Mini-Nanowrimo Drabbles -- assorted fandoms
For Mini-nanowrimo this year, I committed to 100 words a day as a minimum, with the intention of writing (at least) one drabble a day. Many, though not all, were inspired by/derived from/influenced by the "And for your inspiration" things -- the quote, one or more of the words or the picture. Usually I would start writing and by the first few words I would know what fandom it was going to be. Sometimes I knew before I even started writing. The Highlander, and Sanctuary drabbles will have their own posts. These are the fannish one-offs, in order of being written.
Day 3 - Doctor Who (1963)
Floating Armament
The cannon floated, improbably, in mid air over the landscape of farms and scattered fields. A sturdy, old-fashioned cannon, blackened bronze barrel hooped in iron, carriage of white washed oak, neatly roved-over ropes looped from the cascabel to confine the recoil when it was fired. There were no wings or any kind of visible engine to keep it aloft, but aloft it was, untethered seemingly from gravity as well as sense. Bobbing some distance behind it was a straggling line of dilatory cannonballs. Sarah Jane watched as they meandered by. No doubt the Doctor would have some explanation for it.
[Inspired by a picture of a cannon on a parapet in Denmark, taken by Dr Derickson, also the prompt-word ‘wings’]
On AO3
Day 5 Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones
Wave-washed
When the sun rose up out of the wall of water that had been Kankredin, the clean curve of the wave that reared up, shining blue and gold and dazzling with light, entirely free of the taint of hidden death and mageries wrought in blood and fear, divisiveness and subjugation; the plash and scatter of sea foam that no longer burned salt, poisoned drippings of deceit and despair; the very shapes of rocks and hills that held the river and faced the sea all proclaimed the land changed, the fabric of the world woven anew. Unfettered, Kars Adon’s spirit flew.
On AO3
Day 7 - Fairy Tales
Snow and Sleep
Snow fell, soft, thick, inexorable, endless descent of wheeling whiteness capping the crenelations, the revetments and the ravelins, the sleeping cannon and the sloping roofs that huddled near the walls. Trees bent under the clinging weight as tiny crystals gathered, edges catching, clasping, locking tight, icing twig and leaf, needle and cone. Stones settled, etched in ice, as battlements and courtyards lay under perfect coverlets, unbroken purfles of white. Even the knotted brambles that hemmed the castle round, binding gate and passage fast was lent a beauty - made obdurate lace by snow. Day would see no waking eyes but thorns.
On AO3
Day 8 - Doctor Who - Virgin New Adventures
Freeing Time
Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~William Faulkner
In the clockwork universe there was no time, only ticking, eternal moments, discrete and solitary. All was order, tidy, precise. The Tardis landed in the central machinery with especially loud noises.
In the heart of the world-engine was a casket: ironwood, crystal, ivory and cerasteel, bronze-bound, inlaid with quicksilver symbols and gold. In that box was the heart of Time, prisoned in cold velvet, suspended in lightless, soundless, motionless void.
The Doctor reached the stillpoint unhindered, moving between the moments. The box opened to his touch; the clock stopped, freeing continuity, duration: disorderly, untidy, vibrant Time into the universe again.
On AO3
Day 13 - Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Books
Was an entirely different experience of books, being read to. Had been little time for reading these last three years, and before that it had been a winter occupation, summer taken with the never-ending conflict with the Usara, when not fully occupied with the business of keeping the peace between his own people. Rather than the weight and texture of the volume in his hands, the transmutation of letters - print, script, symbol - on the page to meaning in the mind, an intimate relationship twixt text and self, was instead Mildmay's voice, mind, understanding, presence shaping still words into living stories.
