the deep moans round with many voices

Batch the fifth, 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!

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

( 25. ) For gold_pen_leaps, in response to the prompt: The Magnus Archives, any, voyeuristic of you, written 2/1/22

Watch and Wait (280 words)

-----

The thing is, and Sasha still has no idea how to bring this up with Tim, she's not really that into sex -- or at least not sex that involves someone else touching her body. Yes, there's an element of interest in not knowing exactly how the other person will touch her clit or thrust inside her or stroke her side or pinch her nipple or whatever other act may or may not be on the table, but honestly, she can manage the physical stimulation fine on her own, and being tangled up so close makes it hard to see. Physical stimulation is only half the story, after all -- the brain is the biggest sex organ in the body, as the saying goes -- and she needs mental stimulation to properly get going.

So yes, she had sex with Tim and it was all right. She likes Tim a lot. He's good with his hands, he's very appealing to look at, and he's fun to listen to. But she doesn't want to have sex with him again. She wants to watch him have sex with someone else while she sits on a sofa with a vibe and some lube and gets herself off.

And that is an awkward and scary conversation to have with anyone, let alone somebody you have to face at work five days a week, so she's been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off some more.

As she flees into Artefact Storage, Sasha thinks that when this catastrophe is over, she's going to tell him and damn the consequences. After all, what could possibly be worse than almost getting eaten alive by supernatural worms?

---------------
---------------

( 26. ) For gold_pen_leaps, in response to the prompt: any, any, became a sommelier for charity, written 2/1/22

Gala Night (160 words)

Fandom = Greenwing & Dart

-----

"Explain to me again how this farce is meant to aid the poor of Orio City?" I hissed into Hal's ear as I passed, a silver pail filled with snow and three bottles of an inordinately expensive white clutched in my gloved hands.

Hal bowed (somewhat ironically, I could tell by the set of his shoulders, though I doubted anyone who hadn't roomed with him for years could see through his earnest facade) to the latest group of notables who had stopped to twitter around him at the host's podium when they entered the repurposed ballroom, and delivered them courteously into the hands of another young gentleman who was playing at wait staff.

"Because sometimes the best way to pry money from tight pockets is to make the people attached to those pockets feel indulged and superior," he murmured, "and what better way to accomplish that than to have fellow aristocrats wait on them hand and foot for a night?"

---------------
---------------

( 27. ) For cornerofmadness, in response to the prompt any, any Girls Just Want To Have Fun, written 2/8/22.

A Spoonful of Sugar (185 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives

-----

"Are you sure you don't want to spend the afternoon in my corridors?" the Distortion asks in Helen's best reasonable-friend voice; "I promise I'm an excellent listener if you want to shout, you can't hurt anything if you want to kick my walls or shred the wallpaper, and I have a nice variety of ice cream for winding down afterwards."

For a moment, Melanie looks genuinely tempted.

"Ah well, maybe some other day," the Distortion says in response to Melanie's eventual headshake of refusal, because patience is a virtue and a well-seasoned meal is always more filling.

She can wait while the sharp, pulsing song of the Slaughter continues to strengthen in Melanie's bones (her fierce denial of any outside, unnatural influence, no matter how clear the line from war ghosts to phantom bullets to the ability to harm creatures of the Flesh, makes such tasty, twisty echoes), and then wait some more while Melanie's incandescent fury adds spice to the terror of other victims wandering Helen's guts.

When the Distortion swallows Melanie for keeps, her screams of betrayal will be delicious beyond human words.

---------------
---------------

( 28. ) For swirlsngirls, in response to the prompt Any, any, sophisticated, manipulated, written 2/8/22.

Two-Step (235 words)

Fandom = Greenwing & Dart

-----

The first trick to manipulating Lark is to keep all the important actions just beneath her sight, where she doesn't even realize something might exist to overlook: for example, it was obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention that Jemis's final paper must be nonsensical -- he was flying so high in the penultimate stages of wireweed addiction that any coherence was the next best thing to a miracle -- so hiding his insight into the relationship between Ariadne nev Lingarel's poem and a guide to Orio City's famously impregnable prison was easy as making a snide remark about Jemis's fixation on yet another treasonous minor historical poet and laughing at Lark's answering jape.

