2 SPN drabbles & Animorphs drabble365days dump
Title: Ode to Cas
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean
Rating: PG-13 for language
Prompt: Here on the poetry meme
this is a fucking poem
don't be too impressed
yes i do write poetry
yes i know -- who'd have guessed?
you're a dick of an angel, that's for sure
you don't come when we ask
but hey, i'm only human too
not a superhero; can't stand masks
i know you're listening way up there
in your heaven oh so shiny
teach this one to your holy fish
go kick some archangel heiney
*
Title: How to Fire a Rifle in Three Easy Steps
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean, John, Sammy
Rating: PG
Prompt: any, any, with scarves of red tied round their throats to keep their little heads from falling in the snow
Ten years old, Dad puts a rifle in my hands and tells me trigger finger, recoil, shoot down the bottle. Six and he teaches me to throw a punch, eight and I learn how to handle a knife.
Fourteen and he tells me to show Sammy. I say yes sir because knowing how is better than what'll happen when he doesn't. I tell him trigger finger, recoil, shoot down the bottle, and when he's done he asks me why.
I don't know, I want to say. Because it's safer? Because I learned? Because we're Daddy's little soldiers and we do what we're told? I don't tell him about Fate and angels and the Campbell line, because destiny is invisible until it makes you bleed, and once the noose around your neck is tight it won't be shaken loose.
**
drabble365days claim: Animorphs, Elfangor & family
Assume spoilers for The Andalite Chronicles and ratings G/PG. Prompts in bold.
Rise
If there's one thing every Andalite aristh agrees on, it's that there's no better feeling than flying.
The kafit bird, with its twelve wings and extraordinarily light form, hardly needs to flap to keep aloft, soaring above the grazing fields and hala fala trees, as easy as shifting from one hoof to another.
The dome ships, so huge that the rumble of engines are hardly audible from aristh quarters, an enormous mass of metals and glass somehow rising smoothly from the planet's surface, breaking atmosphere to emerge into the blackness of real space. Z-space is less like flying and more like floating, but it's an incredible feat just the same.
The fighters, small and sleek and agile, darting from one end of a battle to the other with hardly a touch of the controls. Shredder beams arcing from the tail and Dracon beams singing her flanks, and though Andalites are screaming and burning and dying all around you it feels nothing but elegant, the way those fighters can move.
The Northern Harrier -- Circus cyaneus. Better than a kafit bird, better than a dome ship, better even, perhaps, than a fighter. Just two wings and two legs and so much sky. Soaring on the thermals, a red-tail by your side, and you only wish all those arisths who loved to fly could see you now.
-
It's okay not to be okay
I've never been fond of Elfangor. He plays the hero, his dreams too big and his mind always in the stars while his hooves stay planted firmly in the grass. And yet, now, watching him, I can't help but feel sorry for my fellow aristh as he huddles out of the way by Alloran's personal waterfall, his flank trembling visibly beneath his fur. He's trying to hide, but the Jahar is too small to hide someone as large as he is. He's already grown taller and broader than I ever will, probably, but I don't envy him his physical strength now.
I trot up behind him, hooves clopping softly on the floor, and his tail blade jerks in reflex. I stand well out of range, having no desire to taste the blade that's already seen too much use today.
< Aristh Arbron, > he says, too polite, too formal. Elfangor has never been fond of formalities.
< You missed a spot, > I say, dipping my tail blade down to shear away the very tips of the hair on his flank. Dried blood -- it's all Hork-Bajir blood, not a scratch on him, the bastard -- falls away with the fur. I've probably crossed a line. It was an intimate gesture, too familiar for anyone but a shorm or a mate. I wonder, suddenly, who he left at home.
Both stalk eyes twist to stare at me in surprise, followed by his main eyes. Good, I've shocked him.
< You saved my life, > I say, dipping my stalk eyes in gratitude -- it's genuine, to my surprise and his. I turn away, having said, or rather not said, what I came to say, but I can't help throwing one last remark over my flank: < You'll get over it. >
< I don't regret saving your life. > He frowns with his eyes.
I laugh. How someone as dense as him ever became an aristh I'll never understand. < That's not what I meant. >
-
Everything is broken
Loren looks at him, her face shining. "Elfangor. I'm pregnant." They live and name their son Tobias, and they die when the planet burns.
