Thank you for the tag @hobbitwrangler and @balrogballs (I'm like nearly a week late answering this one but it's alright, time is fake after all). Here's a little something from the Elwing/Maedhros Arranged Marriage AU (neither of them are happy about it, and it goes about as well as you can imagine). Here we get a bit of an interaction between Maglor (who's the mastermind behind this whole thing, in his defense he's trying to fix a terrible situation), and Elwing:
“It would make for a beautiful story,” she can see something lighting up behind his eyes the more he speaks, like a stray spark in a hayloft, “tragic of course, but all the best stories are. Wouldn’t you agree?” He has the audacity to turn to look at her. It’s the first time he’s really looked at her.
His hand hovers near her face, hesitant, the same way you’d treat a scared cat. She could bite his finger clean off.
She doesn’t. Not yet at least.
“Tragedy has never been to my taste. I always much preferred the songs with a happy ending,” she doesn’t have many memories of a time before, but she does remember falling asleep in her parents bed as a child. Stories of bravery and love that defied all odds swirling in the air, “I don’t think we’re in that sort of story. Do you?”
If she wasn't watching him like a hawk she would’ve missed it. The flash of something bitter and injured crossing over his face. Then, just as quickly, it fades back into something long-suffering and pleasant.
A well-worn mask to hide any and all vulnerability.
She cannot find it in herself to feel bad for him. Good, she thinks, this at least I can still keep.
Tagging everyone who tagged me back and, @icarusofathousanddays, @lady-of-ithilien, @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras, @saintvoids, @ulmondil, @lady-of-imladris, @yewfey, @ffigwit, @philtatosbuck, @nerdanelparmandil, @seaemberthesecond, @starshadeemilyart, @nycterisg and anyone else who wants to join in and share something!
Inside each man lives a wild creature. This creatures is not able to draw the line of difference between self respect and ego. He associates power with violence and destruction. This animal remains tame till the words of his master are followed as orders. This creature remains unnoticed as it continues lurking in the dark while we stand unaware to his existence. Everytime, a voice is raised against wrong, the demon stirs and created havoc in the life of those involved.
Got tagged by @balrogballs (thank you so much!!), I'm being very slow at working on stuff (and I'm procrastinating a lot too), but here's a little more of my "Haleth accidentally marries Caranthir and they have to deal with the aftermath" fic:
Her head was killing her and the sunlight coming in through the windows wasn’t being much help. At all.
And neither were the gaggle of elven lords gathered around the table. One of them, the tallest one, had buried his head in his hands and was not looking like he wished to resurface anytime soon (something which was ridiculously unfair in her opinion, he’d been the one to summon them here after all). The one to his left had been tapping his fingers on the table for the past ten minutes or so (off rhythm apparently, as one of the other ones had sighed) and Haleth was so tempted to throw an apple to his head.
Tagging @ulmondil, @outofangband, @justdrowthings, @saintstars, @nerdanelparmandil, @feyandferal, @queerofthedagger, @lyragoth, and whoever else sees this!! Consider it an open tag!
Thank you for the tags @neeeeeklaus, @icarusofathousanddays, @ffigwit!! Here's a part of my Mrs. Parker fic! She's not having a great time and you get the 2nd person POV for that extra immersion into the horrors!
You’re three months shy of your twenty-second birthday when the boy you love dies.
Everyone tells you he hasn’t but you know better. It doesn’t matter that he has the same face (though he’s missing the little scar behind his ear he got that time you went camping on your third date), or that he has the same name (even if half the time it takes you calling him two or three times for him to turn around), or even that he swears to you that he’s alright and then kisses you the way he always does (and that makes it worse, because what if you’re wrong?).
You know it’s not him.
Because you know Josh (except now he keeps telling you to call him Joshua), and you know that he always wanted to travel the world (except now he’s asking about when you’d like to move into his old family home with you), and he hated anything and everything bitter (he takes his coffee black now, and smiles at you when you stumble out of the bedroom like it’s normal for him to up before you)
You miss him waking up late and fumbling around for his glasses in the mid afternoon. He's stopped wearing them, says he doesn't need them anymore
Most importantly Josh would’ve driven across state lines to find a clinic no questions asked (well maybe he would’ve asked if you wanted someone else to take you). Joshua listens to you tell him the news with a blank look on his face until he lights up like the Christmas your grandma used to set up with way too many lights.
