yet what they seek could be found

Title: A Collection of Snippets
Notes: Very short pieces that popped into my head. Most will stay as they are, but I may expand on some.


Adopt their ways, charm their hearts, but don't mistake yourself for one of them. They never will. [ 05/11/2013 ]

***

Title: A Collection of Haiku


eyes open:
the world appears
briefly
[ 04/19/2013 ]

cracks grow on branches
leaves left—
frost feeds
[ 03/04/2013 ]

see
a gun pulled—a spark catch
even a spider skitter
[ 01/31/2013 ] [ excerpted from stranger ]

( read older haiku )

Title: A Collection of Six Word Stories
Notes: I'm having fun with writing sixwordstories.


I'd do anything to save effort.
[ 06/25/2013 ]

Fool; you knew what I am.
[ 04/10/2013 ]

I wish I never knew paradise.
[ 04/09/2013 ]

Hating him comes before loving me.
[ 04/08/2013 ] [ expanded in more ]

Your more is my less. "Congratulations!"
[ 03/16/2013 ]

( read older stories )

Title: The Herald d'Mors
Chapter: 1. Angel
Warnings: Language
Word Count: 1,615 (this chapter) / ~6,500 (total)
Notes: I wrote this story a few years ago and edited it recently.


I. Angel
He thought she looked like an angel.

It was in the unearthly white of her skin and the way her copper hair fell upon the pillow as if it had been arranged in those flowing, beautiful waves. She was still now, almost relaxed even. Her eyes were hazy and a slight smile played on her lips—for a moment, Garrett could almost feel the calm that had settled over her like a sheet of silk—and then her mouth opened to gasp for breath and a shudder rippled through her body.

( The inappropriate thought fell from his mind as he helplessly watched yet another wave of pain take over. )

Easier


no gravity, no friction
to push against
me or pull me farther than I want to go

here it's effortless

to build
marble palaces, steel truss bridges, rotting stocks.
I graffiti my own walls.
the materials are everywhere
it's easier here

and new become old
becomes new, recycled in an equation—
nothing lost

here's a whole world built
and being built
and I am its


( god to a world without people; )

Title: Mastery
Warnings: Violence (not graphic)
Word Count: 100
Notes: Written for the prompt "Free" at fiction_drabbles. I may write more in this world.


The dream promised freedom.

…from the anxiety that clung like fog to every street and word. A grocery run tugged at spider-threads of alliance and enmity. Chances to kill and gain, exposed―by you? for you? He half-remembers constables, laws, another world's naïve playthings.

Someone was always stronger until no one was. Not this idiot, scavenging the Master's shed. She shatters, begging for her life.

He shuts her up.

Years upon years of freedom, from everything, to do anything. Take―or receive splendid tributes. Command―or accept solicitous service, hear artful ingratiation. Bound in silky ennui, he aches for the bite of fear.

Title: Message, Part 1
Pairing: F/M
Word Count: 100
Notes: Written for the prompt "Desk" at fiction_drabbles. This will have a sequel drabble.


They called her Anna Belle. Her auburn waves and sparkling eyes won her many suitors.

One gave her side-splitting laughs and sandcastles; another, perfume and gold-chained pearls.

She loved the first and, threatened with disownment, married the second. Her Jamie moved away. Her husband was industrious, stoic―stone to her fire―but kind. In treacherous moments, she liked him. In seven years, he died.

Anna weeps.

At her desk, on a torn sheet from her journal (her husband’s gift), she writes to her lost love. She hurls the bottled message from their beach.

She does not hurl herself after, clinging to one-in-a-billion.

Fallen

No one ever told him,
"You're just like your brother."
Father kept his silence; a moment of silence
perhaps, that had slipped out of time and stretched into years,
or simply a farmer's practicality—no time to waste
on idle grief. The fields won't plow themselves.

He thought
he'd be like his brother. His brother,
who slew demons to save innocents on heroic adventures
all through the world of his imagination. He
built up a pedestal,
like towering pines in the deep forest,
standing firm until the first lick of flame.
Until—in a single thrust of a sword
and those eyes,
unknowing, uncaring, unfeeling,
stormy-ocean blue like his own—they came
crashing
down to earth and under.

Yes, he is like his brother.

Title: Stranger
Warnings: Language, mention of violence
Word Count: 312


Another swallow. The half-empty mug clanks down on the counter. There’s a science to this, getting a good buzz going while keeping a white-knuckled grip on the clarity to see a gun pulled—a spark catch—even a spider skitter across the discolored wood wall—

To see the young officer maneuvering past the lively tables, advancing on Will’s nicely solitary corner of the counter. Will warns the man away with a glower; the intruder meets it with a quirking of the stupid grin on his face.

“You the one who took Rakarta back from the traitors?”

The obscenely cheerful question yanks memories by in a flash: boom-shriek-roar-boom-bellowing orders-bodies falling-charging forward-boom-dropping back-dark red on ground-bright red on walls: “THE PEOPLE WILL RULE.” Not my business.

“Fuck off,” he grunts, as the stranger claims the nearest of the half-dozen empty barstools beside him.

“Just got back in from Ettsboro,” the man continues, as if he’d been asked. He’s more drunk than Will ever lets himself get, but Will can’t quite dismiss him as one of the careless idiots who’ll be buried (if he’s lucky) in a few months. The man’s eyes, which haven’t budged from his yet, are a vivid blue. Their intensity, even wrapped in alcohol, drives off the tempting label of a happy fool. This is all wrong. His voice is brash, loud, and too familiar, and Will likes it.

With a long pull from his drink, the man settles in. He sets down his empty mug and calls for the bartender. “Another beer!”

Will stands abruptly. “I’m done for the night.”

He’s not going back to the barracks to play cards with the men, like some officers do in the evening. Bloody team bonding. He’ll keep them alive, if he can, and that’s it. They’re a fighting unit, not some two-point-four-child family. The word slashes into him, bleeding out his frustration.


Notes: I randomly generated Will's personality using this D&D personality generator. The guidelines I got were "Motivation: Protection, Nurturing, Family Values," "Instinct: Hostility, Aggression, Attack," and "Approach: Disciplined Commander." I really like the idea of defining a character by their motivation, instinct, and approach.

Title: Prayer
Warnings: Pain, self-injury for a purpose
Word Count: 265


She walked further into the cold.

However strong her will, she could not stop the shivers that racked her body or the instinctive clench of her arms around herself. Her fingers, wrapped around bare skin, could feel the miniscule bumps that the chill had raised all along her arm. The wind caressed her gently with icy fingers.

Physical sensation bombarded her mind, binding her fast to the earth even as she strove to soar beyond it. One—step—at a time.

She dropped to her knees in the snow. Her shoulders curled forward, of their own accord, acting sensibly to minimize her exposure. She could not stop one moment of weakness, clinging to even that scrap of protection, and then another—gritting her teeth as an excuse—before arching her body back, allowing the death cold to enter her freely. Her arms, in the motion of being flung out, jerked as the cold landed to feast on every part of her body, a flock of birds, a stabbing of knives, before she managed to continue and force her hands down on, into the snow. They thankfully numbed quickly. Her mind danced wildly among the field of pain that was her body, skipping here and there, no looming tower of particular agony to hold her attention.

She turned her head up toward the sky, an almost uniform blue-gray, and gulped in huge breaths of needles that stabbed at her throat and lungs. In, out, in out cold out in cold cold.

I give up my body. I place myself in your hands.

(Do not abandon me.)