And two more for the Tam/LEC 3 story!
Author: C
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 463
Story / World: LEC 3
Title: It's More Than Quiet, It's (Her) Right
Prompts: Blueberry Yogurt #17: uncomfortable silence. Boysenberry #10: black knight.
Characters: Mina, Amber, Jonathan, Libris. You know, the entirety of that side.
Toppings / Extras / Other: Rainbow Sprinkles (focusing on Mina).
Notes: Mina likes antiheroes.
Sometimes there’s silences. Sometimes you look up because the chatter had made your own humming blend in but now it’s a sole cacophony (though you really aren’t that far off-tune) in your ears and no one’s saying anything and turning a page sounds like an avalanche falling so you stop too.
In an odd sort of way you can do more than live with these silences. You can live for them. You can see them as the playback slowing down on life and a chance to breathe in and catch up. You can see it as a privilege and a mercy, the tight nervousness in your chest something to be treasured as a sign of that you’re getting to do something that few experience and less appreciate.
The uses for such moments are half to infinite, but just getting a good look at situations is easiest and could thus be favorite; and then, looking, there’s the fact that they should be different altogether.
Not that they should have a more definitely right goal, or even that they should not be who they are; those things are big, half-unconscious processes. This is as simple as that they should look different. If they’re the good guys - well, there’s no way they could be heroes, not with the breathy panic-inducingly vague and morally irrelevant objective that they have. But they could be anti-heroes, and maybe it would be comforting, make this feel less ridiculous, if it wasn’t just Jonathan who could pull off tall, dark, and worth taking seriously (not to mention the glowing, but no one does mention that at all).
Instead they look like - well, Jonathan; some religious high school student; someone’s vague idea of an old-fashioned librarian; and a much more run-of-the-mill nerd. Libris isn’t a good example, she could make anyone’s skin crawl, but the thing is that Amber can’t be just the kind of girl who spent two hours drawing the red whale on that shirt or the possible inheritor as control of the Cílnar goes. Amber has to be, can’t not be, both (there’s the stupid changeling thing again, in action), and these small sorts of things feel like they must be what makes the difference between how stories are supposed to go and these things that keep happening.
No sane person would want to live in a story, yes, but stories are so much easier (did anyone say sanity’s required?).
Sometimes there’s empty spaces where you wait because the world is busy breathing, and these are a gift. And sometimes there are long pauses when everyone’s waiting for the answer to a question only you didn’t hear, and these are not a gift at all.
Mina smiles, guiltless, at near-precisely twenty seconds past awkwardness. “Sorry, what?”
Author: Still C.
Rating: PG? The Oracles are creepy, nothing harsh though.
Wordcount: 843
Story / World: LEC 3, more or less.
Title: Times Three
Prompts: Blueberry Yogurt #24: hold my hand. Strawberry #22: flowers.
Characters: The Oracle[s].
Toppings / Extras / Other: None? I think.
Notes: They look kind of drowned, really. Pale and clammy and dark-haired. Maybe that's how they died. Maybe they were sisters?
Maybe there was a difference between them, a long time ago. Maybe they thought and they hoped and they wondered. Maybe one of them had a tiny notch of a scar on her nose and a coppery-haired mother who called her Isadora. Maybe one of them was named Delia and could keep her eyes crossed for longer than anyone she knew. Maybe the third didn’t really ever have a name, so for her it isn’t too different.
Maybe, once upon a time, the girls were human.
At any rate they aren’t anymore, though they look it. They aren’t really strictly three anymore. They’re one person, though on that’s a bit clumsy when it comes to thinking with three brains, drawing with thirty fingers, walking with six legs on twenty-nine toes. One person, with outlying bits, like a country too embarrassed of its territories to make them actual states.
One person who doesn’t care about much of anything, and outlying bits who do.
So names are just another thing not to care about, and if the younger one calls them whatever ones he thinks of to convince the girl with strange hair, why should they care? If the one called Tinker bows to them when they walk by, why should they care?
And if they can’t remember having names, having selves, why should they care?
The answer is, of course, that they shouldn’t. That they don’t. It’s just more of the outlying bits, pointless grave-markers for and little left by dead humans too inconsiderable to think about the inconvenience. These remainders are not their business. Such things as their Lady asks them to do, and the future, those things are their business and those (most of the time) only.
When the Lady speaks they listen; she might be the only one for whom this is true with them anymore. To them she is unto a goddess, or would be but it’s an affront to the Fei to say so; Lady is all she is and all she has to be, and her voice lifted them up when they died, her voice holds them up still, and her voice fills their heads like windchimes made thunder.