(No. I seize the threads that bind her to him and sever them, changing the route of that long-ago Skrit Na freighter.)
Esplin 9466 stares in awe at the blank white sphere, nearly cutting himself on his Hork-Bajir blades in his excitement. "The Time Matrix," he murmurs, reverence in his voice. "The Council will make me Visser One for this -- no, they'll put me on the Council itself!" Far away, the GalaxyTree burns.
(It cannot be allowed to pass. I thread and stitch and weave, winding the Andalite and his human back together. Then I pull him away and cleanse her. She was there, when she needed to be, and yet she wasn't. She bears no children, his or any other.)
The headlines on Earth read: Four teens still missing; UFO unexplained. It's only a few days later that Esplin 9466 looks out at Aximili through eyes gone cold. < Who shall I give you to, little brother? > he muses in Elfangor's voice. < If you wish to live, you must promise not to struggle. > Aximili wishes to live, but he wishes for freedom more.
(Unacceptable. I meddle once more, twisting the lines so that the child may exist in Loren, though Elfangor is only in her dreams.)
The deck is stacked. The sons, the brothers, the estreen. The warrior is unexpected, unprecedented. But yes -- she matters.
-
Home is behind
I remember my first time off-world as if it were only moments ago.
Though all non-essential crew was to remain in quarters until we were past lower orbit, I shifted restlessly in the narrow space allotted to me, peering desperately out the tiny window as if by sheer will I could rotate the ship to allow me a view of the homeworld, instead of the inky blackness of space.
Noises drifted in from the hall as the warriors began to leave their quarters. Rushing through the corridors as fast as I dared -- running down a senior officer at this early stage would be a very bad idea, after all -- I made my way to the Dome, jostling through the crowds of Andalites returning to their stations for the jump into Z-space.
My destination in sight, I trotted even faster, all four eyes focused eagerly on the closed door that, once opened, would give me my first live view of the homeworld from orbit. I was so fixated on my target that only my instinctual reflexes saved me from having the tip of an ear shorn off by the tail blade that suddenly blocked my way.
< And where do you think you're going, little brother? > Elfangor sounded faintly amused, but panic flared in my belly -- was there a job I was meant to be doing? Had I already messed up?
< I'm sorry, El-- my Prince. > I barely caught myself in time. < I only wanted to see the view. >
He laughed, deep and quiet. His laugh is unique among Andalites -- I've never heard one like it, and he finds the strangest things amusing. And yet, it suits him.
< Come, Aximili-kala, > he said, still chuckling, and I startled at hearing the pet name our father had given to me. < Let's say good-bye to our home. > The door to the Dome opened and he gestured for me to go first.
I trotted out into the Dome, my shoulders hunching at the sheer vastness of it. I'd been in the Dome itself several times before, of course, but it was quite different with space pressing down from all sides, and the homeworld hanging above our heads like some vast moon. I suddenly felt very small.
< We won't come here again for a long time, Aximili-kala, > Elfangor said, a wistful sort of look in his eyes, though he was turned towards the stars that stretched out into the distance. < But I hope, where we're going, you'll find a home just as sincere as this. >
He left the Dome, leaving me alone in the shadow of our planet. I stood there for a long time, until the engines rumbled beneath my hooves and the homeworld was swallowed by the whiteness of Z-space.
Returning to my quarters, I pondered what my brother had said. At the time, I believed him to be referring to the ship -- it was, after all, meant to be our home away from home.
But now, my friend, knowing what we know, and being what we are, I do think he meant something else entirely.
Welcome home, Tobias.
-
Autumn
Red and brown leaves litter the ground. When he crushes one beneath his boot, the dry crunch it produces is oddly pleasing.
"This has always been my favorite time of year," she says, her bare fingers wiggling by her side. They watch as a pair of human children run by, screeching in delight, faces flush under knit caps. The smaller flings himself into a pile of leaves; the other follows.
Elfangor reaches up and catches a drifting leaf in his hand, twirling it curiously between thick human fingers. "It's dying," he observes, sounding faintly troubled. "Is it not worrying that your trees' primary energy source is wilting?"
Loren laughs. "That's what they do, Elfangor. That's why we call it fall." Her fingers twitch again.
"Are you cold?" he wonders, glancing down at his own hands.
