an overdose of fate (dark chocolate 5/30)
Author: C
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 662
Story / World: ifupdown ( index)
Title: though he'd never admit to it
Counts for the Summer Challenge? Yes.
Prompts: Dark Chocolate #7: supplication.
Characters: Iall, some mention of Zane and gods.
Toppings / Extras / Other: Butterscotch + Hot Fudge. Malt: Prompts From a Hat [7: supplication // Iall: even in the darkness, every color can be found].
Notes: Blargh, look, angst. Although the quote works very well for him, if you're spinning him as halfway sympathetic.
I was raised to pray.
I don’t even know who I’m praying to now, and truth be told there’s no one I could pray to who would make sense; I know this. I’m one of those who wander around the status of gods without really being anything like a deity, and while that is how I like things it should mean praying is silly.
And it is, but I’m still doing it.
Here there’s only two sides and you can’t have much of a trade in between them. There’s everything pale and pure and, if you’re lucky, white; that would be mind and body and soul, I guess. We’ve already got body going for us, and we all do try for all the rest. We try so hard.
I know.
The other option is all but complete blackness, because they say there’s always hope but hope means breaking your bones and flaying off your skin until you start to change your mind. It’s not that I disapprove. It’s a thing that happens. And it works, that’s all that matters. But that’s the truth.
A long, long time ago, that kind of frightened me.
It would be ridiculous, though, to be frightened of one of the duties of the people who are mine. Who were mine. They’ll still be mine, of course, but I’m to look at things in a much bigger way now. Zane has named his successor and it’s me.
I knew it already, but it was the strangest thing to hear. People are almost already treating me like I’m the First. They shouldn’t. We should all be equal. The first leads, it doesn’t make him better. Zane isn’t Untainted. I’m not. They should be honored instead.
Truth be told they’re the only ones here who deserve anything. The rest of us wander around lying in the hopes that it’ll get us closer to the truth, which they are.
It seems to have worked for me.
But I’m frightened. I’m scared like a child and while on the one hand that would be allowed if I were simply worried about the people involved, and the responsibility, and the fact that I’m giving them the few bits of my life that were still mine. It should not be allowed when I can’t pin down what frightens me, when some of it’s leaking into things I fixed long ago.
These things include what I did before I came here, and the facts about my father, and what the Untainted actually do, the details, because the problem with being the commander among them is that, if curious, I can find out anything. Somewhere in my mind there’s everything anyone’s ever gone through at their hands, all rolled up into one memory that I will not touch for my life.
They say in blackness all you should be able to find is, maybe, a hint of light but I know there’s color in there. There is supposed to be no color here but I can see it. It’s because I’ve been too close to the Untainted, and I wonder if this is how they see things; it must be why they very rarely interact with the rest of us. Any small hint of variation is horrifying.
Except me. I’m all right because I am most unquestionably theirs, and there always has to be someone who can do things wrong for them.
But if there’s no color in the white, and there’s no color in the black that’s actually gray, then I don’t know what I’m doing. I see not just two paths, I see dozens.
The simple fact of that I’m Zane’s heir ought to mean I’m pure and proof against these things, but instead I can see them better than anyone and I think he chose very, very wrong. I should be absolutely certain, I should have been absolutely certain all my life, but it never really stuck.
So even now I am doubting.
Author: C
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,000
Story / World: ifupdown ( index)
Title: And Valencia
Counts for the Summer Challenge? Yes.
Prompts: Dark Chocolate #23: paranoia.
Characters: Valencia, some guy whose name I don't know, the Rain Lady.
Toppings / Extras / Other: Butterscotch + Rainbow Sprinkles. Malt: Prompts From a Hat [23: paranoia // {random Fate}: and the wind kicks up with the smell of rain].
Notes: See what I mean about the rain prompts?
It used to be - I'm not saying this as better or worse, just that it used to be - that I only got the vaguest of feelings when I was being watched. I thought this was because the feeling of eyes traipsing over you was only ever poetic license (poetic nonsense, rather), not something that really worked, not in real life. Definitely not something I would ever experience in a way that I could tell apart from the normal nervousness.
