#chesterton challenge

[politicalmamaduck]

May the Fourth be with You!

And Happy PadMay! In honor of these two events, I wanted to write a little something featuring our Queen, and process some things in my own life. I used today's Chesterton Challenge prompt from @inklings-challenge, although Star Wars style ;)

On days where the HoloNet was filled with holojournal articles filled with the Clone Wars’ worst atrocities across the galaxy, and it seemed like she barely even had time to enjoy her morning caf before having to don her own form of battle armor, Padme wondered if it was all worth it. If anything she did would ever make a difference in the relentless onslaught of violence they faced each day. 

On days where she woke up and the pain in her head was like lightning splitting her brain in two, she wanted to close the blinds and crawl back into bed, she wondered if it was all worth it. She wondered what would happen on the day her body told her no, you absolutely cannot work today, you must rest, and what the meddroids would say. 

On days where she wanted to cry and comm her mom and jump on her starship to head home to Naboo, to the safety of her mother’s arms and her niblings’ laughter and her hometown, she wondered if it was all worth it. Her niece didn’t understand what she did, not yet. When she was old enough to, would she still look at her aunt the same way? 

And yet she kept working, kept trying, at least. She prayed and did her breathing exercises and listened to calming music. She appreciated each moment with her handmaidens, with Anakin, with her fellow Senators, and tried not to take any of them for granted. She tried to tell each of them how important they all were to her. 

Maybe the holojournals would forget about Padme Amidala after she retired. Maybe history would remember her as one voice among many. 

She would have to find a way to say it was worth it in the end, that she lived her life according to the hope that love and goodness would endure. 

[incomingalbatross]

Laud Rising

I made a thing for the Chesterton Challenge! Day 18: Friendship.

---

“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” — C. S. Lewis

---

As a child in the city of Laudness, Katherine dreamed of wonders. The world was dulled and faulty, with days always too hot or too cold, too long with work and too short for excitement; weeks spent first learning her lessons, then her bookbinder’s trade, as seasons passed by. But everywhere around her -- in stories and games, in sky and flowers, in the hidden corners of houses and streets -- she glimpsed something more hiding behind. She longed to find that more, to get inside all of these things and away from the plodding irritations of the world-as-it-was.

Her mind was filled with wondrous adventures and brave comrades, victories over monstrous evils and gifts beyond imagining. She devoured old legends of her land’s founding, when the city had first been named -- when the Heroes of Laud had raised the nation into a place of liberty, freeing their people from servitude and protecting the land. Somehow, since then, the shine had been rubbed off the world; nowadays even legends and fairy-stories were unpopular, and Katherine found her books by scrounging alone in the city library.

She learned from other books that other people held her longings too -- learned words for it, words like hiraeth and sehnsucht and nostalgia and joy. And she learned, as she grew older, that the world-as-it-was couldn’t be separated from the wonders she glimpsed in it; even that, maybe, the most legendary heroes had once had to deal with blisters, and boredom, and dullness -- but that even so, the thrill of a sunset or a goose-call were just as much a part of her world as the blisters. But even as she learned to accept these things, to weave her dreams into the fabric of daily life without letting them be more than that, it only made some of them only sharper, clearer, more distinct with time.

Because Katherine dreamed of heroism. The more she grew to love the world as it was, to see the longed-for as only hidden under stains in its fabric, the more fiercely she dreamed of fighting for all the good that it held. She burned with the need of it -- but how, how, how? There was nothing so simple as a dragon to slay, in their nation; there were human problems instead, like corruption and falseness and poverty. She was no warrior, anyway, and no leader -- she wasn’t even particularly good with people. She was smart, she’d learned that, but staring at the troubles of the world was more like staring at the Gordian knot than anything else. It needed something other than her mind to fasten on a starting-point, and so she could only freeze in indecision.

But she could see what the world could look like, with those threads untangled -- what it could look like if it were washed clean. And from her books and stories, she could imagine the type of people that could start such a fight.

What she could do was what she had always done; daydream, spinning beauties and wonders together into tales.

So she began, at last, to share the little she had, and told her stories, for want of better things to do.

