that traps the monster and to spin the thread that guides us safely through."

"Ah, the benefits of a classical education," Ariadne says wryly, watching the slow and suspicious patrol of the squirrels and songbirds that populate the wilderness she's built in Eames's mind, and wonders whether, when Arthur begins testing her rough-draft maze for flaws, she'll have time to shoot herself awake before she learns what it feels like to die sliced apart by a thousand tiny claws and beaks.

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( 24. ) For silvr_dagger: Any, any, stealing the sun, written 1/8/17 [AO3 version]

years of drought and famine (225 words)

The clouds are thin in the first years, translucent veils that drape in narrow, scattered bands across the sky: the world's victory sari, people call them, and marvel at the way they seem to catch faint fire at sunset or sunrise, kindling Solstar's white to color within their refracted folds, or to reflect Oceanus's blue-green shine like a dream of verdant growth. But gradually they grow thicker and more frequent, and eventually begin to blot out Solstar's light for hours at a time: an ill-omen, people say now, and wonder in whispers whether perhaps the white witch of the mere cursed the world in her death-throes, or whether the Aeriel was corrupted in her victory; wait, say others, the world was not born in a day, nor can its rebirth be easy; all changes are terrifying even when they bring prosperity and joy at the end of the shift; but patience and trust come hard after generations of the world's slow fall and there are mutterings against the work of Crystalglass, words that might grow into deeds without a countersign, and soon.

And then, at last, in the midst of a daylight darkness, there comes a thing unseen for generations: wrapped in the lowering gloom of oppressive clouds and the fear of the stolen sun, the sky breathes rain once more unto the thirsty earth.

-----

Note: Darkangel Trilogy, obviously. :)

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( 25. ) For silvr_dagger: Mad Max: Fury Road, any, chasing the sun, written 1/10/17 [AO3 version]

truth, like the sun (175 words)

They say if you drive west fast enough, the sun never sets; drive west fast enough and a single day lasts forever. The true metal, the true V8, they race across the sky in a blaze of glory too bright to look upon with pitiful fleshy eyes, and they will never die; this is Valhalla, the promise and the dream, where everything is caught in an eternity of perfect, howling speed and chrome.

"Flashy and hollow, just like the rest of Joe's lies, and easily turned around if the people here weren't too cowed and beaten down to think," Angharad says when Furiosa relates this bit of warboy lore, words dragged halting and unfamiliar between her teeth like a slow fuel leak she can already tell will leave her stranded and weaponless one of these endless days; "What if you drive east to meet the sun as a partner, instead of west to capture it?" and Furiosa sits in gear-ground silence for the rest of her watch rather than admit she's never thought to ask the question.

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( 26. ) For silvr_dagger: Any, any, treason, written 1/10/17 [AO3 version]

the treason of pity (250 words)

"If I had it all to do over again," the Dolorosa says to her kismesis as they lie, sweaty, blood-streaked, and sated, in the little nest of torn sailcloth that serves as both pile and bedding ground for the slaves in Mindfang's crew, "I'd tell my son to aim for the Empress instead of the people; she is the Empire, after all, its incarnation as well as its creator; any attack on its power and order is an attack on her, and vice versa. Instead of making ourselves into a threat to put down, we could have shown her how the highbloods have already stolen control out from under her nose -- high treason on a scale to beggar belief -- and tried to set up something better in the wake of the resulting bloodbath; she admires strength and daring, after all, and surely after helping her regain power in practice as well as in theory, we would have convinced her that letting such qualities flourish among lowbloods does not automatically equal chaos."

"If you had it all to do over again, you'd do exactly the same as before," the Demoness says, a thread of weary resignation laced through her habitual scorn, "because I'd go back too, a thousand thousand times if necessary, until I nudged you back onto the path; my master only accepts the timeline that leads to his victory, and as we both know, there are punishments worse than death; do not seek more of them than are already your share."

-----

Note: This will make much more sense if read in combination with The Time-Traveler's Kismesis: Counterthesis.