Then he brings your hands to his lips (he used to say that stuff was cheesy when someone did it in movies) and tells you you’re going to do a great job. He thanks you and tells you not to worry about anything. That he’ll take care of all of you and that you don’t have to go through this alone.
You want to scream at him, throw something at him or maybe storm off. But your parents cut you off half a year ago when they found out you had a live-in boyfriend, and you don’t have a car, and you were never the best at keeping the regular sort of friends (making them was another thing, you’ve always been fun and charming and quick-witted, but sooner or later they all start making excuses), let alone the type that would put their life on pause to help you with this.
Josh had liked you as you were. Joshua doesn’t seem to really see you. But at least that means he won’t see whatever it was that made everyone else leave.
So you let him hold you, and you hope this isn’t the worst mistake of your life.
Tagging, @slightly-ditzy, @ulmondil, @seaemberthesecond, @lady-of-imladris, @colorfultomatofruit, @horrid-corvid, @philtatosbuck, @sotwk, @cancerian-woman, @saintstars, @ray-astra0, and anyone else who has something they'd like to share!
Got tagged by @icarusofathousanddays, @lady-of-imladris, @mangoliefics, and @neeeeeklaus (and I've been super late to answer the game), so here's a snippet from it's textbook really (my take on the Sleeping Beauty Spell) I've been slowly working on! (And I am only going slightly insane trying to make sense of the magic system because they keep contradicting themselves)
Here’s the thing about magic. It will always be easier, faster, and a thousand times more efficient to create a loophole yourself and weave it into the spell, than it will be to make the enchantment airtight and unbreakable.
(The latter, while impossible on a purely technical level, can be approximated by way of making the spell complex and obscure enough. While it's true that magic follows the laws of Nature, but that in and of itself is poorly defined, so there are infinite possibilities. Still a bit of crapshoot, especially if you’re not the best at physics or probability)
Magic, at the end of the day, has a weird sense of irony.
Tagging everyone who tagged me back and @mariedemedicis, @daze-stole-ur-milk, @slightly-ditzy, @colorfultomatofruit, @peasant-player, @cancerian-woman and anyone else who wants to share something!
He saw the guilt on their faces every time they caught themselves, that knife-sharp regret that tainted every moment spent in his company. So no, he could not blame them for not asking him to stay.
He hoped that they, in turn, did not blame him for leaving. Even if abandoning them for a wintry wasteland felt as though he was punishing them for being afraid.
The Amlach/Maedhros fic I've been talking about for ages (well part one of two at least). Have you ever met two people who are both fucked up in different ways and are processing it in the worst way possible (or almost worse)? That's them. Also I'm holding @nycterisg responsible for putting this ship in my brain
I would say someone needs to get them help but I think they're fun like this.
Since I have gotten some asks about other people's ocs for the sentences meme, I am bestowing you my highest honor: please give me miriam and one of your OCs that I know!!!!!! you are hiding!!!!!!!!! I KNOW IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (also you can totally ignore this one)
Answering this one first because rules are fake and I can do what I want. Allow me to introduce you to Maisie, my girl from our world who tripped one day and found herself in Davina's body about three years before The Originals started. She has a bone to pick with The Narrative, the weirdest way of doing magic this universe has seen, and she's very very gay.
(I am a little very nervous because I love your girl Miri so much so I hope I don't get her too wrong, even from if this is an outsider's perspective)
three some sentences fic game
She's looking at the girl-who's-not-supposed-to-exist sat on the ground staring at the crackling TV in their motel room. There's a The Pink Panther Show rerun playing and she's staring like she's never seen colors like it before in her life.
(Her hair is still wet from the shower Maisie had to help her into. The shampoo had gotten in her eyes a little, and she'd cried in that silent way one can only learn)
Maisie almost believes it. But sometimes the girl's eyes widen like she's trying to grab at something but can't quite reach. It's enough to make her suspicious.
The smart choice would've been to leave her in the basement where she wasn't supposed to be. Not that Maisie was ever supposed to find those coffins in the first place.
