Writing update
Been getting over a vicious bug, so have only recently been back online to respond to comments and do a posting update on revealed holiday exchange fics and art. An accomplished feeling, especially as a headache is still threatening my equilibrium and ability to concentrate for than a hour. I've compiled a list of writing projects for the next few months, something to keep me on track and as a shout-out to those unfortunate few to whom I owe fics. ^^;
Writing projects
[HnG] Sequel to As the Grass Grows: Untitled gift fic for issen4
Suyeong turned blindly into the warmth of Yeongha's hand that rested lightly against his cheek. "I'm not a kid anymore," he whispered. And the words were both reassurance and promise.
And in the darkness, he felt Yeongha tremble.
[HnG] Sequel to Three Stones in an Empty Triangle: working title "Soldier in the Crossfire"
He had his back to her, looking into her cupboard, when he asked abruptly, "You like instant ramen?"
Ever since he'd taken her to meet his parents, they'd stopped going out for their weekly dinners by silent mutual agreement. Instead, they'd taken to having home-cooked dinners at each other's place; it was more economical. Tonight was the first time they were eating at her place.
She shrugged. "I don't particularly like or dislike it," she replied, stirring the pan-fried wonton. "It's most convenient, short of ordering out. And that's just too expensive to do continuously on my teacher's salary. Why?" She glanced briefly at his back.
"It's just…I had a friend who stockpiled ramen like this." A pause, then softer. "You reminded me."
She turned back to cooking the dinner, and asked him teasingly without looking at him, "Was this a female friend - should I get jealous?" She wasn't being serious, but timber of his voice when he responded...
"He. Shindo Hikaru."
Her hand on the spatula slowed; she wasn't quite sure why. "You've never mentioned him to me."
"…I don't see him much anymore: he moved to Korea a few years ago. He-" Another pause, longer this time. "He didn't keep in touch."
"That is unusual, isn't it?" she said slowly, trying to figure out her unease, "Moving to Korea? Not many do that - from Japan, that is."
"Shindo's unusual in many ways." His voice sounded distant and preoccupied. When she looked, she saw him still standing by the open cupboard, turning the instant ramen bowl over and over again in his hands.
[HnG] Completion of music/orchestra/band AU: working title "Three Part Invention in F Minor," gift fic for tininess
[HnG] Completion of Season of Black Chrysanthemums
The surroundings - the backlit shoji walls, the worn tatami of the ryotei, the muffled yowl of an alley cat in the distance - faded unnoticed into the background. Only Shindo remained, warm and reassuringly solid against him.
[HnG] Beginning of (as I described it to owari) the Yeongha-gay-sex-tour -- because the Hikago fandom needs more pr0n. XD
For tininess: Yeongha/Hikaru
For me, hee! corbeaun: Yeongha/Akira
Possibly, Yeongha/Yashiro
[C.S. Lewis - Chronicles of Narnia] Completion of the Calormen-eunuch and Edward story: working title " Poleis"
“And how does His Majesty find Tashbaan?”
Edmund did not like the smile on the Grand Vizier's face. He did not like the Grand Vizier.
“No tales could compare,” he murmured politely, and sipped from his wine cup.
The Grand Vizier plucked a ripe fig from a nearby bowl. “I understand,” he glanced sideways at Edmund and rolled the plump dusky-colored fruit between his fingers, “that you've been enjoying some of the various…ah,” he bit into the fig, “pleasures of the city,” and chewed thoughtfully while examining the fruit’s exposed succulent insides.
The polite smile on Edmund’s face congealed. He retained enough self-possession to give a bland response, then redirect and continue the conversation in another vein for some time before he allowed himself to beg off. Susan was too occupied with Rabadesh to give him more than a gimlet eye when he excused himself from the banquet with all the best wishes to the Tisroc’s health.
The next morning, four young boys were sent to Edmund's quarters-a token of the Tisroc's esteem.
Oiled and perfumed, each boy was successively prettier than the last, with soft swan breasts and dark kohl-lined eyes-the least of them surpassed Muti. All four were eunuchs.
[Highlander] AU first-meeting for Duncan and Methos in Japan 1778: working title "Shogun"
Because she was a woman, she hadn't been allowed into the ritual area. Instead, she knelt in darkness in the heart of her family home, waiting. When the shoji paper door to her room finally slid open, letting in the last crimson light of day, she bowed her head in silent, resigned grief. Jiro, the Koto family retainer, knelt and bowed low to her back. His voice when he spoke was quiet and removed of all emotion. "Your father made two full cuts before the sword fell - the Koto name was not shamed."
