[Fic] Three Sentence Ficathon fills, part seven
I don't think I've ever written so many fills for previous iterations of the ficathon? (I mean, I have probably written more words -- for example, the time I wrote ten interconnected fills for 
be_themoon that I then strung together into an 11K fic -- but not individual fills.)
Anyway! Here is the old ficathon post (still open for fills and comments! just not new prompts), and here is the new ficathon post (open for everything).
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37. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Beauty and the Beast; wolves; whose woods these are I think I know, written 2/12/20
Dark and Deep (100 words)
-----
They are hungry, have been hungry for years; and yet the pack cannot split, grown children moving off to find their own territories, their own mates, as is the way of generations. Instead something stings their muzzles and burns their paws if they venture beyond the woods, muddles their senses until they circle back to the cold stone walls that no longer have a refuse pit to scavenge, traps them even as their prey dwindles and flees from the dark and cold growing under the trees.
These woods belong to death until the spell breaks or the final petal falls.
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38. For
eagleoftheninth: Any, any, "all I do anymore is hurt," written 2/12/20
Clarity of Sight and Word (150 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Contains implied plans for self-harm.
-----
"Let's untangle that a little," Melanie's therapist said: "Do you mean that you're in pain, that you hurt others, or that you've hurt yourself?"
"Both? Both is good," Melanie said reflexively, and then winced at how thin her voice sounded making that joke; "Um, it's a meme, ignore that; but yes, I did mean that both ways, that I'm in pain and I keep hurting others; even now that I'm not... that I don't feel pressured into anger and violence, I still carved those reactions into habits and it's too easy to fall back into them, and it's not like my work situation has stopped being terrible."
"I notice you said nothing about self-harm," her therapist noted in a careful tone, and Melanie pressed her lips together and tried to think how not to sound like an immediate danger to herself if she mentioned her new hope for true escape.
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39. For
sideways: Books of the Raksura, Stone/Azure, "if you start a war here today, you're not sleeping in my bower for the rest of the turn", written 2/14/20
In Love and War (150 words)
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"If I start a war?" Azure said, spines rising in affront; "Since when am I the undiplomatic one?"
"Oh, we're both undiplomatic, but apparently Cherish is head-over-talons for one of the younger Sky Copper queens and if you break that alliance over border hunting disputes and Zenith's general... everything... then he'll never forgive us," -- Azure snorted, to which Stone shrugged and corrected himself: "Yes, obviously that will only last a turn, but the point is the entire court will be miserable and I'll be staying in the consorts' bowers, not yours."
"Were we ever that young and overly dramatic?" Azure wondered, before snorting again and lowering her spines; "Yes, I know, you think I'm still overly dramatic, but I can at least promise to hold my temper for our son's sake -- possibly for other reasons as well," she added, and nipped the tendons in Stone's neck by way of demonstration.
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40. For
sideways: Books of the Raksura, Consolation & Kethel, what does it mean to make a home, written 2/14/20
Homeward Bound (190 words)
Nine sentences.
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"I think-- I think it's not only people and not only a place. It's having the same people in the same place, taking care of it, so that we know we belong there and it belongs to us, and we can pass it on to our children," Consolation said uncertainly, trying to make sense of the vague half-explanations the consort, her father, had given when she was still too young to fully understand.
"Hard to find a place we can all fit," Kethel said. "Hard to stay for long."
Yes, because nobody wanted Fell around, and if they took a place by force they'd have to spend all their time defending it instead of learning to live by some way other than endless raiding, some way that didn't exhaust all the local resources until they had to move on or die. Consolation snarled at the old, familiar frustrations, until the backwash of her emotions crashed down through the flight's link and she yanked her anger back so she didn't swamp the others.
"We'll find a way," she told her kethel. "A home is worth a fight. It has to be."
