| #316 Ten Years Ago |
[08 Jan 2010|04:28pm] |
The turn of the century and even in London it was cold, but not too cold. There were fireworks going off.
The turn of the millennium is something to celebrate with lights and building things, victory parades in the streets, and walking down cobblestones and paved roads that were new before her country was coveted or conceived of.
The boy standing beside her tries so hard to be his. Pleads and begs, buys her dresses and pretty black clothes but it's only a passing fancy. He's only a passing fancy. He's everything she ever dreamed of, blond hair and blue eyes, pretty voice and pretty words and just a little bit dangerous. She'll see the danger before the year is out and drop him by the street like the garbage he is and the only thing she'll miss is the city.
She's smarter than that. He knows. He's watched her for so long. And she's so close, now. She's less than a mile away.
But it's the turn of the century, the decade, and the millennium, and even though she's so close her eyes aren't on him, they're on the fireworks going off above her head. The gray-tan buildings standing tall in the sky, narrow and leaning. Tomorrow she'll go into the city and they'll see places. Older places. And she'll laugh and smile and be enchanted.
He's watched her for so long. He can be a little more patient.
Won't be long now.
The Sorcerer // Original Character // 244 words
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| #317 What do you have from childhood? |
[08 Jan 2010|04:25pm] |
In the beginning, there was nothing. There was the void. The absence of presence, an emptiness incomprehensible in its profundity because there was nothing to penetrate it, to fill it, to draw the line between emptiness at all and fullness or the presence of something, anything.
And then there was something. The dividing line between one and zero, between presence and absence. And the void felt the awareness of what it was, the knowledge of absence, that he had been empty and was now full.
And he felt the threat of being empty again.
Eventually one became two, became more, and the somethings became more numerous and diverse, and the void became darkness when the word for light was invented. More words followed, force and creation and invention and God, as well as weakness and destruction and stagnation and the devil, much much later. Words took on shapes, and the shapes changed, and required new words. The patterns repeated but every time they did there was one little moment where the pattern turned left instead of right, and a new picture was born. A new thing, a new idea.
Once, the pattern of the void called itself Sorcerer, and it took the form of a sentient creature called man, and walked among men and made mistakes and sowed passion and disturbance and bred intelligence and creation and incredible feats of complex terrors.
But still, always, in the back of its mind, it remembered when it was the hungry, empty void.
The Sorcerer // Original Character // 248 words
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| Okay, I admit it, there is no rational explanation for this. |
[08 Jan 2010|04:03pm] |
Prompt 312: Redo a prior prompt.
Prompt 90: Have you ever experienced something you couldn't explain? Write down your brushes with the mysterious.
Okay, I admit it, I lied when I said I'd never encountered anything I couldn't explain. But it's not really my fault. When everyone around you is living in denial, it's hard to avoid drawing the conclusion that either the problem is you, or maybe there's a good reason you should keep your head down and not say anything.
I think... that there is a power that may possibly have created the multiverse, or at least, that has the kind of power over the multiverse that the Q have over individual planets or solar systems. And I think She is screwing with my head. On purpose. Because She thinks it's funny.
Yeah, yeah, okay, the irony has me rolling on the floor in hilarity too. Now will you stop laughing and let me tell this story?
( I disapprove of God's sense of humor, level of responsibility toward Her job, and just about everything I know about Her, which is next to nothing, including whether or not She exists or is some sort of elaborate prank someone played on me. )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek: TNG
Note: This prompt based on "I, Q", a Pocket Books novel by Peter David and John de Lancie.
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| #317 From Childhood |
[08 Jan 2010|12:17pm] |
She does keep a few keepsakes from her family's farm. Nothing that reminds her of what happened there in blood and fear, nothing like that. But a few things.
Mostly these days what Irina keeps are memories, and she keeps those tightly locked away except when she takes them out to write about them now and again, when the mood strikes or when she's afraid of losing it.
"Petya!" she calls. "Come inside! It's cold, and you're not wearing any gloves!"
"It's not that cold!"
And it isn't. But it's still cold enough to warrant gloves, which she slaps impatiently in the palm of her hand till Petya comes to the door of the hotel and puts them on. With much grumbling and rolling of eyes.
( Read more... )
Irina Petrova // Original Character // 675 words
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| #316 Where Were You Ten Years Ago? |
[08 Jan 2010|12:15pm] |
It was cold. It was snowing.
