Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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@mxbookkeeper
“we were lovers in a past life” trope but the current incarnations are enemy-to-lovers trope. when.
To be clear. I don’t want “our past love ended in betrayal and anger and now we hate each other.” I want “we died in love and in each other’s arms” but the current incarnations do NOT remember and they ARE trying their best to End the other one and these new sudden flashbacks to lovingly holding each other’s hands is EXTREMELY UPSETTING
I had a dream that the king and the queen of a small country had a daughter. They needed a son, a first-born son, so in secret, without telling anyone of their child’s gender, they travelled to the nearby woods that were rumoured to house a witch.
They made a deal with that witch. They wanted a son, and they got one. A son, one made out of clay and wood, flexible enough to grow but sturdy enough to withstand its destined path, enchanted to look like a human child. The witch asked for only one thing, and that was for their daughter.
They left the girl readily.
The witch raised her as her own, and called her Thyme. The princess grew up unknowing of her heritage, grew up calling the witch Mama, and the witch did her very best to earn that title.
She was taught magic, and how to forage in the woods, how to build sturdy wooden structures and how to make the most delicious stews. The girl had a good life, and the witch was pleased.
The girl grew into a woman, and learned more and more powerful magics, grew stronger from hauling wood and stones and animals to cook, grew smarter as the witch taught her more.
She learned to deal with the people in the villages nearby, learned how to brew remedies and medicines and how to treat illness and injury, and learned how to tell when someone was lying.
Every time the pair went into town, the people would remark at just how similar Thyme was to her mother.
(Thyme does not know who and what she is. She does not know that she was born a princess, that she was sold. She only knows that one night after her mother read her a story about princesses and dragons, her mother had asked her if she ever wanted to be a princess.)
((Thyme only knows that she very quickly answered no. She likes being a witch, thank you very much, she likes the power that comes with it and the way that she can look at things and know their true nature.))
The witch starts preparing the ritual early, starts collecting the necessities in the winter so they can be ready by the fall equinox. Her daughter helps, and does not ask what this is for, just knows that it is important.
The witch looks at Thyme, both their hands raised into the air over a complicated array of plants, tended carefully to grow into a circle, and says, sorry.
Keep reading
To reiterate: I think purple prose is fun and cool, actually, and I don't take criticism
So is no one gonna call Dante out for his disgusting RPF of Virgil? We really gonna be out here stanning a man who thinks it’s okay to write a self-insert story where his favorite poet guides him through the afterlife? Fucking cringe.
[text ID: a tweet by @rhododaktulos that reads, ““my child is completely fine” your child’s favourite trope is found family”]
accidentally getting obsessed with a minor side-character from a series you haven’t written yet
writing aesthetic: making your protagonist a self insert of yourself so your readers will psychoanalyze + diagnose them and you can figure out what the fuck is wrong with you
why must i Write Words? is it not enough to imagine, passionately,
i do write things actually. do NOT fact check this
I want to write. I have ideas. I open document. I type four of the worst sentences ever created in the english language. I daydream the rest of the scene. I close document.
My hobbies include reading, writing and doing neither of those things
My hobbies include
reading, writing and doing
neither of those things
I found a company called “Frantic Meerkat” who makes journals whose sole purpose is to call me out
This is by the Mincing Mockingbird guy (of “I’d sell you to satan for one corn chip” and “The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math” fame) and you can buy them here
https://www.mincingmockingbird.com/collections/frantic-meerkat
i keep telling myself i can’t handle longer projects but in the last four days i wrote 23,377 words just totally by the seat of my pants
This is the Good Post of seat-of-your-pants inspiration, reblog so you too may add 23,377 words to your WIP without a single moment of hesitation or self-doubt
Bursts like this are like
I feel called out…
The Strangest Roommate I’ve Ever Had
This took place all about three years ago. I was going to college at the time and was living with two of my friends, Phoebe and Macie, along with Macie’s boyfriend Joe. I’d been friends with Phoebe since we were kids but only recently befriended Macie within like a year of agreeing to move in together, and Joe was sort of a last minute addition.
Well, to sum it all up so we’re not here all day, Joe was a jackass. He was a lousy roommate, but he was even worse to Macie, who’s a pretty meek person and a doormat for Jackass Joe. It was the third time Joe was caught sleeping around that Macie finally snapped and broke up with Joe. He responded by taking off and leaving us scrambling for a new roommate so we didn’t end up losing our place. I think it was Macie who posted the ad on our school’s Facebook page as a last ditch resort. It didn’t matter if they smelled like ham or were up all night blasting Marilyn Manson, we just needed someone to pitch in with the bills.
