[Fic] Three Sentence Ficathon fills, part one
Two of these are actually from the previous iteration of the ficathon, which I apparently neglected to ever post to my journal. Oops?
Anyway, here is the link to the current ficathon if you want to play too. :D
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25. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Any, any, everything outside us is mad as the mist and snow, written 1/18/16
battle magic (250 words)
"The trouble with magic," Edith said, studying the penciled reports of King Feyraud's current position with an absent frown, "and by 'trouble' I mean the reason it's so inefficient, is that it has no system. Every magician has a different center, which means there isn't any way to generalize from one to another. And that means people who try to turn magic into a rational field of study or practice end up writing treatises of rather dodgy philosophy and dictionaries of ingredients and spells that won't work for anyone but their creators, instead of something useful like a maths textbook or an engineering manual. So yes, I know some battle magic, but that doesn't mean anything in practical terms since none of what I've read will work for me. Especially not Jadis's spells."
"That is very interesting and I'd love to hear more once we're back at Cair Paravel," Mary said, "but at the moment I only need to know if you can do something both large and subtle enough with your shadows to keep the Sarovencian sentries from noticing the raiding party I plan to lead across the river this evening."
Edith lifted her eyes from her contemplation of the map. "Oh, is that all? I can't do it from here, but if I'm with the party, that shouldn't be a problem. It might even be fun." Her hand dropped to the stone knife at her belt, and Mary felt a moment of sympathy for the unsuspecting Sarovencians as her sister smiled.
-----
Note: This wound up as a tiny installment in As the Morning and the Night, my genderswapped Pevensies AU. King Feyraud of Sarovence is an OC ruler of a mountain country near Archenland who has a tenuous blood relation to the old Narnian royal family; he attempts to claim Narnia by conquest both in this AU and in my normal timeline.
I consider this ficlet non-canonical (for the AU) in its fine details, but I intend to rework it into a proper story someday.
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26. For killing_kurare: Any, Any, You must have made some kind of mistake // I asked for death, but instead I'm awake, written 2/29/16 [AO3 version]
the seer and the light (150 words)
She rises out of the Green Sun, shedding plasma in her wake, and for a moment everything is gloriously, impossibly clear: all the paths of fortune laid out in terrible, shining simplicity to the end of all possible universes. Then it occurs to Rose that sight implies someone to do the seeing, just as paths imply someone to travel them, which implies that she exists, which implies that she isn't done, and her enlightenment begins to fade.
She buries that thought with practiced skill, but buried isn't quite the same as gone and she retains just enough memory of future choices to know that she'll chase that taste of oblivion in other ways -- the same way she's spent her whole life chasing the void where her mother's love should be -- and despite the ruin down that road, she already knows she won't manage to (won't want to) make herself stop.
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Note: Homestuck, obviously. :)
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1. For notoriousreign: MCU, Laura Barton/Clint Barton, vacation, written 11/29/16 [AO3 version]
to get away from it all (175 words)
Once Laura got Clint past the urge to rehang the door of their very swanky hotel suite, and made him call in a tip to SHIELD about the suspicious behavior of the front desk clerk and two of the cleaning staff instead of pursuing the people himself, he settled fairly well into relaxation: his only stipulation that she try either scuba diving or surfing before they headed back north.
"I never really appreciated how fun doing nothing could be, before," he said, breath tickling along the curve of her ear as she lounged on a beach towel and basked in the sun and the pressure of his strong, callused fingers rubbing sunblock into her shoulders and down the hollow of her spine; "Maybe I just needed the right beautiful woman as my partner and mission coordinator."
"I'm telling Nat you said that, and getting Maria to record the resulting carnage," Laura murmured sleepily into the cradle of her folded arms, and smiled to herself at a job well done when Clint stopped his massage to laugh.
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2. For hanorganaas: Star Wars, Han/Leia, Passionate, written 11/29/16 [AO3 version]
the ruling passion conquers reason still (175 words)
They never stop loving each other; that's not the problem.
It is, however, a symptom of the problem, because the same passion that fuels their connection -- that makes them fight the whole galaxy when it would keep them apart -- drives them in all things, and what they want (besides each other's embrace, and Luke safe, and Vader and the Emperor dead) is fundamentally incompatible; Han will chew off his own legs to win freedom for himself while Leia will bind her entire self into service to win freedom for everyone else, and neither is willing to give in any more than they could possibly let go.
They love each other from a distance, then -- a comet swinging around a sun to spell glory or disaster, a meteor shower burning up in the atmosphere of the planet it can't escape, a pair of unstable stars perturbing each other into massive solar flares -- and each takes comfort knowing the other is out somewhere in the void, burning with a flame as unquenchable as their own.
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3. For adamas: Daredevil; Ensemble or Matt Murdock/Any; teaching how to see without sight, written 11/30/16 [AO3 version]
absence makes (275 words)
After Karen banged and tripped her way across what felt like miles of treacherous floor and furniture, Matt guided her (both of them still laughing) to his couch and said, "Maybe we should start with something simpler, or at least something that keeps you in one place and doesn't split your focus so much."
