Two Muse-related shorts
Ok so since getting back from Sheffield I haven't done much except swallow painkillers by the handful, attend screening and get bombarded with story ideas. Unfortuneatly none of the ideas relate to either Genevieve (my heroes are still stuck at their army camp) or the untitled weird thing I started over the summer which kicks off in a brothel (more about that at a later date possibly). Instead I've been writing more W-Space stuff (so Becs is happy) and muse-related... things. So I'm dumping them here to inform scare you lot.
Err... enjoy?
Title: Another One
Summary: The arrival of muse number four and her introduction to the other three. Based loosely on what happened over the summer. All the fault of my dear sister...
‘I do not need another muse!’
Famous last words because no sooner have they been uttered than she becomes aware of someone leaning against the doorframe behind her. The scent of pocky isn’t strong, but it’s there and when she turns her head ever so slightly to try and reassure herself that’s she just imagining it, all it takes is a flick of shoulder-length blue hair before she knows that it is way too late to turn back now.
Introductions, when they have to be made, are entertaining, terrifying and blessedly brief. Yatr takes the news well, giving the new arrival a quick look up and down, politely declining her offer of chocolate pocky (she won’t share the strawberry flavour because it’s her favourite) and asking her how long she intends to be staying.
The short, untidy girl gives a shrug of her shoulders as she stuffs the half-eaten box back into one of the numerous pockets that cover her baggy jeans. The lollipop stick in her mouth flicks from one corner to the other before she smiles and then she’s asking questions of her own about where Yatr’s from, what kind of stuff he makes Dria write and whether the food around here is any good.
Yatr is polite, teasing and smug by turns. He proudly takes the credit for what he considers to be Dria’s best work (namely anything featuring him) and throws a few compliments in the general direction of the young writer. Unfortuneatly he disappears the moment he realises Regina’s on her way leaving the new girl perched on the end of Dria’s bed, kicking her legs against the drawer beneath it and wondering aloud why he left so abruptly.
Regina, bad-tempered as ever, dismisses the girl’s questions with a wave of a knife and tells her to never expect Dria to write anything worth reading. ‘She doesn’t have the guts to listen to any of my suggestions and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from me.’
Whether because of ignorance or a stubborn streak Dria hadn’t noticed before, the new girl offers Regina a whole box of pocky because ‘you sound like you’re PMSing really badly and the chocolate’ll make you feel better.’
The knife sinks a good inch and a half into the wall, pinning a few blue hairs there before they disappear the way Regina, like Yatr before her, did.
Giving Dria a wide grin, the new girl exclaims, ‘no wonder you need me around here, those two are awful!’
‘Yatr’s not so bad,’ Dria sighs, shaking out her pillow in the hope that it might help her get to sleep a bit quicker.
‘Yeah but you can tell he’s too vain to eat sweets or snack food. Ever,’ pronounces the new muse.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d mind that, it means there’ll be more for you. And are you going to tell me your name? I can’t keep thinking of you as muse number four or the new one.’
The lollipop is removed from the blue-haired girl’s mouth before she announces calmly, ‘Kime.’
‘Kime?’ Dria repeats, eyebrows rising in surprise. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s Kime,’ she insists. ‘Kime, Kime, Kime. But not Queen Kimeru-sama, I’m not an androgynous Japanese pop singer.’
‘What is it short for then?’ asks Dria, sitting back in her bed, finally resolved to the fact that she’s lost yet another bit of her sanity.
‘You said you had four muses now, when am I going to meet the other guy?’ Kime’s abrupt question is accompanied by a faint blush on her cheeks as she returns the lollipop to her mouth.
‘Answer my question first, then I’ll answer your’s.’
Kime shakes her head, sending blue locks flying, ‘fourth muse. Me, Lord Know-it-all, her Supreme Bitchiness and who?’
‘Are you trying to get another knife thrown at you?’
‘I’ve got fast reflexes and besides muses can’t actually kill each other. Now who’s number four?’
‘I think Regina would give it a good go, although she’ll kill Yatr before she gets to you. And the one you haven’t met yet is Ion.’
‘Does he like pocky?’
‘I’ve never asked him. So what is your full name?’
‘What kind of name is Ion?’
‘What kind of name is Kime? And Ion is short for Inspiration.’
