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little_lady_dThings I wrote in November-December of 2018:
Three sentence fic for the Three Sentence Ficathon!
Sometimes you had to re-pot a plant, and there was no way around it -- you'd dig it out, and you'd find the roots cramped and circling, growing in the shape of what they couldn't escape. Utena listened, as Anthy explained, because Anthy so seldom spoke from her heart.
Anthy took her hand, and showed her how to coax and break roots out of their old patterns, how to leave a world behind, and grow again.
—
Magic came with a price, Caleb could tell you that, or his evenings wouldn't be eaten up by strategic planning meetings and budget proposals with deathless kings and queens from every corner of Kath. Everything came with a price, no matter how you stuck the non-profit label on it. But at his heart, Caleb was still a gambler, and so he had to ante in and hope.
—
Caleb managed risk, so it was his job to know the numbers, to memorize statistics on necromantic earths and demonic incursions and assess the likelihood of one cascading apocalypse-like into the other.
Risks without numbers were harder to manage -- and he could find the numbers, sure, if he wanted a deep dive into divorce rates between deathless and non-deathless partners and the reported work/life balance of God Wars veterans -- but that wasn't his job anymore. He took a chance because he wanted to, and because (even if he'd never say as much to Kopil) he believed.
—
In her years in the Neath, the Gracious Widow had come to value constancy. The constancy of suppliers and shipping tables eased her business; the constancy of rooms draped in darkness eased her heart. The Duchess was petty and proud and more obsessed with her mysteries than any Roser, and yet, she was a constant.
—
Hamlet preached patience and readiness, no longer stalling but waiting to seize the moment. "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow," he said, something to smile on even in grief. Horatio had always been patient, and yet -- he couldn't bring himself to watch Hamlet fall.
—
In the days after his father's death, the consolations of philosophy hurt to the touch, and the books of ancients became a blur of words, words, words which did nothing to soothe the ache of knowing: all fathers die. Hamlet turned to the foil, to fencing, to feeling mortality in the coiling of his limbs and the climb of his pulse, to dueling shadows 'til exhaustion claimed him and he couldn't move.
Laertes, home from France, found him and corrected him; he placed his hand on Hamlet's and guided the foil, showed him how to lunge without overextending himself, and though he didn't say a word of Hamlet's father, it was the finest consolation he could receive.
—
He didn't want their blood money, their thirty pieces of silver. He didn't say: give me back the silver of his tongue, his voice, his winding speeches which wove between naive bluster and truths too precious to carry in the marketplace. What was lost, was lost, and Judas knew it couldn't be bought, sold, or bartered.
—
And some 11,335 words of Tous Les Chats! (The working title of my maybe-novel.) It follows the adventures of a jazz mage in 1920s New York as he dodges Prohibition and his past. The Prohibition is on magic, not liquor.
I'm archiving it in a locked community (here).
Three sentence fic for the Three Sentence Ficathon!
Sometimes you had to re-pot a plant, and there was no way around it -- you'd dig it out, and you'd find the roots cramped and circling, growing in the shape of what they couldn't escape. Utena listened, as Anthy explained, because Anthy so seldom spoke from her heart.
Anthy took her hand, and showed her how to coax and break roots out of their old patterns, how to leave a world behind, and grow again.
—
Magic came with a price, Caleb could tell you that, or his evenings wouldn't be eaten up by strategic planning meetings and budget proposals with deathless kings and queens from every corner of Kath. Everything came with a price, no matter how you stuck the non-profit label on it. But at his heart, Caleb was still a gambler, and so he had to ante in and hope.
—
Caleb managed risk, so it was his job to know the numbers, to memorize statistics on necromantic earths and demonic incursions and assess the likelihood of one cascading apocalypse-like into the other.
Risks without numbers were harder to manage -- and he could find the numbers, sure, if he wanted a deep dive into divorce rates between deathless and non-deathless partners and the reported work/life balance of God Wars veterans -- but that wasn't his job anymore. He took a chance because he wanted to, and because (even if he'd never say as much to Kopil) he believed.
—
In her years in the Neath, the Gracious Widow had come to value constancy. The constancy of suppliers and shipping tables eased her business; the constancy of rooms draped in darkness eased her heart. The Duchess was petty and proud and more obsessed with her mysteries than any Roser, and yet, she was a constant.
—
Hamlet preached patience and readiness, no longer stalling but waiting to seize the moment. "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow," he said, something to smile on even in grief. Horatio had always been patient, and yet -- he couldn't bring himself to watch Hamlet fall.
—
In the days after his father's death, the consolations of philosophy hurt to the touch, and the books of ancients became a blur of words, words, words which did nothing to soothe the ache of knowing: all fathers die. Hamlet turned to the foil, to fencing, to feeling mortality in the coiling of his limbs and the climb of his pulse, to dueling shadows 'til exhaustion claimed him and he couldn't move.
Laertes, home from France, found him and corrected him; he placed his hand on Hamlet's and guided the foil, showed him how to lunge without overextending himself, and though he didn't say a word of Hamlet's father, it was the finest consolation he could receive.
—
He didn't want their blood money, their thirty pieces of silver. He didn't say: give me back the silver of his tongue, his voice, his winding speeches which wove between naive bluster and truths too precious to carry in the marketplace. What was lost, was lost, and Judas knew it couldn't be bought, sold, or bartered.
—
And some 11,335 words of Tous Les Chats! (The working title of my maybe-novel.) It follows the adventures of a jazz mage in 1920s New York as he dodges Prohibition and his past. The Prohibition is on magic, not liquor.
I'm archiving it in a locked community (here).