thanks dear! // three sentence meme

middy/enikö + fancy dress

The ridiculous thing is that he doesn’t recognize her at first, not with hair done up, her dress strapless and candle-bright in the sea of black tie, dripping seedpearls down her back. It’s her laugh that distracts him—a decade between them and she still giggles the same, a shock so sharp and bright that he he blurts, cutting through the inane chatter around him, “Middy?”

She turns slow, skirt swelling around her, and the eyes behind the beaded white mask are unmistakable—as is the voice that stutters, and says, as though they were sixteen again, “Nikö?”

dairef + arranged marriage AU

“Stalking after you all fucking night,” Zaref curses, gloves abandoned over the back of the chair and tailcoat swiftly following. Daichi stands in the middle of the room, still pressed neatly into his suit—in the gold of House Eliades, of course, with only the barest hint of Airedon blue—and watches him swirl around with a force and focus usually reserved for the field of battle.

“He’s not here now,” Daichi says when Zaref finally comes to a stop, standing furious in his shirtsleeves, and he leans in with relief when Zaref takes it as the invitation it is.

kol + band AU

She laughs in Max’s face when he asks if she has anything to contribute—a song, a lyric, a melody, a baseline, anything?

thank youuuuu // three sentence meme

minah + first performance

It was the same feeling before and after, her heart beating hard enough to come out through her shirt, but the terror transmuted to something else halfway through the show, and she tumbled off stage grinning ear to ear, more and less herself than she had ever been.

“Is it always like that?” she asked Alesso when she caught him after, still glowing with the understanding of what this could be, of who she could be.

“Not always,” he said, face warm, eyes bright, “but if you’re lucky, often.”

vesper + mentoring

Tellas’ face lights up when the light blooms in his cupped palms. He loses it almost immediately, startled by his own success, but the glee lingers, face turned up to hers and glowing as bright as his trembling mage light.

“Well done,” she tells him, his pride echoing in her own chest, a gleaming reminder of why she loves this work despite the shadows of the Circle.

kol + pacrim au

Scenario: Funeral

Hurt me!

It's a blisteringly hot day for it, the sky white-blue overhead and the gulls circling listlessly high up where the updrafts ease to cooler skies. The crowd is just as listless, all broiling in their black mourning garb, silent except for the droning of the cleric and the faint rustle of the ladies waving their fans in a futile bit for some air.

thanks babe // one word writing prompts

46. — skies + minah

Colm is with them for barely a season, from Treviso to Ostwick. He speaks Antivan like a Rivani and Rivani like a Ferelden, and on stage he plays the drums and the pipes and the seer, whispering about spirits. His tricks are all clever, mechanical illusions, cobbled together with silk and oil lamps and Mithri up in the rafters tugging at fishing-twine strings to make the ghosts dance. He teaches Minah to play along with his drums, to make the low and eerie sawed-off whine of a hungry ghost and the quick and traipsing trill of an eager spirit, which is not so unlike a Marcher reel. He teaches her that sometimes a bit of silk and a bit of string makes for a better show than the truth of a thing, be it wind or waves or spirits. And he teaches her to read the skies—not with any true mastery, but enough to find north. More than one sort of seeing, he says, hands limber and callused as he points out constellations she knows and more she doesn’t. Sometimes the only map you need is right above your head. It must be nice to only need to look up to find your way. She wishes he’d had time to teach her how to know what her way is meant to be.

20. — wishing + eniko

On a star, Middy grins at him. The balcony is as narrow as it always is and dusty with summer heat, and the the night is yellow with the bleed of the city and the smog but a few twinkling pinpricks struggle down through the haze. You know. Star light, star bright. He knows how the child’s rhyme goes. He’s not so poorly shaped by the world that he doesn’t understand how wishing works. It’s only that watching her face tilt up towards the city sky, he can’t think of anything more worth wanting.