(It's a little annoying that they were in the wrong place, she was doing such a good job at being careful)
She also wasn't supposed to pull out any daggers nor was she supposed to steal any still sleepy vampires away from there, she should've just walked out and pray she could reach an airport before the whiniest mass murderer known in the world could catch wind of her.
(It's been three years since she's been having nightmares about him and his siblings. This is just the worst.)
Instead she's got a non-verbal vampire she's never seen on her screen holed up in a shitty roadside motel and a dagger she needs to ditch in the nearest pond laying on the bed. Maisie grabs it, turning it around in her hands, and the girl snaps her eyes to her.
They're impossibly blue. It's unfair really.
(She's got the same haunted eyes Maisie had seen on a painting during a school trip. The sort that tell you the artist couldn't quite capture the full light in them.)
"Do you-?" She trails off for a moment, not sure if this is the right thing to ask, "Do you want it back?" She tentatively holds it out to her, point side facing inwards like how you're meant to safely hand over a knife.
The girl tilts her head, and reaches out, not to take the dagger but to run her fingers over the hilt. Gently, almost lovingly, like she's trying to trace the shape of something she lost and just now found.
It dawns on Maisie that she's not going to be running away from this one.
(Which means she's royally screwed.)
Rules: share something old – a snippet of a favorite fic you wrote that you are proud of; share something new – give us a sneak peek of something new you are working on; share something borrowed – a snippet from a fic you read recently that you loved; and share something blue – a snippet you wrote or read that made you cry!
Something New: I am very slow going on this and I know I've been talking about it for ages without much to show for it, but I'm still working on my Finduilas Lives AU so I'll share something from that!
She didn’t even have a good reason for getting lost. Nothing she could have gone back and explained away without having to- Well, to actually explain.
There had been a boy in the market. Stood knee-high next to his mother, eagerly tugging at her skirts to show her one of the painted kites a vendor was selling. He was too young, his hair had been the wrong shade, and the mother had been too slender and pale for her to make a mistake.
It hadn’t mattered in the moment. Not one bit. So she had trailed off after them.
Carefully of course, with the sort of delicately cultivated air of coincidence one has when trying to get close to a street cat.
Which is to say she was stalking them. Watching them stop at stalls every so often, or listening to them mutter about what they would have for dinner back home.
No, they can’t get the little fried fish covered in the sticky golden sauce, they already have food at home, and, Oh alright, maybe just one of the honey almond clusters then, but we’ll have to save it for dessert!
The sort of perfectly every day things that sting of peace and happiness and maybe even ignorance if she was feeling particularly cruel.
Not as cruel as not knowing what your baby brother’s hair had turned out to look like, nor as cruel as the fact that she could not imagine Gil Galad as anything other than an infant, or that she knew she would not be able to recognize him if they ever crossed paths again.
Certainly not as cruel as the realization that she could no longer remember what her mother’s voice had sounded like
Something Old: I'm going with something from Heartspur because I feel like I don't talk about that fic nearly enough and it's still so so special to me (I loved writing it so much and I think it's one of the best pieces I've done)
He doesn’t get much sleep before the full moon. He wonders if being exhausted is making the pain better or worse.
Worse, it has to be worse.
He feels himself tear and rearrange into something strange, skin pulled taught over muscle and sinew, just to be ripped opened over bones cracked wide to reveal their marrow. The chains chafe, blisters healing almost as soon as they form, and if he wasn’t out of his mind with pain he might wonder if blood makes metal rust the same as water does. If him bleeding will make him have to change the chains out fast.
Sometime past midnight the moon dives into his mind and spills all over it, runny and sticky like syrup, filling every crevice it can find.
He aches enough to name the loss of himself mercy.
He’s not thinking when he stumbles into his room the next morning and face-plants onto the bed. He is sore and his mouth still tastes like iron from where he bit down on his own tongue hard enough to make it bleed. He’s tired, and he just wants to sleep so he’s not thinking when he hears Callie scratching on his door, and it’s only when he goes to pick her up that he realizes.
She’s tense and wary, staring at him with her yellow-green eyes, pupils needle thin. His voice breaks over her name and it’s almost like the sound breaks the standstill. She’s hesitant, careful in a way she’s never been around him before. When she slowly gets closer, sniffing his hand and letting out a questioning chirp like he’s a stranger, it’s like his body is being torn apart all over again.