She began writing: fables and adventures and quests, telling them at first to whoever would listen, then selling them to whoever would print them -- binding them herself, if she had the time and paper. Stories of what the world could be, of the kind of heroes that could fight its evils, cast into the molds of her favorite legends; new tales of the Heroes of Laud, their Captain-King and his wise Queen, the Minstrel and the Steward and all the other famous figures, turned into her new heroes. She put her dreams and longing put out into the world, begging someone to take them up, to do what she couldn’t.

Begging for someone who could see in her dreams all that she could, and more.

Then, one day, a young man knocked on her door. “You printed this,” he said, eyes shining, and held out her first book: The Rising of Laud, half-a-dozen stories inside an amateur cover. “Do you know the author? I haven’t been able to find them yet, but this is their first work --”

“Why do you want to know?” she asked.

He looked down at the book, then back up again. “I’ll sound mad if I tell you the truth,” he said gravely.

Katherine raised an eyebrow, uncertain what to say. “If you do, at least I’ll know you must mean it?” she offered.

“A very good point.” He breathed in, and then said, “I’ve wanted to meet the writer since I first read their stories, because -- they’re the first stories I’ve ever wanted to come true.”

She stared at him.

“They see things truly,” he continued, as if he thought she didn’t understand. As if he weren’t understanding her as he spoke. “It’s -- it does sound mad, I know, but this is what I want to be --” he gripped the book in both hands, looking down at that worn cover “-- what I will be, if I’m allowed, and I just want to talk to the other person I think wants this.” And then he looked her squarely in the eyes, focused and alight with conviction in a way she’d never been -- but the way she’d always wanted to be helped to find.

Her dreams had never had faces, but she thought that her Captain-King would have hd a face like this.

“I do want this,” she said, somehow unhesitating. “I wrote it -- that’s why I wrote it, to call for someone. But…I don’t know how to help.”

He laughed. “You called, I listened,” he said. “Others might too. And after all --” he held up the book again “--the Heroes have to have their Minstrel, right?”

“I can’t sing very well,” Katherine warned, stepping back from the door to let him in.

“That’s not the important part,” he insisted. He held out the book to her, and she took it automatically as he stepped inside. “You said it yourself, in this -- what’s the role of the Minstrel?”

“She has several.”

But she knew which one he meant, even as she spoke. She ended up saying the line in unison with him -- the tenet of the Minstrel, in more than one tale:

“The Minstrel’s role is to tell the Heroes that they will never be alone.”

And after all, Katherine began to remember, that applied in more ways than one -- not just to the Minstrel's audience, but even to herself.

[olyia-stories]

An ode to the little things

The smallest streams flowing over pebbles

Little blue flowers blooming on the sides of the road

An unexpected hug

Coffee perking first thing in the morning

Freshly painted nails

A butterfly landing on a bush

A nice pen

Clean linens

Cold water on a hot day

Warm sunlight dappled through leaves

Freshly baked bread

A cool looking rock

A pretty harmony

A cat purring

Finishing a task

Unboxing a new bar of soap

Friends around a table

Being warm by a crackling fire

[griseldabanks]

Okay, here goes. For my birthday I'd like 21 and 29 from Let Me Count the Ways, in one fic for Ed and Al in the foster family au. Make it angsty, but also lots of hugs please! (You know what I like.)

--Rain

Let Me Count the Ways ask game

Prompts: "I should have told you this a long time ago." and "It's not my fault."

Ed couldn't sleep. It was one of those warm, clear nights where the moon was full and so bright it lit up the room almost as bright as day, only with cool silvery light instead of the golden warmth of the sun. On nights like this back home, Mom would take them stargazing. She would point out all the constellations, and they would take turns looking through the telescope until Al was about to nod off, and then they'd go home and fall asleep over mugs of hot chocolate.

But now they lived in the suburbs. Roy and Riza were fast asleep, and it had probably never occurred to them to go stargazing, and you couldn't see many stars anyway because of the city lights.

A creak in the bed across the room made Ed roll over to look. Al sat on the edge of his bed, gazing out the open window with a wistful expression. The moonlight washed over his skin, turning it to ivory. He could have been a statue. The statue of a sad little boy whose mother would never take him stargazing again.

