minutia_r

I have actually been reasonably productive over the past week but it's mostly original stuff that I don't want to link to this identity. And while I am reluctant to let this meme become the Suki/Toph meme, have some more Suki/Toph:

Then her mouth meets Suki's, and it's only an awkward tangle--where do noses go, should Toph close her eyes if she's not using them to see anyway--but Suki is more practiced at this. Once the first moment of shock passes, she puts her arm around Toph to brace her, and the graceless position Toph has chosen shifts into something that feels comfortable and natural and not quite enough.

Toph has fought with non-benders before, both against and alongside, too much to underestimate them--but it has always seemed that their chi, however focused and graceful, never extends beyond their own bodies. Now Suki is holding Toph close, running her tongue against Toph's upper lip in a way that makes her gasp, the energy flowing through Suki into Toph and back into the earth. When Suki sets Toph onto her feet again, she's trembling. She frowns, and holds onto the stone railing hard enough to make finger-marks, and the trembling stops.

I am working on the remix for dropsofviolet! Very slowly.

A slim form slips out the tent flap--it’s probably meant to be unobtrusive, but the piping on her coat is bright red, and Mako is sitting directly in the blast of cold air that comes in as she goes out. He gets halfway out of his seat before Korra grabs a handful of his jacket and yanks.

“Sit down, buster.”

“But,” says Mako. “She’ll get lost, she’ll freeze. And just because she’s mad about seeing us together--well, she has reason to be mad, I guess.”

One of these weeks I will post on time. This is from the story I wrote for reverse remix:

“I didn’t get much, not from a first meeting,” Kareen was saying. She turned her arm, flashing the pink marks of a hypospray on the inside of her elbow. “But I did get this.”

“Is that--” Mark cut himself off. Rejuvenation would definitely trip the security flags.

“Either that or a slow-acting poison."

It's a short story, but somehow it was harder than usual to pick a six-sentence-long excerpt?

I am working on yours, Dove! (I hope you don't mind Mako POV)

Real life is kicking my ass. Have a thing.

Things are different in the waking world. Once I tried to make a cake; I took eggs, and a pinch of mustard powder, and three pairs of old socks, mixed it up and set it in the sun. When I saw the appalling mess in the bowl, which refused to become anything else--when I smelled it--I sat down on the step and cried. It’s a petty thing, I know, but life takes you that way sometimes.

This isn’t home.

(If I owe you a response to something, I will try to get to it at some point.)

When I participate in fanfic exchanges, I often mean to write treats. Sometimes I even start writing treats. The only treat I've ever successfully finished and posted was for cordialcount this purimgifts, and that was because I originally thought I was going to use it as one of the assigned stories but due to the peculiar rules of purimgifts I ended up not doing that.

I tell you that to tell you this: Sorry, betony, seeing as how I only posted my assigned fic just now, it doesn't look like I'll have time to finish the treat I meant to write you. And seeing as how I never seem to find the motivation to finish these things after the collections open, I'm just going to post what I've got as your Sunday, er, fifteen.

O Goddess, don’t let me be mad.

There is bird’s blood under your fingernails, and the tang of iron in your nostrils; you have just offered a sacrifice to a half-forgotten character from the books in your father’s library that no one imagined you knew how to read. As clear a sign of madness as anyone could ask for, she would say, the sharp-tongued girl you used to be. But nothing is clear anymore.

There is no sweet savor of smoke ascending to heaven. The fowl is raw and bloody, as sacrifices to me often are. O daughter, could you not have offered sacrifice to Athena, wise counselor, victorious in battle? Or Nemesis, of the dark eyes and the bright knife; she would have heard your prayer.

Or, having addressed your petition to me, you might have asked for madness. That lies within my power to grant. My husband’s arrows blind, but I can charm the reason and bewitch the senses. Instead of listening with your heart in your throat for a tread muffled by the herb-strewn floor, and eating your meals hunched over as if every morsel might be snatched from you, you might have glided through alabaster palaces in a dream, and feasted on phoenix and leviathan. But you asked for clear sight.

Did you think that my light would show your husband a kind man, your father a wise one, your story a comedy? When my sisters said I had married a monster, I knew better, and you know better, when they say you have not.

This is actually a combination of a prompt from rarewomen (the goddess Psyche deals with a petitioner) and a prompt from the 3 sentence ficathon (Katherine of Taming of the Shrew killing Petrucchio with kindness).

Crap, I forgot. Well, it's still Sunday somewhere.

It felt like being buried alive.

"You can't do this to me," said Gabriel. "I'm a nine-lifed enchanter and you're just a . . . a gamekeeper."

Mr. Farleigh's lips curved slightly. "That's right." It was plain that he knew Gabriel had meant to say witch.

This is from Hunt of the Unicorn. It's been refusing to move for, oh, a year, but before I got stuck I did write a bit of chapter four, and this is part of it.

Each Sunday, post six sentences from a writing project -- published, submitted, in progress, for your cat -- whatever.

Bolin levers the top open and lifts out a small tree in a green clay pot; its leaves are round and fleshy, like little discs.

Asami's first unworthy thought is another thing to take care of, but if Air Temple Island has ten thousand trees on it, her apartment might have one. The memories of that place, good and bad, aren't ones she wants to let go of yet. "It's lovely."

"It's a money tree," says Bolin. "Because, see, the leaves look kind of like silver yuans, and they say if you have one in your house then oh no Asami please don't cry."

I should really finish this fic before it gets jossed by book 2! Failing that, I suppose I could just post the section with Asami and Bolin, which will leave it looking like Asami/Bolin or at least pre-Asami/Bolin which wasn't my original intention, but there are still good bits in it.

Each Sunday, post six sentences from a writing project -- published, submitted, in progress, for your cat -- whatever.

Oh hey look I'm doing this on Sunday this time!

"I know something you don't know," said Sokka.

"Honey," Suki purred, "there isn't anything you know that I don't know."

"Well, I understand the principles of fluid dynamics as applied to lighter-than-air—ow! I give, I give!" Man, those bits on the fan were sharp. And Suki's weight on his back was nice, and the press of her thighs, even through layers of sweaty padding . . . he let his cheek fall back to the ground and sighed happily.

This was going to be a Suki/Sokka/Toph PWP, but I wasn't sure where I was going with it.

Yes, I abandoned a PWP because I wasn't sure where I was going with it. I may have a slight tendency to overthink things.