On AO3
Day 19 - Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Eclipse
The Clock of Eclipses ticked, tocked, running, Working: keeping awful, even time battering behind everything Kay could not see. Too easily, he (never imaginative, never time for imagination) imagined, saw, in the darkness that surrounded him, intricate, horrible machinery twin to that under Summerdown, ravenous for life, for blood, for pain and fear and most of all despair. Staircases straight and twisted, leading up and down into bleak, impenetrable shadows where gears and arms and blades lurked, each inexorable tick tugging, telling him to give up, give in, surrender all. Perversely, it only made Kay choose the more to live.
Also inspired by working on my requests and Dear Writer letter for Yuletide.
On AO3
Day 22 - Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Sunset
Sunset stained the water delicate shades of peach and orange and pink shading into lavender and purple mist in the shadows. Tree-skeletons, leaves turned and fled at the coming of winter, stood black against the flame-bright sky where molten citrine yellow-edged clouds gone grey-violet under rose-gold floated on the horizon; all becoming ash.
Kay could feel the warmth of the day fading on his face, taste the faint, chill breeze, hear the evening bird-sounds, even smell the rising breath of cooling stone, but the colors were only Rothmarlin memories; no confluence of sense could let him see the Grimglass sunset.
On AO3
Day 23 - Companion to Wolves - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Dreamer
Skjaldwulf had been called a dreamer many times in his life - dreamer an epithet for alf-shot, ice-addled, impractical, unreasonable, Other, odd, and worse than useless for it. The inhospitable north of the world had little patience with a boy who heard voices in the wind (the song of the wolves, calling to him), who kept on asking ‘why?’ and worse, ‘why not?’ (unsatisfied with ‘ because’ and ‘I say so’ and ‘we have always done it this way.’) He had called himself a dreamer, the word a flail to batter at a hopeless, late-found love - alf-shot and addled by ice indeed.
But the wolf-songs in the wind had been real, and the answers he had sought out - and what he had found on the way while seeking: tales, wonders, reasons, answers to unimagined questions - were also real, and valuable. As for love…. Skjaldwulf watched as Mar (brother of his heart) play-wrestled and romped with Kjaran and Viradechtis in the moonlit snow, Vethulf (co-Jarl and lover, all unlooked for) a warm presence at his shoulder. Watching with them, Isolfr (beloved of both) leaned comfortably against a nearby tree. Odd, Other: what they six had forged between them worked. Love found a way.
On AO3
Day 24 - White Wing - Gordon Kendall
Ransomed
When the Fleet hospital authorities allowed Dustin up to bathe unsupervised by guard or medic drawn from the ranks of the Colors, keen to enforce the smallest rule, letting his wing-sibs, his family, tend to him, Gregory felt that demonstrated a real dwindling of the distrust, fear and outright opposition to the idea that one trained as Sejiedi, no matter how born, could be truly deprogrammed. Seeing him walk - fragile, weak and unsteady but clear-eyed - the few steps to the fresher, Gregory knew they had ransomed not just their Dustin (pilot, lover, husband, friend) but Gregory's own heart as well.
-Prompt words: Opposite, Demonstrated, Enforce, Dwindling, Ransomed, Bathe
On AO3
Day 25: TPM
Sand
The crumbling white sand stretched away to hazy, grey-white mountains in the distance, steep-sided and stark. In the foreground, nearly prone, balanced on fists and toes, almost supplicant, was a figure dressed only in leather kilt and singlet, feet and hands confined in layer on layer of hide and pitch, brown hair tied back, knotted far more intricately than Qui-Gon's own: a fighter from the ceremonial 'welcoming' combat the previous day. One of the Victors; no others had been granted Reprieve, that message clear to the delegation.
She lifted her head, dark, fierce eyes meeting his. "Help us, Master Jedi."