Then came the first time I flipped: the most eye-opening experience of my life.
I call it flipping because that's what it feels like: it's making a card lift itself up and over to see the face you're missing. You stay in the same general place; everything else moves around you. It would be amazing were it more elaborate or not so fast. As it is there's no time to think of it as magic.
The reason I flipped for the first time isn't important. I was sixteen. I was being chased. It was, of course, raining.
And I wanted - it seemed very sudden, because I had no idea when I had stopped treating the chase like a game - all of it to go away. Not just the chase, or the rain, or the stupid wet folds of my dress as they tangled around my ankles: all of it.
So it did.
Since then I've learned it's really more like nudging a die; with your mind, still, sure, but there's just more than two sides involved. So far I've come across a tentative three, but I'm sure there must be more; after all, I am still very young and can learn more.
(Even by human reckoning I am very young, you know. I'm just saying.)
At any rate: that particular side is sort of quietly terrible. I flipped to there in the space between, I don't know, one step and the next. One heartbeat and the one after it.
It takes a little while to sink in even now; back then it took forever. The other place is dark and cool, and when I flipped there it took me a while to realize this; my lungs and skin were burning, and bright afterimages scarred the emptiness in front of me. In short, I kept myself from seeing what was there quite efficiently.
This space is also completely silent, if you let it long enough. This was back when I thought “quiet” and “silent” were the same thing, both meaning “the only thing you can hear is rain”.
Now I could hear myself breathe, and pretty loudly: harsh, ragged, rasping a bit, like I'd run much farther than I had. Maybe that was the case. I could hear my heart slamming up against my lungs and ribcage almost as loudly; this beat was irregular too.
I couldn't hear rain. It was bizarre, like being deaf. Or maybe it was like hearing for the first time after sixteen years of deafness. Even now I'm not sure.
Something as quietly terrible as the place itself started to happen as I calmed down, though: my heartbeats started to fade out of hearing. My ears tried to ring and gave up after a few tinny seconds, leaving a buzzing near-silence behind. And though every breath I took was steadier and quieter than the last, I felt like with each I took in less and less actual air.
I knew, logically, that I wasn't suffocating; no strange colors punctuated my vision anymore and my head didn't swim. But my lungs felt horribly empty, and my throat was at the same time relaxed as normal and tightening as if was making up for the lack of a noose around my neck.
The last suggestion of an afterimage had left my eyes, so that I could see nothing but the blackness that a just-blinded man must experience. I couldn't see walls - the air was stagnant when it felt like it existed, I had to be in some kind of room - or floor, nor could I feel anything under my bare feet.
Also I couldn't feel my feet.
I'd been wearing a dress even when I got here, but now not only did I feel bereft of cloth, I felt bereft of flesh to brush up against it. I would have dropped my hands to my sides but I couldn't feel my hands. All I knew was my near-inaudible heartbeat and my even-quieter breathing.
In that moment I would have given my ears, my eyes, my tongue and fingers - my life, my soul, anything to get out of the place that seemed to be consuming me, making me into more nothingness like itself.
Of course, such dramatic measures didn't prove necessary. I flipped back again without any idea - such things always must be done this way - of where I was going or how. In fact, I didn't even know what I was doing, that I was doing it.
I came to on the same grass I'd left, sweating and half-collapsed, never so thankful for the light drizzle on my face and the sawtooth blades of grass scratching my legs.
One of the main things flipping that first time taught me, along with that there were places with out the sound of rain and fear, was what it felt like not to be watched. Afterwards, I could tell when people were watching me by contrasting it with that feeling of not-being-watched, of being alone.
Admittedly, it seemed that people were always watching me, even when I was alone, except when I flipped.
That was my mother, of course. She still visits sometimes. Now, for instance. So the young man I'm talking to asks why I'm shivering and, when I tell him, smiling, he says it's nothing.
I nod and go along with his diagnosis until the gathering smell of rain while the sky stays blue shocks sense into him.
