Fic: Mini-Nanowrimo Highlander Drabbles
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 Sanctuary and Fannish One-Off drabbles have their own posts. These are the Highlander drabbles, in order of being written.
Day 2: Highlander, Methos
Winter Sunrise
Winter sunrise stained the paling sky pink and grey, silhouetting snow-etched skeletons of leafless trees, regimented iron fences enclosing still-sleeping houses. The cathedral towers reached out dim and wavering reflections in the ice-rimed water of the slow river, stretched up dark against the clouds. Candle- and lamp-light began to gleam through thin curtains in attic dormers, narrow panes of below-stairs and back-stairs windows. Methos watched the harbingers of busy day moved from room to room behind expensive glass, waking fire in stately hearths. The bells for Lauds began to ring as he shouldered his pack and turned to walk away.
On AO3
Day 4: Highlander, Methos
Stars
When it is darkest, men see the stars ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes, looking up through a haze of light-pollution Methos missed truly dark skies. Nights when the heavens were wildflower-thick with stars, scintillate with color; when one could lie on a grassy hilltop and fall up into endless depths of space, with only the press of ground against one's spine to anchor flesh to earth as spirit flew.
(He even, occasionally, missed the frozen, clouded-over long nights in the far north with the sun a week-old memory, and neither star nor moon to cast a shadow on the snow. And then he would laugh at himself and snap out of it.)
On AO3
Day 7: Highlander, Methos
The Fourth Horseman
We can never be gods, after all-but we can become something less than human with frightening ease. ~N.K. Jemisin
Not god or monster, but god and monster. Something both more and less than human. It was not a choice, not now, not with the heady rush of victory, of power, of freedom from the common herd, from subjugation to the will of petty, cruel, mortal men pouring through him, water to a bone-dust-dry throat (his own screams still raw, harsh, sharp in mind), bread and meat and frothy beer to famished, broken and re-broken flesh (blade and rod, prick and poison, dying only brief oblivion, not surcease): their screams, their fear, their heart's-blood spilled as Death gave them death.
On AO3
Day 10: Highlander, Original (Methos)
The Bones of Houses
The bones of houses lie in the ground, layers of them, going down. Skins of vinyl, linoleum, plastics, pleather, gave wAy to tile and glass-brick, veneer and painted panels. Then carved wood, shaped stone, lath and plaster, inlay and leaded mullions lead back to clay brick, woven withies chinked with white mud, laid logs and hides stretched on sticks. Deepest of all and throughout are fire-pit ghosts, in caves and hills, plains and forests.
The earth is herself a house, holding us all, bone and stone and flesh and spirit living and loving and dying; to mortal and Immortal: home.
-Inspired by seeing bits of tile and foundations half-buried/half-exposed in the ground at Winkelman Flats during Southern Crusades.
On AO3
Day 12: Highlander, Darius
Laughing Murderer
On the field of battle, they called him the Laughing Murderer for the terrifying joy, effectiveness and energy with which he took on the enemy, leaving them dead and dying under the scythe of his blade. He was gods-kissed, untouchable, and the mere rumor of his presence would strike fear in the ranks (clans, tribes, camps, centuries) of the opposing forces such that more than one man thought (or chose) to run, to fade back into the forest, withdraw whole companies from the fight. Choose the security of living to see another day over the seeming certainty of bright and bloody death.
By the time his armies reached the gates of Lutetia, though, the adventure had begun to pall, and in taking - being taken by - the ancient Emrys, Darius came to count as a more profound success than any he had achieved as warrior or general leading men in slaughter.
Prompts: Adventure, Security, Success, Laughter, Murder, Energy
On AO3
Day 13 - Highlander, Methos
Simple Pleasures
Boots
Methos had long since learned to appreciate simple pleasures. Good boots were one: waterproof, well-fitting, resilient and sturdy but not stiff. His feet had known everything from fetasko of reindeer-hide stuffed with moss to felted wool with wooden soles to supple thigh-high riding boots with lace in the bucket tops to the elaborate stitching and snakeskin applique of the Western cobbler’s art. These days, his boot of choice was still leather, a straightforward ankle-high hiking boot with extra long laces - worn with good wool socks. Good for running or fighting, or walking wherever he wanted to go, far or near.