"Oh?" Karen said, and immediately wanted to kick herself for the breathless inanity of the word and her tone of voice, and then wanted to kick herself again for the way the jump in her heartbeat and the flush of heat across her cheeks (just kissing the edge of Matt's old mask, pulled low over her eyes) might have given Matt the idea that she was upset at him instead of mildly annoyed at herself and how much this was turning her on.
"Yeah, just, I'm going to hold my hand near some part of your body so you can feel the heat and air displacement -- because nobody's ever completely still -- and see if you can reach out and touch my hand with your own: no guessing," Matt said, sliding one hand through the loose tendrils of her hair as he spoke, in a slow, tender gesture of farewell before he shifted his weight off the couch and left Karen's skin tingling at the suddenly untenable lack of his touch... and she wondered, not for the first time but with more force than ever before, how he could possibly stand to live this way -- all his nerves raw, exposed, and hungry -- because despite the blackness that (temporarily, voluntarily) shrouded her world, she had never been more conscious of his body in her life.
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4. For silvr_dagger: Star Trek TOS or AOS, T'Pring/Uhura, a logical arrangement, written 11/30/16 [AO3 version]
no diplomacy like candor (250 words)
"He must contribute his genes toward the continuation of our species; he requires an advocate to navigate our people's internal politics in his name and that of his family; and he needs my control to lean on when his own fails, as I am sure you can attest it has done at inopportune moments," T'Pring said, somehow managing to make Spock and Nyota's shared bed and cabin look like a throne in an audience chamber, a domain entirely within her own control rather than someone else's home she had entered without invitation.
"All logical arguments," Nyota said, and left the implicit 'so far as they go, which isn't very' hanging in the tone of her voice, the position of her eyebrows, and the faint roughness at the end of the final word as if she'd been about to lead into another phrase.
T'Pring smiled, as shocking and unexpected as rain in the desert, and said, "A most elegant turn of phrase and a true display of cross-species linguistic mastery, though if you had spoken so to me in another world, I might have challenged you to kal-if-fee for your presumption at standing between me and my betrothed; in this one, however, necessity and loss have taught me the art of compromise, and I think that any person Spock would choose to bind himself to is one I might equally choose for myself, for mind, for soul, and for body -- and most particularly, in matters of the body, for your talented tongue."
-----
Note: I went with AOS. :)
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Part two coming tomorrow, maybe...
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Anyway, here is the link to the current ficathon if you want to play too. :D
---------------
---------------
25. For
syrena_of_the_lake: Any, any, everything outside us is mad as the mist and snow, written 1/18/16
battle magic (250 words)
"The trouble with magic," Edith said, studying the penciled reports of King Feyraud's current position with an absent frown, "and by 'trouble' I mean the reason it's so inefficient, is that it has no system. Every magician has a different center, which means there isn't any way to generalize from one to another. And that means people who try to turn magic into a rational field of study or practice end up writing treatises of rather dodgy philosophy and dictionaries of ingredients and spells that won't work for anyone but their creators, instead of something useful like a maths textbook or an engineering manual. So yes, I know some battle magic, but that doesn't mean anything in practical terms since none of what I've read will work for me. Especially not Jadis's spells."
"That is very interesting and I'd love to hear more once we're back at Cair Paravel," Mary said, "but at the moment I only need to know if you can do something both large and subtle enough with your shadows to keep the Sarovencian sentries from noticing the raiding party I plan to lead across the river this evening."
Edith lifted her eyes from her contemplation of the map. "Oh, is that all? I can't do it from here, but if I'm with the party, that shouldn't be a problem. It might even be fun." Her hand dropped to the stone knife at her belt, and Mary felt a moment of sympathy for the unsuspecting Sarovencians as her sister smiled.
-----
Note: This wound up as a tiny installment in As the Morning and the Night, my genderswapped Pevensies AU. King Feyraud of Sarovence is an OC ruler of a mountain country near Archenland who has a tenuous blood relation to the old Narnian royal family; he attempts to claim Narnia by conquest both in this AU and in my normal timeline.
I consider this ficlet non-canonical (for the AU) in its fine details, but I intend to rework it into a proper story someday.
---------------
---------------
26. For killing_kurare: Any, Any, You must have made some kind of mistake // I asked for death, but instead I'm awake, written 2/29/16 [AO3 version]
the seer and the light (150 words)
She rises out of the Green Sun, shedding plasma in her wake, and for a moment everything is gloriously, impossibly clear: all the paths of fortune laid out in terrible, shining simplicity to the end of all possible universes. Then it occurs to Rose that sight implies someone to do the seeing, just as paths imply someone to travel them, which implies that she exists, which implies that she isn't done, and her enlightenment begins to fade.