The next day I answered the door to Miss Dorothy Ball.
Read On…
You possess the ability of persistent lucid dreaming. Accompanied by a strange person, together you build a world you revisit every night. One day you see them at a coffee shop. You immediately recognize each other.
You are a world of your own.
That’s not to say you’re extraordinary, necessarily—you might be. Chances are you’re more so than me, at the least, but that’s not much of a feat. Rather, we are each little universes of thought, infinite in expanse yet bound by flesh; pioneers lost in our own minds. Every human is a wellspring of possibility and impossibility, every breath a wish for something greater as we run desperate from the impending dark.
We are, in a sense, prisoners to ourselves. Slaves to dreams we may well never grab hold of, working to the bone so that one day the schism between what we want and what we have might narrow ever so slightly. It is no surprise that every night we shut down for a brief reprieve, where we get a taste of the strange workings inside our heads. A glimpse into the potential we each have, raw as it may be.
When we aren’t asleep, exploring our own dreams, we look to those of others. Snippets of what it’s like to live in someone else’s mind; pretty portals to vast, new, and often beautiful worlds, or ones so terrible and forlorn that anything seems tolerable when compared. Something—anything—to distract from the one that we’re in. To feel greater than ourselves.
After all … isn’t that why you’re here?
~ ~ ~
Is it greed to desire something grand?
I often asked myself things like that as I killed someone.
Many lives have been forever reduced to similar questions that fade in and out like fireflies on a dark summer night—what’s ironic is that putting a sword through a neck is so much easier than finding the answers. It shouldn’t be, right? Just reach out and grab one of the little lightbugs and put it in a jar to study later … but every time I try, they vanish. All I get is a fistful of darkness.
By the time I was done thinking about all of that, there was only one other person breathing in the field before me: the man who had killed my family. My friends. My clansmen. I’d have cried looking at him if that well hadn’t dried up so long before; screamed if there were any leftover rage to burn.
“You’re strong, Kinghunter,” Ilhor Drago snarled, a hulking man in shimmering ebony armor patterned with wispy typhoons of cream and oxblood. He must’ve stood seven feet tall. “But this is my home, and I’ll not die here like some flame you’d snuff out with a shovel of dirt.”
He peered at me through two clusters of holes in a solid iron headpiece, describable only as a perforated bucket. The rest of his battalion littered the wood-lined meadow like smashed tin cans. They’d made quite a morbid medium for my art, shades of death tainting the lush, fertile forest around us, painting fern and flower slick with a contrasting crimson. In the holy glow of spring’s sun, amidst a field paint-brushed with trampled fuchsia tulips and peonies that dribbled out of the treeline, the bloodied plants almost looked at home.
Ilhor charged at me, and I backpedaled toward the lake’s muddy shore while keeping my sword raised overhead. Ilhor would be a challenge, no doubt—perhaps even worth three whole questions—but challenges are meant to be overcome, even if that challenge was once the most feared knight in any kingdom. A man known for cleaving children in two might terrify most, but I’d have fought God himself if that’s what it would’ve taken to put an end to Hadrian’s reign.
What will I do when all of this is over?
His footwork was perfectly placed with excellent tempo; he had the speed of a fox despite swelling with brutish strength, bowing the boundaries of human limits as if they physically couldn’t contain his mass. Each swing of his enormous weapon left my own feeling heavier and heavier in hand, every metallic crack a seismic spasm that rang my soul like a church bell. I ducked and weaved through his razing, slowly backstepping to dodge; parrying had become too taxing on my aching palms. With each lurch forward, he churned huge piles of mud, flinging it around us. Though he was slowed, the length of his broadsword kept me from making a clean retreat.
Is there a place left in the world for someone like me?
Not only was I reduced to defense, but the stout cascade of steel he donned had virtually no openings, aside from under the armpits and a small gap beneath his helmet—one just big enough to slip a thin, thirsty blade into.
Another swing, another step, retreating further and further until I could avoid parrying no more and our swords locked with spark and screech. He grabbed me with a single hand that touched its fingers together at the nape of my neck, feet desperately reaching for the ground as he lifted me into the air. I must’ve looked to pedal myself airborne.