The second trick is to eschew complicated plots: even if Lark suspects Violet's impending betrayal (and with her sophisticated eye for clothes, she cannot have missed the declaration in Violet's color choices during Lark's carefully scripted audience with Jemis and his friends), she would expect Violet to disclaim that declaration as a way to toy with Jemis, suborn a guard or find a mage to whisk him out of the prison, and then play cat-and-mouse through the fog and the foulness of Orio City's streets toward a well-disguised ship in the harbor.

Instead, Violet steps through the mirror into the inescapable prison, secure in the knowledge that even should she live a thousand years, Lark will never understand what just happened.

---------------
---------------

( 29. ) For swirlsngirls, in response to the prompt Any, any, set a fire in my head tonight, written 2/8/22.

Not Wholly Unwilling (155 words)

Fandom = Greenwing & Dart

-----

"Unlace me," Lark commanded, and as I obediently began undoing her stays, she turned her head to favor me with an assessing gaze that lingered over both the bruise blooming plum-dark around the raw and oozing scrape across my cheek, and the new-grown swell of my breasts beneath my plainer bodice; there was something satiated in her eyes, like a cat well-fed and pleased to toy with mice, and under that a swell of renewing hunger.

"Face the wall," she commanded when I had finished and the shoulders of her dress fell loose down the deceptive softness of her upper arms; I turned, silent, and let her unlace my dress in turn.

As she pulled me to her bed, she kissed the bloody wound her own hand and rings had made, kindled a throb of pain and desire, and the part I will never tell a living soul is that I fell willingly to flame.

---------------
---------------

( 30. ) For topaz_eyes, in response to the prompt: Any, any, the skin around every city looks the same, written 2/8/22

And Taxes (180 words)

Fandom = The Hands of the Emperor

-----

Every city is fundamentally the same upon approach: wilderness and pastures give way to grain fields and tended forests, which give way to market gardens and little blots of houses, which give way to walls and narrow streets and buildings reaching skyward for lack of space to sprawl. People need food and fuel, and transportation is expensive; these concentric rings are the inevitable collision of those truths, with only occasional exceptions for fishing fleets or long-distance water-based grain trade.

Cliopher rides into Astandalas the Golden in the back of a vegetable wagon magically sped along the imperial highway from a hundred miles away, and doubts the evidence of his own eyes when he sees the sharp delineation between the city of roses and the gorgeous, wasteful, parks outside its walls. The power to shape an entire region to serve aesthetic whims rather than human needs is earthshaking, and the mindset that would make that trade is beyond his comprehension.

Of course the Empire fell. No society can balance on such a narrow edge forever; one day, the debt comes due.

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

When I see an 'any' fandom prompt, I ask myself, "Can I make this about Greenwing & Dart?" The answer is generally, "Yes." :D

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!

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

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

Relevant Applications (100 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives

-----

"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.

---------------
---------------

( 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)

-----

"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."

---------------
---------------

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

Delegation (210 words)

-----

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."

---------------
---------------

( 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

-----

"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."

---------------
---------------

( 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)

-----

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.

---------------
---------------

( 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

-----

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.

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

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. :)

Batch the eleventh. :)

All prompts drawn from the 2021 iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon (post one and post two), hosted by the wonderful rthstewart. The ficathon is now closed to new prompts, but you can continue filling prompts and commenting on other people's fills for as long as you like!

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

( 61. ) For anonymous: Any, any, illuminated manuscripts, written 3/6/21

Be Light Made (280 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives

-----

Library of Jurgen Leitner, Catalog Item #732: An illuminated manuscript copy of Genesis 1:1-4, single page, held within two pressboard report covers; the text appears to be from the Douay-Rheims translation, which is notable in that the work is clearly hand-scribed on parchment rather than a hand-illustrated printed text or an engraved print, despite the technologies prevalent at the time of the English College, Douai's work.

Main Effect: When read aloud, the text produces a clear, bright light that illumines a sphere of thirty-foot radius around the page, in which no shadow is present and all things are visible, including the interiors of normally solid objects; when read silently, this effect is apparently limited to the perception of the reader; and in both cases, the effect dissipates after approximately seven minutes.

