drive-by pocket-sized four-day challenge
Thank you to everyone who voted in the poll and expressed interest in this quickie challenge! (Even if you didn't vote in the poll, you're still welcome to play!)
THE CHALLENGE / HOW TO PLAY
THE CHALLENGE / HOW TO PLAY
- Anyone participating can play: You can leave as many prompts as you want, but you MUST fill at least one prompt. Please don't leave a prompt if you don't ( Read more... )
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"You know you're only making yourself look ugly, frowning at me like that," said Howl. "Don't you have enough wrinkles as it is?"
He was particularly striking today, with hair that shimmered like fire every time he moved his head and, curse it, that second-best suit, freshly bespelled for charming the metaphorical pants off everyone. Honestly, thought Alden. who could possibly fall for all that flash and glitter? Even those earrings were over the top. Alden was entirely sure it was deliberate on Howl's part, matching the color so exactly to those smug, self-assured, entirely too bright eyes of his.
Howl struck a pose at the door and twisted the knob to the red blob of paint. Kingsbury, then.
"Don't wait up for me," said Howl. "Calcifer, don't let him near my rooms. I shudder to think what he might next do to my spiders."
Alden stuck his tongue out at Howl's back. It was at least as hearty and hale of the rest of him, excepting his old knees and the occasional fluttering of his well-worn heart, and he was pleased to know that he could still produce a most satisfying raspberry.
When Howl returned in the middle of the night, Alden woke to such a sight that his heart pounded in a most unsettling manner. He could hardly catch a breath. Though Howl had left through the Kingsbury door, he returned from another quarter entirely: black paint.
Howl…was not himself. Gone was the enchanted suit and the charming smile. As for his hair….feathers. Shining, flaming feathers the size of Alden's hand, or bigger, and Howl shed them as he came through the door. The feathers gleamed on the floor before evaporating within a breath or two. Howl might have been a bird at some point, but he was transforming back and was grotesque, stuck between two forms. Only the center of his face was unchanged, and only that face gave Alden the indication that some terrible monster had not boarded the moving castle, intent on eating them all.
It made it all the worse that Alden suddenly found that face beautiful in spite of its magical trappings.
Howl dragged himself up the stairs, losing more feathers to human skin. Claws became toes, legs shed scales. Alden rolled out of bed as quietly as he could and followed him.
Slowly, slowly, Howl treaded through the castle and to the bath. Alden saw that the hand that reached for the bath door shook. It took Howl two tries to wrestle the door open; his fingers were hampered by translucent nails just receding from the length of claws but still curiously hooked and shimmering with the same magical fire as the feathers.
Howl glanced backward at Alden. He said nothing but shuffled forward to the bathtub, and he left the door open in clear invitation. Alden sighed. He followed Howl in and ran the taps as hot as Calcifer could provide.
Alden wasn't a nosy person, not really, and wasn't it only right to be assured that the magician holding the bespelled castle together was going to stay a magician and not dissolve into the contents of a large feather pillow, leaving everyone inside the castle to be crushed when the whole, blasted, rickety thing came tumbling down at last?
"I don't know what you've been doing, and I don't care," said Alden. "All I know is that it can't be good to leave you in this state."
The water was now halfway up the tub, and Howl clambered in, sloshing water over the side in a swirl of color. He settled himself back and closed his eyes. He looked even worse wet, not that Alden would say anything about that. The feathers clung, a second skin as dark as blood that rippled nauseatingly under the magnification of the bathwater. Alden tipped in a half a bottle of some potion to try and cover it up.
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Howl sighed also, and cracked one eye at Alden.
"It's the king," said Howl. "If you must know, Sir Nose, it's the king."
The pupil was slitted, Alden was startled to see, like that of a bird. Yet even as he looked, the shape slowly flattened out to something more like normal.
"The king?" said Alden. "What does the king have to do with anything?"
"I've been avoiding his summonses," said Howl. "But tonight…The war with Strangia…"
Howl slid a little further into the water, and his knees broke the surface. A last feather or two still clung and Alden, reflexively, brushed them away before he thought better of it and yanked his hand backward, uncertain.
Howl glanced up at Alden and smiled, then.
"Alden," said Howl. "Did you know you've stopped being old? I wish…"
Alden startled and looked, then, at the hand that had touched Howl. It was his hand, not old in the least. He rolled up the sleeve of his nightshirt and stared.
"But!" said Alden. "The curse!"
"I suppose you forgot to tell yourself how old and feeble you were, as soon as you woke," said Howl. "That is your magic, you know."
"Magic?" said Alden. "I should think I would know if I could do magic."
The Witch of the Waste had said something about magic, true, but Alden made hats, not spells. Didn't he?
Howl snorted, blowing ripples into the bathwater.
"Your spells are what you speak," said Howl. "You tell a hat 'youth' and the wearer looks younger. Tell yourself you are old, and, convinced by a needlessly dramatic performance by that useless old hag…"
Howl raised one red eyebrow at Alden.
"And I made myself old," said Alden. "Oh dear."
"Calcifer took off the witch's original curse as soon as you set foot on the back stairs," said Howl. "Can't have enchantments running around my castle, you know. They can interfere dreadfully with my work."
Howl raised an arm out of the bath then, and sprinkled the room with more bathwater. The drops flared red, orange, yellow, blue on the walls before fading into ordinary water. Alden was relieved to see that Howl's arm was free of feathers and back to its usual, shapely appearance.
Howl laughed, and Alden had the distinct feeling that Howl was laughing at him.
"What?" said Alden.
"No one who looks at another person as you have looked at me could possibly be dull and old," said Howl. "No need for an enchanted suit with you, is there?"
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Howl was completely feather-free, nothing but miles of softly steaming, wet skin, and that ridiculously bright hair trailing down his back.
"I ought to curse you to a lifetime of cold baths!" said Alden. "It would absolutely serve you right--"
Howl stepped out of the bath and enfolded Alden in his arms.
"If you did that, you'd suffer with me," he said.
His breath tickled Alden's ear and Alden shivered, struggling with goose pimples that wanted to rise. It had nothing to do with the silky timbre of that voice.
"I suppose it would be inconvenient," said Alden. "To have to encourage the taps at every bath I took."
Howl chuckled, and the vibrations gave Alden the most distinct tingle in his toes, curse it.
"I assumed that we would be bathing together, my dear Alden," said Howl. "I don't suppose you have any thoughts about the problem of the King's ridiculous war with Strangia, do you?"
Howl's hands drifted downward from Alden's shoulders to the small of his back.
"Only I'd hate for a good bath to be interrupted," said Howl. "It would be such a waste."
The hands, those sneaky, slithery, magic hands, went a little lower and bracketed Alden's hips, pulling him snug against Howl's body. Alden felt his clothes dampening.
"Remind me later to tell you a little about a place called Wales," said Howl. "Now how about this nightshirt of yours? It's a little old-mannish, don't you think?"
He smiled, bright and expectant.
Mingled fury and exhilaration rendered Alden speechless for the first time in his life.
"Why--" said Alden. "I--"
Something in Alden uncurled without further prompting.
The bath behind them, lukewarm, suddenly began to steam.
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(Three comments long, I know! *shakes fist at LJ's arbitrary limitations!*)
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