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Cordelia: cowards, but okay

The old Vor: you get women's responsibilities! Like choosing his household staff, the people he will see every day, and overseeing his education for the next 8 years!

Cordelia, later, to Aral: do they understand what they just did?

clone: im going to take your place and kill your dad!

miles: OUR dad

clone: what?

miles, pointing: baby! baby brother!

clone: What??

miles, still pointing: your names mark!

mark, bitterly: I don’t have a birthday.  I have whatever it’s called when they open a uterine replicator.

📝 Share a line from your story with no context.

@winterandwords Thanks for the tag, friend! This is from the issue of Sunset Vol 3 that went up on Patreon this past week:

"But he’s not himself anymore.” “I’d think that would be an improvement, honestly.”

I'm no pressure tagging  @toribookworm22  @void-botanist   @willtheweaver & open tag

Because @eccaiia's open tag tempted me so here I am! Sorry to everyone who's ever tagged me anywhere, your tag is sitting patiently in my drafts but this tag is brighter and exciting, so we're doing her first 😜

Tomorrow:

Finished with his own things, Quintus buckles his belt and shrugs on his coat. He finds Miriam hanging wet clothes on nearby shrubbery, and shirtless Nikolaos tussling with his trousers. “Perhaps you might cut them off,” he observes. “So that they’ll have to be restitched tomorrow with inferior skills?” Nikolaos retorts. “Think again, Quintus. Perhaps you may like to go into battle and find your pants around your ankles, but that joyful image isn’t to everyone’s tastes.”

Hour:

It does something to Quintus, Miriam notices, to see strong, ever-large Nikolaos a pale shadow of himself. It does something to her too, but Quintus seems to vanish inside himself for hours at a time, emerging wan and unsteady. He sleeps within touching distance of Nikolaos, although the gap between them is never crossed, at least, not when Miriam glances their way.

Pale:

He looks up, lit by the orange glow of the firelight, and frowns. He gestures, and Nikolaos moves closer, kneels down beside him. Quintus’s gray eyes are pale, narrowed. He touches the corner of Nikolaos’s mouth, which stings. “I’m fine,” Nikolaos says. Quintus’s hand doesn’t move. “You’re soaked through, you’re limping, your face is cut open, and you look like something that’s been dragged through the mud and hung out to dry.”' “So, I look normal.”

Dawn:

“Quintus,” Nikolaos says, like he’s been saying it for some time. “Quintus, look.” Quintus battles his exhaustion. There’s nothing to see but Nikolaos’s pointing finger. Nikolaos’s finger wiggles, and then Quintus realizes that the fact that he can see that far is noteworthy indeed. “Dawn,” they say together like a prayer, and find a little more vigor in their frozen limbs.

He should perhaps have remembered that Aragorn is named for Fingolfin. Fingolfin’s mother-name, Arakáno, would properly be translated to Sindarin as “Aragorn”. Most people would not show up to an enemy fortress with an army they knew was far too small, and start a battle they knew they would lose. But Fingolfin famously did exactly that.

This tag is from the beloved @eccaiia -- thank you, kai! I'm looking for PORTAL.

P. Perhaps he is being overly cautious, but to be discovered now is a headache he doesn’t want to deal with for a single minute.

O. Once he understands Quintus means what he’s saying, he drops his head, his hair brushing Quintus’s sternum, and then he moves away.

R. Resting on his own stomach, Nikolaos’s fingers twitch. “I’m so tired,” he whispers.

T. Time stretches and stretches further, and then it’s over, faster than Quintus wished.

A. At this point, there’s not much point in mentioning it, but habits linger, so Miriam puts her foot in her mouth and says, “Quintus, why do you feed him like that?”

L. Lifting his head up after a while, Quintus squints a crooked smile Nikolaos’s direction. He is different like this, made young and happy by first waking.

^^fingers hit some buttons as I started typing and I rolled with it :) Thanks for the tag, @memento-morri-writes!! As usual, I interpreted the word line like a total idiot. Bon appetit!

A line about the sun:

Quintus closes his eyes. In the sunlight, everything behind his lids is buttery warm.