‘You suck at naming stuff and Kime’s a great - ow!’
Breaking off because a rolled-up newspaper had just come into sharp contact with the top of her head, Kime glares up at a tall, blond-haired man who is dressed almost as scruffily as she is. He gives her a quick glance and then looks up at Dria. ‘Another one?’
‘Another one,’ she nods, frowning at the cigarette in his mouth.
‘Pocky?’ suggests Kime, holding out the open box of biscuit sticks covered in something pink and strawberry-flavoured.
The cigarette is removed and replaced by a stick of pocky. ‘You can keep her,’ Ion announces before leaving again.
‘Was he talking to you or me?’ Dria wonders aloud as she wriggles down further beneath the covers.
Kime shrugs, ‘who cares? I like him.’
Dria just rolls her eyes. ‘Then follow him,’ she tells the new muse before rolling over and falling asleep.
Title: Bad Habits
Summary: I was bored in my Late Egyptian lecture on Thursday and so was staring out of the window and... there's no way to phrase it that makes me sound sane so I'll just shut up.
It’s nothing much, certainly no ordinary person would pay any attention to it, if it even managed to catch their eye. But she notices. Maybe it’s because the lecturer is so boring or because she really doesn’t care about what the form of the verb is. Maybe it’s because she’s read her translation aloud already and so the chances of him picking on her to answer a question are slim or because her friend next to her is silently occupied, doodling all over her notes while she ignores the grey and white clad lecturer at the front of the room.
Whatever the reason, she is the only person to spot the trail of blown smoke wave past the window before dissipating amongst the wind and light rain. Someone’s smoking.
The department building has been clad in scaffolding for months, hiding the red-leaved ivy and crumbling Victorian bricks under layers of new metal poles, wooden boards and sheets of plastic. Exactly what the workmen are doing to the roof of the building, no one’s bothered to inform them, but no noise bothers the class that is mired in bored silence, all counting down the minutes until the hour ticks round.
Another wisp of barely-there smoke catches her eye and this time she pays more attention to it as it struggles against the wind before vanishing. The smoker can’t be far away, she muses, standing on the scaffolding, hidden from sight by the heavy shutters and the end of the window as though they don’t want to be seen.
But it’s none of her business if they’re a workman sneaking a quick fag break so she lets her gaze drop back to the page of handwritten notes in front of her. Back to the scrawl and curl of the letters she scribbled the night before inbetween bursts of laughter as the four of them made up bad jokes about hieroglyphs. Back to the out-of-proportion birds, snakes and houses that stand in lines amongst stick people, rolls of cloth and obscure squiggles that would mean nothing to an outsider but which make some kind of sense to her. Back to the grey pencil overlaid with black and blue ink in the places where she’s confident of her translation, annotated in red at the points where something vaguely grammatical needed to be noted.
Just as she’s adding a string of ‘zzzz’s to float above the head of one of the pencil-drawn birds on the top line, her eye is caught by movement outside the window. It’s smoke again but now the arm of the smoker has come into view and it quite clearly doesn’t belong to any workman. She frowns, wondering what it is about that single limb that seems so familiar to her.
The hand disappears for a moment, returning to rest on the metal pole with a half-burnt cigarette held calmly between two long fingers. It isn’t until the smoker flicks ash from the end of it, and the ash vanishes into nothing as soon as it’s left the cigarette butt, that she makes the connection between the man outside and herself. A smile tugs at her mouth, even though there’s no reason to smile as the middle-aged man at the front of the room tells the class that they "are all looking exceedingly blank".
As though knowing that he’s been spotted and identified by the girl indoors, the smoker moves properly into view, cigarette still in one hand while the other is calmly stuffed into a trouser pocket and when he sees the startled look on her face, his already smug grin merely gets wider.
She, for her part, blinks a couple of times in dumb astonishment and looks back at her work. But the hieroglyphs and grammatical notes don’t answer her questions so she looks out of the window again and stares at her grinning muse as he takes another drag on his cigarette.
Her question is silent, surprised and to the point, 'Yatr, when the hell did you take up smoking?'
In case anyone's wondering (I doubt you are, but you never know) until now the only one of my muses who smokes has been Ion. I always thought Yatr was too vain to take it up but I think some of Ion's bad habits are rubbing off on him. And that is pretty much what happened in Thursday's lecture. More or less. And we were in hysterics while doing our translation the night before for all kinds of weird reasons that I can't remember now.