07. — melody + vesper

oh boy!! // first times meme

CAES + scheming

before the magic and the lessons and aneleus' favor, when he was just a lowly house slave who slept in the kitchens with all the other lowly house slaves and sleeping arrangements were decided by favor and seniority, caes arranged for another one of the boys—a year or so older than him, liked well enough to avoid the grind of chopping vegetables and washing dishes in favor of running plates too and from the dining room—to have an accident. nothing serious, but a worn-out sandal strap and the overturned corner of a rug were enough to send the boy down with the master’s favorite porcelain on a night when he had guests to attend. the head of the kitchens had words and a birch for the boy, and caes was called in to replace him, careful to avoid the shards of dinnerware strewn across the carpet as he carried wine and dates and grape leaves in a tunic far nicer than any he’d ever owned. it was too bad for the boy, really, but caes enjoyed sleeping closer to the hearth after that

MINAH + scheming

ough // first times meme

LIRA + grieving

one of the mabari lost a litter to illness. lira, some eight or nine summers old, understood death well enough to know the little wriggling things that had snuffled at her cheeks and chirped at her, blind and hungry and trusting, would be buried and left to rot in the earth. she'd been inconsolable for days, carrying around an ache not just for the loss of the pups but for the lives they would not live and the grief of their mother. she spent all that summer in the kennels, tending to the hounds and the pups and doing everything she could to make sure the others survived. that was the year she got alfie.

MINAH + grieving

grandparents were meant to die, a friend said after in an awkward attempt to sympathize. honestly, she didn’t really mind the death of it; everyone ended eventually, and her grandfather was old and his health was failing, and he’d lived long enough to know her and love her and that, she figured, was more than most got and something she could treasure. so it wasn’t the dying, not really. but he wouldn’t have a bit of candy for her waiting in his pockets, and he wouldn’t take his coffee after dinner in the antivan way and make the whole house smell roasting-sweet, and there would be no more golden afternoons in the garden when he put his hand on her cheek and told her he was proud of her, and she wished she had treasured them better while he was still here, instead of remembering after how wonderful it felt to sit next to him and smell his aftershave and know he loved her beyond what words could tell.

KOLBARA + grieving

(+) “Not like that,” says Bryce, laughing. “Lira, pup, no, wait––”

“But you said,” she pouts, brow furrowing as she brandishes the dulled toy blade at him. “Always point it at your opponent!”

“When you’re fighting, not when––”

“We are fighting! We’re practicing! You said!”

“This doesn’t look much like practice to me,” he says. She stops waving the knife around to cross her arms and frown at him with as much ire as a six-year-old can manage.

“That’s because you’re not fighting me back like you’re supposed to. That’s how real warriors practice!”

“If you say so,” he shrugs, and lunges for her. She shrieks with laughter as he scoops her up, still brandishing her little knife.

“No! No! You’re not fighting fair!”

“I’m the tickle monster! I’ve come to tickle you!”

“No!” she wails, laughing as he digs his fingers into her sides, smacking him on the shoulders with the dull toy. “Daaad! No!!”

Eleanor finds them covered in dust and panting half an hour later, Lira sitting proudly on his stomach while Bryce winces beneath her.

“Do I want to know?”

“I beat the tickle monster,” Lira says proudly. “Now we’re all safe.”

“Ah, but what you don’t know,” says Bryce beneath her, “is that the tickle monster has a very dangerous and powerful wife, who will avenge him.”

“Oh will I?”

“Please, love?”

“I suppose I must,” Eleanor agrees, stretching her hands out, and Lira scrambles off her father with a shriek of joy. “I’m coming to get you!”

.

(-) It isn’t the blade that’s the trouble; she knows that in and out and backwards and forwards. It’s the blood, slippery-hot and thick and sticky, like she can feel it between her fingers and seeping into her pores and coating everything.

It is a different thing entirely to fight a man and to kill him. Her stomach turns.

“There, now,” says her father somewhere behind her, and then the heavy weight of his hand rests on her shoulder, holding her down, keeping her tethered to the world. She sucks in a breath, and the copper-thick scent of blood sticks to the back of her throat. “There now, pup, it’s over. You did well.”

She leans over then and is sick all over the ground, all over the man she’s just fought, just killed. Bryce rubs small circles against her back and murmurs to her, apologizes. When she’s through, he kisses her forehead and says, terrible and sorry, “You’ve saved a great many lives with his. Sometimes, that is the price we pay for it.”

And she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and nods once, shakily, eyes prickling with tears she will not let fall.