In the distance, she heard the fading clip-clop of horses as the Shogun's official witness headed back to Edo with her father's head as evidence. Theirs was only a middling 300 koku samurai family - barely enough to warrant the one samurai retainer - but Koto Hideo, by his manner of death, had absolved his family of the consequence of treason.
"Did my father thank the Shogun's graciousness before he willingly cut his belly?" she murmured, purposely using the derogatory hara-kiri instead of the more honorable term of seppuku. She gave a short laugh as she heard Jiro start in dismay behind her.
"O-Maya-dono!" he protested, clearly aghast at her outburst.
Maya closed her eyes briefly then, and carefully turned from her kneeling position before the Koto family shrine. Jiro, by propriety, did not meet her gaze and stared stoically at the floor before his hands. Already she regretted her brief lapse of control. The walls have ears and the doors eyes, as her long dead nurse used to say. And there was still much to be done.
"The barbarian is dead?" she asked. It was useless to wish the past to be otherwise, or wish her father to have been other than the man he was. Koto Hideo was gone and, until her brother returned from the capital, she would need to ensure the Koto name was not stripped of its honor. 'There are things a man must do,' Koto Hideo had often said during his life, 'and things he cannot.'
Her honorable father had died in acknowledgment of the treason he intended, and it was now Maya's task to see it through.
Jiro nodded his head curtly. "Aa. Afterwards, the envoy was content to see him hanged like a dog. The body has already been cut down and is now lying in the east wing." The east wing of the family house had been abandoned since her mother's death nearly a decade ago. For fear of being tainted by the impurity, no one in the household would go near the dead body before the eta, the unclean ones, came to dispose of it. It would give her just enough time.
"Good." Maya withdrew a pre-written letter from her sleeve and placed it on the ground before the man. Its contents were innocuous, should anyone other than its intended recipient read it. "Edo is so busy this time of the year; the Shogun may not remember to notify my brother of his father's passing. Please, deliver this to Koto Ichiro in person."
The man took the slip of paper and tucked it into his sleeve. His face did not betray any tension at the unusual request - he was samurai, not a messenger boy - and remained expressionless even though he must have felt the odd weight of the letter.
He bowed low to her, forehead touching tatami, in acceptance of the mission in its entirety.
[Fairytale/Original] A reworking of Snow White: working title "Blood Snow"
He saw her, all black hair and red lips against the snow, and thought instantly of the princesses that old Nurse used to tell. When he touched her, she was stone hard, lips blue beneath the blood that caked her mouth, her wide staring eyes rimmed with frost. If he'd dared then to peel back his gloves and touch her skin to skin, he would have left bits of himself on her frozen face, so cold she was.
Writing projects
[HnG] Sequel to As the Grass Grows: Untitled gift fic for issen4
Suyeong turned blindly into the warmth of Yeongha's hand that rested lightly against his cheek. "I'm not a kid anymore," he whispered. And the words were both reassurance and promise.
And in the darkness, he felt Yeongha tremble.
[HnG] Sequel to Three Stones in an Empty Triangle: working title "Soldier in the Crossfire"
He had his back to her, looking into her cupboard, when he asked abruptly, "You like instant ramen?"
Ever since he'd taken her to meet his parents, they'd stopped going out for their weekly dinners by silent mutual agreement. Instead, they'd taken to having home-cooked dinners at each other's place; it was more economical. Tonight was the first time they were eating at her place.
She shrugged. "I don't particularly like or dislike it," she replied, stirring the pan-fried wonton. "It's most convenient, short of ordering out. And that's just too expensive to do continuously on my teacher's salary. Why?" She glanced briefly at his back.
"It's just…I had a friend who stockpiled ramen like this." A pause, then softer. "You reminded me."
She turned back to cooking the dinner, and asked him teasingly without looking at him, "Was this a female friend - should I get jealous?" She wasn't being serious, but timber of his voice when he responded...
"He. Shindo Hikaru."
Her hand on the spatula slowed; she wasn't quite sure why. "You've never mentioned him to me."
"…I don't see him much anymore: he moved to Korea a few years ago. He-" Another pause, longer this time. "He didn't keep in touch."
"That is unusual, isn't it?" she said slowly, trying to figure out her unease, "Moving to Korea? Not many do that - from Japan, that is."
"Shindo's unusual in many ways." His voice sounded distant and preoccupied. When she looked, she saw him still standing by the open cupboard, turning the instant ramen bowl over and over again in his hands.
[HnG] Completion of music/orchestra/band AU: working title "Three Part Invention in F Minor," gift fic for tininess
[HnG] Completion of Season of Black Chrysanthemums
The surroundings - the backlit shoji walls, the worn tatami of the ryotei, the muffled yowl of an alley cat in the distance - faded unnoticed into the background. Only Shindo remained, warm and reassuringly solid against him.