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( 27. ) For lignota: Any, any, following smoke and remembering fire, written 1/12/17 [AO3 version]

the seat containing of unweary'd flame (Meet Adoration to My Household Gods) (200 words exactly)

Magic in this world, Susan reflected, was maddening compared to the magic she'd learned in Narnia; if that had been plucking ripe apples from low-hanging boughs in a well-tended orchard, this was wading through thorns and interminable flies in search of stray raspberries not yet discovered by birds or bears, or befriending some higher, older powers in hope of borrowing the bounty of their own hoards.

Still, she fought best from a distance, whether with weapons or words, and as bows were too conspicuous and handguns both too noisy and too illegal (not to mention of limited utility at best against vampires and demons), magic seemed the most immediately useful replacement.

Susan squeezed another drop of blood from her pricked fingertip, repeated once again in halting Greek (blast Peter for laughing when he realized she would have to learn multiple new languages and writing systems to master her new field), "Hestia, queen of hearth and home, strike this spark for your daughter," and smiled when the nest of kindling in her saucer breathed a sigh of smoke; it was no clear, bright flame to strike foes or summon aid, but all things would come with time, and work, and faith.

-----

Note: Part of my One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts series, which crosses Narnia and BtVS. The halves of the title come from the Orphic Hymn to Hestia (#84, Taylor's translation) and Tennyson's 'Ulysses,' respectively.

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( 28. ) For anonymous: Any, any, tears of flowers, written 1/12/17 [AO3 version]

unwanted blessings (500 words exactly)

"The traditional blessing is for roses and jewels to fall from a poor but kind girl's lips with every word she speaks, but the fairy I met said that made it hard to hold actual conversations and tended to wreck local economies, not to mention the roses prickle something awful on the tongue," Morwen's new roommate, Rosamund, said when their conversation turned to their respective reasons for attending Stokey's Academy.

"Magic does have consequences," Morwen agreed. "Is that why you decided to become a sorceress? To see if you could unpick other traditional causes and effects?"

"Not exactly," Rosamund said with a frustrated scowl. "You see, the fairy still blessed me. She just blessed me to cry flowers instead of speak them, since she said if I was upset enough for tears, that's when I'd actually need flowers to cheer me up. It's a complete nuisance. The flowers are mostly violets and cherry blossom, which thankfully don't prickle, but the petals feel like tissue paper and slugs on my eyeballs, they get absolutely everywhere, and I can't even turn them into a garland or bouquet because they don't have any stems."

"Ugh." Morwen grimaced in sympathy and refilled Rosamund's teacup with the last of her aunt's best company blend that she'd brought with her from home. "That sounds like she was so proud of noticing the problems with the old spell, she didn't bother to make sure her new spell was actually any better."

"Yes, exactly," Rosamund said, and gulped the tea down like water. "That's not the worst part, though. After she cast the flower spell, the fairy said she wouldn't bother trying to make an endless gold spell that wasn't subject to abuse. Instead, she told me that my family already had everything we needed. That sounds nice, right?"

"In a vaguely moralistic and uplifting way," Morwen agreed.

"Very 'be content with your lot and beware the dangers of ambition,' yes," Rosamund said. "But it did sound nice... until we realized it was a spell too, and it was keeping our farm from ever turning a profit."

"How so?"

"If we already had everything we needed, what reason was there for anything to ever change? So nothing does. Everything's frozen the way it was when I met the fairy. We can't clear new fields. We can't rotate crops. We can't even buy a new goat without one of our old goats magically dying for no reason, which means the blessing is actually more of a curse." Rosamund clutched her teacup with white-knuckled fingers and said, so fiercely that Morwen almost expected her eyes to burst into flame, "I came here to learn how to break it. Then I am going to find that fairy, if I have to chase her to the ends of the earth, and I am going to give her a piece of my mind."

"I'll hold her down for you," Morwen promised, and gently pried the teacup from Rosamund's work-roughened hands before it shattered.

-----

Note: Enchanted Forest Chronicles. This one got a little out of hand. Oops? Also, Stokey's Academy is a bit of headcanon I made up when I was giving Morwen backstory for various other fics; it is glancingly mentioned in The Affairs of Dragons and serves as the main setting for A Splash of Color.

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( 29. ) For lizzie_marie_23: Narnia/Harry Potter, Edmund ~ or / Ginny, hidden corners of the world, written 1/12/17 [AO3 version]

the gate of iron and emerald (375 words)

"This is why you missed the first minute of the battle and left us without our best distance fighter," Edmund said flatly as he continued to inspect his mail shirt for damaged links; "Because you tripped and fell down a hole."

