Lora's Birthday 2019: Short Ficlets
Here are 3 ficlets less than 1000 words, since they felt too short to put in their own post.
1. anon asked for Lyme from the POV of someone at the Centre
The girl has eyes like swords and a purple butterfly splashed across her nose. She snatches the brochures with greedy fingers and devours them, drinks up the pretty children and the pretty promises with the expression of one long-starved.
Kyra sits behind a table in schools like this at recruitment drives like these every week. This is not the first child with open bruises on her skin like a defiant trumpet blast. Not the first to leap at games and fun and food and three hours away from home and not care where she lands. A lot of them lash out at the trainers, or crumble completely at the first stern word, so programmed to snarl or bow to authority that it would take years to rebuild. Some learn. Many don’t.
She asks about dresses, and Kyra gives her the answer she wants to hear, because that will get her to take the paperwork home, but it’s also a question. The presentation they give is an inkblot test that lets the children choose their meaning, what they think the Centre will do for them. Most can be moulded into something useful, but the ones with the strongest ideas, they can be trouble. A rock-headed trainee determined to act for self and self alone is no use to anyone.
She returns the next day with her permission form and a question, the only question that matters: will she fight. “I want to learn to fight. I need to.”
And this, this is more than hating the clothes her parents make her wear or the marks they leave on her skin. This is more than hoping the Centre will be some kind of magic sanctuary to keep the bad guys out. This the Program can use.
Kyra tells her so, in different words. And she unfolds the permission form, flattens it against the tabletop, and writes high-profile candidate: recruitment officer recommendation at the bottom and signs it with a flourish.
2. anon wanted Nero, dealing with guilt post-Arena
“I have a nephew.”
Adessa sets down her book and looks at him over the tops of her glasses. “Oh?”
She knows, probably. It’s in his file, it’s gotta be. Family stuff isn’t supposed to make it past Residential but if any of them have relevant extenuating circumstances, this would be it. But Centre files have some weird rule, mentors aren’t allowed to talk about it unless the victor brings it up first. Like it’s not polite or something. Like they have to pretend you told them of your own free will. It’s … well, Nero appreciates the effort, anyway.
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Missy told me, when I saw her. Said I’m never allowed to see him after what I did.”
Adessa’s nostrils flare. “Some people will never understand, Nero. That’s the price we pay.”
“I know.” Nero looks down at his hands. Clean. Smooth. Not even the hint of blood caked under a fingernail. Nobody would know he picked up a rock and bashed some kid’s skull straight in. Nobody would know he did that over and over again. Nobody would know he lost track of how many until his post-Arena debrief. Except that when his sister looks at his face that’s the only thing she sees. “It just … sucks. All of this, it all started because of her and now she thinks I’m a monster. Sometimes … sometimes I think, why did I bother? Why did I do all this shit? That was years of torture and murdering people doing whatever they told me to do and almost dying five ways to the hills and back just so she could call me just as bad as him? What was it for?”
“I think we both know that’s not true,” Adessa says crisply, the kind of voice that’s too casual and polite to be anything but furious. And huh, looks like the police reports must’ve been in his file. “You may be many things, my dear, but you are not that man. But for the sake of argument, what do you think would be different, if you hadn’t bothered? I wouldn’t have my victor, of course, but let’s think about you, your life. Your self-righteous sister.”
He’d really rather not, but he did bring it up, so fair’s fair. Nero pulls the blanket tighter around his legs. “He would’ve pushed her down the stairs. He was so mad when he learned about the baby, he would’ve done anything to make it go away.” Never mind they could’ve gone to a doctor for that, this wasn’t Twelve. Nobody needed to drink pine needle tea and wait in the woods for the stomach cramps to start. That wasn’t the point for Nero’s old man. It never was. “He would’ve hurt her. Would’ve kept hurting her. Until one day he went too far or she found somebody who could take her away from it all.” And in the meantime Nero would keep picking fights, trying to draw as much wrath on himself as he could, but powerless to do anything to stop it.
“Which version do you think she’s better off?” Adessa asks. “That one, or the one where she spent the last five years in safety, receiving payouts from the Centre in return for your cooperation? How much of that security is worth the churning of some delicate sensibilities, do you think?”