She is either the first or the second best thing in the world, one of the only good ones. First or second place depends only on if it’s counted as due to her that they have the Sight, and the Art, and themselves.
Because of her they see the future, half-walk in it, bright in case they couldn’t tell the difference. Because of her, there’s a roar of bright water that can overtake them and make all the differences fall away. Then there’s one person, one who uses six ambidextrous hands to sweep great arcs of color onto asphalt that’s there just for her, one person who will be breathing hard with six lungs and seeing with six near-colorless eyes when she steps back with three feet to examine her work. One person who doesn’t realize she could ever breathe, or see, or walk in a different way.
She’s one person who takes two of her hands in two more and stands there, knowing that soon she’ll disappear for a while again. No one touches her-them, normally, for good reason; she-they would not want it, and their-her skin is as cold and clammy as that of a drowned person’s corpse.
And she gives way, then, as the tide leaves, to a three-as-one, though they don’t drop each other’s hands quite yet. One just looks forward at a free set of fingers as they’re wondering how a dark pink chunk of chalk managed to turn perfect blood-red, why the rose for the ignorant but nice-smelling pretty girl of Tam’s is as unblended as possible, as if even the one-as-three didn’t much care to touch it.
They consider this, holding their dead colorful hands, suddenly subdued, and they wonder whether their Lady needs to know.
Which is - one last look at the drawn prophecy in case the House eats it - of course, a question to which anyone would be able to guess the answer.
The answer is “yes”. There is nothing the Lady doesn’t - can’t - hear, and maybe this can help her; she does seem to need it.
One of their bodies crouches down and places a hand on the driveway. Insofar as anyone can control the House they can, and they’d rather the Lady not take their word for this.
There’s a smear of blue and green and orange, now, a remarkably normal-looking child’s handprint left by Carrion hands.
Hopefully it means nothing to the greater picture, but they do not think in terms of hope, and coincidence doesn’t happen for them, especially so shortly after getting to be the three-as-one.
They know the Fei is dying; why is a mystery. They can see the consequences of this unknown cause in her future, smell it on her skin.
If this will help her it may even be worth getting involved in the outside world for.
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 463
Story / World: LEC 3
Title: It's More Than Quiet, It's (Her) Right
Prompts: Blueberry Yogurt #17: uncomfortable silence. Boysenberry #10: black knight.
Characters: Mina, Amber, Jonathan, Libris. You know, the entirety of that side.
Toppings / Extras / Other: Rainbow Sprinkles (focusing on Mina).
Notes: Mina likes antiheroes.
Sometimes there’s silences. Sometimes you look up because the chatter had made your own humming blend in but now it’s a sole cacophony (though you really aren’t that far off-tune) in your ears and no one’s saying anything and turning a page sounds like an avalanche falling so you stop too.
In an odd sort of way you can do more than live with these silences. You can live for them. You can see them as the playback slowing down on life and a chance to breathe in and catch up. You can see it as a privilege and a mercy, the tight nervousness in your chest something to be treasured as a sign of that you’re getting to do something that few experience and less appreciate.
The uses for such moments are half to infinite, but just getting a good look at situations is easiest and could thus be favorite; and then, looking, there’s the fact that they should be different altogether.
Not that they should have a more definitely right goal, or even that they should not be who they are; those things are big, half-unconscious processes. This is as simple as that they should look different. If they’re the good guys - well, there’s no way they could be heroes, not with the breathy panic-inducingly vague and morally irrelevant objective that they have. But they could be anti-heroes, and maybe it would be comforting, make this feel less ridiculous, if it wasn’t just Jonathan who could pull off tall, dark, and worth taking seriously (not to mention the glowing, but no one does mention that at all).
Instead they look like - well, Jonathan; some religious high school student; someone’s vague idea of an old-fashioned librarian; and a much more run-of-the-mill nerd. Libris isn’t a good example, she could make anyone’s skin crawl, but the thing is that Amber can’t be just the kind of girl who spent two hours drawing the red whale on that shirt or the possible inheritor as control of the Cílnar goes. Amber has to be, can’t not be, both (there’s the stupid changeling thing again, in action), and these small sorts of things feel like they must be what makes the difference between how stories are supposed to go and these things that keep happening.
No sane person would want to live in a story, yes, but stories are so much easier (did anyone say sanity’s required?).