Ginny twirled her wand between her fingers (the way Lucy sometimes spun daggers) and said, in a tone that implied she was attempting forbearance despite great provocation, because despite everything she was fond of him and so forgave his foibles, "Because while I was scouting for ambushes -- it's only chance that the attack came from the west instead of the east, besides which I can't believe you missed a half-dozen giants in land this flat -- I found a locked iron door in an emerald frame in the back wall of this cave, which is so ridiculously out of place that it might as well be screaming it's magical, even without the runes I can't read carved over the lintel, and I was in the middle of testing to see if opening it would be dangerous -- it shouldn't be, by the way, unless you're actually as useless as you act when you're trying to convince people you're young and ignorant, in which case I want a raise since bodyguarding that kind of idiot definitely deserves hazard pay -- but anyway, stop looking at me like I'm a particularly squishable beetle and let's go see what's on the other side."

"I feel that Susan would tell us that interfering with strange magics is a terrible idea, and counsel us instead to both employ caution and remember our mission," Edmund said, pro forma, but this journey to Harfang for truce negotiations had several days' flexibility built in to account for the general disarray of Ettinsmoor after Peter's latest summer war, and he could never live with himself if he turned down a chance to explore one of the hidden corners of the world, thus blatantly presented as both invitation and challenge; and so he motioned his other bodyguard (a grizzled She-Wolf by the name of Skadi) to alert the rest of the party to this turn of events and followed Ginny into the narrow cleft in the earth, to meet what fate awaited them beyond the mysterious door.

-----

Note: A loose sequel to By Its Cover.

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( 30. ) For silvr_dagger: Beauty and the Beast (Disney or fairy tale; f/f genderswap), Beauty (or Belle)/Beast, roses in the snow, written 1/14/17

the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers (300 words exactly)

Beauty walked the garden paths beside Lady Falcon-in-Flight's massive form, one hand on her spear (as always, for the spells that bound the castle were fraying with age and sometimes spun off monsters) and the other extended to rest lightly on her lady's shoulder: soft fur layered thickly over hard muscle that could drive a body tirelessly for days on end until a chosen quarry was brought to bay -- now twitching restless and unfulfilled as her lady fought to leash a beast's instinct and appetite into a pale mimicry of human form and function, just as she gifted Beauty with garlands and gold instead of the fragile heart Beauty yearned to cradle in her hands and guard from every wound.

"You should hunt, as your body aches to do," Beauty said, as she had each morning since the new moon; "Bring me back a stag or boar, hard-won with your own strength: for blood on snow suits midwinter better than soft, spell-wrought flowers that seek to make all seasons equally a lie."

Her lady tensed, and Beauty bit her lip in expectation of yet another refusal... but this day her lady sighed (a hot, metallic gust of air, like opening the door to her eldest sister's smithy), turned her great head to fix her golden, slit-pupiled eyes on Beauty's own, and said in her rumbling voice, "If you wish a kill, you may make it yourself, but you are right that this body needs to run; I will be your hound and horse together, if you will be my mistress and guide me with a firm hand lest I lose myself to bloodlust; and perhaps when we return we might search the garden until we find amidst the ice a rose that, like you, has remembered its birthright of thorns."

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You know, I think these ficlets could count for snowflake_challenge Day 7: create a fanwork, if I wanted to make this post multipurpose.

...I believe I will. :)

I have been playing a little over at caramelsilver's Three Sentence Ficathon. Come join in! The more people making and filling prompts, the more fun it is for everyone!

Anyway, here are the six fills I have written so far.

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( 1. ) For idhren24: Harry Potter, Madame Pince, user-centered institution, written 11/29/15 [AO3 version]

gentility is relative (150 words)

Her library serves two mutually incompatible purposes: to provide appropriate instructional aid for underage wizards, and to hold the most complete repository of magical knowledge in northwestern Europe. Irma has petitioned for decades to split the collection -- or at the very least, move the restricted section into a separate room where she can establish security protocols with proper teeth -- but those two purposes are written into the school charter and would need a unanimous vote from the Board of Governors to make the most minor official alterations, and Dumbledore won't circumvent them on this issue.

