Quick piece for @flashfictionfridayofficial!!
[over on ao3]
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It’s crawling on her back.
It’s freezing. Not like the cooker’s doing much.
Shivering, Donna hunkers down beneath the thin, coarse sheets of her camp bed. Her grandfather’s deep, even breaths one side, her mother’s shuddering breaths the other. It stinks of spices, oil and must in here. Bloody galley kitchen. She doesn’t know how she’s going to get rest herself. Doesn’t know how Grandad does it. … No, she does. He’s gone through things just as bad, if not worse.
But what kind of life is this for them? Donna can’t let this continue as it is, she can’t. But what can she do?
[over on ao3]
Fingers encircle his wrist. “Stay,” Rose says, quiet.
He doesn’t turn around, his hearts are thumping far quicker than her own. “Time Lords run half a human's average temperature,” he rambles, trying to cover the quiet gap between them with sound. “Wouldn't get you anywhere near as toasty as a good ol'—”
"Doctor," she cuts in softly, and he dares to glance back. Her eyes meet his. “I'm not asking for warm. I'm asking for you.”
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Fandom: Doctor Who
WC: 434
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I am back!! With a short lil prompt fic c:
This is for: r/FanFiction's Trope Bingo! With the prompt being: Snowed In.
Back from my writing slump to do another piece for @flashfictionfridayofficial!! Been in a writing rut for a while, but this prompt's help jumpstart my creativity! Really fun, and immediately had an idea around smth to do with alien ducklings… Then it just expanded from there.
Enjoy!
[over on ao3]
Three pale, fuzzy heads pop out from beneath a dirtied blanket. Large, wide eyes fix on him.
And their chest-aching broadcast bubbles orange.
He sighs, a deep gust that causes his whole frame to slump. “Just had to be, didn’t it,” he says, quiet.
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A week-old distress signal leads the Doctor to three orphaned empathic aliens who've lost everything. Of course they had to be babies.
Fandom: Doctor Who
WC: 1097
Storming purple paints the inside of his eyes. Brushes over ‘em with an unwanted pressure that burns—familiar but fresh. Like a wound that won’t heal.
Then it bounces back against his shielded mind.
Straightening—his sonic screwdriver dangling from his fingers—the Doctor narrows his eyes into the hollowed-out remains of the research station. “Gonna have to do better than that to get into my head,” he calls down the empty corridor.
His own voice bounces back at him, sharp, challenging.
It fades.
Only for something else—so faint no human would ever pick up on it—taking its place.
Peep, peep…
“No.” His shoulders drop, his fingers tightening around the sonic. “Can’t be.”
But there it is, reaching out again. That desperate, cutting thing that he doesn’t want to be anywhere near. A thread tugging underneath. Not enough to drag him, but enough that his feet want to move the way it’s pointing.
It’s not just from one, but multiple little voices, crying, scared, alone.
In these ruins.
Sucking metallic air through his teeth, he shoves the sonic back in his pockets. Before he’s even realised he’s moved, he’s halfway down the corridor, boots crunching through grit.
“A week-old distress signal, and what does it get me instead of nothing?” he growls to himself, hands stuffed into his leather jacket.
Peep, peep, peep.
The closer he gets, the louder their psychic wailing. Red-purple, pressing against his senses, like sound through muffled glass. By the time he reaches the warped door it’s emitting from, he’s got a headache coming on.
Preparing himself, he rams the door open with his shoulder. It slams on what’s left of its hinges. Then gives up completely, crashing to the floor. He ignores it, zeroed in on a glass enclosure across the debris-scattered room.
It’s grubby with water stains that’ve been scrabbled into the surface. Frantic claw marks.
Three pale, fuzzy heads pop out from beneath a dirtied blanket. Large, wide eyes fix on him.
And their chest-aching broadcast bubbles orange.
That look.
Wide-eyed wonder, hope with a golden song.
He's seen it before, lifetimes ago.
He sighs, a deep gust that causes his whole frame to slump. “Just had to be, didn’t it,” he says, quiet.
They open their yellow beaks and peep anew, shriller this time.
“Alright, alright, keep your feathers on,” he grumbles.
Got to get them out—who knows how long they've been without water. He turns about the space, scanning for signs of a release lever, a button, anything. “Whole room’s an absolute mess,” he mutters, crunching through the remains of a data tablet.
Fractured console parts litter the counters. Cables twisted over each other across the tiled floor. He tries one of the most put-together machines. But nothing happens.
The peeps die off. From inside of the enclosure, soft rustling takes its place. When he glances over, three little forms are pressing against the glass nearest to him. They wobble as their heads swivel, attempting to track him across the room.