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41. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Narnia/Enchanted Forest Chronicles crossover; any character; boundaries between worlds, written 2/14/20
Strike the Bell (885 words)
As you can see, this completely and utterly got away from me. *wry*
-----
"It occurred to me that the Caves of Chance might be the best setting for experimenting with dimensionally-complicated spells," Telemain said as he led Morwen, Aunt Ophelia, and Fiddlesticks down a narrow, twisting passage, "given that malleability of location is one of their many inherent peculiarities. While I haven't yet found a way to sidestep the wizards' barrier spell, as it were, by forming a path through various other-spaces, I do believe I've found a way to make the boundaries between dimensions, or perhaps between universes, permeable to sight."
"Fascinating," Morwen said, keeping her tone somewhat dry though she did mean it sincerely. "You'll have to explain the theory to me later, but for now just tell me if you've seen anything interesting."
"Mostly a lot of dark caves," Telemain said with a vaguely annoyed expression, "which I suspect is down to general resonance effects. It's quite likely I'd see trees if I managed to get the spell functional within the Enchanted Forest, see mountains from the Mountains of Morning, and so on. But the encounter that most particularly caught my attention was the very tall woman in a white fur coat and a crown of iron and ice who seemed to see me in return and attempted to cast a spell, presumably of an aggressive nature, across the barrier between us... until the image of a lion suddenly blotted her out and ordered me not to look that way again."
"That's rude!" said Fiddlesticks. "Everybody knows cats can look at kings, and Telemain's almost like a cat, so he should get to look wherever he wants."
"If you want to make that argument to a lion, be my guest," said Aunt Ophelia. "I'll watch from off to the side."
Morwen ignored the consequent hissing squabble and asked, "Did you listen to him?"
Telemain frowned. "Obviously not. What kind of researcher would I be if I let people arbitrarily close down avenues of investigation? And the next time I found that specific boundary, the woman in the white crown acted as though she'd never tried to attack me and instead attempted to suggest we collaborate on a way to send more than visual images between worlds. She has intriguing ideas, which have helped us establish a tenuous audio link in addition to the visual link, but I find her behavior somewhat suspicious and wanted to bring you in for a second opinion, both on the technical end and on my potential research partner's motives."
Morwen hummed thoughtfully between her teeth. If Telemain had managed to notice potentially suspicious behavior through his focus on new research ideas, it was likely this alternate-universe witch had deeply questionable ethics. That wasn't necessarily a deal-breaker -- Morwen had collaborated with ethically shaky people on various projects over the years -- but it did mean she'd take a very careful look at what this alternate-universe witch might be able to do with proper inter-dimensional travel spells.
But all she said aloud was, "I see. Well, it looks like we've finally reached your laboratory, so let's get started and hope the mysterious lion doesn't interrupt to warn me off in turn."
"Now you've jinxed it," said Aunt Ophelia.
"Jinxes aren't real!" said Fiddlesticks. "And anyway, we'll protect you."
"If he does, we'll simply start over," said Telemain as he snapped his fingers and lit the magical lamps that hung on chains of varying length. "I've never been good at following orders without a proper explanation."
"Except mine, I hope?"
"You always explain yourself afterwards," Telemain said absently. "Now, let me see..." He bustled about the complicated brass and crystal apparatus in the center of the cave for several minutes while Morwen tried to split her attention between his adjustments and her cats, who were poking gleefully around the corners in search of misplaced magical gewgaws or small underground prey. She could make out that he was tapping into the same principle of indeterminacy he'd used in his failed attempts to reverse-engineer Mendanbar's elegant transportation spell, and that he had several components designed to enhance clarity, truth, and so-forth, but beyond that it was difficult to interpret the practical details without knowing the background theory.
"That should do it," Telemain said at last. He drew a small stone wand topped with a chunk of rutilated quartz, tapped it three times against a small golden bell -- the chime rang out both as a sweet tone and a mirage-like visual ripple -- and pronounced, "Vertilarian, vertilentricae, vertilosiux."