Ed sat up, drawing Al's attention. Sitting cross-legged on the edge of his bed and dangling his one foot over the edge, Ed said softly, “I miss it too. Looking at the stars.”

Hugging himself as if chilled by the warm breeze, Al looked mournfully across at him. It wouldn't be the same without Mom, his eyes said. He could always tell what Al meant to say, even though no sound passed his lips.

Ed swallowed hard. Al's grief was like a knife in his ribs, in a way harder to bear than his own. It wasn't fair that Al had to grow up like this. It wasn't fair that he had to live with foster parents instead of real ones. It wasn't fair that Ed had to interpret his words instead of listening to them.

The knife stabbed harder into his side. It had been there all along, ever since that awful day....

“Al...” he whispered. “There's...something I need to tell you. Something...I should've told you this a long time ago, but I was...I was scared, I guess, of what you might say.”

Al's brow furrowed and he tilted his head to one side in confusion.

Clearing his throat, Ed dropped his gaze to the floor, where the blinds made stripes of moonlight and shadow on the floorboards. He hesitated, heart hammering against his ribs. Then, just like the first time he'd jumped into the deep end of the pool, he took a deep breath and plunged in before he could lose his nerve.

“It's my fault Mom's dead.”

He didn't dare look up to see Al's expression, but he could easily hear the sharp intake of breath. “You didn't know where we were going that night, did you?”

He heard, more than saw, Al shake his head.

“We were going to meet...him.” Ed grimaced around the sour taste in his mouth at the hazy memory of their father. He only had one image of his father in his head: the day he walked out the door.

His hands curled into fists on his knees. “He'd been sending letters. For weeks. Asking Mom if he could see us. You know how it was always my job to go check the mailbox? Well, I saw his name, and so I...hid them. Each time one would come in, I wouldn't give it to Mom, I'd read it myself and then I'd hide it under my mattress. But I didn't think about him calling on the phone. So that night...you remember how she took that phone call into her room for like an hour, and then she came out and said we had to get in the car? That's why. Because she was taking us to see him.”

All he'd wanted was to protect Mom from that jerk who'd left them. He was a traitor to their family, so they shouldn't want anything to do with him. But Ed wasn't an idiot. He may have only been eleven, but he'd heard the way Mom would talk about him, the longing way she'd look at his photos in the hallway. If he ever showed his face around town again, Ed knew she'd go running to him in a heartbeat. And just end up heartbroken all over again.

“But...if I hadn't hidden the letters...if she'd been reading them all along...it wouldn't have been that night. They would've arranged a meeting some other time, when it wasn't raining, and then she wouldn't have been so...crying and distracted...and then it wouldn't...she wouldn't have....”

A warm arm around his shoulders brought him up short. He squeezed his eyes shut, and only when he felt tears dripping onto his knee did he realize he was crying.

He sat stiffly, not leaning into Al's embrace. He didn't deserve this sympathy. He didn't even deserve to cry. “It's...It's my fault,” he choked out. “It's my fault we're...like this.”

Al's hand covered his, but he said nothing. He never said anything. He was locked in a prison of silence, all because of his stupid, stupid brother....

“You should hate me,” he whispered. “I wouldn't blame you if you did.”

Al let go of his hand and cupped Ed's cheek, gently raising it so they could meet each other's gaze. Ed looked into his brother's eyes, turned silvery in the moonlight, and he knew what Al would have said if he could: I don't blame you, brother.

“Why not?” He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to bear the forgiveness and gentle understanding anymore. “Why don't you hate me?”

A warm forehead nudged gently against his. Keeping one hand pressed to Ed's cheek, Al reached for Ed's and pressed his palm against his own cheek. It was wet too now.

“I know,” Ed murmured. “We're all we've got. But...that's my fault too.”

Pulling back just enough to look each other in the eye again, Al shook him slightly. Suddenly, he was all steel and stubbornness, despite the tears still trailing down his cheeks. He stabbed a finger at Ed's chest and shook his head emphatically.

“What?” Ed frowned. “You're saying it's not my fault?”

Al nodded.