Nero wants to laugh but it gets stuck halfway, and he rubs at his chest with his balled-up fist. “I know. I just wish I could see the kid. It sucks knowing she’s gonna raise him knowing nothing about me.”
Adessa tilts her head to study him, expression sharp and inescapable. “Do you think she’s unfit?”
“What?” He jerks back.
“I could have the child brought here tomorrow if you believe she’s raising him inadequately. You are entitled to your relatives, and that child is as much yours by blood as it is hers.”
Nero swallows a wave of nausea. “No. No! No, I don’t want that.”
Adessa sets her book aside and sighs. “Then, my dear, the best thing is to accept that people will think what they will think, and that is an ugly and inescapable fact. The only way to live is to know how you feel and that nothing else matters.”
When Adessa speaks it feels like the world scrambles to rearrange itself to her liking. Nero wishes he had half her confidence for things as simple as deciding what he wants for breakfast. He’s still not sure he shouldn’t have let the Peacekeepers send him to the penal mines instead. He could be smashing rocks right now, nice and simple, instead of seeing dead children whenever he tries to sleep. “And how do I feel?” he asks, hating himself for the question but unable to stop it.
“You are brave, and strong, and you did what no one else could at an age when it should never have been asked of you,” Adessa says firmly. “You won an ugly Games full of ugly choices and you do not have to defend yourself to anyone, ever. Do you understand?”
He exhales. It’s shaky. His indrawn breath is fast and whooshes out of him as soon as it hits his lungs. He tries again, and this time it sticks. “Yes ma’am.”
“Good.” Adessa takes his afghan, folds it up into neat little squares in short, precise movements. “Stand up, please, it’s time to spar.”
3.
morbane asked for any characters, baking or cooking
The specimen in front of her is a misshapen lump of brown and white, tinged with black at one end, cracked and dusted with white powder. It looks, vaguely, like it could be the corpse of some mangled muttation left out in the sun. It smells like the end of an Arena campfire when it’s time to move and the Pack tosses water on the site and lets the smoke hiss itself out against the sand.
Hera’s mentor raised her better than to say What is it? She has visited half a dozen orphanages in the past year and faced several scrawled drawings held up by proud children demanding her attention, but she doesn’t think Tell me about it will apply here.
Odin stands beside his masterpiece, his one good eye bright and blue and so innocent for a boy who killed so many. Hera never looked that young a year ago, she’s convinced of it. “Well?” he says, throwing out his chest. “What do you think?”
Oh, reap me sideways… “You made that?” Hera says finally. When in doubt, stick to what’s obvious. “All on your own?”
“I did!” Odin pats the … bread (?) like a proud father might his newborn while Hera tries to make encouraging noises. He glances up at her, and his expression turns soft and knowing all at once. “I know it must look strange. Tell me something, did you help make food at home? I mean … before.”
They don’t talk about Before, that’s one of the unwritten rules of the Village, but this is also Odin’s kitchen, and maybe he can set the rules here, a little sovereign kingdom marked out in terra cotta tile. Odin’s question brings up such a sharp memory that Hera is startled: the high counter, the stool beneath her small, bare feet, larger hands guiding her smaller ones around a mixing bowl, the rumble of laughter against her back.
“I did,” she says, before she can catch herself. “Did you?”
She knows the answer before Odin says it, in the curl of his hand around the bread, protective but also claiming, taking ownership of his creation and the act behind it. “I did not. We had servants, my family, and I was not permitted in the kitchen. I had a destiny, and anything that was not important to that destiny, well … I shouldn’t waste my time.” His smile turns rueful. “My hands have done many great and terrible things, Hera, ever since I was a boy, but always for destruction. That was my purpose, and I have no regrets or complaints. But now … now I can create.”
Hera looks again, at the boy one year her junior who feels so much younger and older all at once, this boy with the carved-out eye and the broad-fingered hands that snapped a girl’s neck and cut a boy in half and tenderly worked a loaf of bread into being. She looks back at the bread. She sighs. “Teach me how to make it?”