She buries that thought with practiced skill, but buried isn't quite the same as gone and she retains just enough memory of future choices to know that she'll chase that taste of oblivion in other ways -- the same way she's spent her whole life chasing the void where her mother's love should be -- and despite the ruin down that road, she already knows she won't manage to (won't want to) make herself stop.
-----
Note: Homestuck, obviously. :)
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1. For notoriousreign: MCU, Laura Barton/Clint Barton, vacation, written 11/29/16 [AO3 version]
to get away from it all (175 words)
Once Laura got Clint past the urge to rehang the door of their very swanky hotel suite, and made him call in a tip to SHIELD about the suspicious behavior of the front desk clerk and two of the cleaning staff instead of pursuing the people himself, he settled fairly well into relaxation: his only stipulation that she try either scuba diving or surfing before they headed back north.
"I never really appreciated how fun doing nothing could be, before," he said, breath tickling along the curve of her ear as she lounged on a beach towel and basked in the sun and the pressure of his strong, callused fingers rubbing sunblock into her shoulders and down the hollow of her spine; "Maybe I just needed the right beautiful woman as my partner and mission coordinator."
"I'm telling Nat you said that, and getting Maria to record the resulting carnage," Laura murmured sleepily into the cradle of her folded arms, and smiled to herself at a job well done when Clint stopped his massage to laugh.
---------------
---------------
2. For hanorganaas: Star Wars, Han/Leia, Passionate, written 11/29/16 [AO3 version]
the ruling passion conquers reason still (175 words)
They never stop loving each other; that's not the problem.
It is, however, a symptom of the problem, because the same passion that fuels their connection -- that makes them fight the whole galaxy when it would keep them apart -- drives them in all things, and what they want (besides each other's embrace, and Luke safe, and Vader and the Emperor dead) is fundamentally incompatible; Han will chew off his own legs to win freedom for himself while Leia will bind her entire self into service to win freedom for everyone else, and neither is willing to give in any more than they could possibly let go.
They love each other from a distance, then -- a comet swinging around a sun to spell glory or disaster, a meteor shower burning up in the atmosphere of the planet it can't escape, a pair of unstable stars perturbing each other into massive solar flares -- and each takes comfort knowing the other is out somewhere in the void, burning with a flame as unquenchable as their own.
---------------
---------------
3. For adamas: Daredevil; Ensemble or Matt Murdock/Any; teaching how to see without sight, written 11/30/16 [AO3 version]
absence makes (275 words)
After Karen banged and tripped her way across what felt like miles of treacherous floor and furniture, Matt guided her (both of them still laughing) to his couch and said, "Maybe we should start with something simpler, or at least something that keeps you in one place and doesn't split your focus so much."
"Oh?" Karen said, and immediately wanted to kick herself for the breathless inanity of the word and her tone of voice, and then wanted to kick herself again for the way the jump in her heartbeat and the flush of heat across her cheeks (just kissing the edge of Matt's old mask, pulled low over her eyes) might have given Matt the idea that she was upset at him instead of mildly annoyed at herself and how much this was turning her on.
"Yeah, just, I'm going to hold my hand near some part of your body so you can feel the heat and air displacement -- because nobody's ever completely still -- and see if you can reach out and touch my hand with your own: no guessing," Matt said, sliding one hand through the loose tendrils of her hair as he spoke, in a slow, tender gesture of farewell before he shifted his weight off the couch and left Karen's skin tingling at the suddenly untenable lack of his touch... and she wondered, not for the first time but with more force than ever before, how he could possibly stand to live this way -- all his nerves raw, exposed, and hungry -- because despite the blackness that (temporarily, voluntarily) shrouded her world, she had never been more conscious of his body in her life.
---------------
---------------
4. For silvr_dagger: Star Trek TOS or AOS, T'Pring/Uhura, a logical arrangement, written 11/30/16 [AO3 version]
no diplomacy like candor (250 words)
"He must contribute his genes toward the continuation of our species; he requires an advocate to navigate our people's internal politics in his name and that of his family; and he needs my control to lean on when his own fails, as I am sure you can attest it has done at inopportune moments," T'Pring said, somehow managing to make Spock and Nyota's shared bed and cabin look like a throne in an audience chamber, a domain entirely within her own control rather than someone else's home she had entered without invitation.
"All logical arguments," Nyota said, and left the implicit 'so far as they go, which isn't very' hanging in the tone of her voice, the position of her eyebrows, and the faint roughness at the end of the final word as if she'd been about to lead into another phrase.
T'Pring smiled, as shocking and unexpected as rain in the desert, and said, "A most elegant turn of phrase and a true display of cross-species linguistic mastery, though if you had spoken so to me in another world, I might have challenged you to kal-if-fee for your presumption at standing between me and my betrothed; in this one, however, necessity and loss have taught me the art of compromise, and I think that any person Spock would choose to bind himself to is one I might equally choose for myself, for mind, for soul, and for body -- and most particularly, in matters of the body, for your talented tongue."
-----
Note: I went with AOS. :)
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Part two coming tomorrow, maybe...
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)