She sighs. "Oh, Elfangor, you are hopeless." She seizes his left hand in her right, lacing their fingers together.
"Is this gesture considered practical among humans?" Some sort of odd hand-warming practice, perhaps?
Laughing, she pulls him off the pavement to sprawl out on the grass. "Just shut up and live, dear."
"Andalite physiology little resembles that of an Earth deer."
"Are you saying there are alien deer?"
He smiles. "Perhaps."
-
To the ends of the Earth
< What'll happen if you go back? >
< I do not know. I expect I'll be tried before the Electorate for transgression of Seerow's Kindness. As I'm only an aristh it's doubtful I'll be exiled, but I'll certainly lose my place in the military. > The tone of his thoughtspeak was flat, careless. I didn't believe it for a second.
I briefly lost sight of Ax as he dipped past the treeline, though his hooves crunching in the leaf carpet allowed me to track him until he returned to the meadow to continue grazing. < It's a big deal, then, this Kindness thing? >
< It's the most important law in Andalite society. It's similar to -- > He paused, considering. I was startled to realize I could identify the pensive expression on his mouthless face. < I suppose the nearest equivalent would be your President Nixon's Waterfence. If my people knew that a Prince such as Elfangor had done such a thing -- > He ground a forehoof angrily into a clump of grass. < I will not allow my brother to be dishonored in death. I am only an aristh. He has much further to fall. >
I thought he probably meant Watergate, but didn't bother to correct him. < Neither of you have to fall, Ax. We'll vouch for you. All of us. >
< Thank you, Tobias. > I recognized the half-smile he made with his eyes, the one I'd never before seen him hold for more than a second without suddenly looking ashamed. It was nice to finally know why. < But I hardly think the word of five adolescent aliens who benefitted from "my" transgression will hold much weight with the Electorate. >
< I wouldn't call it benefitting, > I said without thinking, then shook my head. It must have looked strange on my hawk's body. < No. Meeting Elfangor was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. >
< You will help me, though, Tobias? Help me to protect his memory and his honor? >
< I'll always help you, Ax, > I promised. It sounded cheesy even in my head. < To the ends of the Earth. > Despite myself, I couldn't resist adding, < However close that is. >
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean
Rating: PG-13 for language
Prompt: Here on the poetry meme
this is a fucking poem
don't be too impressed
yes i do write poetry
yes i know -- who'd have guessed?
you're a dick of an angel, that's for sure
you don't come when we ask
but hey, i'm only human too
not a superhero; can't stand masks
i know you're listening way up there
in your heaven oh so shiny
teach this one to your holy fish
go kick some archangel heiney
*
Title: How to Fire a Rifle in Three Easy Steps
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean, John, Sammy
Rating: PG
Prompt: any, any, with scarves of red tied round their throats to keep their little heads from falling in the snow
Ten years old, Dad puts a rifle in my hands and tells me trigger finger, recoil, shoot down the bottle. Six and he teaches me to throw a punch, eight and I learn how to handle a knife.
Fourteen and he tells me to show Sammy. I say yes sir because knowing how is better than what'll happen when he doesn't. I tell him trigger finger, recoil, shoot down the bottle, and when he's done he asks me why.
I don't know, I want to say. Because it's safer? Because I learned? Because we're Daddy's little soldiers and we do what we're told? I don't tell him about Fate and angels and the Campbell line, because destiny is invisible until it makes you bleed, and once the noose around your neck is tight it won't be shaken loose.
**
drabble365days claim: Animorphs, Elfangor & family
Assume spoilers for The Andalite Chronicles and ratings G/PG. Prompts in bold.
Rise
If there's one thing every Andalite aristh agrees on, it's that there's no better feeling than flying.
The kafit bird, with its twelve wings and extraordinarily light form, hardly needs to flap to keep aloft, soaring above the grazing fields and hala fala trees, as easy as shifting from one hoof to another.
The dome ships, so huge that the rumble of engines are hardly audible from aristh quarters, an enormous mass of metals and glass somehow rising smoothly from the planet's surface, breaking atmosphere to emerge into the blackness of real space. Z-space is less like flying and more like floating, but it's an incredible feat just the same.