“You don't blame me because it's not my fault?”

Nod.

Ed looked away, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “That's nice, Al. But I don't believe it.”

A sudden punch in the shoulder brought his attention back to Al. The glare sent his way said louder than any words, You should. Because it's true.

Scrubbing his hands over his cheeks to wipe away the tears, Ed shook his head. “Yeah, that's what all the shrinks tell me. But what do they know?”

Al leapt to his feet and smacked a hand on his chest. I know. I was there. Then he marched over to his dresser and grabbed the framed photo sitting there between piles of library books and the little collection of rocks and feathers he'd begun to accumulate. He stomped back over to Ed and shoved the picture right in front of Ed's face.

Their mother beamed back at him, her arms around a much younger Ed and Al. They all looked so happy. So content.

Ed glanced up at his brother, who insistently shoved the picture into Ed's hands. He looked down at his mother's smiling face, and for the first time, he tried to imagine what she would say if she were here. If he'd actually gotten a chance to apologize for what he'd done.

No, Ed. Don't blame yourself. It wasn't anyone's fault. The road was slick, and neither of us saw what was happening until it was too late. I'm so sorry that you and Al were hurt. But most of all, I'm sorry that I'm not there to tell you in person.

Maybe it was because he'd gotten so used to interpreting Al's silences and facial expressions, but Ed almost thought he could hear his mother's voice. A drop of moisture fell onto the glass in the frame, right over her smiling face, quickly followed by another and another.

“She'd say...sh-she'd say...it's n-not my fault....”

Al sat down on the bed beside Ed again, and when Ed blinked the tears away, he nodded with a sad little smile. Encouraging him to say it again.

“It's not my fault....” Once he said the words and really, truly believed them, Ed couldn't seem to stop saying them. “It's not my fault...it's not my fault....”

Crawling into Ed's bed, Al tugged at Ed's sleeve until he slid under the covers as well. Together, they sat and looked at the picture of their mother, resting their heads against each other.

Sometimes, Ed broke the silence by whispering, “So you don't hate me?” or “You sure it's not my fault?” And each time, Al shook his head and dried his brother's tears with a corner of the sheet. Slowly, slowly, the words settled in his heart and began to sound true.

The next morning, when Riza came in to wake the boys for breakfast, she found them slumped against the headboard, heads resting against each other and hands tightly clasped. With a smile, Riza softly backed out of the room and let them sleep a little longer.

[sashakielman]

Sword

Thank you to @inklings-challenge for the daily prompts and putting together the Chesterton Challenge!

Swords weren’t much use to a magic user. When one could call the sun or wind or water into their hands, what was the point of a weapon? Or so some people and schools of thought believed. Edan knew better. He had been in too many situations where it could have been dangerous to reveal he was a fully trained witch. He was no expert duellist, but he could use a sword and a pistol about as well as any non-magic using rancher in one of the rougher Realms. 

His father was born in one such Realm. May his soul finally be at peace. The traditional blessing didn’t feel hollow. Edan meant every word, especially his addition of “finally.” As a child, he was too angry and overactive to sit still and pray, hating to be cooped up inside or even expected to wait patiently outside during religious ceremonies on his Realm’s sacred mountain. 

But now, having abdicated his role as heir to the throne, and recovering from his battle injuries, he found himself drawn to the quiet of the temple, to the peace of meditation, to praying for his father’s soul, and for all those lost so needlessly in the war. 

May all their souls find peace. 

Edan would never look at his magic, his hands, a weapon, the same way again. He prayed he would find his own peace with himself in this life.

[phoebeamorryce]

Day Three: Sword

Another rewrite, this time of a short story I was fiddling with last year. It's based on my Wayfarer's Cottage story, but beyond that there isn't much detail. This is an overhaul of the first scene.

Blood.

A drop of blood on the tip of a silver blade. Water running to meet it, watering it like wine.

It falls to the sand, a costly oblation to slake the thirst of powers too great to deny. Another falls to join it, and another, reddening as they gather. The ground is already saturated. It will never be enough.

The roaring at my back, so loud it deafens me, calls for more, more. And yet…. And yet the air has changed, no longer charged with the raw power of the gathering storm. The storm has broken.