Secondary Effects: One reading produces no obvious negative effects, aside from the frequent horror and revulsion at the sight of normally hidden aspects of the world; however, with each subsequent reading, whether silently or aloud, and regardless of the length between incidents, the effect doubles in its duration for the reader -- note that this extension does not apply to a bystander within the thirty-foot radius who simply hears the words; for bystanders, the original seven minute duration continues to apply no matter how many times the text is overheard -- until it becomes effectively permanent, with a duration longer than the reader's projected lifespan; additionally, because the light penetrates normally solid objects, closing one's eyes provides no relief; the long-term effects of such expanded perception have thus far been impossible to determine, as the initial test subject committed suicide and no other assistants have volunteered to replicate the experiment.

---------------
---------------

( 62. ) For anonymous: Twelve Dancing Princesses, any princess except the eldest or youngest, forgotten middle child no more, written 3/7/21

Escapism (335 words)

-----

We all knew the dancing would end someday: that either one of the suitors would discover our secret, our father would tire of the riddle and marry us off one by one, or our mysterious underground escape would turn into a trap.

For my sisters, the very transient nature of our freedom made them reluctant to question -- why did the passageway open to our hall? why did the princes not court ladies of their own realm? why were we not permitted to stay once our shoes were worn through? -- and I admit I was too afraid myself to risk upsetting the spell, to the point where I laughed at a good dozen men's deaths by our father's decree (though in truth, when one considers the many wars he provoked and the draconian laws he set forth, a dozen foolhardy princes and knights are scarcely worth mentioning).

But with my eldest sister married to a soldier, our father passed away, and my other sisters shipped off one by one to marry strangers in lands as foreign as the underworld yet far less free, I remembered the twigs and the cup my brother-in-law carried out of the earth as his proof, and it dawned on me both that a seed remembers its source and that bricking up one door does not preclude opening another: and so I put my old skills to the test once more (did you think my eldest sister brewed the sleeping draughts herself? don't be a fool; her interests always lay in taxes and budgets, as our youngest sister's interest lay in music, my second-eldest sister's in embroidery, and so on -- we are twelve people, not an indistinguishable mass) and stole both myself and those relics out from under the watchful castle guards; for an escape is not complete if it merely enlarges the bounds of one's cage -- when I next venture into that shining, underground land, I shall return to a home where I alone control the lock and hold the keys.

---------------
---------------

( 63. ) For anonymous: Any, any, two perfect pears, written 3/9/21

Grin and Pear It (160 words)

Fandom = Doctor Who

-----

"'Two perfect pears' is a contradiction in terms, because there is no way on this or any other planet or plane of existence that a pear can be anything other than a foul waste of water and fructose," the Doctor said, glaring at the fruit basket Martha was poking through in the TARDIS kitchen.

"Pear blossom's awfully pretty, though, and you can't get the trees or flowers without the fruit," Martha said, twirling one of the pears -- a lovely, firm green fruit, with just a hint of blush near one side of its base -- and wondering if she trusted the grateful farmer's market vendors of New New Earth to have washed their produce before presenting her and the Doctor with a fresh and delicious reward.

"I cannot believe your lack of imagination, Martha Jones -- what about grafting, or cloning, or genetic engineering, or--" the Doctor began, only to sputter into undignified silence when Martha grinned and took a juicy bite.

---------------
---------------

( 64. ) For syrena_of_the_lake: Looney Tunes, any, oh what heights we'll hit, written 3/9/21

First Contact (155 words)

-----

"I'm not entirely certain, but as of our most recent intercepted radio transmission, I believe that Earth hasn't given Mars diplomatic recognition, let alone begun sending live embassies," Marvin said, pointing his disintegrator at the gently sizzling brown-furred creature at the bottom of a new impact crater near Argyre Planitia, surrounded by what looked like the debris of an unreasonably large cast iron pot with a clamp-on lid and some sort of primitive spring-launch mechanism; "Hands up and explain yourself, Earthling spy."

The furred creature stuck one arm straight up, waving a tiny white flag with I SURRENDER blazoned across the fabric -- exactly the sort of cowardly move a spy would make, Marvin thought, and also self-evidently not an explanation; he readied himself to shoot.

"Meep meep," an unfamiliar voice said from behind him, and Marvin had just enough time to turn and see a feathery blur bearing down before the impact knocked him flying.