Perhaps the next Headmaster will be more open to the notion that the Founders never anticipated the effects of so many magical books confined in such close proximity. Until then, Irma does what she can to protect her books from her students, and vice versa.

She has managed thirteen years since the last accidental death.

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( 2. ) For killing_kurare: Labyrinth, Jareth/Sarah, He returns at night, written 11/29/15 [AO3 version]

good night till it be morrow (150 words)

The air feels different in the mornings after Jareth visits: a crisp, green sensation, like wind blowing over leaves and stone and icy water, regardless of the actual weather. Sarah rolls sideways on her bed at dawn and buries her face in a pillow that bears a faint and fading trace of ozone and feathers; that scent and the touch of the Labyrinth in the air are the only signs that anyone had come to visit, let alone shared wine and kisses and slept beside her, and for an aching moment she wishes...

But then she sighs, and shuffles through her shoebox apartment in search of coffee and her laptop, and submerges herself back into mundane life rather than resent his absence; she has her responsibilities and deadlines as Jareth has his own, and neither wants to risk their hard-won peace by dragging its terms into the light of day.

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( 3. ) For runespoor7: Naruto, Sasuke/Sakura or Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura or Sakura gen, you've always been a/ good girl, smart girl, pretty girl, lucky girl, written 12/1/15 [AO3 version]

life lessons (200 words exactly)

Be good, be smart, be pretty, be lucky: a kunoichi's instruction manual.

Sakura can manage smart in her sleep, though likely not the way the advice is meant; knowing precisely how to take apart the human body (and stitch it back together) is not the clever, subtle manipulation of social strings that girls are guided toward mastering. She'll never think of herself as pretty, but she's learned not to blush and demur when Sasuke and Naruto call her that; if they see a part of herself that she can't find, she's willing to trust their judgment as she knows they trust hers when it comes to their own hidden sides. Goodness is a matter of perspective and circumstance, and she knows perfectly well her moral compass swings more toward retribution and the cold dictates of stop-loss logic than she likes to let show; skill, though, has never been a problem, so by that interpretation she's three for three.

As for luck? She's lived through ten lifetimes of misfortune, but she won through. She has Naruto and Sasuke back, to guard her as she guards them in turn. Let the whole world turn against them; they can make their own fate.

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( 4. ) For celeste9: Mad Max: Fury Road, Max/Furiosa, small comforts, written 12/1/15 [AO3 version]

reciprocity (100 words exactly)

Furiosa wakes fast and cold, stretches out the inevitable aches and strains from sleeping upright in the Rig's cab, and frowns when she finds less pain than she expected. Something soft and heavy slithers down the back of the seat, lands on the gearshift with a muffled thump: the Fool's jacket, the one he reclaimed with such vehemence from the war boy, folded into a makeshift pillow for her while she slept.

She glances over at the driver's seat, sees the furrowed line between his tired eyes, and gives the man the returned comfort of not mentioning his small kindness.

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( 5. ) For killing_kurare: Sailor Moon, Haruka/Michiru, dinner, written 12/1/15 [AO3 version]

at the stroke of midnight (150 words)

Part of being a professional musician on Michiru's level is maintaining contact with the right parts of society: the ones who pay for tickets and donations to keep orchestras and concert halls in the black. Haruka hated the artificiality of it all at first; hated biting her tongue while Michiru gently and politely redirected insulting conversational threads into equally offensive but more financially productive directions; hated the improbable clothes, the uncomfortable shoes, and the score or clashing perfumes; hated the way even the food at charity dinners and fancy restaurants seemed to ooze self-satisfied superiority.

She still hates all those things, but she's learned to let her anger go and wait for the moment Michiru meets her eyes and nods, and they slip away, laughing, to mount Haruka's motorcycle and roar off through the night: two princesses turned back into ordinary women in search of cheap, greasy takeout and the lived-in comfort of their own home.

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( 6. ) For anonymous: Inception, Arthur/Ariadne, they love it when it rains, because they can share an umbrella, written 12/1/15 [AO3 version]

like silence, but not empty (125 words)

"I designed a happy childhood memory," Ariadne said, staring up at the sodden sky of their latest mark's subconscious with a disgruntled expression. "What's happy about rain?"