The fighters, small and sleek and agile, darting from one end of a battle to the other with hardly a touch of the controls. Shredder beams arcing from the tail and Dracon beams singing her flanks, and though Andalites are screaming and burning and dying all around you it feels nothing but elegant, the way those fighters can move.
The Northern Harrier -- Circus cyaneus. Better than a kafit bird, better than a dome ship, better even, perhaps, than a fighter. Just two wings and two legs and so much sky. Soaring on the thermals, a red-tail by your side, and you only wish all those arisths who loved to fly could see you now.
-
It's okay not to be okay
I've never been fond of Elfangor. He plays the hero, his dreams too big and his mind always in the stars while his hooves stay planted firmly in the grass. And yet, now, watching him, I can't help but feel sorry for my fellow aristh as he huddles out of the way by Alloran's personal waterfall, his flank trembling visibly beneath his fur. He's trying to hide, but the Jahar is too small to hide someone as large as he is. He's already grown taller and broader than I ever will, probably, but I don't envy him his physical strength now.
I trot up behind him, hooves clopping softly on the floor, and his tail blade jerks in reflex. I stand well out of range, having no desire to taste the blade that's already seen too much use today.
< Aristh Arbron, > he says, too polite, too formal. Elfangor has never been fond of formalities.
< You missed a spot, > I say, dipping my tail blade down to shear away the very tips of the hair on his flank. Dried blood -- it's all Hork-Bajir blood, not a scratch on him, the bastard -- falls away with the fur. I've probably crossed a line. It was an intimate gesture, too familiar for anyone but a shorm or a mate. I wonder, suddenly, who he left at home.
Both stalk eyes twist to stare at me in surprise, followed by his main eyes. Good, I've shocked him.
< You saved my life, > I say, dipping my stalk eyes in gratitude -- it's genuine, to my surprise and his. I turn away, having said, or rather not said, what I came to say, but I can't help throwing one last remark over my flank: < You'll get over it. >
< I don't regret saving your life. > He frowns with his eyes.
I laugh. How someone as dense as him ever became an aristh I'll never understand. < That's not what I meant. >
-
Everything is broken
Loren looks at him, her face shining. "Elfangor. I'm pregnant." They live and name their son Tobias, and they die when the planet burns.
(No. I seize the threads that bind her to him and sever them, changing the route of that long-ago Skrit Na freighter.)
Esplin 9466 stares in awe at the blank white sphere, nearly cutting himself on his Hork-Bajir blades in his excitement. "The Time Matrix," he murmurs, reverence in his voice. "The Council will make me Visser One for this -- no, they'll put me on the Council itself!" Far away, the GalaxyTree burns.
(It cannot be allowed to pass. I thread and stitch and weave, winding the Andalite and his human back together. Then I pull him away and cleanse her. She was there, when she needed to be, and yet she wasn't. She bears no children, his or any other.)
The headlines on Earth read: Four teens still missing; UFO unexplained. It's only a few days later that Esplin 9466 looks out at Aximili through eyes gone cold. < Who shall I give you to, little brother? > he muses in Elfangor's voice. < If you wish to live, you must promise not to struggle. > Aximili wishes to live, but he wishes for freedom more.
(Unacceptable. I meddle once more, twisting the lines so that the child may exist in Loren, though Elfangor is only in her dreams.)
The deck is stacked. The sons, the brothers, the estreen. The warrior is unexpected, unprecedented. But yes -- she matters.
-
Home is behind
I remember my first time off-world as if it were only moments ago.
Though all non-essential crew was to remain in quarters until we were past lower orbit, I shifted restlessly in the narrow space allotted to me, peering desperately out the tiny window as if by sheer will I could rotate the ship to allow me a view of the homeworld, instead of the inky blackness of space.
Noises drifted in from the hall as the warriors began to leave their quarters. Rushing through the corridors as fast as I dared -- running down a senior officer at this early stage would be a very bad idea, after all -- I made my way to the Dome, jostling through the crowds of Andalites returning to their stations for the jump into Z-space.
My destination in sight, I trotted even faster, all four eyes focused eagerly on the closed door that, once opened, would give me my first live view of the homeworld from orbit. I was so fixated on my target that only my instinctual reflexes saved me from having the tip of an ear shorn off by the tail blade that suddenly blocked my way.
< And where do you think you're going, little brother? > Elfangor sounded faintly amused, but panic flared in my belly -- was there a job I was meant to be doing? Had I already messed up?
