The North Sea...
Look, look! My drabble won Mod's Choice at dramione_ldws Draco's Birthday Rumble Invitaional! *FLAILS*
And kali_elecktra made shinies! *shows shinies*
Gotta admit I was way stumped by the prompt until about three hours before the deadline. Eek. Hoping this week it comes to me a little faster.
And the Mod's said really nice things that made me all jello-y. "The North Sea captured our hearts with it's lyrical dreamlike quality - the asides teased our funny bones. But girl, you nailed the prompt, and no one does longing like you."
*sigh* I do love longing.
Here she is...
Title: The North Sea
Author: ilkee
Rating: G
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 499
Promts: Home is where the heart is. / Draco is away on business at Plopsaland De Panne on his birthday. / Pick a fact - any fact (historical, a festival, local color - whatever) from the highlighted link and incorporate it into your drabble (feel free to use the external references listed on the link page, such as the amusement park's website, if need be).
The North Sea is cold like the glaciers that created it.
Draco looks to the west and imagines he can see a line, like a rope, stretched taught over the Strait of Dover. It’s shallow here, for a long way out, and he imagines he can walk across it. Imagines his flat in London. Large and empty. Cold like the sea.
The sand is still holding on to the last of the day’s sunshine, and he digs his toes into it.
He’s been undercover here for three months. Tracking a small but deadly group of Death Eater hopefuls who haven’t realized the Dark Lord really isn’t coming back this time. (No, really.)
Tomorrow he’ll go home.
Fourteen insurgents were captured. Six by Draco himself. They were young and Draco feels his age in his bones. Not that he’s old. (It’s his birthday today, did you know?) But he feels as though he’s lived too many lives for one person.
She was there at the end. She’s always there at the end, with her hair wild and a hundred flicks of her wrist and a fire in her eyes that makes him hold his breath.
He touched her leg.
It sticks out in his mind like an out-of-sync color in a painting. Nine solid hours of battle and this is the only thing he can remember. Three months of garish colors and cartoon music and children toppling their honey-flavored ice cream cones too close to his shoes, and this is all he remembers.
Cool, smooth skin sliding against his palm, and the warm, secret place behind her knee as he helped untangle her. It couldn’t have lasted more than two seconds before they were fighting again.
Draco takes a deep breath and watches it uncurl in the cold air.
It always happens like this. When he’s weighed down by fatigue. Weary of strange cities and translation spells and living out of a suitcase with clothes that aren’t even his. It’s these times when he thinks of home. Of fog and nighttime and narrow streets and Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger.
She is always there at the end.
Draco looks down at his feet lost in the pale sand, both glowing in the moonlight. When he looks up again, she’s walking toward him. Measured, hesitant steps until she is standing, barefoot, next to him. He’s holding his breath again.
She’s awkward now. Her fingers clumsy without her wand, swiping at the curls the wind throws forward. Draco’s thoughts stutter and he shifts from one foot to the other, the sand falling away under him, leaving him unbalanced.
“It’s my birth¬-”
And she’s kissing him. Her mouth is hot and the air on his face is cold. And that line stretched across the cold sea snaps and wraps around him, tangles with her arms and his arms and it’s safe and soft and warm, and he doesn’t care where he goes next as long as she’s there at the end.
------------
K, so I'm watching Where The Wild Things Are and all I can think every three minutes is, "Ack! What if someone gets HURT!!!" Followed by, "OMG! I dont think I'm ready to raise a boy!" *flops down hopelessly*
And kali_elecktra made shinies! *shows shinies*
Gotta admit I was way stumped by the prompt until about three hours before the deadline. Eek. Hoping this week it comes to me a little faster.
And the Mod's said really nice things that made me all jello-y. "The North Sea captured our hearts with it's lyrical dreamlike quality - the asides teased our funny bones. But girl, you nailed the prompt, and no one does longing like you."
*sigh* I do love longing.
Here she is...
Title: The North Sea
Author: ilkee
Rating: G
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 499
Promts: Home is where the heart is. / Draco is away on business at Plopsaland De Panne on his birthday. / Pick a fact - any fact (historical, a festival, local color - whatever) from the highlighted link and incorporate it into your drabble (feel free to use the external references listed on the link page, such as the amusement park's website, if need be).
The North Sea is cold like the glaciers that created it.
Draco looks to the west and imagines he can see a line, like a rope, stretched taught over the Strait of Dover. It’s shallow here, for a long way out, and he imagines he can walk across it. Imagines his flat in London. Large and empty. Cold like the sea.
The sand is still holding on to the last of the day’s sunshine, and he digs his toes into it.
He’s been undercover here for three months. Tracking a small but deadly group of Death Eater hopefuls who haven’t realized the Dark Lord really isn’t coming back this time. (No, really.)
Tomorrow he’ll go home.
Fourteen insurgents were captured. Six by Draco himself. They were young and Draco feels his age in his bones. Not that he’s old. (It’s his birthday today, did you know?) But he feels as though he’s lived too many lives for one person.
She was there at the end. She’s always there at the end, with her hair wild and a hundred flicks of her wrist and a fire in her eyes that makes him hold his breath.
He touched her leg.
It sticks out in his mind like an out-of-sync color in a painting. Nine solid hours of battle and this is the only thing he can remember. Three months of garish colors and cartoon music and children toppling their honey-flavored ice cream cones too close to his shoes, and this is all he remembers.
Cool, smooth skin sliding against his palm, and the warm, secret place behind her knee as he helped untangle her. It couldn’t have lasted more than two seconds before they were fighting again.
Draco takes a deep breath and watches it uncurl in the cold air.
It always happens like this. When he’s weighed down by fatigue. Weary of strange cities and translation spells and living out of a suitcase with clothes that aren’t even his. It’s these times when he thinks of home. Of fog and nighttime and narrow streets and Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger.
She is always there at the end.
Draco looks down at his feet lost in the pale sand, both glowing in the moonlight. When he looks up again, she’s walking toward him. Measured, hesitant steps until she is standing, barefoot, next to him. He’s holding his breath again.
She’s awkward now. Her fingers clumsy without her wand, swiping at the curls the wind throws forward. Draco’s thoughts stutter and he shifts from one foot to the other, the sand falling away under him, leaving him unbalanced.
“It’s my birth¬-”
And she’s kissing him. Her mouth is hot and the air on his face is cold. And that line stretched across the cold sea snaps and wraps around him, tangles with her arms and his arms and it’s safe and soft and warm, and he doesn’t care where he goes next as long as she’s there at the end.
------------
K, so I'm watching Where The Wild Things Are and all I can think every three minutes is, "Ack! What if someone gets HURT!!!" Followed by, "OMG! I dont think I'm ready to raise a boy!" *flops down hopelessly*