On AO3
Day 25: Roads of Heaven
Aftermath
Denis was a Pilot, not a Magus, Captain-and-husband, not adept, though ever since the geas and Silence’s breaking of it, the celestial spheres were closer, though no less strange, and he could see more than just the Void Marks did he not focus close. Most different of all the _in hydraulis_ could, and would, shake his bones with terror and terrifying delight. Before there had only been the simple, subliminal sense of the Key unlocking the Door that was not a Door, accessing the necessary mindset for piloting. Julie knew a little of it, since it was he who woke him from the day-mares, who had held him on that nightmare ship. Julie wanted him to speak to Silence, if he would not speak to Isambard (and that, indeed, Denis simply would not do. Isambard would not be privy to any more of Denis than he had already forced him to reveal, been forced by that nasty piece of work that had been Gyazi) but stubborn (and stubborn had saved life and sanity on other occasions, in other straits) he would not yet. Not until he truly could not find a way to handle it. Until then, he would cope.
On AO3
Day 28: Adam Lambert RPF
High Heels
You put high heels on and you change. ~Manolo Blahnik
The first time Adam put on heels -- real heels, teeteringly high, narrow points gripping his toes, straps biting and sliding at ankle and heel -- he understood something he'd never even thought of before: they gave both vulnerability and vantage, not just inches, altitude, but attitude, atmosphere. The air was different, breathed in with canted hips, the view different from a more precarious height, and the sense, the feel, the shape of the space he made in the world was different in ways he had no words for at all. Changed and yet, emphatically himself. Many of Adam's boots have heels.
On AO3
Day 28: Lord John Grey
Title
Lord John Grey had learned early that a title was no armor against contempt, nor had it protected him from being violated (by mocking laughter and careless hands of rebellious Scots, by a rough English arm at his throat and rougher prick in his arse, by the shattering violence of lead and steel and bronze). His title both caused and smoothed rockier moments of challenge to his orders, what with surly contempt evinced by some and fawning obsequies by others. (That his authority needed no gilding to be effective was not a consideration with him in his youth.) He was not, he believed, stoical by nature, but the exigencies of his life and the nature of his desires had been an effective whip, for all the scars it left were not visible in the flesh. His title had certainly not armed him against that - if anything, it exacerbated the situation, especially as he believed in living up to the ideals of lordship, inasmuch as it was possible. Whinging had no part in the example he wished to make, any more than greed or parsimony, arrogance or neglect; whereas honor, generosity (of spirit no less than goods) and careful leadership did.
Prompt words: Title, Violated, Rockier, Gilding, Stoical, Whip. Used in order and in the form given.
On AO3
Day 3 - Doctor Who (1963)
Floating Armament
The cannon floated, improbably, in mid air over the landscape of farms and scattered fields. A sturdy, old-fashioned cannon, blackened bronze barrel hooped in iron, carriage of white washed oak, neatly roved-over ropes looped from the cascabel to confine the recoil when it was fired. There were no wings or any kind of visible engine to keep it aloft, but aloft it was, untethered seemingly from gravity as well as sense. Bobbing some distance behind it was a straggling line of dilatory cannonballs. Sarah Jane watched as they meandered by. No doubt the Doctor would have some explanation for it.
[Inspired by a picture of a cannon on a parapet in Denmark, taken by Dr Derickson, also the prompt-word ‘wings’]
On AO3
Day 5 Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones
Wave-washed
When the sun rose up out of the wall of water that had been Kankredin, the clean curve of the wave that reared up, shining blue and gold and dazzling with light, entirely free of the taint of hidden death and mageries wrought in blood and fear, divisiveness and subjugation; the plash and scatter of sea foam that no longer burned salt, poisoned drippings of deceit and despair; the very shapes of rocks and hills that held the river and faced the sea all proclaimed the land changed, the fabric of the world woven anew. Unfettered, Kars Adon’s spirit flew.
On AO3
Day 7 - Fairy Tales
Snow and Sleep
Snow fell, soft, thick, inexorable, endless descent of wheeling whiteness capping the crenelations, the revetments and the ravelins, the sleeping cannon and the sloping roofs that huddled near the walls. Trees bent under the clinging weight as tiny crystals gathered, edges catching, clasping, locking tight, icing twig and leaf, needle and cone. Stones settled, etched in ice, as battlements and courtyards lay under perfect coverlets, unbroken purfles of white. Even the knotted brambles that hemmed the castle round, binding gate and passage fast was lent a beauty - made obdurate lace by snow. Day would see no waking eyes but thorns.