Odin brightens, and tugs her by the sleeve over to the cabinets. “All right, first let’s get all our ingredients. Do you want a sweet loaf or a savoury …”
1. anon asked for Lyme from the POV of someone at the Centre
The girl has eyes like swords and a purple butterfly splashed across her nose. She snatches the brochures with greedy fingers and devours them, drinks up the pretty children and the pretty promises with the expression of one long-starved.
Kyra sits behind a table in schools like this at recruitment drives like these every week. This is not the first child with open bruises on her skin like a defiant trumpet blast. Not the first to leap at games and fun and food and three hours away from home and not care where she lands. A lot of them lash out at the trainers, or crumble completely at the first stern word, so programmed to snarl or bow to authority that it would take years to rebuild. Some learn. Many don’t.
She asks about dresses, and Kyra gives her the answer she wants to hear, because that will get her to take the paperwork home, but it’s also a question. The presentation they give is an inkblot test that lets the children choose their meaning, what they think the Centre will do for them. Most can be moulded into something useful, but the ones with the strongest ideas, they can be trouble. A rock-headed trainee determined to act for self and self alone is no use to anyone.
She returns the next day with her permission form and a question, the only question that matters: will she fight. “I want to learn to fight. I need to.”
And this, this is more than hating the clothes her parents make her wear or the marks they leave on her skin. This is more than hoping the Centre will be some kind of magic sanctuary to keep the bad guys out. This the Program can use.
Kyra tells her so, in different words. And she unfolds the permission form, flattens it against the tabletop, and writes high-profile candidate: recruitment officer recommendation at the bottom and signs it with a flourish.
2. anon wanted Nero, dealing with guilt post-Arena
“I have a nephew.”
Adessa sets down her book and looks at him over the tops of her glasses. “Oh?”
She knows, probably. It’s in his file, it’s gotta be. Family stuff isn’t supposed to make it past Residential but if any of them have relevant extenuating circumstances, this would be it. But Centre files have some weird rule, mentors aren’t allowed to talk about it unless the victor brings it up first. Like it’s not polite or something. Like they have to pretend you told them of your own free will. It’s … well, Nero appreciates the effort, anyway.
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Missy told me, when I saw her. Said I’m never allowed to see him after what I did.”
Adessa’s nostrils flare. “Some people will never understand, Nero. That’s the price we pay.”
“I know.” Nero looks down at his hands. Clean. Smooth. Not even the hint of blood caked under a fingernail. Nobody would know he picked up a rock and bashed some kid’s skull straight in. Nobody would know he did that over and over again. Nobody would know he lost track of how many until his post-Arena debrief. Except that when his sister looks at his face that’s the only thing she sees. “It just … sucks. All of this, it all started because of her and now she thinks I’m a monster. Sometimes … sometimes I think, why did I bother? Why did I do all this shit? That was years of torture and murdering people doing whatever they told me to do and almost dying five ways to the hills and back just so she could call me just as bad as him? What was it for?”
“I think we both know that’s not true,” Adessa says crisply, the kind of voice that’s too casual and polite to be anything but furious. And huh, looks like the police reports must’ve been in his file. “You may be many things, my dear, but you are not that man. But for the sake of argument, what do you think would be different, if you hadn’t bothered? I wouldn’t have my victor, of course, but let’s think about you, your life. Your self-righteous sister.”
He’d really rather not, but he did bring it up, so fair’s fair. Nero pulls the blanket tighter around his legs. “He would’ve pushed her down the stairs. He was so mad when he learned about the baby, he would’ve done anything to make it go away.” Never mind they could’ve gone to a doctor for that, this wasn’t Twelve. Nobody needed to drink pine needle tea and wait in the woods for the stomach cramps to start. That wasn’t the point for Nero’s old man. It never was. “He would’ve hurt her. Would’ve kept hurting her. Until one day he went too far or she found somebody who could take her away from it all.” And in the meantime Nero would keep picking fights, trying to draw as much wrath on himself as he could, but powerless to do anything to stop it.
“Which version do you think she’s better off?” Adessa asks. “That one, or the one where she spent the last five years in safety, receiving payouts from the Centre in return for your cooperation? How much of that security is worth the churning of some delicate sensibilities, do you think?”
