#drabblefest 2023

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Prompt: Critical Role (fandom), Vex'ahlia/Saundor (pairing), Fork-in-the-Road AU (fanfic trope). Have fun (encouragement).

:P

Seriously though, this one was a fun stretch! A slightly different fork than the obvious one.

“Westruun’s to the left, yeah?” Vax said.  Vex had an orphaned bear cub clinging to her back, a half-healed stab wound, a half-starved brother.  They went right.

Syngorn is like Vex, too cowardly for the world, fleeing at the first sign of danger.  She can’t stay put after thinking it, so she slips out into the Feywild woods.  Vex isn’t good for much, but after decades in this city, at least she can sneak.

She’s not sure what turns brought her to this part of the Feywild.  The tree drips darkness.

“You’ve come alone?” the archfey asks.  “Sweet, broken Vex’ahlia.”

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I want to leave this fandom/character neutral but like. "Only one bed" and a pern fusion? (Do they have beds in pern? "Only one dragon")

Only one dragon, you say?

“Technically, there are three dragons,” Percy points out pedantically, but Fenth and Deth are so much smaller than Asharith’s golden bulk that there’s barely space for the twins to nestle between them, Trinket tucked into Vex’s hair.  Easier for all seven humans to bed down together against Asharith’s side, the greens curled up across the campfire keeping watch.

They're squished close, but after what they saw today — the horror, Th’dak and Cindreth, the raging hell a single bronze dragon with no sanity or mercy left in his rider’s heart can make of a Hold — not a one of them complains.

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Hi! For your drabble challenge: arranged marriage and I Never Loved Myself Like I Loved You by Dead Poet Society.

Hope you're having a good week!

Oooh, song I had not heard before and like very much, thank you kindly dear anon. You did not specify fandom, character, or any such context, so I hope you are familiar with The Untamed, because this is gonna be real confusing if you're not. (Nobody I know loves that hard, with that much self loathing, if not the Wei Wuxian.)

There's a much bigger story here, and maybe a less sad one, but in a hundred words we get this:

There’s nobody in all the jianghu good enough to deserve Jiang Yanli, but then — there’s nobody good enough to deserve Lan Zhan, either.

He turns around when he hears the news in the Yiling marketplace, arrangements made, announcements out, deal done.  Turns and leaves Wen Ning and the radishes right there, back to the Burial Mounds, walking faster, jogging, running for the hills, darkness, blood, all he's always known he deserves.

He loves them.  He can’t, wasn't ever meant to — the two best people he’s ever known, his sister, his—

He can’t.  He bleeds just to think it.  He runs.

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Stranger Things, Nancy/Robin, huddling for warmth, for the drabble prompt?

Woo! Bit by bit, we're churning these out.

“Do you think they—”

“Shh.”  Nancy’s palm is warm and a little moist, pressed over Robin’s lips.

Nancy’s whole body is warm, in the bone-deep chill of the Upside Down.  Robin leans into it and pretends to herself it’s just an attempt to conserve heat.  They’re still damp from the lake.  Robin would be shivering even if she weren’t trembling with fear, with adrenaline, with the press of Nancy Wheeler’s side against hers.

“Stay quiet,” Nancy whispers, breath tickling Robin’s neck.  She tugs Robin in close, like she can feel the pull of their bodies together against the cold too.

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7. Not Yet/Love Run (Reprise)

I had to bully you in chat into fulfilling the brief and giving me two prompts off the list, but you offered Shinji/Kotone from P3 as a pairing, so Shinji/Kotone is what you get.

“We could steal a boat,” she says, standing on the bridge with its view of the rising sun and the half-full moon and the ships, tall and safe, in Iwatodai Harbor.

“Might have some trouble bringing it back,” Shinji offers, playing back.  Asking-without-asking for Kotone to strum up the next verse, Orpheus on a lyre, like a story could pull anyone up out of the underworld if she sings it right.

“We won’t,” she improvises.  “We’ll be pirates.  Run for the horizon.”

He holds her hand and says, “Then what?”  Doesn’t ask her to stop pretending.  Not yet.

Not yet.