The air over the apparatus wavered like stone-struck water, then resolved into something almost but not exactly like a magic mirror. On the far side, looking back at them like a cat at a mouse it hasn't quite decided whether to eat or to play with, was a woman with salt-white skin and long black hair, wearing a crown of ice and iron and a white silk dress embroidered with diamonds and pearls that likely cost as much as Morwen's entire house.
"Hello," the woman said. "I see you've brought a guest."
"This is my friend Morwen, a highly skilled witch," Telemain said. "Morwen, may I introduce Jadis of Narnia. I'm sure we'll all find this a very interesting work session."
"Yes," said Morwen, in a carefully blank tone. "I believe we will."
Across the boundary between worlds, Jadis smiled.
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42. For anonymous: any, any, fine print, written 2/15/20
Uninformed Consent (275 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Sentences = I gave up.
-----
"What annoys me is that I don't think the binding should work at all," Basira remarked idly to Martin. "I read the contract very carefully after I signed it. No matter how convoluted legal jargon can get, I'm certain there weren't any clauses that could be construed as, 'You can't unilaterally terminate your employment, attempts to stay away from the Institute make you sick, and if Elias Bouchard dies, you will too.' You could argue that I was verbally informed of all that so my signature implied consent, but none of the rest of you knew what you were getting into, so that doesn't really hold water."
"I'm pretty sure logic has nothing to do with it," Martin said, having had far more time to worry at the problem than was probably good for his mental health. "It's more down to fear -- the fear that you've overlooked something vital and now someone's revealed a bit of information that ruins your life. That's what the Eye does: awful knowledge revealed only when it's far too late to fix anything, you know?"
Basira hummed thoughtfully. "If our fear is what fuels the contract's effectiveness, what happens if we all stop being afraid?"
"I don't know. I don't think that's possible, not for all of us, all of the time, or even for all of us at the same time for just a minute," Martin said.
"I wouldn't be so sure of that. Daisy knows where to get hold of some powerful drugs," Basira said. "But we'll set that aside as a last resort. For now, I think stopping the Stranger from ending the world is more important."
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Now I will revise my little speech for tomorrow's Board Minute during the Sunday service, maybe do a couple other tiny chores, and then go to bed early. :)
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
be_themoon that I then strung together into an 11K fic -- but not individual fills.)
Anyway! Here is the old ficathon post (still open for fills and comments! just not new prompts), and here is the new ficathon post (open for everything).
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
37. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Beauty and the Beast; wolves; whose woods these are I think I know, written 2/12/20
Dark and Deep (100 words)
-----
They are hungry, have been hungry for years; and yet the pack cannot split, grown children moving off to find their own territories, their own mates, as is the way of generations. Instead something stings their muzzles and burns their paws if they venture beyond the woods, muddles their senses until they circle back to the cold stone walls that no longer have a refuse pit to scavenge, traps them even as their prey dwindles and flees from the dark and cold growing under the trees.
These woods belong to death until the spell breaks or the final petal falls.
---------------
---------------
38. For
eagleoftheninth: Any, any, "all I do anymore is hurt," written 2/12/20
Clarity of Sight and Word (150 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Contains implied plans for self-harm.
-----
"Let's untangle that a little," Melanie's therapist said: "Do you mean that you're in pain, that you hurt others, or that you've hurt yourself?"
"Both? Both is good," Melanie said reflexively, and then winced at how thin her voice sounded making that joke; "Um, it's a meme, ignore that; but yes, I did mean that both ways, that I'm in pain and I keep hurting others; even now that I'm not... that I don't feel pressured into anger and violence, I still carved those reactions into habits and it's too easy to fall back into them, and it's not like my work situation has stopped being terrible."
"I notice you said nothing about self-harm," her therapist noted in a careful tone, and Melanie pressed her lips together and tried to think how not to sound like an immediate danger to herself if she mentioned her new hope for true escape.
---------------
---------------
39. For
sideways: Books of the Raksura, Stone/Azure, "if you start a war here today, you're not sleeping in my bower for the rest of the turn", written 2/14/20
In Love and War (150 words)
-----
"If I start a war?" Azure said, spines rising in affront; "Since when am I the undiplomatic one?"