Lessons would resume tomorrow, but today was the last day of holidays, and all the children on the farm intended to enjoy it. One entire side of the farm, even, had a curtain of snow sliding down over the edge of the overhang from the two days where it had been warm enough to thaw, a little bit.
The little ones were falling all over themselves with excitement. Literally; Irina scooped baby Petya (he was no longer a baby, as he said, but she kept thinking of him that way) up and put him on her shoulders as Borya hoisted Natalya up out of the drift into which she'd been shoved by the charging triplets.
Irina was halfway through sixteen years old and studying for the university exams. With luck... if she was lucky, she would arrange to live in the city, studying at the university to become a doctor of pediatric medicine, visiting her family every month of course. She could come back out to the country when she was done and establish a practice, one that would serve both her people and the rest of the farm folk out here in her area of the country. Doctors, especially those out in the back countries of, well, anywhere, were always wanted and often in short supply.
In two years, she would have begun a course of study at a University and met a young man, enjoying her studies immensely.
In four years, she would be called back to the farm to help her family against rumors of increasing violence in the area, and because it was no longer safe for her to travel alone.
In eight years her family would be slaughtered.
In ten years she would be living another life, in another country, in the city, with a man over ten times her age and her cousin, her only living relative left.
But ten years ago, she would never have imagined this.
Irina Petrova // Original Character // 330 words
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| 317 |
[08 Jan 2010|10:46am] |
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Prompt: 317 – What do you still have from when you were young?
Muse: Jean-Luc Picard
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Word Count: 513
Spaceships: cargo, transport, archaeological studies and exploration ships such as the Enterprise; they all lend themselves to lengthy excursions into space. Most anyone on spaceships such as these learns quickly to consolidate and leave most of their material possessions behind. Attachment to inanimate objects is not just a human condition, it’s a people condition. It’s something that spans heritage, race and affiliation. Things hold memories, good and bad, those we cling to because we learned something valuable from them and those we cling to because our hearts long to keep that memory fresh and alive. Things, memories – they do seem to go hand in hand, I believe.
Read More…
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| NEW TOPIC #317: WEEK OF JANUARY 8-14, 2010 |
[08 Jan 2010|09:30am] |
The topic for the week of 8 - 14 January 2010 is:
What do you still have from when you were young?
1. Put current season TV spoilers behind a cut.
2. Your post must be a minimum of 150 words to count towards your community membership.
3. Put posts longer than 450 words behind a cut.
4. Put the topic number and/or text in the subject header of your post.
5. Sign your post with your muse's full name and fandom.
Reminder: To remain current, you must have answered at least one of Topics #314, 315, 316 and 317 by January 14th.
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| #316: What were you doing ten years ago? |
[08 Jan 2010|12:24am] |
You know... this is a clever trick, this question.
It's trying to get me to say how old I am. Oh yes. I'm on to you, prompt! Don't you know you should never ask a lady her age?
Silly, really. What does it matter how old a woman is? But there it is – an expiration date stamped on your forehead wrinkles, maybe. I know it's ridiculous; it's a sexist double standard created by “a heteronormative patriarchy” as Jean-Paul would call it. And I know that. But...
My own mother would NEVER say aloud how old she was. I think one of the few times I saw her genuinely angry at my father was when he jokingly told her she “wasn't old... for a tree.” Ouch. Dad slept on the couch for that one.
I married very young, and I was widowed not long into my thirties. I am a single woman, and yet I feel no real pressure to date again. In a way I'm almost relieved that I'm supposedly retired from active sexual hunting – let the 20-something blondes have all the fellas. I'm in a unique position to focus on my career, although I dread the day when I'm taken aside and told I'm just too damn old to be running around in the Guardian suit. (I tell you right now – it had better be a safety concern when they do it, not an aesthetic one. I don't care how gross old lady butt is, that's not the point of having a superteam. ...No it ISN'T, twins.)
At any rate... all those clues are lovely, and I'm not ashamed to be a woman in the prime of her youth, and I don't much care for society's archaic attitudes... but you're still not getting my age out of me, prompt. Nice try.
Heather Hudson/Guardian II
Alpha Flight
307 words
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| #316: What were you doing ten years ago? |
[08 Jan 2010|12:04am] |
She's eight years old and playing in the west field. The sky overhead is iron gray, the sunlight falling dead and weighty on the rocks and grasses.
Except not really – she's eighteen. (possibly. or eighteen hundred. it's hard to tell sometimes and oh her head hurts with it) Her hair is a few shades darker, she has breasts, and her nails are talons.
Wait.