---------------
---------------

( 65. ) For eagleoftheninth: Narnia, any, the kind of odd spirits and whatnot you get in Calormen and/or the Lone Islands, written 3/31/21

Quiet Neighbors (370 words)

-----

The lands beyond the reach of Aslan's voice did not spring to life all at once, joyous and undeniable; they woke slowly, gradually, over decades and centuries (or faster, if gods or humans moved in and took an interest), and so the spirits of the land were sparser, shyer, interwoven with those who walked their lands as folktales and whispered glimpses rather than friends from whom one could, if not precisely borrow a sack of flour or a pat of butter, then certainly exchange casual gossip; they were quiet neighbors.

There was a well-spirit who lived on Aravis's father's estate in Calavar, who had bargained generations past for a plate of honey-cakes and one silver coin each new moon -- so long as the contract was kept, the well stayed sweet and full, but should anyone miss a month, the old slaves whispered, the water might turn to salt or sink down past the reach of any mortal arm; when she arrived in Narnia and curtseyed to a naiad, Aravis wondered if that well-spirit had ever taken human shape, or chosen a gender, or asked if there were others of its kind; she knew, now, what it felt like to be alone in a strange land, to be treated with propriety but rarely with true respect, and she would not wish that on anyone regardless of their nature.

There was a tricky stone between Arsheesh's hut and the village, which liked to shift its place -- never when anyone was watching, but some mornings its bulk loomed above the rutted path, some days below, and now and then precisely in the middle where Shasta had to thrash his way through brambles and scrub to get around it; always around, never over, because even a minor spirit had its pride -- and he wondered now and then why the stone failed to bury Arsheesh and Anradin the way rumor said it had buried a minor Tarkaan who came to collect taxes in the form of two dozen slaves three generations past; but human feet fell lightly upon the earth and words carried even less weight, and in the end the departure of one foreign foundling must have seemed no great loss to a stone.


---------------
---------------

( 66. ) For rthstewart: Bujold -Penric's Demon, Penric and Desdemona, dressed to kill, written 3/31/21

Aftermath (200 words)

Set in the bad period between Penric's Fox and Masquerade in Lodi.

-----

There are two main points to consider when dressing for any event, Desdemona said as Penric lay on his bed, staring up through the darkness at the wooden beams and boards of his ceiling and trying not to think about either the pain in his wrists or facing the judgment of the Mother's clergy tomorrow; First, always choose something in which you can move freely, because one never knows what chaos may break out; second, consider the effect you intend to produce in your audience -- to stand out, to go unnoticed, to entice, to appall, or any other reaction -- and ensure that your clothes, your hair, your speech, and your bearing work together to enhance that effect.

"What effect do you think I should aim for?" Penric said, voice still a little hoarse from their morning fight, but no less flat than it had been for months now: hollowed by the endless string of deaths and failure.

Horror and shame, since evidently sympathy and sense are in low supply in these parts, Desdemona said; Wear your braids to remind them which god has truest claim on your soul, and leave your arms bare -- I can take care of the rest.

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

I really do need to crosspost a lot of my more recent fic to AO3...

I also really do not want to deal with the logistics. Blargh.

Batch the ninth. :)

All prompts drawn from the current iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon (post one and post two), hosted by the wonderful rthstewart. The ficathon closes to new prompts tonight, but you can continue filling prompts and commenting on other people's fills for as long as you like!

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

( 49. ) For paxilam: any, any, not answering the phone, written 2/23/21

Go to Voicemail (250 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives

-----

After his ordeal with Prentiss, Martin makes a point of answering his phone on the first ring and immediately replying to all texts; he winds up fielding a number of junk calls and disrupting his sleep schedule (insofar as he has a sleep schedule, here on the too-small cot in the document storage room, jolting awake at every creak of floorboard or groan of piping), but it's worth it to feel connected, to know that no supernatural creature will have another chance to impersonate him.

"That was one of the most suspicious things about you," Jon tells him much later; "It's not normal to be instantly available at all hours of the day and night, and naturally I jumped to incoherent conspiracy theories rather than the much more obvious and plausible answer that it was a trauma response -- the irony, of course, being that my paranoia was also a trauma response, and so we made each other steadily more upset rather than trying to support each other, or reach out to Tim."

"And when I stopped answering my phone altogether?" Martin asks. "Was that also suspicious?"

Jon shrugs, lightly, as if his isolation when he woke from his coma hardly mattered. "No, because by then I knew you -- I wished you would change your mind, of course, and I thought you were taking a terrible risk for a highly uncertain return, but you've let me run off halfcocked into all kinds of peril; how could I trust you any less?"