On AO3
Day 8 - Doctor Who - Virgin New Adventures
Freeing Time
Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~William Faulkner
In the clockwork universe there was no time, only ticking, eternal moments, discrete and solitary. All was order, tidy, precise. The Tardis landed in the central machinery with especially loud noises.
In the heart of the world-engine was a casket: ironwood, crystal, ivory and cerasteel, bronze-bound, inlaid with quicksilver symbols and gold. In that box was the heart of Time, prisoned in cold velvet, suspended in lightless, soundless, motionless void.
The Doctor reached the stillpoint unhindered, moving between the moments. The box opened to his touch; the clock stopped, freeing continuity, duration: disorderly, untidy, vibrant Time into the universe again.
On AO3
Day 13 - Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Books
Was an entirely different experience of books, being read to. Had been little time for reading these last three years, and before that it had been a winter occupation, summer taken with the never-ending conflict with the Usara, when not fully occupied with the business of keeping the peace between his own people. Rather than the weight and texture of the volume in his hands, the transmutation of letters - print, script, symbol - on the page to meaning in the mind, an intimate relationship twixt text and self, was instead Mildmay's voice, mind, understanding, presence shaping still words into living stories.
On AO3
Day 19 - Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Eclipse
The Clock of Eclipses ticked, tocked, running, Working: keeping awful, even time battering behind everything Kay could not see. Too easily, he (never imaginative, never time for imagination) imagined, saw, in the darkness that surrounded him, intricate, horrible machinery twin to that under Summerdown, ravenous for life, for blood, for pain and fear and most of all despair. Staircases straight and twisted, leading up and down into bleak, impenetrable shadows where gears and arms and blades lurked, each inexorable tick tugging, telling him to give up, give in, surrender all. Perversely, it only made Kay choose the more to live.
Also inspired by working on my requests and Dear Writer letter for Yuletide.
On AO3
Day 22 - Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Sunset
Sunset stained the water delicate shades of peach and orange and pink shading into lavender and purple mist in the shadows. Tree-skeletons, leaves turned and fled at the coming of winter, stood black against the flame-bright sky where molten citrine yellow-edged clouds gone grey-violet under rose-gold floated on the horizon; all becoming ash.
Kay could feel the warmth of the day fading on his face, taste the faint, chill breeze, hear the evening bird-sounds, even smell the rising breath of cooling stone, but the colors were only Rothmarlin memories; no confluence of sense could let him see the Grimglass sunset.
On AO3
Day 23 - Companion to Wolves - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Dreamer
Skjaldwulf had been called a dreamer many times in his life - dreamer an epithet for alf-shot, ice-addled, impractical, unreasonable, Other, odd, and worse than useless for it. The inhospitable north of the world had little patience with a boy who heard voices in the wind (the song of the wolves, calling to him), who kept on asking ‘why?’ and worse, ‘why not?’ (unsatisfied with ‘ because’ and ‘I say so’ and ‘we have always done it this way.’) He had called himself a dreamer, the word a flail to batter at a hopeless, late-found love - alf-shot and addled by ice indeed.
But the wolf-songs in the wind had been real, and the answers he had sought out - and what he had found on the way while seeking: tales, wonders, reasons, answers to unimagined questions - were also real, and valuable. As for love…. Skjaldwulf watched as Mar (brother of his heart) play-wrestled and romped with Kjaran and Viradechtis in the moonlit snow, Vethulf (co-Jarl and lover, all unlooked for) a warm presence at his shoulder. Watching with them, Isolfr (beloved of both) leaned comfortably against a nearby tree. Odd, Other: what they six had forged between them worked. Love found a way.