It causes his hearts to lurch.
How old are they? Two months? Three?
Four small fingers tink against the enclosure’s surface. The largest owlet regards him with dark, sad eyes.
Shoving the threatening thoughts away with a scowl and a flick of his hand, he turns his back on them. Must be something in here that still works.
Minutes in though, he finds nothing.
Restless frustration simmers as he fiddles with his sonic’s frequency, tracing it around the enclosure's fused seams.
His fuzzy audience are watching his every movement like kids’d watch cartoons. Keeps popping green against his barriers. Always the same with empaths. Have to swarm. Have to connect.
Safety in numbers.
There’s a click, subtle. Enough give for him to push the door in, with care.
The three owlets burst free in a scramble of white down and lanky legs. Chirrups of joy tangling around his feet. He tenses. Has to shift back, just to avoid stepping on them.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he tells them, firm. Despite the fact they’re practically blinding him with the orange-yellow fireworks display behind his eyes. “Got to get you out of here proper, first.”
Fluffy bodies bob as they wobble their way around the debris—toward the entrance.
“Oi,” he calls after them.
They peep and the biggest one swivels their head around to stare at him. Cheeps… something. It lilts at the end. A question? Then they turn again, picking their way toward the corridor… as if they know exactly where they’re going.
“Fantastic,” the Doctor mutters, falling into step behind them. Bad as those bloody apes. Been rid of them for an age, and now look at him.
They bumble about, over cracked flooring and around tipped over chairs. Sometimes face-planting, shrieking about it. Needing him to help them out. Other times circling his feet again, like they want to keep him in their sights at all times. Feel the hum of him.
It presses in on him, that he’s letting them do this, looking after them. That they’re getting away with it. But what can he do? Can’t leave them here.
The largest one’s way ahead of the others. Managing their big feet while the others keep forgetting they have them. Chirping, the large one flaps their fluffy wings about the air.
The Doctor pauses, one hand hovering near the smallest owlet. Trying to stop it from pecking at his shoe. “What?”
The large one bobs their heart-shaped head. Flicks it to the side to peer into the dark room behind them.
Closing his eyes, the Doctor sighs through his nose. And scoops the smallest aggressive fluff-ball into his arms.
Their warmth seeps beneath his jumper.
Can feel their heart beating rapid against his chest.
He hates this.
Straightening up, he says, “C’mon then, show me.”
Inside, the lights flicker, attempt to come on. Can’t. But the owlets slip into the space just fine.
The largest chirrups at him. They’re standing over a blob, cool blue seeping across his shield, triumphant. No, wait. Shifting the owlet closer to his shoulder, he squints.
It’s…
“A toy?” he asks, eyebrows shooting toward his hairline. “All this, for some ratty thing like that?”
It’s massive in comparison even to this one. And they keeps looking from it, to him, then back again.
“Alright, fine.” Stepping further in, he scoops up the cuddly toy too. Looks like a cross between a duck and a crocodile. The small owlet snuggles up to it. “But that’s it. I’m taking you somewhere that isn’t falling apart.”
I see this post all the time and I'm so confused. Most people throughout history were busier than your average resident of a developed country is now. My primary reaction to reading about the past since I was a child has been "I'm glad I don't live then, I'm too weak for that, I could not do that much work all the time."
In the past things took longer to do but they often required a waiting period. You had to chop wood, put it in your stove, and light it, but it took a few hours for it to get hot enough for baking and then another hour for the bread to fully cook. History books will say things like "It took 4 hours to make a loaf of bread" but they don't mention that you only had to do actual work for a fraction of that time and the rest could be devoted to other tasks or relaxing for a while
Employee workload has doubled or tripled because of modern technology. It makes things faster but also creates less downtime which employers have filled with more responsibilities. You can do more work in a 10 minute period if all the files are on the computer but in the olden days you got to take a short walk to the filing cabinet and let your mind wander while you thumbed through folders, which means a modern 10 minutes of work is more mentally exhausting. The amount of work one employee has to do today used to be split between 2 or 3 people. We lost those moments of downtime we used to get by having to do things the slow way
IDGAF if the women in my fiction are empowering or aspirational, I'm an adult, I don't need role models, I want the women in my fiction to be interesting, and if that involves being pathetic, hypocritical, amoral, or trapped in a delightfully dysfunctional relationship so be it
I'm practising colouring/shading/lighting and line work using Angel Ganev's art course before finishing off my Aerti painting, I'm still a bit rusty at it so thought I'd use Tseng's 3D model as a study.
