(no subject)

[thethrillof]

aiming at that "write more" goal. also i remembered i have OCs and maybe i should try to write a little for 'em. since i literally haven't tried to for nearly a decade. so just little prompts form a word generator b/c a little is better than nothing at all.

 

 

[kitty]

The door is locked with curses. The windows are blocked with similar. The walls are inscribed with runes of paranoid power, all to hide the tiny form pattering around the circus master’s personal sleeper car.

A cat.

Dr. Aconite allows her to rub against his ankles as she anticipates her meal of delicious meats, saturated with webs of spellwork winding through it.

For this eve out of the month, beneath the shadow of the new moon, she’s a fluffy silver tabby. Magic beneath the breaking of day, when he’ll allow the sun a sliver to slip in, will shift her: body twice the size of a man, the fur to heavy strands of granite, fangs and claws to points of onyx, eyes to facets of ruby laced with gold.

A gorgeous, nightmarish thing.

A cat. Just—a cat.

Oftentimes own ability impresses him. Others…the people of these lands are so easily fooled. Stomped down, trusting in the Fae and their kind.

The false spirit stretches and paws at his legs, insisting he hurry for her food.

“You don’t enjoy being this small anymore, do you, girl?”

Perhaps he’s projecting.

[kick]

Forensics shouldn’t be a strong point of the miniature people.

‘Shouldn’t’ is an uncertainty.

The shoes together are smaller than Susan’s pinkie nail. Authentic? It has to be. They’re the one item of clothing she can’t pass off as something stolen from a dollhouse or scavenged from some human’s junk. Chunks of plastic would hurt flesh feet, oversized plush things would be tripped over. Shoes had to be custom-made to work.

Everything had to be custom-made to work.

She adjusts her glasses, peers up from the intricacies of her work to look at the body in the jar, and the pulsing light beside it.

The vessel that would become her spy is still asleep, unalive. Fixating on the minutiae of the clothing options is better than the thought he might never wake up, even with all the work of condensing memories to make a custom Soul.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she’ll try.

For now, still, the shoes.

[prickly] (warning for child neglect)

The TV’s on mute.

Her kid’s jumping on the bed. Thinks she can’t hear. She could get up, go yell. They can’t afford a new one if it breaks.

The couch is soft and smothering.

Andrea doesn’t move.

If it breaks. Then it breaks. Then a new one won’t happen, and the kid’ll have to sleep on this same couch when she’s not in it, or deal with springs cutting to the skin. Whichever.

Children are smart enough to learn consequences. Hers is. Knows when to be quiet. Knows when to be gone.

She’s lucky. Some would say that. For her kid. A nice kid. A good kid.

She never should have had one, never wanted one that badly.

But since she’s stuck with a child, at least she got a smart one.
 

[parent] (warning for child neglect/abuse)

Their designation is Model 16. Their name is less important.

It changes every few weeks, months, sometimes years. Sometimes it’s lost, warped into an insult, a ‘that thing’ a ‘defective’. That last one’s a favorite. “This is defective,” an angry wannabe parents says after the son/daughter they forgot to feed or forgot to play with for days sits down and screams. “Your Model’s defective!” when their specially-made skin bruises yes, that badly after a blow with whatever was at hand at the time.

They are a Model Child. Perfectly a child, with minor adjustments for certain individuals’ capabilities. They don’t exist to punish, just to teach and perhaps fulfill.

They take name after name, have parent after parent. They’re a robot that learns as a child and as an analyzing machine, and they’ve gotten patterns down. This man will give up once his new son wants an emotional connection. This woman will give up her daughter when she has a temper tantrum. This couple will hate their child for being heard as well as seen. They are a child, they are a taste of reality and so many of these people are reality-impaired.

It could fill them with disgust, or it could make them sad. It’s the case that they do have emotions, or something so close that the engineers and programmers and they themselves can’t parse.

It doesn’t. It’s just…boring. Predictable.

Model 16 sometimes wishes they were allowed to visit parents from the lower classes instead of the rich. Maybe they’re not quite the same.

 

[request]

“…Cook for her?” Chas says.

“Is that a question?” Noble sighs. His sister isn’t even looking up from her basket of…whatever. It smells like dirt and flowers. There might be something weirder in there, where her hands are digging through the mulch. He’s learned his lesson about sticking his nose into her business, if nobody else. “I don’t even know how to cook.”

“So? It’s the thought that counts, right?”

“Not like this! I need something good!”

Chas yanks something up. It’s a big basket. Whatever’s in there is the size of an ox skull, and smells rank. No wonder she’s wearing a mask, and the thought of this ‘courting’ thing with food goes a dozen steps higher on the ‘no’ list.

“Did you ask her?”

Noble throws his arms up. “No! How can it be a surprise if I ask her what she wants her to surprise to be?”

“You didn’t say it was a surprise.”

“Well! It is.”

Chas, unhelpfully as always, shrugs. The green stuff is clinging to the skull and her wrists. “Well, good luck.”

Noble spins on his heel and goes. Maybe someone in town will know what to do about this nonsense.

[admire]

They’re a hero.

It’s a back-breaking job sometimes, but still a good one. They win fights, they save those in danger, they travel as far as they please.

People are grateful and people remember. Zeal finds they’ve got favors and fans the whole world over, and a few knight-heroes they’ve inspired themselves! Fame was never their intention, but denying it would be incredibly stupid.

Usually.

“A wife?”

There are a thousand things wrong with this statement. Or, well, at least two. One, they don’t want a wife. Two, this country is a little backwards and wouldn’t actually approve of their marriage if certain things about Zeal got out.

“A wife!” the rich man booms, gesturing to the youngest of his daughters, who shrinks into herself as her surrounding sisters look envious or pitying.

Their airship needs repairs. They absolutely have to wait a few days, even if the palms of their hands are itching with the urge to move, to run. Fake romance is absolutely more horrific than dealing with a mad wyrm.

“…When?” Zeal asks.

“At the start of summer! Unless you desire it earlier, of course?” He looks eager, every inch of him showing that he wants them to insist for just that.

“Summer, then,” they say. Their machine will be back in shape enough to escape before that. The girl and her father won’t take it well, they’re sure, but enemies are a natural consequence of heroics too.

They’re needed in places besides this one, and their airship can only comfortably fit themselves.

 

 

 

Comments

[rynet_ii]

Nice!

Andrea's little story actually made my stomach twist a bit. |'D

And I wonder who Chas and Noble are talking about!