[bingo card] prompt me meme!
Over at multi_genfic we're having a really fun bingo game ending on the 31st of July and I wanted to fill up my square, but will need some help - so I'm asking for prompts! Choose one of my squares and give me a GEN prompt (friendships only, no slash) below in the comments and I will try to fill it. Help me get a jump start!
( herein lies my bingo card )
( herein lies my bingo card )
"Ma'am?"
Elizabeth raises one eyebrow slowly and silently and full of not just a little bit of clear annoyance and the bearded man peering into her office gulps and she has to bite back a smile.
She's a king now and kings don’t smile at their underlings on the high seas and kings aren’t interrupted in the middle of their meal and kings do all sorts of things she’s not quite used to taking for granted and a king is what she is now even if she feels like a child waiting for her father to come haul her over his shoulder and drag her home kicking and screaming and she doesn’t have a father she saw him row out to death and there’s nothing even a king can do about that and there’s only so much change a woman can deal with and she’s a king now.
"Uh... I mean sir? Sir?" he stammers at her. She waits. "Sir? Am I disturbing you?"
"It's a bit late for that, isn't it?" she is delighted by the hard edge to her voice, it doesn't sound a bit like a child playing pretend and that stirs something deep inside her, it smells like regret and tastes like triumph.
Funny how she used to think you could have one without the other.
“We’re coming up on another ship?”
She stares at him.
“The men are wondering…”
“Is it your job to wonder?”
“No ma’am.” At her sharp gaze, he gasps, “No sir!”
“Send in the first mate and never deliver a message to me in such a manner again,” there is a threat in her voice that speaks of the sea and the laws that men clinging to the edge of the water have always known without them being spoken aloud and she’s grateful for the rise and fall of the waves beneath her feet, when he ducks out of the room she stands, plants her feet down beneath her, and feels the rolling waves beneath her soles and there is a strange sense of harmony and grounded-ness to the gentle rocking she never feels on solid land.
“Sir! Our scouts have spotted a slaving ship ahead.”
Elizabeth keeps her eyes closed, a smile curling at the corner of her lips, “Prepare the boys. We’re going hunting.”
She can feel him bow a little, “At this point they are just asking for trouble, sir.”
She opens her eyes, “Signal to the other ships behind, there may be an ambush.”
“And if there is?”
She paces to the window and looks out the grimy hole onto the expanse of blue she calls a home and pauses mostly for dramatic effect, “Save what you can, build the armada, leave no man behind.”
“Yes sir.”
“Lee?”
Her man steps forward, “Sir?”
“Would you like this one to be yours? I don’t want to keep you here unnecessarily.”
Lee stiffens, his dark eyes narrowing, “This ship is my home, sir.”
Elizabeth’s eyes travel over the man, remembering the skinny little boy she plucked out of her first slaving ship, it ran aground and too many men were lost that day, but she had Lee, and here he still was at her side after so many years. “Give me a list of men for promotion within the hour and we will discuss the new ship.”
He smiled and she smiled back, “Yes, sir.”
She turned back to the window and to the blue on blue that was her domain and her kingdom and her salvation and her freedom and nodded, “To battle, Mr. Lee.” To save and to conquer and to spread and to rule and to demolish and to change.
The sea was her kingdom and she clung to its rollicking back and commanded her armada and was a king.
polysyndeton
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and blame most of my terribleness on you, jsyk
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