"Oh, we're both undiplomatic, but apparently Cherish is head-over-talons for one of the younger Sky Copper queens and if you break that alliance over border hunting disputes and Zenith's general... everything... then he'll never forgive us," -- Azure snorted, to which Stone shrugged and corrected himself: "Yes, obviously that will only last a turn, but the point is the entire court will be miserable and I'll be staying in the consorts' bowers, not yours."
"Were we ever that young and overly dramatic?" Azure wondered, before snorting again and lowering her spines; "Yes, I know, you think I'm still overly dramatic, but I can at least promise to hold my temper for our son's sake -- possibly for other reasons as well," she added, and nipped the tendons in Stone's neck by way of demonstration.
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---------------
40. For
sideways: Books of the Raksura, Consolation & Kethel, what does it mean to make a home, written 2/14/20
Homeward Bound (190 words)
Nine sentences.
-----
"I think-- I think it's not only people and not only a place. It's having the same people in the same place, taking care of it, so that we know we belong there and it belongs to us, and we can pass it on to our children," Consolation said uncertainly, trying to make sense of the vague half-explanations the consort, her father, had given when she was still too young to fully understand.
"Hard to find a place we can all fit," Kethel said. "Hard to stay for long."
Yes, because nobody wanted Fell around, and if they took a place by force they'd have to spend all their time defending it instead of learning to live by some way other than endless raiding, some way that didn't exhaust all the local resources until they had to move on or die. Consolation snarled at the old, familiar frustrations, until the backwash of her emotions crashed down through the flight's link and she yanked her anger back so she didn't swamp the others.
"We'll find a way," she told her kethel. "A home is worth a fight. It has to be."
---------------
---------------
41. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Narnia/Enchanted Forest Chronicles crossover; any character; boundaries between worlds, written 2/14/20
Strike the Bell (885 words)
As you can see, this completely and utterly got away from me. *wry*
-----
"It occurred to me that the Caves of Chance might be the best setting for experimenting with dimensionally-complicated spells," Telemain said as he led Morwen, Aunt Ophelia, and Fiddlesticks down a narrow, twisting passage, "given that malleability of location is one of their many inherent peculiarities. While I haven't yet found a way to sidestep the wizards' barrier spell, as it were, by forming a path through various other-spaces, I do believe I've found a way to make the boundaries between dimensions, or perhaps between universes, permeable to sight."
"Fascinating," Morwen said, keeping her tone somewhat dry though she did mean it sincerely. "You'll have to explain the theory to me later, but for now just tell me if you've seen anything interesting."
"Mostly a lot of dark caves," Telemain said with a vaguely annoyed expression, "which I suspect is down to general resonance effects. It's quite likely I'd see trees if I managed to get the spell functional within the Enchanted Forest, see mountains from the Mountains of Morning, and so on. But the encounter that most particularly caught my attention was the very tall woman in a white fur coat and a crown of iron and ice who seemed to see me in return and attempted to cast a spell, presumably of an aggressive nature, across the barrier between us... until the image of a lion suddenly blotted her out and ordered me not to look that way again."
"That's rude!" said Fiddlesticks. "Everybody knows cats can look at kings, and Telemain's almost like a cat, so he should get to look wherever he wants."
"If you want to make that argument to a lion, be my guest," said Aunt Ophelia. "I'll watch from off to the side."
Morwen ignored the consequent hissing squabble and asked, "Did you listen to him?"
Telemain frowned. "Obviously not. What kind of researcher would I be if I let people arbitrarily close down avenues of investigation? And the next time I found that specific boundary, the woman in the white crown acted as though she'd never tried to attack me and instead attempted to suggest we collaborate on a way to send more than visual images between worlds. She has intriguing ideas, which have helped us establish a tenuous audio link in addition to the visual link, but I find her behavior somewhat suspicious and wanted to bring you in for a second opinion, both on the technical end and on my potential research partner's motives."