[HnG] Beginning of (as I described it to owari) the Yeongha-gay-sex-tour -- because the Hikago fandom needs more pr0n. XD
For tininess: Yeongha/Hikaru
For me, hee! corbeaun: Yeongha/Akira
Possibly, Yeongha/Yashiro
[C.S. Lewis - Chronicles of Narnia] Completion of the Calormen-eunuch and Edward story: working title " Poleis"
“And how does His Majesty find Tashbaan?”
Edmund did not like the smile on the Grand Vizier's face. He did not like the Grand Vizier.
“No tales could compare,” he murmured politely, and sipped from his wine cup.
The Grand Vizier plucked a ripe fig from a nearby bowl. “I understand,” he glanced sideways at Edmund and rolled the plump dusky-colored fruit between his fingers, “that you've been enjoying some of the various…ah,” he bit into the fig, “pleasures of the city,” and chewed thoughtfully while examining the fruit’s exposed succulent insides.
The polite smile on Edmund’s face congealed. He retained enough self-possession to give a bland response, then redirect and continue the conversation in another vein for some time before he allowed himself to beg off. Susan was too occupied with Rabadesh to give him more than a gimlet eye when he excused himself from the banquet with all the best wishes to the Tisroc’s health.
The next morning, four young boys were sent to Edmund's quarters-a token of the Tisroc's esteem.
Oiled and perfumed, each boy was successively prettier than the last, with soft swan breasts and dark kohl-lined eyes-the least of them surpassed Muti. All four were eunuchs.
[Highlander] AU first-meeting for Duncan and Methos in Japan 1778: working title "Shogun"
Because she was a woman, she hadn't been allowed into the ritual area. Instead, she knelt in darkness in the heart of her family home, waiting. When the shoji paper door to her room finally slid open, letting in the last crimson light of day, she bowed her head in silent, resigned grief. Jiro, the Koto family retainer, knelt and bowed low to her back. His voice when he spoke was quiet and removed of all emotion. "Your father made two full cuts before the sword fell - the Koto name was not shamed."
In the distance, she heard the fading clip-clop of horses as the Shogun's official witness headed back to Edo with her father's head as evidence. Theirs was only a middling 300 koku samurai family - barely enough to warrant the one samurai retainer - but Koto Hideo, by his manner of death, had absolved his family of the consequence of treason.
"Did my father thank the Shogun's graciousness before he willingly cut his belly?" she murmured, purposely using the derogatory hara-kiri instead of the more honorable term of seppuku. She gave a short laugh as she heard Jiro start in dismay behind her.
"O-Maya-dono!" he protested, clearly aghast at her outburst.
Maya closed her eyes briefly then, and carefully turned from her kneeling position before the Koto family shrine. Jiro, by propriety, did not meet her gaze and stared stoically at the floor before his hands. Already she regretted her brief lapse of control. The walls have ears and the doors eyes, as her long dead nurse used to say. And there was still much to be done.
"The barbarian is dead?" she asked. It was useless to wish the past to be otherwise, or wish her father to have been other than the man he was. Koto Hideo was gone and, until her brother returned from the capital, she would need to ensure the Koto name was not stripped of its honor. 'There are things a man must do,' Koto Hideo had often said during his life, 'and things he cannot.'
Her honorable father had died in acknowledgment of the treason he intended, and it was now Maya's task to see it through.
Jiro nodded his head curtly. "Aa. Afterwards, the envoy was content to see him hanged like a dog. The body has already been cut down and is now lying in the east wing." The east wing of the family house had been abandoned since her mother's death nearly a decade ago. For fear of being tainted by the impurity, no one in the household would go near the dead body before the eta, the unclean ones, came to dispose of it. It would give her just enough time.
"Good." Maya withdrew a pre-written letter from her sleeve and placed it on the ground before the man. Its contents were innocuous, should anyone other than its intended recipient read it. "Edo is so busy this time of the year; the Shogun may not remember to notify my brother of his father's passing. Please, deliver this to Koto Ichiro in person."
The man took the slip of paper and tucked it into his sleeve. His face did not betray any tension at the unusual request - he was samurai, not a messenger boy - and remained expressionless even though he must have felt the odd weight of the letter.
He bowed low to her, forehead touching tatami, in acceptance of the mission in its entirety.
[Fairytale/Original] A reworking of Snow White: working title "Blood Snow"
He saw her, all black hair and red lips against the snow, and thought instantly of the princesses that old Nurse used to tell. When he touched her, she was stone hard, lips blue beneath the blood that caked her mouth, her wide staring eyes rimmed with frost. If he'd dared then to peel back his gloves and touch her skin to skin, he would have left bits of himself on her frozen face, so cold she was.