Beer
Beer was another simple pleasure, one of the very few that Methos could take almost as much enjoyment in the fact that it was older than he was as he did in the beer itself. Sometimes a necessity - as when neither the water nor the wine were drinkable; and while poisoned water would not kill him for long, the process was decidedly unpleasant, and bad wine was simply nasty - occasionally quite strange (peculiar was the only word for some of Darius' brews), but barley, water and yeast properly assembled and concocted, with or without other ingredients, never failed to please.
Books
Books were not precisely simple, even now in the age of ebooks and printing on demand and the once unthinkable ubiquitous availability of paper and ink in all kinds and colors and degrees of permanence, but the pleasure he took in reading (and writing) was as deep and uncomplicated and long lasting as ever it had been. They held so much and gave it back again to the eyes, fingers, ears, mind. He had learned braille for the pleasure of it, and there was not a script or writing system that once mastered would ever forget. Books kept him sane.
Fire
Fire on the other hand was the oldest friend he knew. Fire was life: warmth in the winter, burning bright on hearth, heat under cauldron and kettle and roasting spit, coals red under a blanket of ash, ready to blaze up again with air and fuel; light in the darkness, torch and lamp, bonfire and watchfire and beacon-fire on the hilltops, warding the home-places from the wild things. Fire was sunlight, wildfire, forge-fire, tool and weapon and fearsome, changeable companion. And fire was the lightning in his veins, his nerves, the marrow of his bones: Quickening-fire holding him to life.
On AO3
Day 18: Highlander (general)
Malaise
Immortals very rarely got physically sick, not after First Death at any rate, but that did not do anything at all about becoming sick at heart. Spiritual malaise was something else entirely, not subject to the Quickening’s healing force. Nor could a Quickening prevent the effects of privation (lack of food, of water, of rest, of air) on thought or feeling or flesh, though it did allow for far swifter recovery from those effects, once the lack was remedied. Immortal flesh was still flesh, biochemistry, not magic. A different physic was required to ease non-physical wounds, broken hearts, time-weary minds.
Prompt word: Sick
On AO3
Day 21: Highlander, Methos
Dry
Some days it felt as though all the words had vanished, dribbled out one’s ears, fled brain and fingers, inaccessible and mocking. Some days the words spilled profligate and generous, chaining together in phrases and sentences, paragraphs and sections, rushing faster than mere hands and keys could capture. This was not one of those days. This was a day dry of words, yet they still needed to be produced, drug out of hiding, pinned down on the page, no matter how difficult or reluctant. Reports, technical things could be hammered out with sheer perseverance. Creative words were another thing entirely.
-Inspired by feeling personally parched of words, so I wrote about that, rather than off any of the prompts.
On AO3
Day 24: Highlander, Rebecca
Owl in the Rain
Rebecca woke to the pattering sound of rain and the diffuse light of an overcast early morning coming through the open casements of her bedroom windows. She had a sense of being watched, a little disconcerting considering the inaccessibility of her tower room. No Immortal Presence, though: not Amanda making an unconventional but not unprecedented entrance. When she raised her head to scan the windows, it was to meet the round yellow gaze of a small owl, perched on the windowsill closest to the bed.
"Are you one of Athena's, then, come with a warning? Or perhaps a delivery-owl with a message from the wizarding world?" John did not stir as she slid out from under the covers, and the owl only cocked its head at her quiet words and gentle approach. "I'm much too old for Hogwarts, you know," she said with a smile. "Or are you just little and lost and wanting to get out of the rain?" For all her light words, it felt like a warning, and she was old enough to attend to such. She was dressing, braiding up her hair, bending and stretching and loosening her sword in its sheath before she felt the first distant touch of a familiar, hostile Presence.
Rebecca pressed a light kiss to John's hair, straightening as she felt the feather-weight prick of talons on her shoulder and the brush of feathers against her ear. The little owl accompanied her down the stairs then flew up to float in the upper spaces of the hall, grey-eyed Athena's own avatar and witness warding and watching over her. When the knocker sounded - loud, imperative, peremptory, demanding instant entrance - she opened the door with chin high and blade ready.
Luther had no chance against Rebecca awake, warned and ready for him.
