[Fic] Three Sentence Ficathon fills, part twelve
This will be my final Three Sentence Ficathon fill collection post. (Probably.)
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 until the end of today, after which it will also close for prompts though you can still write fills).
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67. For anonymous: Imperial Radch, Seivarden, stranded, written 2/25/20
Out of Time (140 words)
-----
Culture shock is a known hazard of military service: contact with non-Radch can unsettle the steadiest personality, to say nothing of being stationed among them on planets where everything is built and organized along alien principles; but even stranded on the far outskirts of the Empire, Seivarden had still had her fellow Radch to rely upon and generations of patterns telling her how to react and recover.
Now, stranded in the future, her own people have become a foreign world; she has no pattern to follow, no fellow soldiers to support her; even Breq, who remembers the universe that was, has travelled the slow path from one year to the next and changed along the way into someone entirely different and strange.
Seivarden curls into a knot on her bed and tells herself soldiers must not weep in alien hands.
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68. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Narnia, raccoons, masters of their trade, written 2/26/20
Jack of All Trades (75 words)
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"That trade being?" Susan asked.
The Raccoon grinned, the dark band of fur across her face shading her eyes into near-invisible glints, and waggled her hand-like forepaws: "Whatever we like! Opposable thumbs are helpful but not strictly necessary, and if you can't get a Being or a Primate to do fiddly work, a Raccoon will always be the next best option -- not to mention we charge less and haul away your rubbish heaps for free."
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69. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Any; any; The hurrier I go, the behinder I get, written 2/26/20
Wherever You Go, There You Are (160 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives
-----
Which was the beauty of it, of course, because fear did tend to hurry one along -- no time to sit and reason logically when all the little glands and nerves were screaming at the top of their lungs to flee or fight -- or even to freeze, because the mind froze along with the body, each cell vibrating so fast that everything blurred into a single sheet of terror-white.
And once they were hurrying, how easy to wind that panicked path into corkscrew curls, steps strung between her fingers like recursive, nightmarish cat's cradle yarn, around and around and around it goes and where it stops... well, it doesn't stop, of course, because it's not just a spiral; it's a Möbius strip and the strip is Helen and Helen is hungry.
She may have jumped tenses there, but that's fine because time is only another path to twist and no matter how fast her victims run, she's always there before them.
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70. For
last_haven: Any, any, I've had my adventures, I don't need something new, I'm afraid of what I'm risking if I follow you, written 2/26/20
Tikkun Olam (125 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives
-----
"We can stay here," Georgie offers; "You've been through enough, and there's no saying we'll be able to do any good out there anyway. At least here we have a little protection -- you from the Eye and me from the End, and the other powers are keeping their distance for now."
Melanie smiles in the direction of her girlfriend's voice and shakes her head: "I quit the Archives because I couldn't be part of something evil, but you know the quote, right -- that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing? -- maybe we can't do much, but if we have a little protection the least we can do is extend it to as many people as we can."
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71. For
runespoor: any, any, buying back your memories, written 2/27/20
Equivalent Exchange (500 words)
Original fiction, because reasons. :) Also, structural restrictions? Never heard of them! *wry*
-----
"How do I know if they're worth the price?" she asked. "I don't even know if they were stolen, or if I traded them for something I thought was worth more at the time -- I'm fairly sure I didn't lose them gambling, because I don't feel like a gambling person, but I can't even be completely sure of that -- so you see my problem with the entire concept, right?"
"You've stated it with admirable clarity," said the person sitting on the other side of the glittering mosaic table, hands (...probably hands? though admittedly she didn't have many points of comparison anymore) folded neatly before a cloth-wrapped torso and underneath a toothy (...too toothy? not enough teeth? she kept losing track when she tried to count them) smile. "This is why the transaction is voluntary rather than compulsory -- I like to keep potential sources of regret to a minimum, so while I'm afraid I can't show you the contents of your memories without a down payment, the least I can do is ensure that you understand your options. This is also why the exact method of payment is entirely at your discretion, providing, of course, that it's of equivalent value -- one doesn't last long in business selling below market rate, you understand -- but whether you pay with time, emotions, senses, abilities, or any other item of worth is all one to me."
She pondered this information for a time, while the person with the cloth-wrapped torso and face sat patiently and without breathing. Then she said, "If I asked how you came to have possession of my memories, would you tell me or would that also require payment?"