Morwen hummed thoughtfully between her teeth. If Telemain had managed to notice potentially suspicious behavior through his focus on new research ideas, it was likely this alternate-universe witch had deeply questionable ethics. That wasn't necessarily a deal-breaker -- Morwen had collaborated with ethically shaky people on various projects over the years -- but it did mean she'd take a very careful look at what this alternate-universe witch might be able to do with proper inter-dimensional travel spells.
But all she said aloud was, "I see. Well, it looks like we've finally reached your laboratory, so let's get started and hope the mysterious lion doesn't interrupt to warn me off in turn."
"Now you've jinxed it," said Aunt Ophelia.
"Jinxes aren't real!" said Fiddlesticks. "And anyway, we'll protect you."
"If he does, we'll simply start over," said Telemain as he snapped his fingers and lit the magical lamps that hung on chains of varying length. "I've never been good at following orders without a proper explanation."
"Except mine, I hope?"
"You always explain yourself afterwards," Telemain said absently. "Now, let me see..." He bustled about the complicated brass and crystal apparatus in the center of the cave for several minutes while Morwen tried to split her attention between his adjustments and her cats, who were poking gleefully around the corners in search of misplaced magical gewgaws or small underground prey. She could make out that he was tapping into the same principle of indeterminacy he'd used in his failed attempts to reverse-engineer Mendanbar's elegant transportation spell, and that he had several components designed to enhance clarity, truth, and so-forth, but beyond that it was difficult to interpret the practical details without knowing the background theory.
"That should do it," Telemain said at last. He drew a small stone wand topped with a chunk of rutilated quartz, tapped it three times against a small golden bell -- the chime rang out both as a sweet tone and a mirage-like visual ripple -- and pronounced, "Vertilarian, vertilentricae, vertilosiux."
The air over the apparatus wavered like stone-struck water, then resolved into something almost but not exactly like a magic mirror. On the far side, looking back at them like a cat at a mouse it hasn't quite decided whether to eat or to play with, was a woman with salt-white skin and long black hair, wearing a crown of ice and iron and a white silk dress embroidered with diamonds and pearls that likely cost as much as Morwen's entire house.
"Hello," the woman said. "I see you've brought a guest."
"This is my friend Morwen, a highly skilled witch," Telemain said. "Morwen, may I introduce Jadis of Narnia. I'm sure we'll all find this a very interesting work session."
"Yes," said Morwen, in a carefully blank tone. "I believe we will."
Across the boundary between worlds, Jadis smiled.
---------------
---------------
42. For anonymous: any, any, fine print, written 2/15/20
Uninformed Consent (275 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives. Sentences = I gave up.
-----
"What annoys me is that I don't think the binding should work at all," Basira remarked idly to Martin. "I read the contract very carefully after I signed it. No matter how convoluted legal jargon can get, I'm certain there weren't any clauses that could be construed as, 'You can't unilaterally terminate your employment, attempts to stay away from the Institute make you sick, and if Elias Bouchard dies, you will too.' You could argue that I was verbally informed of all that so my signature implied consent, but none of the rest of you knew what you were getting into, so that doesn't really hold water."
"I'm pretty sure logic has nothing to do with it," Martin said, having had far more time to worry at the problem than was probably good for his mental health. "It's more down to fear -- the fear that you've overlooked something vital and now someone's revealed a bit of information that ruins your life. That's what the Eye does: awful knowledge revealed only when it's far too late to fix anything, you know?"
Basira hummed thoughtfully. "If our fear is what fuels the contract's effectiveness, what happens if we all stop being afraid?"
"I don't know. I don't think that's possible, not for all of us, all of the time, or even for all of us at the same time for just a minute," Martin said.
"I wouldn't be so sure of that. Daisy knows where to get hold of some powerful drugs," Basira said. "But we'll set that aside as a last resort. For now, I think stopping the Stranger from ending the world is more important."
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Now I will revise my little speech for tomorrow's Board Minute during the Sunday service, maybe do a couple other tiny chores, and then go to bed early. :)
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)