On AO3
Day 25: Highlander, Methos/Duncan
Lavender and Dungeons
Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green, When you are king, dilly dilly, I’ll be your queen
The song had been humming through Methos' head all day, and now it was joined by another, in a completely different voice, rich and dark to the chiming lightness of the other:
Second floor dungeon, jewelry department: neck chains, ankle chains, wrist chains, leg chains, thumbscrews and nooses of the very finest rope…
The two pieces did not go together, not metrically, not melodically, not thematically or lyrically. Yet here they were, chasing each other around in his head, a centuries-old lullaby of improbable futures and archaic domestic details, and a half-century old musical example of celluloid fancy. The combination produced an image that he entirely refused to analyze: Duncan decked in chains elaborate and fanciful, precious metal and base, floral and paper and tinsel, otherwise gloriously naked but for a crown of flowers; himself rope bound, swaddled in hemp, coils and coils looping waist and wrists and ankles, and around his neck a twisted chain of lavender stems, purple-blue and dusty green. The airy flowers held him faster than all the rope combined.
His brain was a very strange place indeed some days.
-This was the result of these two songs colliding in my head last year while working on my Yuletide piece. I was reminded of it this year and took the sketch of it and made it a drabble.
On AO3
Day 27: Highlander - Storage-verse (Methos)
Exhalation of Stars
On another island in the Archipelago of Alphabetical Order was a different structure, something that had once been a watchpoint, an observatory. Blocky, mud-brick walls enclosed a round tower that reached and opened upward. Inscrutable circles marked the sides, round depressions set in rings, spiraling around and up the central structure, a myriad blank eyes. From the ragged top a plume, a banner, a flame of stars emerged, bright against the deep twilight-shaded, light-spattered sky. Often only illusion, the radiance of the galactic arm shining in the deeps beyond. Sometimes, though, it was the very exhalation of time.
On AO3
Day 30: Highlander - Methos
Moon
Seen from Saint-Exupéry, (one of a handful of worldlets created at fantastic expense, complete with glass envelope atmosphere and Yimm-Arcadia gravity generators, expanses of grass, even trees, though the dwellings are all below the surface naturally) the Earth's Moon is immense, thrice the height of the man who owns the place. It's never far from full, given the respective orbits of the two satellites, though the faces change in as orderly a progression as the phases do on Earth. When she shows her oldest face, Piers Pierce-Adams can be found by a tree, watching it float in the heavens.
On AO3
All of them in one place:
Immortals and Time (2000 words) by
lferion
Fandom: Highlander: The Series, 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: John Bowers/Rebecca Horne, Duncan MacLeod/Methos
Characters: Methos, Darius (Highlander: The Series), Luther (Highlander: The Series), Rebecca Horne, Duncan MacLeod
Summary: Twelve Drabbles concerning Immortals and their lives
Day 2: Highlander, Methos
Winter Sunrise
Winter sunrise stained the paling sky pink and grey, silhouetting snow-etched skeletons of leafless trees, regimented iron fences enclosing still-sleeping houses. The cathedral towers reached out dim and wavering reflections in the ice-rimed water of the slow river, stretched up dark against the clouds. Candle- and lamp-light began to gleam through thin curtains in attic dormers, narrow panes of below-stairs and back-stairs windows. Methos watched the harbingers of busy day moved from room to room behind expensive glass, waking fire in stately hearths. The bells for Lauds began to ring as he shouldered his pack and turned to walk away.
On AO3
Day 4: Highlander, Methos
Stars
When it is darkest, men see the stars ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes, looking up through a haze of light-pollution Methos missed truly dark skies. Nights when the heavens were wildflower-thick with stars, scintillate with color; when one could lie on a grassy hilltop and fall up into endless depths of space, with only the press of ground against one's spine to anchor flesh to earth as spirit flew.
(He even, occasionally, missed the frozen, clouded-over long nights in the far north with the sun a week-old memory, and neither star nor moon to cast a shadow on the snow. And then he would laugh at himself and snap out of it.)
On AO3
Day 7: Highlander, Methos
The Fourth Horseman
We can never be gods, after all-but we can become something less than human with frightening ease. ~N.K. Jemisin
Not god or monster, but god and monster. Something both more and less than human. It was not a choice, not now, not with the heady rush of victory, of power, of freedom from the common herd, from subjugation to the will of petty, cruel, mortal men pouring through him, water to a bone-dust-dry throat (his own screams still raw, harsh, sharp in mind), bread and meat and frothy beer to famished, broken and re-broken flesh (blade and rod, prick and poison, dying only brief oblivion, not surcease): their screams, their fear, their heart's-blood spilled as Death gave them death.
On AO3
Day 10: Highlander, Original (Methos)
The Bones of Houses
The bones of houses lie in the ground, layers of them, going down. Skins of vinyl, linoleum, plastics, pleather, gave wAy to tile and glass-brick, veneer and painted panels. Then carved wood, shaped stone, lath and plaster, inlay and leaded mullions lead back to clay brick, woven withies chinked with white mud, laid logs and hides stretched on sticks. Deepest of all and throughout are fire-pit ghosts, in caves and hills, plains and forests.