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 662
Story / World: ifupdown ( index)
Title: though he'd never admit to it
Counts for the Summer Challenge? Yes.
Prompts: Dark Chocolate #7: supplication.
Characters: Iall, some mention of Zane and gods.
Toppings / Extras / Other: Butterscotch + Hot Fudge. Malt: Prompts From a Hat [7: supplication // Iall: even in the darkness, every color can be found].
Notes: Blargh, look, angst. Although the quote works very well for him, if you're spinning him as halfway sympathetic.
I was raised to pray.
I don’t even know who I’m praying to now, and truth be told there’s no one I could pray to who would make sense; I know this. I’m one of those who wander around the status of gods without really being anything like a deity, and while that is how I like things it should mean praying is silly.
And it is, but I’m still doing it.
Here there’s only two sides and you can’t have much of a trade in between them. There’s everything pale and pure and, if you’re lucky, white; that would be mind and body and soul, I guess. We’ve already got body going for us, and we all do try for all the rest. We try so hard.
I know.
The other option is all but complete blackness, because they say there’s always hope but hope means breaking your bones and flaying off your skin until you start to change your mind. It’s not that I disapprove. It’s a thing that happens. And it works, that’s all that matters. But that’s the truth.
A long, long time ago, that kind of frightened me.
It would be ridiculous, though, to be frightened of one of the duties of the people who are mine. Who were mine. They’ll still be mine, of course, but I’m to look at things in a much bigger way now. Zane has named his successor and it’s me.
I knew it already, but it was the strangest thing to hear. People are almost already treating me like I’m the First. They shouldn’t. We should all be equal. The first leads, it doesn’t make him better. Zane isn’t Untainted. I’m not. They should be honored instead.
Truth be told they’re the only ones here who deserve anything. The rest of us wander around lying in the hopes that it’ll get us closer to the truth, which they are.
It seems to have worked for me.
But I’m frightened. I’m scared like a child and while on the one hand that would be allowed if I were simply worried about the people involved, and the responsibility, and the fact that I’m giving them the few bits of my life that were still mine. It should not be allowed when I can’t pin down what frightens me, when some of it’s leaking into things I fixed long ago.
These things include what I did before I came here, and the facts about my father, and what the Untainted actually do, the details, because the problem with being the commander among them is that, if curious, I can find out anything. Somewhere in my mind there’s everything anyone’s ever gone through at their hands, all rolled up into one memory that I will not touch for my life.
They say in blackness all you should be able to find is, maybe, a hint of light but I know there’s color in there. There is supposed to be no color here but I can see it. It’s because I’ve been too close to the Untainted, and I wonder if this is how they see things; it must be why they very rarely interact with the rest of us. Any small hint of variation is horrifying.
Except me. I’m all right because I am most unquestionably theirs, and there always has to be someone who can do things wrong for them.
But if there’s no color in the white, and there’s no color in the black that’s actually gray, then I don’t know what I’m doing. I see not just two paths, I see dozens.
The simple fact of that I’m Zane’s heir ought to mean I’m pure and proof against these things, but instead I can see them better than anyone and I think he chose very, very wrong. I should be absolutely certain, I should have been absolutely certain all my life, but it never really stuck.
So even now I am doubting.
Author: C
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,000
Story / World: ifupdown ( index)
Title: And Valencia
Counts for the Summer Challenge? Yes.
Prompts: Dark Chocolate #23: paranoia.
Characters: Valencia, some guy whose name I don't know, the Rain Lady.
Toppings / Extras / Other: Butterscotch + Rainbow Sprinkles. Malt: Prompts From a Hat [23: paranoia // {random Fate}: and the wind kicks up with the smell of rain].
Notes: See what I mean about the rain prompts?
It used to be - I'm not saying this as better or worse, just that it used to be - that I only got the vaguest of feelings when I was being watched. I thought this was because the feeling of eyes traipsing over you was only ever poetic license (poetic nonsense, rather), not something that really worked, not in real life. Definitely not something I would ever experience in a way that I could tell apart from the normal nervousness.