On AO3
Day 24 - White Wing - Gordon Kendall
Ransomed
When the Fleet hospital authorities allowed Dustin up to bathe unsupervised by guard or medic drawn from the ranks of the Colors, keen to enforce the smallest rule, letting his wing-sibs, his family, tend to him, Gregory felt that demonstrated a real dwindling of the distrust, fear and outright opposition to the idea that one trained as Sejiedi, no matter how born, could be truly deprogrammed. Seeing him walk - fragile, weak and unsteady but clear-eyed - the few steps to the fresher, Gregory knew they had ransomed not just their Dustin (pilot, lover, husband, friend) but Gregory's own heart as well.
-Prompt words: Opposite, Demonstrated, Enforce, Dwindling, Ransomed, Bathe
On AO3
Day 25: TPM
Sand
The crumbling white sand stretched away to hazy, grey-white mountains in the distance, steep-sided and stark. In the foreground, nearly prone, balanced on fists and toes, almost supplicant, was a figure dressed only in leather kilt and singlet, feet and hands confined in layer on layer of hide and pitch, brown hair tied back, knotted far more intricately than Qui-Gon's own: a fighter from the ceremonial 'welcoming' combat the previous day. One of the Victors; no others had been granted Reprieve, that message clear to the delegation.
She lifted her head, dark, fierce eyes meeting his. "Help us, Master Jedi."
On AO3
Day 25: Roads of Heaven
Aftermath
Denis was a Pilot, not a Magus, Captain-and-husband, not adept, though ever since the geas and Silence’s breaking of it, the celestial spheres were closer, though no less strange, and he could see more than just the Void Marks did he not focus close. Most different of all the _in hydraulis_ could, and would, shake his bones with terror and terrifying delight. Before there had only been the simple, subliminal sense of the Key unlocking the Door that was not a Door, accessing the necessary mindset for piloting. Julie knew a little of it, since it was he who woke him from the day-mares, who had held him on that nightmare ship. Julie wanted him to speak to Silence, if he would not speak to Isambard (and that, indeed, Denis simply would not do. Isambard would not be privy to any more of Denis than he had already forced him to reveal, been forced by that nasty piece of work that had been Gyazi) but stubborn (and stubborn had saved life and sanity on other occasions, in other straits) he would not yet. Not until he truly could not find a way to handle it. Until then, he would cope.
On AO3
Day 28: Adam Lambert RPF
High Heels
You put high heels on and you change. ~Manolo Blahnik
The first time Adam put on heels -- real heels, teeteringly high, narrow points gripping his toes, straps biting and sliding at ankle and heel -- he understood something he'd never even thought of before: they gave both vulnerability and vantage, not just inches, altitude, but attitude, atmosphere. The air was different, breathed in with canted hips, the view different from a more precarious height, and the sense, the feel, the shape of the space he made in the world was different in ways he had no words for at all. Changed and yet, emphatically himself. Many of Adam's boots have heels.
On AO3
Day 28: Lord John Grey
Title
Lord John Grey had learned early that a title was no armor against contempt, nor had it protected him from being violated (by mocking laughter and careless hands of rebellious Scots, by a rough English arm at his throat and rougher prick in his arse, by the shattering violence of lead and steel and bronze). His title both caused and smoothed rockier moments of challenge to his orders, what with surly contempt evinced by some and fawning obsequies by others. (That his authority needed no gilding to be effective was not a consideration with him in his youth.) He was not, he believed, stoical by nature, but the exigencies of his life and the nature of his desires had been an effective whip, for all the scars it left were not visible in the flesh. His title had certainly not armed him against that - if anything, it exacerbated the situation, especially as he believed in living up to the ideals of lordship, inasmuch as it was possible. Whinging had no part in the example he wished to make, any more than greed or parsimony, arrogance or neglect; whereas honor, generosity (of spirit no less than goods) and careful leadership did.
Prompt words: Title, Violated, Rockier, Gilding, Stoical, Whip. Used in order and in the form given.
On AO3