Why am I so damn good at this?
“Why did you come here?” Ilhor asked, though he didn’t care to relax his grip. “I defected. I defected!”
My words barely squeezed out between his fingers. “Hadrian wouldn’t let a defector live. Did you think an early retirement would save you?”
“How did you even find this place? He promised me it was safe!”
“Nowhere—” I punched at his giant gauntlets like a child, gasping. “—is safe.”
He grunted twice; once at me, and once at the ground.
With our weight combined, he sank past his ankles into the soft, dense mud that lined the lake’s western shore. He dropped me, hoping it wasn’t too late, then yanked at them fruitlessly—an alligator has strength on the close, not open.
I lunged, but his sword slammed into mine and sent it flying further into the forest than reality should allow, nesting into the canopy with a grating buzz like a silver beetle. A pained screech and flurry of wings rang out, followed by a distant, wooden thunk. Before I could look back in disdain, his blade was thrusting straight at my heart. I ducked, twisting, and barely managed to get low enough for it to deflect off my mail, then grabbed his wrists and pushed forward with all my weight to outstretch his arms.
I only had a second before he’d overwhelm me, but that was all I needed. A small dagger, its polished gold hilt adorned with rubies, was partially hidden at his hip under a small flap of fraying linen. I let go of his off-hand, dropped even lower and grabbed it, then released his sword hand and pushed forward. In a blur of motion, I jammed the dagger into the thin gap between his helmet and breastplate just as his massive python of a left arm snapped at me again. A weary stumble backward was enough to escape his reach.
He struggled and sucked at the air, his words wet with blood. “I’m … not even … a king… .”
“How many innocent people did you kill for one?” I whispered, hacking off his head.
That was for you, Ophelia. For our little ones.
He plummeted into the coast, sinking into it a little bit. After a moment to collect myself, taking a few deep breaths, I was free to finally loot his body—a vulture hungry for the treasure I could smell on him. Out of a covered compartment at his right hip, I pulled out a golden scroll with reverence, cupping it in my hands and brushing my thumbs across its complex network of embossed vines. It was the fifth one I’d stolen, and it was every bit as mesmerizing as the first, glowing as though the sun itself had been laid out in my still aching palms. I knelt there for some time, drinking its glow, and aches melted to memory with each moment. Eventually, I found it within myself to forfeit worship and tuck it into a satchel at my waist.
My fugitive beetle-sword was stuck in a tree nearly twenty yards away, with traces of blood on and around it. Splintered branches and shredded leaves littered the area, but there were no signs of life—or death—anywhere. I yanked it out, apologized to anything I may have harmed in Dominaria Forest, and ran back to the lake’s edge.
Hidden. No patrols, no shipments, no trade. Forest for miles on all sides. How ironic that your pet’s hiding place has become mine, Hadrian. It’ll need a little cleanup, to say the least, but maybe this can be somewhere my roots can anchor.
A place to belong.
As I approached the castle, stepping over bodies like they were nothing more than fallen branches after a storm, a light, playful voice caught me off-guard.
“What a shame—I wanted to kill him.”
I spun, reflexively unsheathing my sword to flare wary steel. A woman emerged from behind bark, crossing her arms and leaning lazily against the tree she’d been using for cover. Her weapon was unattended, dangling with a laxness inherited from its owner.
“I was rooting for you to lose, but your fighting skills are impressive. You’re not like the others I’ve run into around here,” she continued, her gaze sharper than a blade fresh off of whetstone, her lips hinting at a smirk.
I smiled as a cool breeze slid through thick trees, relaxing. “Yeah. You seem … different, somehow. You seem real.”
This is so good! I need more!
Actually, I came across this prompt four years ago when it was first posted, and it struck a chord in me. I started writing for it and soon realized that I was telling a much bigger story, one that’s important to me.
What you just read was only the first chapter! After four long years of working on weekends and night in-between my jobs, it’s finally a full-length novel–called Lost in a Dream–and I’m so happy with how it turned out.
If you do read it and enjoy the story, leaving a review would mean the world to me; as an indie author, reviews are a huge part of how the book is perceived and I need them to grow. Becoming and author is my dream and has been since I started writing, one that I’m finally starting to make reality :)
Paperback:
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E-book/Kindle:
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Oh my god, I can’t believe you actually wrote an entire book off one of these prompts. Just bought it!