But she rubs her head against his hand in the end, eyes still carefully watching. It’s not right or anywhere near perfect. Something still feels shattered inside of him in a way he doesn’t know if he can fix.
His grumpy sweet cat lets him pick her up and dig his face into her fur. She purrs and headbutts him when a sob breaks through. His cat doesn’t hate him. It doesn’t help with the pain or the rage or the guilt. But it lights something warm and bright in his chest, almost like hope.
Something Borrowed: I have been rereading Shadows of the Dead by @hobbitwrangler for probably the hundredth time by now and I highly recommend it!! Seriously go read it, it's absolutely perfect
Do you remember her then, Denethor? Do you remember how she smiled and laughed that day?
But her brother-in-law would not answer even if she asked. He stared, empty with grief at Finduilas.
But that isn’t Finduilas. That’s an empty shell that you sucked dry yourself. How do you like your handiwork, my lord steward?
And yet Ivriniel did want to mourn. She had yearned to see her sister, even if it was only the empty shell of her, for every second of the long, dreadful road from Dol Amroth. And yet now that she had arrived … He is here. How can we two grieve together? We cannot, for the woman we grieve is not the same.
The woman Finduilas had been would not be buried like this, so thin and drained of colour that she seemed a cruel parody of the person Ivriniel had grown up with. Ivriniel had seen it happen, slowly at first, in the first years of her marriage. The rings around her eyes, the reduced energy which would eventually deteriorate into complete listlessness, the smiles where once there had been laughter. “She is growing up,” her mother had said, when Ivriniel expressed her concerns. “Do not overreact because she is doing what you are incapable of.” You mean she is becoming like you, Ivriniel should have shot back. She is becoming accustomed to the bars of her cage. Ivriniel had watched, as the light faded from her sister’s eyes, as the world before her became of less and less interest. And there were always excuses. She is getting used to her new home. She has become a mother. She has greater responsibilities now.
Something Blue: I could not decide if to rec something that's made me teary eyed or if I should share something I've written that made me have to stop and take a breather because crying and writing is not a good combination.
So first the recommendation!! This is from And the world was gone by @justdrowthings which actually kicked me in the chest with this opening:
Elrond watches the two tiny boys sleep clinging to each other as they must have done in the womb, as if to deny that something as simple as birth could pry them apart.
It is impossible not to see two other peredhel boys equally inseparable by birth, by kinslaying, by war against a god.
Until one of them died.
“I messed that one up,” Elros would admit now, leaning over the crib to watch the boys sleep.
“You would do it again,” Elrond points out softly to avoid waking his wife who slumbers as contently as the twins do.
“I would, and I would beg you to follow me and you would still choose as you did,” Elros would flash him one of those obnoxiously easy smiles that drew everyone to him.
“They will never know you,” Elrond says sadly to the ghost of one he knew as well as himself until he did not.
“You’ll tell them stories, but just the good ones,” Elros would trace those little dark curls beginning to frame those impossibly sweet faces. “They will know my people.”
Excellent, the ghosts of Númenor would already dog the feet of his sons. They could not yet walk and already had ghosts at their heels.
“Oh stop it,” Elros would chide. “Look at them, so adorable and yet you’re already growing them, dooming them and burying them.”
And then this something I wrote in the latest chapter of I dreamed you called for no reason (I do not handle grief well at all which would explain a lot, also this is from near the end of the chapter so if you're following the story but haven't caught up yet you're forewarned):
And then I poured you some of that stupid liquor you always said was better than the rest. I’ve been sitting in on some anthropology lectures, and apparently they used to bring food and drinks for the dead. Still do in some places.
Some of the stories say it can bring ghosts back for-
There’s a pastry store that opened near my work and I almost brought you one. I would’ve if it wouldn’t have gotten squashed on the way over. They’re this sort of soft fried pancake dough stuffed with custard or lemon curd, they sell both.
He would’ve brought a dead girl a stupid pastry if he had thought it would survive the drive just in case it might get her to haunt him.
She couldn’t even get a text for her to angrily delete before throwing the phone at the wall.
I got you sunflowers instead. And then I realized I don’t even know your favorite flower and your mom had already left so I could ask and I hope you like sunflowers.