No, that's wrong. She's eight. Flaxen blonde hair, playing with a doll in the dirt. Speaking to it. Lecturing, really. So absorbed is she that she doesn't notice the engine going from a soft growl to a scream. She only looks up when she hears her mother scream, because that is a sound she has never heard before (not true there was when mikhail) and she sees the tractor. The heavy sunlight moves sluggishly over the chrome.
“ILLYANA!”
Too fast, too fast. She should have grabbed him before he could run out, standing in front of the pale faced little girl. Held him aside. The heavy machine would have left little to mourn – skull crushed. her hair would turn red, and her lifeblood seep onto the hungry earth.
The Sorceress Supreme opens her eyes. She's nowhere near Siberia. She is ageless. Her tail curls neatly around her. She knuckles her cheeks, feeling warm wetness and smelling salt.
Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong day, wrong week. (there's something wrong with me, the wrong mix in the wrong genes)
Ten years is a complicated thing.
Illyana Rasputina/Magik
X-Men
250 Words
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| Theatrical Muse #316 - Where Were You Ten Years Ago |
[07 Jan 2010|10:23pm] |
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It was the coldest night so far of the young year, and Robert was glad to be home. He slipped out of his clothing and into a simple t-shirt and pajama bottoms before adding another quilt to the bed, covering up his sleeping wife and their three year old daughter. Then he crawls beneath the covers to join them, the feeling of both of their bodies press against his warming his heart as well and his body.
Ten years ago, he'd have been alone, going home to a cold bed. He was a surgeon then, one of the best in Chicago, and he'd probably spent hours on his feet before finally being able to call it a night. Dinner would have been whatever he could grab from the fridge and he'd turn on the TV in the bedroom because he didn't want to outright admit he was lonely. There was another redhead in his life back then, one he couldn't have because she was very much married. All he had was his career.
Now he wasn't a surgeon anymore. He didn't even have two arms anymore. But he did have a beautiful wife who returned his love, a daughter that made him discover life all over again and now a new baby on the way. And for the first time in his life, he felt completely rich.
Muse: Robert "Rocket" Romano
Fandom: ER
Word Count: 277
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| Theatrical Muse #316 - Where Were You Ten Years Ago |
[07 Jan 2010|10:08pm] |
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I remember the night ten years ago I decided that maybe suicide would be the better option for me.
And you remember it too. It was the first day of a new Millenia. You were probably out partying, but I was where I had always been on New Year's Eve, at home. Watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve, and even though he had some very fine entertainment, Mr. Clark was not to personally provide me with company. It was the biggest day many of us will see historically, and yet, I cringe at the memory.
I remember picking up the phone and dialing that number where the operator gives you the time. I wanted to hear a human voice that badly. And once I did, I wept. It seemed like a very good idea then to end my life, end my suffering. I didn't think I'd ever move beyound that feeling of inertia. I even took a knife out of the drawer and looked at the place where my veins touch my skin. I almost did it. But something in me decided I couldn't do it.
I won't pretend that I had some ephipany or moment of divine inspiration. In fact, what I did next was take the bottle of wine out of my fridge and proceed to get totally intoxicated. I'm pretty sure I passed out under the coffee table. And then I woke up the next morning and started over again. There was no miraculous recovery, but every day it did get a tiny bit easier.
It was worth every moment of pain to be where I am now.
Muse: Jerry "Hands" Espensen
Fandom: Boston Legal
Word Count: 272
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| Theatrical Muse #316 - Where Were You Ten Years Ago |
[07 Jan 2010|09:48pm] |
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(Set in 1999)
Ten years ago, I found out that the son I have never been able to openly claim as my own had taken over the X-Files Division. Perhaps it would be a proud moment for some fathers. For me, I knew it would either end in his death or my own. The X-Files Division deals with paranormal phenomena and while that sounds silly when it's said outloud, what lies there is much more insidious. Between those files are information that might alter the course of humanity. If you think I'm being melodramatic, consider this... how would the world change if there was proof that alien life exsisted? What if the proof also showed that they have exsisted amoung us, and even further, that we have started consortiums to help them to enslave our own species. And shadow societies to work against them, beyound their sight.
Ten years later, Mulder is getting closer to the truth every day. At this point, I am conflicted where to stop him or support him. My time on this earth is running short and I want it to stand for something. If the aliens exsist, something won't exsist anymore.