---------------
---------------

( 50. ) For sawthefaeriequeen: Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, Janet and Tina, they develop their own roommate in-joke, written 2/24/21

It's All Greek to Me (710 words)

Obviously this is not a 3-sentence fill. *headdesk*

-----

( cut for length )

---------------
---------------

( 51. ) For sholio: MCU, any, superpower swap, written 2/27/21

Mirror, Mirror (340 words)

This is more of a skill swap than a power swap, but I figure if building flying armor counts as a superpower, Natasha and Clint's skillsets should as well. :)

-----

The Red Room had a specific ideal to which they trained their agents -- deceptively lovely, flexible, able to wear any mask and get close enough to kiss a target and steal his secrets as well as his life -- but while Natasha excelled enough to live, that pattern always felt like somebody else's coat, too baggy in the shoulders and tight around the waist. She prefers to work from a distance and in the shadows; steal impersonal documents, snap photos, plant microphones; send an autographed bullet from half a mile away. The idea of touching other people's skin, feeling their breath against her ear, makes her own skin crawl like the memory of a dozen spiders wandering over her while she lay paralyzed and desperate not to scream, and it's a rare person who can pass unharmed through the sphere of empty space she carves around herself with her dead-eyed stare.

The US Army was much more interested in snipers than infiltrators, but sometimes what you want isn't what you need, and Clint's always been personable when he puts his mind to it, not to mention good with accents and languages and mirroring what other people project onto him; you pick up those tricks pretty quick as a runaway, and even more so in the entertainment business. He's still a sniper on paper, but the moment he catches wind of SHIELD sending out feelers, he makes a play for a different line of work -- something where he can look the people he kills in the eye and know that they have a faint chance of turning the tables, walking away while he bleeds out on the floor. It's probably just as unethical to betray a cultivated trust, but he's been doing that for most of his life and it's a rare person who can coax him to peel off his masks and show the awkward, half-forgotten shape of his true self.

They make an odd pair, the sniper and the seducer, but nobody at SHIELD would dare to pull them apart.

---------------
---------------

( 52. ) For wingedflight: Narnia/The Magnus Archives, any, the entities in Narnia, written 2/28/21

A Century of Fear (295 words)

-----

1. Vast

Narnia is not a large land, but the shroud of Winter smothers the landscape, blurs landmarks into a sweeping sameness: a blank canvas of white-gray-black that deceives the eye and spreads out to, so far as anyone can know, the uttermost bounds of the world -- and perhaps even beyond, out past the Western mountains and the Eastern sea until a body could travel a thousand years and still never find a day of summer sun, for the Winter admits no truth but its own immutable nature, and flattens all attempts at defiance to mere blots on the purity of its expanse.

-----

2. Buried

Petrification should stop the mind along with the body, yet those who feel the tight embrace of stone close in around them, driving inward like a vice, could tell you otherwise if they still had breath and space to speak; instead they stand silent in the crushing prison of their own forms, squeezed tighter and tighter until it seems they must explode under the pressure of their own transformed skin and muscle and bone... and yet there is always another notch to tighten, and never the release of death or sleep.

-----

3. Corruption

Collaboration is the law of the land, a sick fever that floods communities like clockwork as neighbor sells out neighbor for a scrap of food or a brief reprieve from violence; to love your family, to do right by them, you must do wrong by others, and that truth gnaws both inward through the soul and outward through the fragile bonds of care and trust that bind downtrodden Narnians together, until no one can look upon those they love, those for whom they sold their self-respect, without a hot rush of shame and revulsion clogging their throats and coating their teeth with bile.

---------------
---------------

( 53. ) For anonymous: Any, any, starry river of the sky, written 2/28/21

Who Walks Among the Stars (160 words)

Fandom = original

-----

The stars are more of a sea than a river, and more of a marsh than either, but there are channels where light flows swift and deep in and among the darker, drier ground, and those are what travelers follow on the winding paths between the worlds -- unless, of course, they are lucky enough to win the favor of birds and fly swift and true where others walk.

Kemmess steps tentatively from one hillock of dark to the next, testing the depth of the starry stream with the green, sap-sticky length of a broken reed, still glowing faintly with watery light. She has traversed the earth, the moon, and the sun without finding the hidden keep where her beloved has either fled or been imprisoned -- each witness she meets tells a different tale -- but there are whispers of worlds more distant yet in the heavens, and she will walk a thousand years rather than turn back with questions yet unanswered.