A line about tears/crying:

Perhaps because they are moving towards a clear goal, or because the breaking dawn casts a soothing light, Quintus speaks for the first time. “It’s not your fault.” [Miriam's] gaze latches on to his, and her large, dark eyes fill with tears. “Or Andromeda’s. Or Camille’s.” Quintus doesn’t know what to do with her tears, so he ignores them. “It’s not even Nikolaos’s fault.”

A line where someone learns a lesson:

“What do the others use?” “Honey, sometimes oil,” Quintus listed off, on one hand. “Quills to cover the tips. Tongs of some sort to grasp the arrowhead. Knives to carve away the skin around it.” Nikolaos turns away and retches. “Stop,” he says. “Stop. I’ll find you some quills then, shall I?”

A line that surprised you when you wrote it:

“Do you know most people have twelve ribs on each side?” [Quintus] blusters. “Yet, inexplicably, some don’t. I’ve come across bodies with less, and bodies with more.”

Thank you for tagging me weeks ago @mrbexwrites! I've had this one sitting in my drafts for weeks now and I kept coming back to it. But everytime I would think of posting it, it would be either Thursday or Friday. So yay, I'm finally making it to Wednesday!

Tagging: @leahnardo-da-veggie @felittw0rks @alintalzin @orphanheirs @satohqbanana & anyone else who wants to do it! If you get tagged, it is not a must to do it <3 It is only really up to you!

Today I'm playing with PIANO -- thank you for the tag, @artdecosupernova-writing!!!

P. “Peachy,” Sutton fired back. “And you?”

I. “If you left now,” Jacob said, calculating, “You’d get home at close to four in the morning.”

A. “Aw,” Jacob said sadly, and pulled out a pair of chopsticks to help the poor thing on its journey to the afterlife. The afterlife, meaning the trashcan.

N. “Now I feel like a baby,” Sutton muttered. “Throwing a fit over this.”

O. “Oh, no,” Michael said. “I’ve just heard stories.”

● They are destined to become full, undead vampires after their death.

● They are living vampires because one of their parents was vampiric, they were cursed, or they were born under specific fated/magical circumstances.

● Alternatively, could be turned into a living vampire by an undead vampire, using some kind of blood ritual, in which case it could make a good substitute for the more common ghoul/thrall character.

● They do not have to drink blood, but are capable of drawing power from it when they do.

● Alternatively, they might feed on people's energy rather than drink their blood.

● They may have fangs, sharp teeth, or neither, in which case they might use their nails to wound victims for feeding.

● They are capable of sensing the presence of undead vampires, and, if they are the kind that is not easily controlled by them, could make very effective vampire hunters.

● They are not yet harmed by sunlight or weakened during the day.

● They cannot stomach all human food, and are most likely to only eat meat, and/or drink milk, while some might only eat plain food like rice, or are only able to consume liquids but can drink sap or juice.

● Most likely are not affected by the things that ward off a vampire (garlic, hawthorn, wild roses), but might already be affected by things like holy water if you want to play up the cursed angle.

● Could be in possession of all kinds of magic powers, (but I personally prefer to keep them to a minimum, lest they get too powerful).

● Have great potential to be either enjoying their current powers and looking forward to their later vampirism, or to live in constant fear of what they might become. Might feel closer to humans and wish to protect them, to want to mediate between the undead and the living, or could be fully on the side of (malicious) vampires.

● Could be named moroii, dhampir, or, if you must, daywalkers.

But apartment complex.

It's not old or abandoned or anything, there's people living there. It's cheap and there's a heavy turnaround but there's people. Even rules they all follow not to upset the 'ghost', which is what they're calling the lack of maintenance causing things to rattle and leak.

They don't think there's actually a ghost.

Not even a big building, in a big city. But a cheap, if gated, community sprawled out in a little city, maybe two or three floors...six units at most in the building but multiple buildings spread out.

There's a park, pool, rec center maybe, all of it haunted.

"No swimming after 10PM" is a sign for safety here more than most places. The ghosts of the drowned haunt the pool at night, yanking others to the bottom to join them.