Muse: C.G.B. Spender aka The Cigarette Smoking Man
Fandom: The X-Files
Word Count: 193
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| prompt 316 - what were you doing ten years ago? |
[07 Jan 2010|09:38pm] |
Time doesn’t run linearly, of course. Just because a Doctor occupies one point in time and space, doesn’t mean she can’t be occupying others simultaneously. Ten years is a long time.
He sits at her table, not the other way around. The reasons blur over time, but she thinks it was because she looked a little lonely. He smiles brightly, and chatters, and offers her a pastry. She buys him a cuppa, and the pastries, too, so he won’t have to steal money from a bank machine this time.
He chats with her for an hour, and then runs off to save the world (again).
)No.
Not quite.(
( every angel is terrifying. )
Muse: The Doctor (Eleventh)
Misc Fandom/Doctor Who OC
Word Count: 895
Comments go here.
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| TM Response #316 - Ten Years Ago |
[07 Jan 2010|08:34pm] |
What was I doing ten years ago? Well, ten years ago I was freezing my butt off in Marble Bay, covertly keeping an eye on a teenage princess much like I had been for the last fifteen years.
Oh, you want more? All right, fine. It was about a year after Sarah had moved Alex and herself from Montana to Marble Bay. Alex had pretty much settled in at the public high school and had made a friend in Lucinda Delegadio. She was still writing stories but it had been a while since she had written anything about Coventry.
To be honest I had mixed feelings about that. I knew that she wrote the stories as a means of escaping her life in Crow Creek. But that had been back then. In Marble Bay her life had improved considerably over what it had been in Montana: Alex and her mother shared a nice apartment on the lower income side of town, she had friends and was doing quite well in school. There was nothing to escape from. But on the other hand I feared that she was losing her connection to Coventry and that when the time came she wouldn't be able to help her sister save it from the Darkness. And I almost wished for something to happen so that Alex would start writing about Coventry again.
Then, not three years later Sarah was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Muse: Karsh Antayus
Fandom: T*Witches (DCOM version)
Word count: 239
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| Topic 316 - Ten Years Ago |
[07 Jan 2010|07:30am] |
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What were you doing ten years ago?
What do you think I was doin' ten years ago? I was doin' the same thing I always do. As the First Evil... I was everywhere... in everyone. Evil was doin' its evil thing. And the good guys was tryin' to do their thing. Tryin' to deal with their own personal problems, and find the time to save the world. Same old, same old.
( Read more... )
Topic #316
Muse: The First
Fandom: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Word Count: 902
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| Challenge Three hundred and sixteen: Ten years ago...(407 words) |
[07 Jan 2010|08:34pm] |
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Ten years ago, I had been stationed in Port Royal for perhaps a year or so. I was lieutenant, under the command of Commodore Thomas Ashworth on the ship of the line Augustus. Weatherby Swann was governor of Jamaica, and Jack Sparrow was barely a speck on my horizon, known to me only as a troublemaker branded by the East India Trading Company for his refusal to transport slaves. Elizabeth Swann was a spirited girl who I entertained with my war stories, and Will Turner was an ambitious youth who yearned to handle a sword as well as I did. I spent my pay on rent, books and brandy, and jealously kept the latter away from the two other lieutenants I shared quarters with.
Ten years ago, I was fighting in first and last war of my career thus far: the War of Jenkins' Ear, a conflict that soon became the War of Austrian Succession. Great Britain fought against Spain, and I learned that the Spaniards were tough fighters who were loathe to retreat from a battle. Their obstinacy meant that I saw much bloodshed inflicted on both sides. I had been about six years in the service of His Majesty then, and though I was not unfamiliar with the brutality and death that battles and skirmishes bring, I couldn't help but feel staggered by the theatre of war. I was no innocent to begin with, and yet the war improved my skills with the sword and pistol further. War made fast learners of all of us that wanted to survive it.
I am always mindful of the responsibilities of my rank....they weigh heavy upon my mind even in moments of peace and relaxation. When I was that young lieutenant, my greatest concerns were ensuring that I could appease my landlady with rent and ensure I was fulfilling my duties to the best of my ability. I spent my nights ashore with my roommates, playing cards, drinking and smoking. At sea, I played my violin and wrote letters to my mother and siblings (goodness, George and Victoria were still young children then). Life did not feel as easy then, but I yearn for the relative simplicity of it now, long before Jack Sparrow made his presence felt and Elizabeth was no more to me than a close friend who I wanted to protect. If I'd known what was to come, I might have savoured that time more.
Admiral James Norrington
Pirates of the Caribbean (films)
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