The earth is herself a house, holding us all, bone and stone and flesh and spirit living and loving and dying; to mortal and Immortal: home.
-Inspired by seeing bits of tile and foundations half-buried/half-exposed in the ground at Winkelman Flats during Southern Crusades.
On AO3
Day 12: Highlander, Darius
Laughing Murderer
On the field of battle, they called him the Laughing Murderer for the terrifying joy, effectiveness and energy with which he took on the enemy, leaving them dead and dying under the scythe of his blade. He was gods-kissed, untouchable, and the mere rumor of his presence would strike fear in the ranks (clans, tribes, camps, centuries) of the opposing forces such that more than one man thought (or chose) to run, to fade back into the forest, withdraw whole companies from the fight. Choose the security of living to see another day over the seeming certainty of bright and bloody death.
By the time his armies reached the gates of Lutetia, though, the adventure had begun to pall, and in taking - being taken by - the ancient Emrys, Darius came to count as a more profound success than any he had achieved as warrior or general leading men in slaughter.
Prompts: Adventure, Security, Success, Laughter, Murder, Energy
On AO3
Day 13 - Highlander, Methos
Simple Pleasures
Boots
Methos had long since learned to appreciate simple pleasures. Good boots were one: waterproof, well-fitting, resilient and sturdy but not stiff. His feet had known everything from fetasko of reindeer-hide stuffed with moss to felted wool with wooden soles to supple thigh-high riding boots with lace in the bucket tops to the elaborate stitching and snakeskin applique of the Western cobbler’s art. These days, his boot of choice was still leather, a straightforward ankle-high hiking boot with extra long laces - worn with good wool socks. Good for running or fighting, or walking wherever he wanted to go, far or near.
Beer
Beer was another simple pleasure, one of the very few that Methos could take almost as much enjoyment in the fact that it was older than he was as he did in the beer itself. Sometimes a necessity - as when neither the water nor the wine were drinkable; and while poisoned water would not kill him for long, the process was decidedly unpleasant, and bad wine was simply nasty - occasionally quite strange (peculiar was the only word for some of Darius' brews), but barley, water and yeast properly assembled and concocted, with or without other ingredients, never failed to please.
Books
Books were not precisely simple, even now in the age of ebooks and printing on demand and the once unthinkable ubiquitous availability of paper and ink in all kinds and colors and degrees of permanence, but the pleasure he took in reading (and writing) was as deep and uncomplicated and long lasting as ever it had been. They held so much and gave it back again to the eyes, fingers, ears, mind. He had learned braille for the pleasure of it, and there was not a script or writing system that once mastered would ever forget. Books kept him sane.
Fire
Fire on the other hand was the oldest friend he knew. Fire was life: warmth in the winter, burning bright on hearth, heat under cauldron and kettle and roasting spit, coals red under a blanket of ash, ready to blaze up again with air and fuel; light in the darkness, torch and lamp, bonfire and watchfire and beacon-fire on the hilltops, warding the home-places from the wild things. Fire was sunlight, wildfire, forge-fire, tool and weapon and fearsome, changeable companion. And fire was the lightning in his veins, his nerves, the marrow of his bones: Quickening-fire holding him to life.
On AO3
Day 18: Highlander (general)
Malaise
Immortals very rarely got physically sick, not after First Death at any rate, but that did not do anything at all about becoming sick at heart. Spiritual malaise was something else entirely, not subject to the Quickening’s healing force. Nor could a Quickening prevent the effects of privation (lack of food, of water, of rest, of air) on thought or feeling or flesh, though it did allow for far swifter recovery from those effects, once the lack was remedied. Immortal flesh was still flesh, biochemistry, not magic. A different physic was required to ease non-physical wounds, broken hearts, time-weary minds.
Prompt word: Sick
On AO3
Day 21: Highlander, Methos
Dry
Some days it felt as though all the words had vanished, dribbled out one’s ears, fled brain and fingers, inaccessible and mocking. Some days the words spilled profligate and generous, chaining together in phrases and sentences, paragraphs and sections, rushing faster than mere hands and keys could capture. This was not one of those days. This was a day dry of words, yet they still needed to be produced, drug out of hiding, pinned down on the page, no matter how difficult or reluctant. Reports, technical things could be hammered out with sheer perseverance. Creative words were another thing entirely.