---------------
---------------

( 54. ) For anonymous: Any, any, silk, sage, silver, written 2/28/21

Sacrifices (150 words)

Fandom = original

-----

Silk: she ties a sash across your eyes, ties your wrists behind your back, ties your ankles as you kneel, ties your tongue with careful stitches to stopper up your sighs; there is no need to silence screams, not when you have come willing to her bed, but the ritual is stern.

Sage: she wafts incense through the air, traces oil across your skin in swirls and angled strokes in the pattern of a language and a script you never learned but now almost understand through touch alone.

Silver: she slides the needle into the softness beneath your skin, sends a rush of snow-melt cold flooding through your veins, a tracery of silver from your fingers to your heart... and when the cold-shock hits, when your pulse skips and stutters, she calls you treasure, calls you sister, calls you goddess, and whispers her eternal thanks as she sheaths her knife.

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

I am experiencing a small amount of self-directed annoyance at not completing the same number of fills as last year (when I wrote 72, 12x6 being a tidy and auspicious number), but then I console myself with the knowledge that my life has been significantly more disrupted this year than last year (surgery! church crisis!) and also I am busier at the rental company in my new job than I was in my old job. And 54 fills is not a shabby number by any stretch of the imagination.

Also I have entire pages of the second ficathon post I have not yet perused, so I think I will give myself permission to continue writing fills for at least another week. :)

And now, bed, because my wrist is very sore and I would like to get some sleep.

Batch the sixth. :)

All prompts drawn from the current iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon (post one and post two), hosted by the wonderful rthstewart. Come join the fun!

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

( 31. ) For anonymous: Any, any, grieving for the living, written 2/12/21

Last Rites (95 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives. SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 194!

-----

( cut for spoilers )

---------------
---------------

( 32. ) For undeadrobins: Any, any, waking up to the alarm, written 2/13/21

Home Front (885 words)

Fandom = The Magnus Archives. This turned into a season 5-style statement fic. It's mostly a Slaughter domain, though there are some elements of the Eye, the Desolation, the Vast, and the Lonely floating around the edges.

-----

( cut for length )

---------------
---------------

( 33. ) For thetransintransgenic: Oz/any set on Earth, any, queer visitors from Oz, written 2/13/21

Rainbow's End (175 words)

I realized after I posted this that thetransintransgenic probably meant queer in the modern sense while I was thinking of queer = odd due to the time period when Oz was written. Also, this is not a crossover. *headdesk*

-----

"And this is my friend Polychrome, she's the Rainbow's Daughter and helped me come visit you even though Philadelphia isn't a fairy country," Saladin said, swinging his left hand forward, his fingers (still a bit pudgy with youth, as if he hadn't aged a day since he vanished) twined with the slender, almost ethereal digits of a strangely ageless girl in multicolored scraps of a fabric that wasn't quite gauze, wasn't quite silk, and looked as if it would cost a hundred dollars an inch for an untattered bolt.

Richard glanced at Eleanor, whose speaking look conveyed quite clearly, 'Your ancestor owned a magic umbrella, mine once killed a dragon, and our son reappeared on the roof after a storm; who's to say he hasn't befriended a fairy?' -- and that was an excellent point, so Richard turned back to Saladin and said, "A pleasure to meet you, Miss Polychrome; any friend of our Button-Bright is always welcome in our home."

"As you are welcome in mine," Polychrome said, and curtsied fit to greet a queen.

---------------
---------------

( 34. ) For thetransintransgenic: Oz/any set on Earth, any, queer visitors from Oz, written 2/13/21

Natural History (250 words)

So I wrote a second fill. Crossover = Oz/Chronicles of Narnia. The Field Museum really does have two separate exhibits of human-eating lions (though one is from 1990, and therefore beyond the scope of this ficlet).

-----

"Dorothy Gale," says the blonde girl with the light of other worlds in her eyes, as she shakes Susan's hand, her left arm tucked firmly around her black-haired companion's waist; "I was born in Kansas, oh, ages ago, but there's not much to see there besides farms and sky so I thought I'd bring Ozma to Chicago and show her a real modern city, and so far it's been awfully good fun, especially the trains and the skyscrapers -- how about you?"