How long has it been raining?

Cool rain beads on my bare shoulders and trickles down my arms. The last drops of magic in my veins race with it, until both spill from my fingertips, from the point of my sword. I used my sword for the final blow. I had nothing else to use.

I am empty, aching, spilled out on the sands of the arena.

A touch on my arm has me raising my sword on instinct; the voice in my ear stays my hand. The captain is there beside me, steadying me. He shouldn’t have dared to touch me, and the fact that he has and it did him no harm seems to disturb him. He doesn’t remove his hand.

Blood wells between his fingers.

All in a rush, the dull crashing in my ears subsides. I can hear the rain now, the steady shush of it falling on sand, the plink of it falling on armor. I glance once more at the body on the ground, lying in a growing pool of blood. My blow was swift, clean, merciful as a priest’s blade. The man hadn’t believed it, even at the end. I never could inspire faith in people.

The captain murmurs something I can’t understand and finally eases his hold on my arm. Wordlessly I follow him, careful to lift my feet so I don’t trip over the dead man’s outflung hand.

With every step my strength returns, though my power does not. I gather the last vestiges of that and shoot them through my sword with a flick of my wrist. The blade flashes and the now-dried gore flies from it. I sheath the sword and surreptitiously flex my sword hand. 

The captain and his men part as I join them, then fall into step behind me, the captain closest at my left hand. A flock of servants leaps forward the moment we passed under the stands and into the claustrophobic corridor beyond, plying me with bread and wine. With an effort I keep still and submit to their ministrations. 

One deftly unpins my hair, brushes it, and braids it in a style that falls heavily across my shoulders. Another exchanges my hobnailed boots for shoes with soft soles. I dip a bit of bread into a proffered dish of oil and chew mechanically as the servants undo the laces on my breastplate and lift it over my head. The captain snatches a clean bandage out of a servant’s hands and binds my arm.

Through all of this, no one speaks, not even the captain. I catch his eye as one of the servants pulls the sleeve of a clean shirt over my bandage; the captain stares back at me, lips pressed thin.

Finally the servants leave.

“The surrender will be observed shortly,” the captain tells me, his voice revealing nothing.

I nod my thanks and accept my sword in its scabbard. I clutch it in both hands and count my breaths until my heartbeat slows. The whole place stinks of tallow and ash, and the stones echo back the smallest noise. We can hear the escort approaching before we see the light of his torch.

I am still measuring every breath when I pass behind the escort through the dark hallways and into a long room lit by windows along one wall. A host has already gathered, with more joining every minute. I feel the change as the people notice my presence, and I am alone.

My shoes make the barest sound on the bare floor. They shouldn’t; I had learned as a child how to muffle my footsteps, but today I don’t even have power enough for this. The noise is a bow drawn across my strained nerves.

At the end of the room, with the light behind him as always, my lord waits for me. Sunlight turns his figure to shadow and glances off of polished armor and decorative shields, and my eyes burn, but I do not look away. I know after years of practice how to fix my eyes on my lord’s even with the sun behind him.

All noise has fallen to silence by the time I reach the dais and kneel, sword resting across my upraised palms. Words are spoken over my head, words I don’t bother listening to. They have nothing to do with me, only what comes after me. I pay just enough attention to hear the order to rise, hands now empty, and take my place at my lord’s back. From there I can, if I wish, look out on the sea of faces. The tension is tangible, setting my fingers tingling. I can study the men who have taken my place at the foot of the dais to trade speeches before bowing to defeat.

From there, no one can see my face. I am nothing more than a shining sword in my lord’s strong hand, forged to cut down any who oppose him.

[olyia-stories]

A Shield for the Broken

I stand my ground

I face my foe

There are people behind me that need protection

I draw my sword

I hold my shield

No one needs to go through what I have

I face my foe

The world behind me

I've chosen my battles, and I choose life

[olyia-stories]

(Untitled)

The world in black and white

No color to be found

What is broken cannot be fixed

No room is safe or sound

We have given up the fight

In the darkness there is light

A place safe to stand

Jesus Christ our Lord

Is alive with death in hand

To bring us through the night