-Inspired by feeling personally parched of words, so I wrote about that, rather than off any of the prompts.
On AO3
Day 24: Highlander, Rebecca
Owl in the Rain
Rebecca woke to the pattering sound of rain and the diffuse light of an overcast early morning coming through the open casements of her bedroom windows. She had a sense of being watched, a little disconcerting considering the inaccessibility of her tower room. No Immortal Presence, though: not Amanda making an unconventional but not unprecedented entrance. When she raised her head to scan the windows, it was to meet the round yellow gaze of a small owl, perched on the windowsill closest to the bed.
"Are you one of Athena's, then, come with a warning? Or perhaps a delivery-owl with a message from the wizarding world?" John did not stir as she slid out from under the covers, and the owl only cocked its head at her quiet words and gentle approach. "I'm much too old for Hogwarts, you know," she said with a smile. "Or are you just little and lost and wanting to get out of the rain?" For all her light words, it felt like a warning, and she was old enough to attend to such. She was dressing, braiding up her hair, bending and stretching and loosening her sword in its sheath before she felt the first distant touch of a familiar, hostile Presence.
Rebecca pressed a light kiss to John's hair, straightening as she felt the feather-weight prick of talons on her shoulder and the brush of feathers against her ear. The little owl accompanied her down the stairs then flew up to float in the upper spaces of the hall, grey-eyed Athena's own avatar and witness warding and watching over her. When the knocker sounded - loud, imperative, peremptory, demanding instant entrance - she opened the door with chin high and blade ready.
Luther had no chance against Rebecca awake, warned and ready for him.
On AO3
Day 25: Highlander, Methos/Duncan
Lavender and Dungeons
Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green, When you are king, dilly dilly, I’ll be your queen
The song had been humming through Methos' head all day, and now it was joined by another, in a completely different voice, rich and dark to the chiming lightness of the other:
Second floor dungeon, jewelry department: neck chains, ankle chains, wrist chains, leg chains, thumbscrews and nooses of the very finest rope…
The two pieces did not go together, not metrically, not melodically, not thematically or lyrically. Yet here they were, chasing each other around in his head, a centuries-old lullaby of improbable futures and archaic domestic details, and a half-century old musical example of celluloid fancy. The combination produced an image that he entirely refused to analyze: Duncan decked in chains elaborate and fanciful, precious metal and base, floral and paper and tinsel, otherwise gloriously naked but for a crown of flowers; himself rope bound, swaddled in hemp, coils and coils looping waist and wrists and ankles, and around his neck a twisted chain of lavender stems, purple-blue and dusty green. The airy flowers held him faster than all the rope combined.
His brain was a very strange place indeed some days.
-This was the result of these two songs colliding in my head last year while working on my Yuletide piece. I was reminded of it this year and took the sketch of it and made it a drabble.
On AO3
Day 27: Highlander - Storage-verse (Methos)
Exhalation of Stars
On another island in the Archipelago of Alphabetical Order was a different structure, something that had once been a watchpoint, an observatory. Blocky, mud-brick walls enclosed a round tower that reached and opened upward. Inscrutable circles marked the sides, round depressions set in rings, spiraling around and up the central structure, a myriad blank eyes. From the ragged top a plume, a banner, a flame of stars emerged, bright against the deep twilight-shaded, light-spattered sky. Often only illusion, the radiance of the galactic arm shining in the deeps beyond. Sometimes, though, it was the very exhalation of time.
On AO3
Day 30: Highlander - Methos
Moon
Seen from Saint-Exupéry, (one of a handful of worldlets created at fantastic expense, complete with glass envelope atmosphere and Yimm-Arcadia gravity generators, expanses of grass, even trees, though the dwellings are all below the surface naturally) the Earth's Moon is immense, thrice the height of the man who owns the place. It's never far from full, given the respective orbits of the two satellites, though the faces change in as orderly a progression as the phases do on Earth. When she shows her oldest face, Piers Pierce-Adams can be found by a tree, watching it float in the heavens.
On AO3
All of them in one place:
Immortals and Time (2000 words) by
lferion
Fandom: Highlander: The Series, 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: John Bowers/Rebecca Horne, Duncan MacLeod/Methos
Characters: Methos, Darius (Highlander: The Series), Luther (Highlander: The Series), Rebecca Horne, Duncan MacLeod
Summary: Twelve Drabbles concerning Immortals and their lives