The cloth-wrapped person's smile grew more teeth (or perhaps the teeth simply enlarged?) and the answer came quickly. "Neither; one doesn't last long in business by disclosing confidential details about one's sources and transactions."
"Which... could mean that you bought my memories from me, or bought them from someone else, or simply picked them up at the side of the road," she said, puzzling through the options. "I begin to see how you define clarity of statement. In that case, I believe I would like to purchase one memory -- specifically, the memory of how I came to lose or sell my memories -- in return for the memory of this conversation, and with the addendum that if we've been through this transaction before, the memory of trading a previous iteration of this conversation doesn't count as the sale or loss in question."
"Done," said the cloth-wrapped person, and reached across the mosaic table to press a finger (it must be a finger, because what else could it be?) to her forehead. As the world dissolved into laughter and the click-clack-clatter of falling tiles, Elise (her name was Elise! she'd traded her memories for a map... which she'd promptly lost, and had no idea why it had been important in the first place) could only think, That was too easy. How long until the catch?
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72. For
scytale: Any, any, would you love me more if I killed someone for you?, written 2/28/20
A Generational Story (120 words)
Fandom = The Darkangel Trilogy. Contains implied child sexual abuse and implied incest between an adoptive mother and child, because Oriencor is canonically creepy as fuck.
-----
"Ah, my darling, but deaths are not what I wish you to take; I sculpt with souls, not lives, and you have witnessed full well that a body and mind can continue without such unearned splendor as a soul," the white lady said.
"Yes, mother," Irrylath agreed, and shifted in her lap to give her stroking fingers, dry and cold as the winterock of her castle, better access under his tunic.
"You will be great and grand and bring all Avaric to its knees soon enough, my darling," the white lady said, "and then, when you have brought me twice seven souls from twice seven brides -- why, then, I shall love you as well as my own mother loved me."
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I am still working on a Magnus Archives/Doctor Who crossover prompt fill that got away from me (more so than any of the other long fills I've already posted), but aside from that, I think I am done for this year. Seventy-two fills is a good number -- twelve times six -- and while there is the temptation to go for a baker's dozen, I am home sick today and I have other projects that need my time and attention. *wry*
And hey, 13,445 words (yes, that is an exact number; I have been tracking for my
getyourwordsout spreadsheet) is a pretty good haul if I do say so myself. :D
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
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 until the end of today, after which it will also close for prompts though you can still write fills).
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
67. For anonymous: Imperial Radch, Seivarden, stranded, written 2/25/20
Out of Time (140 words)
-----
Culture shock is a known hazard of military service: contact with non-Radch can unsettle the steadiest personality, to say nothing of being stationed among them on planets where everything is built and organized along alien principles; but even stranded on the far outskirts of the Empire, Seivarden had still had her fellow Radch to rely upon and generations of patterns telling her how to react and recover.
Now, stranded in the future, her own people have become a foreign world; she has no pattern to follow, no fellow soldiers to support her; even Breq, who remembers the universe that was, has travelled the slow path from one year to the next and changed along the way into someone entirely different and strange.
Seivarden curls into a knot on her bed and tells herself soldiers must not weep in alien hands.
---------------
---------------
68. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Narnia, raccoons, masters of their trade, written 2/26/20
Jack of All Trades (75 words)
-----
"That trade being?" Susan asked.
The Raccoon grinned, the dark band of fur across her face shading her eyes into near-invisible glints, and waggled her hand-like forepaws: "Whatever we like! Opposable thumbs are helpful but not strictly necessary, and if you can't get a Being or a Primate to do fiddly work, a Raccoon will always be the next best option -- not to mention we charge less and haul away your rubbish heaps for free."
---------------
---------------
69. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Any; any; The hurrier I go, the behinder I get, written 2/26/20
Wherever You Go, There You Are (160 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives
-----
Which was the beauty of it, of course, because fear did tend to hurry one along -- no time to sit and reason logically when all the little glands and nerves were screaming at the top of their lungs to flee or fight -- or even to freeze, because the mind froze along with the body, each cell vibrating so fast that everything blurred into a single sheet of terror-white.
And once they were hurrying, how easy to wind that panicked path into corkscrew curls, steps strung between her fingers like recursive, nightmarish cat's cradle yarn, around and around and around it goes and where it stops... well, it doesn't stop, of course, because it's not just a spiral; it's a Möbius strip and the strip is Helen and Helen is hungry.
She may have jumped tenses there, but that's fine because time is only another path to twist and no matter how fast her victims run, she's always there before them.