< I'm sorry, El-- my Prince. > I barely caught myself in time. < I only wanted to see the view. >
He laughed, deep and quiet. His laugh is unique among Andalites -- I've never heard one like it, and he finds the strangest things amusing. And yet, it suits him.
< Come, Aximili-kala, > he said, still chuckling, and I startled at hearing the pet name our father had given to me. < Let's say good-bye to our home. > The door to the Dome opened and he gestured for me to go first.
I trotted out into the Dome, my shoulders hunching at the sheer vastness of it. I'd been in the Dome itself several times before, of course, but it was quite different with space pressing down from all sides, and the homeworld hanging above our heads like some vast moon. I suddenly felt very small.
< We won't come here again for a long time, Aximili-kala, > Elfangor said, a wistful sort of look in his eyes, though he was turned towards the stars that stretched out into the distance. < But I hope, where we're going, you'll find a home just as sincere as this. >
He left the Dome, leaving me alone in the shadow of our planet. I stood there for a long time, until the engines rumbled beneath my hooves and the homeworld was swallowed by the whiteness of Z-space.
Returning to my quarters, I pondered what my brother had said. At the time, I believed him to be referring to the ship -- it was, after all, meant to be our home away from home.
But now, my friend, knowing what we know, and being what we are, I do think he meant something else entirely.
Welcome home, Tobias.
-
Autumn
Red and brown leaves litter the ground. When he crushes one beneath his boot, the dry crunch it produces is oddly pleasing.
"This has always been my favorite time of year," she says, her bare fingers wiggling by her side. They watch as a pair of human children run by, screeching in delight, faces flush under knit caps. The smaller flings himself into a pile of leaves; the other follows.
Elfangor reaches up and catches a drifting leaf in his hand, twirling it curiously between thick human fingers. "It's dying," he observes, sounding faintly troubled. "Is it not worrying that your trees' primary energy source is wilting?"
Loren laughs. "That's what they do, Elfangor. That's why we call it fall." Her fingers twitch again.
"Are you cold?" he wonders, glancing down at his own hands.
She sighs. "Oh, Elfangor, you are hopeless." She seizes his left hand in her right, lacing their fingers together.
"Is this gesture considered practical among humans?" Some sort of odd hand-warming practice, perhaps?
Laughing, she pulls him off the pavement to sprawl out on the grass. "Just shut up and live, dear."
"Andalite physiology little resembles that of an Earth deer."
"Are you saying there are alien deer?"
He smiles. "Perhaps."
-
To the ends of the Earth
< What'll happen if you go back? >
< I do not know. I expect I'll be tried before the Electorate for transgression of Seerow's Kindness. As I'm only an aristh it's doubtful I'll be exiled, but I'll certainly lose my place in the military. > The tone of his thoughtspeak was flat, careless. I didn't believe it for a second.
I briefly lost sight of Ax as he dipped past the treeline, though his hooves crunching in the leaf carpet allowed me to track him until he returned to the meadow to continue grazing. < It's a big deal, then, this Kindness thing? >
< It's the most important law in Andalite society. It's similar to -- > He paused, considering. I was startled to realize I could identify the pensive expression on his mouthless face. < I suppose the nearest equivalent would be your President Nixon's Waterfence. If my people knew that a Prince such as Elfangor had done such a thing -- > He ground a forehoof angrily into a clump of grass. < I will not allow my brother to be dishonored in death. I am only an aristh. He has much further to fall. >
I thought he probably meant Watergate, but didn't bother to correct him. < Neither of you have to fall, Ax. We'll vouch for you. All of us. >
< Thank you, Tobias. > I recognized the half-smile he made with his eyes, the one I'd never before seen him hold for more than a second without suddenly looking ashamed. It was nice to finally know why. < But I hardly think the word of five adolescent aliens who benefitted from "my" transgression will hold much weight with the Electorate. >
< I wouldn't call it benefitting, > I said without thinking, then shook my head. It must have looked strange on my hawk's body. < No. Meeting Elfangor was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. >
< You will help me, though, Tobias? Help me to protect his memory and his honor? >
< I'll always help you, Ax, > I promised. It sounded cheesy even in my head. < To the ends of the Earth. > Despite myself, I couldn't resist adding, < However close that is. >