So yes, my head is a very weird place to be ^__^
And Yatr just laughs.
Err... enjoy?
Title: Another One
Summary: The arrival of muse number four and her introduction to the other three. Based loosely on what happened over the summer. All the fault of my dear sister...
‘I do not need another muse!’
Famous last words because no sooner have they been uttered than she becomes aware of someone leaning against the doorframe behind her. The scent of pocky isn’t strong, but it’s there and when she turns her head ever so slightly to try and reassure herself that’s she just imagining it, all it takes is a flick of shoulder-length blue hair before she knows that it is way too late to turn back now.
Introductions, when they have to be made, are entertaining, terrifying and blessedly brief. Yatr takes the news well, giving the new arrival a quick look up and down, politely declining her offer of chocolate pocky (she won’t share the strawberry flavour because it’s her favourite) and asking her how long she intends to be staying.
The short, untidy girl gives a shrug of her shoulders as she stuffs the half-eaten box back into one of the numerous pockets that cover her baggy jeans. The lollipop stick in her mouth flicks from one corner to the other before she smiles and then she’s asking questions of her own about where Yatr’s from, what kind of stuff he makes Dria write and whether the food around here is any good.
Yatr is polite, teasing and smug by turns. He proudly takes the credit for what he considers to be Dria’s best work (namely anything featuring him) and throws a few compliments in the general direction of the young writer. Unfortuneatly he disappears the moment he realises Regina’s on her way leaving the new girl perched on the end of Dria’s bed, kicking her legs against the drawer beneath it and wondering aloud why he left so abruptly.
Regina, bad-tempered as ever, dismisses the girl’s questions with a wave of a knife and tells her to never expect Dria to write anything worth reading. ‘She doesn’t have the guts to listen to any of my suggestions and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from me.’
Whether because of ignorance or a stubborn streak Dria hadn’t noticed before, the new girl offers Regina a whole box of pocky because ‘you sound like you’re PMSing really badly and the chocolate’ll make you feel better.’
The knife sinks a good inch and a half into the wall, pinning a few blue hairs there before they disappear the way Regina, like Yatr before her, did.
Giving Dria a wide grin, the new girl exclaims, ‘no wonder you need me around here, those two are awful!’
‘Yatr’s not so bad,’ Dria sighs, shaking out her pillow in the hope that it might help her get to sleep a bit quicker.
‘Yeah but you can tell he’s too vain to eat sweets or snack food. Ever,’ pronounces the new muse.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d mind that, it means there’ll be more for you. And are you going to tell me your name? I can’t keep thinking of you as muse number four or the new one.’
The lollipop is removed from the blue-haired girl’s mouth before she announces calmly, ‘Kime.’
‘Kime?’ Dria repeats, eyebrows rising in surprise. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s Kime,’ she insists. ‘Kime, Kime, Kime. But not Queen Kimeru-sama, I’m not an androgynous Japanese pop singer.’
‘What is it short for then?’ asks Dria, sitting back in her bed, finally resolved to the fact that she’s lost yet another bit of her sanity.
‘You said you had four muses now, when am I going to meet the other guy?’ Kime’s abrupt question is accompanied by a faint blush on her cheeks as she returns the lollipop to her mouth.
‘Answer my question first, then I’ll answer your’s.’
Kime shakes her head, sending blue locks flying, ‘fourth muse. Me, Lord Know-it-all, her Supreme Bitchiness and who?’
‘Are you trying to get another knife thrown at you?’
‘I’ve got fast reflexes and besides muses can’t actually kill each other. Now who’s number four?’
‘I think Regina would give it a good go, although she’ll kill Yatr before she gets to you. And the one you haven’t met yet is Ion.’
‘Does he like pocky?’
‘I’ve never asked him. So what is your full name?’
‘What kind of name is Ion?’
‘What kind of name is Kime? And Ion is short for Inspiration.’
‘You suck at naming stuff and Kime’s a great - ow!’
Breaking off because a rolled-up newspaper had just come into sharp contact with the top of her head, Kime glares up at a tall, blond-haired man who is dressed almost as scruffily as she is. He gives her a quick glance and then looks up at Dria. ‘Another one?’