Arthur checked his watch -- nearly thirty minutes before they needed to meet Eames outside the mark's hometown library; he could spare a handful for indulgence -- and retrieved a previously non-existent umbrella from his satchel. He shook it open, then wrapped his arm around Ariadne's shoulder and leaned in for a kiss when she joined him under its shelter. "I can think of a few things," he said as the rain fell in a curtain of silver streaks and white noise around the umbrella's rim, closing them into a tiny private world where only they were real.

Ariadne smiled.

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(Yes, I am aware that only three of these are actually three-sentence ficlets. Shush. I do what I want.)

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Master List of Elizabeth Culmer's Fanfiction: Miscellaneous Fandoms
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Organization: This list is organized alphabetically by fandom. Within each fandom, it's arranged first by associated story cycles (if applicable) and then by date. Word counts and writing dates are approximations.

Content/Warning Policy: 1) I am not consistent about warnings! I use them when I remember, for a few relatively broad categories of potentially problematic content, but if something is off-page, non-explicit, or generally backgrounded, I probably won't think to note it in the metadata. 2) The things I try to warn for are explicit sex, rape, murder, torture, cannibalism, incest, depression/suicide, familial dysfunction, and occasionally also societal dysfunction (aka dystopia). Sometimes I just slap a general content warning on all my fic for a given fandom and don't label each individual fic. I also don't generally warn for violence, unless the violence in a fic is dramatically out-of-step with the violence in its source canon. 3) I don't use any content rating system unless I'm posting to a site or community that requires or encourages ratings, because I find movie-style ratings counter-intuitive when applied to written fiction, and not particularly useful for anything other than denoting the presence of explicit sex, which I already note in the metadata.

Quality Rating System: I've marked my favorite stories with asterisks, on a scale of 1 to 4. The more asterisks, the more I like the story. This doesn't necessarily mean that stories without asterisks are bad, just that I don't like them as much. Also, I am not claiming to be an arbiter of taste; you may love stories I dislike, and vice versa. I am just providing a heads-up about the ones that I think are best written and/or most interesting.

Notes: Outside of my main fandoms, my fanfiction writing tends toward resolving plotholes and other canon problems, the creation of backstory (which is itself a form of problem-solving, where the problem is a gap in canon information about a character or an event), or prompt responses (often for Yuletide). Therefore, almost all the stories on this page are an expression of dissatisfaction with canon, of curiosity about what lies behind the canon we see, or of an attempt to satisfy somebody else's heart's desire. Once I've resolved a problem, filled a gap to my own satisfaction, or answered a prompt, I generally have nothing further to write in that fandom, which is why these subsections have so few stories.

Anyway, there's a lot of random stuff on this page, and some of it I look back on and wonder what on earth I was thinking, but overall I do like most of these stories -- probably because when something bugs me so much that I write a story to fix or explain it, or when I am writing to make someone else happy, I care enough to give my best effort.

Where To Read: As always, if an AO3 version exists, it is definitive. FF.net versions are definitive in the absence of an AO3 version. Journal versions are the equivalent of beta drafts, though the shorter and/or fragmentary works may never be posted anywhere else.

Contents: American Gods, An Ash-Blonde Witch, Arthurian Mythology, Batman, the Bible, the Black Jewels series, the Bourne trilogy, Chalion, Charlotte's Web, Children of the Star, Code Geass, Damar, Death Note, Discworld, Doctor Who, Dragonball Z, fairy tales, Girl Genius, The Girl with the Silver Eyes, Glee, Gormenghast, Hamilton, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Hexwood,The Homeward Bounders, Howl's Moving Castle, Labyrinth, Lord of the Rings, Lucifer (comics), Mad Max, Merlin, Murderbot Diaries, the Oz books, Pern, Ranma 1/2, Rise of the Guardians, Sailor Moon, Saiyuki, Seaward, Shakespeare, Stargate: SG-1, Star Wars, Tam Lin (Pamela Dean), Vorkosigan Saga, White Collar, Wolf Hall, X-Men, and Yu-Gi-Oh!.

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( American Gods )

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( An Ash-Blonde Witch )

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( Arthurian Mythology )

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( Batman )

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( The Bible )

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( Black Jewels )

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( Bourne trilogy )

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( Chalion )