Sometimes there’s empty spaces where you wait because the world is busy breathing, and these are a gift. And sometimes there are long pauses when everyone’s waiting for the answer to a question only you didn’t hear, and these are not a gift at all.
Mina smiles, guiltless, at near-precisely twenty seconds past awkwardness. “Sorry, what?”
Author: Still C.
Rating: PG? The Oracles are creepy, nothing harsh though.
Wordcount: 843
Story / World: LEC 3, more or less.
Title: Times Three
Prompts: Blueberry Yogurt #24: hold my hand. Strawberry #22: flowers.
Characters: The Oracle[s].
Toppings / Extras / Other: None? I think.
Notes: They look kind of drowned, really. Pale and clammy and dark-haired. Maybe that's how they died. Maybe they were sisters?
Maybe there was a difference between them, a long time ago. Maybe they thought and they hoped and they wondered. Maybe one of them had a tiny notch of a scar on her nose and a coppery-haired mother who called her Isadora. Maybe one of them was named Delia and could keep her eyes crossed for longer than anyone she knew. Maybe the third didn’t really ever have a name, so for her it isn’t too different.
Maybe, once upon a time, the girls were human.
At any rate they aren’t anymore, though they look it. They aren’t really strictly three anymore. They’re one person, though on that’s a bit clumsy when it comes to thinking with three brains, drawing with thirty fingers, walking with six legs on twenty-nine toes. One person, with outlying bits, like a country too embarrassed of its territories to make them actual states.
One person who doesn’t care about much of anything, and outlying bits who do.
So names are just another thing not to care about, and if the younger one calls them whatever ones he thinks of to convince the girl with strange hair, why should they care? If the one called Tinker bows to them when they walk by, why should they care?
And if they can’t remember having names, having selves, why should they care?
The answer is, of course, that they shouldn’t. That they don’t. It’s just more of the outlying bits, pointless grave-markers for and little left by dead humans too inconsiderable to think about the inconvenience. These remainders are not their business. Such things as their Lady asks them to do, and the future, those things are their business and those (most of the time) only.
When the Lady speaks they listen; she might be the only one for whom this is true with them anymore. To them she is unto a goddess, or would be but it’s an affront to the Fei to say so; Lady is all she is and all she has to be, and her voice lifted them up when they died, her voice holds them up still, and her voice fills their heads like windchimes made thunder.
She is either the first or the second best thing in the world, one of the only good ones. First or second place depends only on if it’s counted as due to her that they have the Sight, and the Art, and themselves.
Because of her they see the future, half-walk in it, bright in case they couldn’t tell the difference. Because of her, there’s a roar of bright water that can overtake them and make all the differences fall away. Then there’s one person, one who uses six ambidextrous hands to sweep great arcs of color onto asphalt that’s there just for her, one person who will be breathing hard with six lungs and seeing with six near-colorless eyes when she steps back with three feet to examine her work. One person who doesn’t realize she could ever breathe, or see, or walk in a different way.
She’s one person who takes two of her hands in two more and stands there, knowing that soon she’ll disappear for a while again. No one touches her-them, normally, for good reason; she-they would not want it, and their-her skin is as cold and clammy as that of a drowned person’s corpse.
And she gives way, then, as the tide leaves, to a three-as-one, though they don’t drop each other’s hands quite yet. One just looks forward at a free set of fingers as they’re wondering how a dark pink chunk of chalk managed to turn perfect blood-red, why the rose for the ignorant but nice-smelling pretty girl of Tam’s is as unblended as possible, as if even the one-as-three didn’t much care to touch it.
They consider this, holding their dead colorful hands, suddenly subdued, and they wonder whether their Lady needs to know.
Which is - one last look at the drawn prophecy in case the House eats it - of course, a question to which anyone would be able to guess the answer.
The answer is “yes”. There is nothing the Lady doesn’t - can’t - hear, and maybe this can help her; she does seem to need it.
One of their bodies crouches down and places a hand on the driveway. Insofar as anyone can control the House they can, and they’d rather the Lady not take their word for this.
There’s a smear of blue and green and orange, now, a remarkably normal-looking child’s handprint left by Carrion hands.
Hopefully it means nothing to the greater picture, but they do not think in terms of hope, and coincidence doesn’t happen for them, especially so shortly after getting to be the three-as-one.
They know the Fei is dying; why is a mystery. They can see the consequences of this unknown cause in her future, smell it on her skin.
If this will help her it may even be worth getting involved in the outside world for.