Then came the first time I flipped: the most eye-opening experience of my life.
I call it flipping because that's what it feels like: it's making a card lift itself up and over to see the face you're missing. You stay in the same general place; everything else moves around you. It would be amazing were it more elaborate or not so fast. As it is there's no time to think of it as magic.
The reason I flipped for the first time isn't important. I was sixteen. I was being chased. It was, of course, raining.
And I wanted - it seemed very sudden, because I had no idea when I had stopped treating the chase like a game - all of it to go away. Not just the chase, or the rain, or the stupid wet folds of my dress as they tangled around my ankles: all of it.
So it did.
Since then I've learned it's really more like nudging a die; with your mind, still, sure, but there's just more than two sides involved. So far I've come across a tentative three, but I'm sure there must be more; after all, I am still very young and can learn more.
(Even by human reckoning I am very young, you know. I'm just saying.)
At any rate: that particular side is sort of quietly terrible. I flipped to there in the space between, I don't know, one step and the next. One heartbeat and the one after it.
It takes a little while to sink in even now; back then it took forever. The other place is dark and cool, and when I flipped there it took me a while to realize this; my lungs and skin were burning, and bright afterimages scarred the emptiness in front of me. In short, I kept myself from seeing what was there quite efficiently.
This space is also completely silent, if you let it long enough. This was back when I thought “quiet” and “silent” were the same thing, both meaning “the only thing you can hear is rain”.
Now I could hear myself breathe, and pretty loudly: harsh, ragged, rasping a bit, like I'd run much farther than I had. Maybe that was the case. I could hear my heart slamming up against my lungs and ribcage almost as loudly; this beat was irregular too.
I couldn't hear rain. It was bizarre, like being deaf. Or maybe it was like hearing for the first time after sixteen years of deafness. Even now I'm not sure.
Something as quietly terrible as the place itself started to happen as I calmed down, though: my heartbeats started to fade out of hearing. My ears tried to ring and gave up after a few tinny seconds, leaving a buzzing near-silence behind. And though every breath I took was steadier and quieter than the last, I felt like with each I took in less and less actual air.
I knew, logically, that I wasn't suffocating; no strange colors punctuated my vision anymore and my head didn't swim. But my lungs felt horribly empty, and my throat was at the same time relaxed as normal and tightening as if was making up for the lack of a noose around my neck.
The last suggestion of an afterimage had left my eyes, so that I could see nothing but the blackness that a just-blinded man must experience. I couldn't see walls - the air was stagnant when it felt like it existed, I had to be in some kind of room - or floor, nor could I feel anything under my bare feet.
Also I couldn't feel my feet.
I'd been wearing a dress even when I got here, but now not only did I feel bereft of cloth, I felt bereft of flesh to brush up against it. I would have dropped my hands to my sides but I couldn't feel my hands. All I knew was my near-inaudible heartbeat and my even-quieter breathing.
In that moment I would have given my ears, my eyes, my tongue and fingers - my life, my soul, anything to get out of the place that seemed to be consuming me, making me into more nothingness like itself.
Of course, such dramatic measures didn't prove necessary. I flipped back again without any idea - such things always must be done this way - of where I was going or how. In fact, I didn't even know what I was doing, that I was doing it.
I came to on the same grass I'd left, sweating and half-collapsed, never so thankful for the light drizzle on my face and the sawtooth blades of grass scratching my legs.
One of the main things flipping that first time taught me, along with that there were places with out the sound of rain and fear, was what it felt like not to be watched. Afterwards, I could tell when people were watching me by contrasting it with that feeling of not-being-watched, of being alone.
Admittedly, it seemed that people were always watching me, even when I was alone, except when I flipped.
That was my mother, of course. She still visits sometimes. Now, for instance. So the young man I'm talking to asks why I'm shivering and, when I tell him, smiling, he says it's nothing.
I nod and go along with his diagnosis until the gathering smell of rain while the sky stays blue shocks sense into him.