Nero wants to laugh but it gets stuck halfway, and he rubs at his chest with his balled-up fist. “I know. I just wish I could see the kid. It sucks knowing she’s gonna raise him knowing nothing about me.”
Adessa tilts her head to study him, expression sharp and inescapable. “Do you think she’s unfit?”
“What?” He jerks back.
“I could have the child brought here tomorrow if you believe she’s raising him inadequately. You are entitled to your relatives, and that child is as much yours by blood as it is hers.”
Nero swallows a wave of nausea. “No. No! No, I don’t want that.”
Adessa sets her book aside and sighs. “Then, my dear, the best thing is to accept that people will think what they will think, and that is an ugly and inescapable fact. The only way to live is to know how you feel and that nothing else matters.”
When Adessa speaks it feels like the world scrambles to rearrange itself to her liking. Nero wishes he had half her confidence for things as simple as deciding what he wants for breakfast. He’s still not sure he shouldn’t have let the Peacekeepers send him to the penal mines instead. He could be smashing rocks right now, nice and simple, instead of seeing dead children whenever he tries to sleep. “And how do I feel?” he asks, hating himself for the question but unable to stop it.
“You are brave, and strong, and you did what no one else could at an age when it should never have been asked of you,” Adessa says firmly. “You won an ugly Games full of ugly choices and you do not have to defend yourself to anyone, ever. Do you understand?”
He exhales. It’s shaky. His indrawn breath is fast and whooshes out of him as soon as it hits his lungs. He tries again, and this time it sticks. “Yes ma’am.”
“Good.” Adessa takes his afghan, folds it up into neat little squares in short, precise movements. “Stand up, please, it’s time to spar.”
3.
morbane asked for any characters, baking or cooking
The specimen in front of her is a misshapen lump of brown and white, tinged with black at one end, cracked and dusted with white powder. It looks, vaguely, like it could be the corpse of some mangled muttation left out in the sun. It smells like the end of an Arena campfire when it’s time to move and the Pack tosses water on the site and lets the smoke hiss itself out against the sand.
Hera’s mentor raised her better than to say What is it? She has visited half a dozen orphanages in the past year and faced several scrawled drawings held up by proud children demanding her attention, but she doesn’t think Tell me about it will apply here.
Odin stands beside his masterpiece, his one good eye bright and blue and so innocent for a boy who killed so many. Hera never looked that young a year ago, she’s convinced of it. “Well?” he says, throwing out his chest. “What do you think?”
Oh, reap me sideways… “You made that?” Hera says finally. When in doubt, stick to what’s obvious. “All on your own?”
“I did!” Odin pats the … bread (?) like a proud father might his newborn while Hera tries to make encouraging noises. He glances up at her, and his expression turns soft and knowing all at once. “I know it must look strange. Tell me something, did you help make food at home? I mean … before.”
They don’t talk about Before, that’s one of the unwritten rules of the Village, but this is also Odin’s kitchen, and maybe he can set the rules here, a little sovereign kingdom marked out in terra cotta tile. Odin’s question brings up such a sharp memory that Hera is startled: the high counter, the stool beneath her small, bare feet, larger hands guiding her smaller ones around a mixing bowl, the rumble of laughter against her back.
“I did,” she says, before she can catch herself. “Did you?”
She knows the answer before Odin says it, in the curl of his hand around the bread, protective but also claiming, taking ownership of his creation and the act behind it. “I did not. We had servants, my family, and I was not permitted in the kitchen. I had a destiny, and anything that was not important to that destiny, well … I shouldn’t waste my time.” His smile turns rueful. “My hands have done many great and terrible things, Hera, ever since I was a boy, but always for destruction. That was my purpose, and I have no regrets or complaints. But now … now I can create.”
Hera looks again, at the boy one year her junior who feels so much younger and older all at once, this boy with the carved-out eye and the broad-fingered hands that snapped a girl’s neck and cut a boy in half and tenderly worked a loaf of bread into being. She looks back at the bread. She sighs. “Teach me how to make it?”
Odin brightens, and tugs her by the sleeve over to the cabinets. “All right, first let’s get all our ingredients. Do you want a sweet loaf or a savoury …”