---------------
---------------
70. For
last_haven: Any, any, I've had my adventures, I don't need something new, I'm afraid of what I'm risking if I follow you, written 2/26/20
Tikkun Olam (125 words)
Fandom = The Magnus Archives
-----
"We can stay here," Georgie offers; "You've been through enough, and there's no saying we'll be able to do any good out there anyway. At least here we have a little protection -- you from the Eye and me from the End, and the other powers are keeping their distance for now."
Melanie smiles in the direction of her girlfriend's voice and shakes her head: "I quit the Archives because I couldn't be part of something evil, but you know the quote, right -- that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing? -- maybe we can't do much, but if we have a little protection the least we can do is extend it to as many people as we can."
---------------
---------------
71. For
runespoor: any, any, buying back your memories, written 2/27/20
Equivalent Exchange (500 words)
Original fiction, because reasons. :) Also, structural restrictions? Never heard of them! *wry*
-----
"How do I know if they're worth the price?" she asked. "I don't even know if they were stolen, or if I traded them for something I thought was worth more at the time -- I'm fairly sure I didn't lose them gambling, because I don't feel like a gambling person, but I can't even be completely sure of that -- so you see my problem with the entire concept, right?"
"You've stated it with admirable clarity," said the person sitting on the other side of the glittering mosaic table, hands (...probably hands? though admittedly she didn't have many points of comparison anymore) folded neatly before a cloth-wrapped torso and underneath a toothy (...too toothy? not enough teeth? she kept losing track when she tried to count them) smile. "This is why the transaction is voluntary rather than compulsory -- I like to keep potential sources of regret to a minimum, so while I'm afraid I can't show you the contents of your memories without a down payment, the least I can do is ensure that you understand your options. This is also why the exact method of payment is entirely at your discretion, providing, of course, that it's of equivalent value -- one doesn't last long in business selling below market rate, you understand -- but whether you pay with time, emotions, senses, abilities, or any other item of worth is all one to me."
She pondered this information for a time, while the person with the cloth-wrapped torso and face sat patiently and without breathing. Then she said, "If I asked how you came to have possession of my memories, would you tell me or would that also require payment?"
The cloth-wrapped person's smile grew more teeth (or perhaps the teeth simply enlarged?) and the answer came quickly. "Neither; one doesn't last long in business by disclosing confidential details about one's sources and transactions."
"Which... could mean that you bought my memories from me, or bought them from someone else, or simply picked them up at the side of the road," she said, puzzling through the options. "I begin to see how you define clarity of statement. In that case, I believe I would like to purchase one memory -- specifically, the memory of how I came to lose or sell my memories -- in return for the memory of this conversation, and with the addendum that if we've been through this transaction before, the memory of trading a previous iteration of this conversation doesn't count as the sale or loss in question."
"Done," said the cloth-wrapped person, and reached across the mosaic table to press a finger (it must be a finger, because what else could it be?) to her forehead. As the world dissolved into laughter and the click-clack-clatter of falling tiles, Elise (her name was Elise! she'd traded her memories for a map... which she'd promptly lost, and had no idea why it had been important in the first place) could only think, That was too easy. How long until the catch?
---------------
---------------
72. For
scytale: Any, any, would you love me more if I killed someone for you?, written 2/28/20
A Generational Story (120 words)
Fandom = The Darkangel Trilogy. Contains implied child sexual abuse and implied incest between an adoptive mother and child, because Oriencor is canonically creepy as fuck.
-----
"Ah, my darling, but deaths are not what I wish you to take; I sculpt with souls, not lives, and you have witnessed full well that a body and mind can continue without such unearned splendor as a soul," the white lady said.
"Yes, mother," Irrylath agreed, and shifted in her lap to give her stroking fingers, dry and cold as the winterock of her castle, better access under his tunic.
"You will be great and grand and bring all Avaric to its knees soon enough, my darling," the white lady said, "and then, when you have brought me twice seven souls from twice seven brides -- why, then, I shall love you as well as my own mother loved me."
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
I am still working on a Magnus Archives/Doctor Who crossover prompt fill that got away from me (more so than any of the other long fills I've already posted), but aside from that, I think I am done for this year. Seventy-two fills is a good number -- twelve times six -- and while there is the temptation to go for a baker's dozen, I am home sick today and I have other projects that need my time and attention. *wry*
And hey, 13,445 words (yes, that is an exact number; I have been tracking for my
getyourwordsout spreadsheet) is a pretty good haul if I do say so myself. :D
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)