"My father is here for work, and he and my mother thought it would be educational for me to see some of the world beyond England," Susan says; "While I can't say I'm terribly fond of railways, I do agree that skyscrapers are fascinating -- and speaking of fascinating things, I was planning to visit the Field Museum, which I'm told has many intriguing exhibits, including the stuffed remains of two man-eating lions; may I invite you to accompany me?"

Dorothy glances at Ozma who smiles and says, "We must never tell the Cowardly Lion about his cousins' taste or their fates," (Susan, who has her own history with lions, tucks this away to decipher later) which seems to signal agreement since Dorothy plants an enthusiastic kiss on the other girl's cheek before turning back to Susan and chirping their agreement.

Susan never does unearth their story, but that's all right; she's learned to respect other people's privacy, and it would be a shame to spoil such a lovely day.

---------------
---------------

( 35. ) For anonymous: Oz books (L. Frank Baum), Ozma, poppies, written 2/14/21

If I Should Change Before I Wake (445 words)

A nine-sentence fill, because reasons.

-----

Ozma only learned about the poppy field by accident, overhearing the Scarecrow and Nick Chopper reminisce about their journey with Dorothy and wonder idly if the flowers are still there; that struck her as a question worth answering, but not important enough to assemble a Royal Progress, so she rode out to look at the poppy field accompanied only by the Sawhorse which, of course, could not be affected by their sleep-inducing scent.

Death was rare in Oz, so rare as to be nearly impossible, and the poppies' lure of repose was nigh overpowering, yet as Ozma and the Sawhorse wandered through the brilliant expanse of red blossoms, they found no slumbering bodies under the swaying stems and leaves -- either the poppies' victims had sunk into the earth entire, or someone with magical protection (or no need to breathe) had been collecting them.

"Which do you suppose is more likely, old friend?" Ozma asked the Sawhorse, one hand resting lightly on her Magic Belt.

"I have no knowledge on which to base a guess," the Sawhorse said, pawing idly at the base of a poppy stalk with one wooden leg, "but I can stay and keep watch; sooner or later someone will fall asleep and then we'll know what happens."

Ozma considered this, then nodded: "It's my royal duty to remove my enchantments and let the poppies' power affect me," she said; "I cannot let any of my subjects risk this danger unaware, and if we return to the Emerald City to ask for a volunteer, who knows what might occur while we are gone?"

"Royal duty sounds terribly unpleasant," the Sawhorse said, but it agreed to Ozma's plan so long as she used her Magic Belt to send a message to the Scarecrow before she fell asleep.

As she removed her enchantments and lay on the soft ground between and beneath the swaying poppies, Ozma wondered how long their perfume would need to take effect, not to mention how long before whatever fate befell the other sleepers would claim her in its turn.

The poppies' scent was heavy and warm, rich without cloying, and Ozma stared upward at the red petals bobbing, the green leaves fluttering, the blue sky and white clouds beyond, all melding into a strangely familiar swirl of color and scent and that echoed behind her slowly closing eyes.

As her mind unmoored from the tethers of the waking world, she realized this swooning, dizzy whirl felt almost exactly like Mombi's spell that had changed her from Tip to Ozma, and had one moment to wonder what body she would wake in before she drifted into the unmapped sea of sleep.

---------------
---------------

( 36. ) For rthstewart: Doctor Who, Donna Noble, That's where all the weird stuff's happening. In the paperwork., written 2/14/21

Worthy of Her Hire (195 words)

-----

Not that it's any of Donna's business, or that she's been looking in particular, but if you want to know how the marketing director spends his holiday bonus (very posh tastes, that man, in the best fucking-the-pig tradition) or where the hired lorries took the old office furniture after the big switcharound (not, shall we say, any of the usual places one takes old furniture, and she might do a spot of digging to satisfy her own curiosity on that point), she can tell you; she can tell you everything.

She files all the paperwork, after all, and scans and files the digital versions, too -- it takes a bit to learn what's normal, what's normal-weird, and what's proper weird for any company, but she has practice; she can pick that up in two weeks or less -- and it's beyond her why nobody ever expects a temp to read the papers she handles.

And if she should happen to spot something not just proper weird but dangerous... well, Donna may be a little fuzzy on the past few years of her life, but she remembers just enough to know, bone-deep, that she can make things better.

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

I have such a lot of fun with this ficathon every year. :DDD