‘Another one,’ she nods, frowning at the cigarette in his mouth.
‘Pocky?’ suggests Kime, holding out the open box of biscuit sticks covered in something pink and strawberry-flavoured.
The cigarette is removed and replaced by a stick of pocky. ‘You can keep her,’ Ion announces before leaving again.
‘Was he talking to you or me?’ Dria wonders aloud as she wriggles down further beneath the covers.
Kime shrugs, ‘who cares? I like him.’
Dria just rolls her eyes. ‘Then follow him,’ she tells the new muse before rolling over and falling asleep.
Title: Bad Habits
Summary: I was bored in my Late Egyptian lecture on Thursday and so was staring out of the window and... there's no way to phrase it that makes me sound sane so I'll just shut up.
It’s nothing much, certainly no ordinary person would pay any attention to it, if it even managed to catch their eye. But she notices. Maybe it’s because the lecturer is so boring or because she really doesn’t care about what the form of the verb is. Maybe it’s because she’s read her translation aloud already and so the chances of him picking on her to answer a question are slim or because her friend next to her is silently occupied, doodling all over her notes while she ignores the grey and white clad lecturer at the front of the room.
Whatever the reason, she is the only person to spot the trail of blown smoke wave past the window before dissipating amongst the wind and light rain. Someone’s smoking.
The department building has been clad in scaffolding for months, hiding the red-leaved ivy and crumbling Victorian bricks under layers of new metal poles, wooden boards and sheets of plastic. Exactly what the workmen are doing to the roof of the building, no one’s bothered to inform them, but no noise bothers the class that is mired in bored silence, all counting down the minutes until the hour ticks round.
Another wisp of barely-there smoke catches her eye and this time she pays more attention to it as it struggles against the wind before vanishing. The smoker can’t be far away, she muses, standing on the scaffolding, hidden from sight by the heavy shutters and the end of the window as though they don’t want to be seen.
But it’s none of her business if they’re a workman sneaking a quick fag break so she lets her gaze drop back to the page of handwritten notes in front of her. Back to the scrawl and curl of the letters she scribbled the night before inbetween bursts of laughter as the four of them made up bad jokes about hieroglyphs. Back to the out-of-proportion birds, snakes and houses that stand in lines amongst stick people, rolls of cloth and obscure squiggles that would mean nothing to an outsider but which make some kind of sense to her. Back to the grey pencil overlaid with black and blue ink in the places where she’s confident of her translation, annotated in red at the points where something vaguely grammatical needed to be noted.
Just as she’s adding a string of ‘zzzz’s to float above the head of one of the pencil-drawn birds on the top line, her eye is caught by movement outside the window. It’s smoke again but now the arm of the smoker has come into view and it quite clearly doesn’t belong to any workman. She frowns, wondering what it is about that single limb that seems so familiar to her.
The hand disappears for a moment, returning to rest on the metal pole with a half-burnt cigarette held calmly between two long fingers. It isn’t until the smoker flicks ash from the end of it, and the ash vanishes into nothing as soon as it’s left the cigarette butt, that she makes the connection between the man outside and herself. A smile tugs at her mouth, even though there’s no reason to smile as the middle-aged man at the front of the room tells the class that they "are all looking exceedingly blank".
As though knowing that he’s been spotted and identified by the girl indoors, the smoker moves properly into view, cigarette still in one hand while the other is calmly stuffed into a trouser pocket and when he sees the startled look on her face, his already smug grin merely gets wider.
She, for her part, blinks a couple of times in dumb astonishment and looks back at her work. But the hieroglyphs and grammatical notes don’t answer her questions so she looks out of the window again and stares at her grinning muse as he takes another drag on his cigarette.
Her question is silent, surprised and to the point, 'Yatr, when the hell did you take up smoking?'
In case anyone's wondering (I doubt you are, but you never know) until now the only one of my muses who smokes has been Ion. I always thought Yatr was too vain to take it up but I think some of Ion's bad habits are rubbing off on him. And that is pretty much what happened in Thursday's lecture. More or less. And we were in hysterics while doing our translation the night before for all kinds of weird reasons that I can't remember now.
So yes, my head is a very weird place to be ^__^
And Yatr just laughs.